Yom Shabbat-Rishon
Saturday-Sunday
2-3 Adar II 5782
March 5-6 2022
Photo (blurry screenshot from a video) of the Day
A Ukrainian orphan with a caregiver arrives at Ben Gurion airport today.
86 Ukrainian orphans along with 14 caregivers arrived at Ben Gurion today.
The News on the Israeli Street
Palestinian terror in the last 24 hours . . .
A Palestinian terrorist stabbed two policemen at the Huta Gate to the Old City of Jerusalem yesterday before he was shot and killed by other policemen.
The dead terrorist.
Palestinian terrorists attacked a woman who was driving near Al-Aruv with her daughter and two infants. She miraculously survived and was able to drive to safety. In the photo below, the daughter peers out of one of the windows on the car that were smashed by “rocks”:
A brush with death: the young girl peers out of the window from her carseat.
The daily Corona update . . .
4,562 new cases of Corona were confirmed yesterday bringing to 54,321 the total number of Israelis with an active case of Covid-19.
The positive test rate was 15.12%.
471 Israelis are in serious condition in hospitals with another 219 in critical condition on ventilators.
10,276 Israelis have died of Corona–39 since Friday.
In sum, the number of new daily cases continues to drop as Israelis no longer are rushing to get tested. However, when they get tested, the positive test rate remains high (15.2%), and nearly 20 people a day are dying from the virus.
Israeli defense systems to Finland . . .
The Finnish Defense Ministry announced yesterday that it will purchase air defense systems from Israel. This comes on the heels of discussions in the Finnish Parliament two days ago about joining NATO–even as Russia threatens Finland (and Sweden) economically and militarily if it does so.
TODAY’S BLOG
Bennett’s Trip To Moscow: What Did He Want To Accomplish?
It was not surprising yesterday to find PM Naftali Bennett flying to Moscow for discussions with Vladimir Putin. No one has ever accused Bennett of lacking hubris and presumption, so his thinking that he could somehow negotiate an end to the Russian invasion was understandable.
However, as it turned out, Bennett was not “merely” talking about what is happening in Ukraine. He also had freedom of Israeli air action in Syria as well as the impending Iranian Nuclear Appeasement Agreement on his mind. What he thought he could accomplish on those two fronts is unknown given the fact that Russia is almost certainly going to continue criticizing attacks in Syria, and the Nuclear Agreement is a done deal.
But as we said, none of that stopped Bennett.
By all accounts including his own press conference afterwards, Bennett’s discussions with Putin, his subsequent flight to Berlin for a quick meeting with Chancellor Scholz, and his multiple phone calls to Zelenskyy were largely fruitless; nevertheless, Bennett expressed satisfaction with himself that he had fulfilled “Israel’s moral obligation” to do something.
On the one hand, it is hard to criticize any effort made to stop the fighting in the Ukraine, but Bennett’s insertion of Israel into the center of the Ukrainian situation carries a definite downside with both sides now able to blame us for lack of movement toward peace. Bennett could have stayed in Israel, contacted the leaders via zoom, and kept his actions under the radar.
But then he wouldn’t have accomplished the main thing he wanted–which was to put himself in the spotlight.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.