Yom Shleeshee
Tuesday
15 Sivan 5782
June 14 2022
The Photos of the Day
(all taken at night)
A small hyena; note the fluff of hair (blurry in the photo) on his back behind his head.
And another:
A medium sized swamp cat similar in markings to a caracal.
And another:
If you look closely, you will find a mother wolf and 7 pups coming out of their den in an orchard.
And another:
A Eurasian badger–these are common in all parts of Israel.
The above photographs were taken by a photography team of the Nature and Parks Authority using special night cameras along the Gaza border. The team was pleasantly surprised to find wildlife–even exotic wildlife–flourishing despite loss of habitat due to fires started by explosive balloons sent by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza.
The News on the Israeli Street
The daily Corona update . . .
5,829 Israelis tested positive yesterday (out of 11.092 tested) bringing to 29,407 the number of active patients in the country.
The positive test rate was 26.35%; the coefficient of infection rose to 1.51%.
102 Israelis are seriously ill; 23 are critically ill—24 of these are on ventilators.
10,882 have died, none in the last 24 hours.
Due to the sharp rise in morbidity (33,000+ new cases in the last week), the Health Ministry is now “recommending” that Israelis return to wearing masks when inside public facilities.
Is it any wonder that . . .?
Some interesting statistics this morning:
1. As you may recall from previous blogs, the birthrate among Israel’s Bedouin population is one of the highest in the world. One reason for this is the fact that many Bedouin men have 4 wives. For many years, the Israeli government under the Family Reunification Law has allowed Bedouin men to go to Gaza to get a wife or to “the West Bank.”
The result is that 42 percent of all the children born to Bedouins in the Negev are from Palestinian mothers.
42%.
Is it any wonder that the Negev has become a scene of chaos and a hotbed of anti-Israel violence?
2. We have been reporting here on OneIsrael for years about how the Israeli judiciary is now populated by lenient judges who regularly sentence Arab terrorists to short stints in prison and then release them before they have served out their sentence.
So, is it any wonder that:
The question the survey asked was “Do you have faith in the Israeli judicial system?” The green line represents Israeli-Arabs, the blue line Israeli Jews.
Support for the Israeli judiciary is declining among the Jewish population here even as it is growing among Israeli-Arabs.
TODAY’S BLOG:
A.B. Yehoshua
A. B. Yehoshua (Avraham “Boolie” Yeshoshua). Photo: Rafaela-Fahn-Schoffman).
A. B. Yehoshua, one of Israel’s leading writers, if not its leading writer, died today of cancer at age 85.
Many of his eleven novels, 3 collections of short stories, and 4 plays were Faulkner-esque (one of the writers he admired most) in that they documented a multi-generational look at Jewish identity and life.
An ardent Israeli, he inflamed Diaspora Jews with comments like these:
“Diaspora Jews change their nationalities like jackets. Once they were Polish and Russian; now they are British and American. One day they could choose to be Chinese or Singaporean…For me, Avraham Yehoshua, there is no alternative… I cannot keep my identity outside Israel. Being Israeli is my skin, not my jacket.”
“A full Jewish life can only be had in the Jewish state. Diaspora Jews are only playing with Judaism.”
He was also a well-known peacenik who nevertheless held the Palestinians somewhat responsible for failing to reach an agreement with Israel.
During one of the wars with Gaza, he said:
“All we are trying to do is get their leaders to stop this senseless and wicked aggression, and it is only because of the tragic and deliberate mingling between Hamas fighters and the civilian population that children, too, are unfortunately being killed. The fact is that since the disengagement, Hamas has fired only at civilians. Even in this war, to my astonishment, I see that they are not aiming at the army concentrations along the border but time and again at civilian communities.”
Your humble servant often did not agree with A.B. Yehoshua’s political views; however, he was a towering literary figure whose writings captured the essence of Israel.
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.