Yom Shleeshee
Tuesday
3 Sivan 5783
May 23 2023
Quote of the Day
“He who controls the Temple Mount controls Jerusalem, and he who controls Jerusalem controls the Land of Israel. I am blessed that I am privileged to live in a generation where many believe in it and work so that this vision and dream will come true. In the name of a hundred generation of Jews who dreamed it, you are making it come true.”
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana at the annual meeting of the little-known Temple Mount Administration–an organization that works quietly behind the scenes to return full Jewish rights to the Mount. The meeting comes each year just before the anniversary of the beginning of the Six Day War which returned Temple Mount sovereignty to Israel.
As those of you who know history are aware, Ohana’s opening statement was first stated by the late Israel Prize Winner Uri Zvi Greenberg.
Terrifying Video of the Night
Watch a terrifying 22 second video in which Palestinian terrorists using automatic weapons opened fire on a mother with her 4 children between Avitar and Tapuach in Samaria last night.
You will hear the terrorists open fire at 14 seconds, then the mother frantically screaming at her children to keep their heads down and asking if they are all right. Fortunately, no one in the car was physically wounded–but they were all traumatized.
Click here to watch the video.
The terrorist(s) are still at large.
The Photo of the Day
PM Netanyahu shaking hands with UAE Ambassador to Israel Mohammed Mahmoud Al-Haja in Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem yesterday.
Al-Haja was officially inviting PM Netanyahu to a climate conference that will take place in Dubai in November.
Prime Minister Netanyahu thanked the ambassador for the invitation and expressed his desire to attend.
The News on the Israeli Street
The war in Judea and Samaria.
Israeli forces captured a number of wanted Palestinian terrorists overnight including Mohammed Tabanja, a senior member of the so-called “Lion’s Den”. Tabanja was caught while hiding in his sister’s house east of Shechem.
Shooting attacks in addition to the one described above:
Palestinian terrorists opened fire on IDF forces in Shechem.
Palestinian terrorists opened fire on IDF forces in Kabatia near Jenin.
IED, Molotov, and “rock” attacks:
Dozens of attacks took place along the main arteries of Judea and Samaria: Highway 60, the Gush Etzion-Hevron Road, and the Jerusalem-Gush Etzion Road.
Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism responds . . .
As you already know, the ultra-orthodox have been the target of abominable statements over the last month from the Opposition which has accused them of being everything from “blood suckers” to “parasitic non-contributors to the Israel economy.”
Last night, before presenting the Coalition’s budget outline to the Knesset, the Chairman of United Torah Judaism Moshe Gafni delivered a fiery response:
“Yair Lapid is standing and talking about serving in the army, and everything related to the matter. With all due respect, Yair Lapid gives mixed stories about his army service, but in no case did he serve as a combat soldier; instead he apparently “served” as a gossip newspaper columnist for the IDF newspaper ‘Ba Mahane’.
My ultra-Orthodox brother, more ultra-Orthodox than I am, was a volunteer in the IDF and served in the Galilee Peace War in the early 1980s in Lebanon. He was in the battle for Sultan Jacoub. We were sure, God forbid, that he was killed in that battle.
He returned from the battle in Sultan Yacoub; his friends were killed there . . . how dare you call him a parasite!
I have a granddaughter . . . She got married and had a son. My great-grandson. My first great-grandson. A young girl, she works in high-tech, earns well, and she contributes to the state’s economy, and she works in high-tech together with her ultra-Orthodox friends who studied together at Rabbi Wolf’s seminary in Bnei Brak, where she studied, a school that has been underfunded. Students there study all the liberal subjects there and they study Judaism. How dare anyone call her and her friends blood-suckers!
On the economic front . . .
The Bank of Israel announced another interest rate increase yesterday of 0.25% bringing the rate to 4.75%.
This may seem small, but combined with all of the other rate increases over the last year, average mortgage holders in Israel will now be paying more than 1,200 shekels more per month than they were at this time two years ago.
TODAY’S BLOG
All It Took Was Money
Click your fingers and just like that the budget “crisis” so desired by the leftist Israeli media is over.
Yesterday all financial problems were solved by Likud.
All it took was money.
United Torah Judaism which sought 600,000,000 shekels for its religious school system got 250,000,000 shekels instead—and is happy with it.
Otzma which wanted additional funding for its Galilee and Negev Ministry also got 250,000,000 shekels–and is happy with it.
Even the 1-person (Avi Maoz) Noam party received a promise to bring up its budget for Jewish Identity Authority at the next Cabinet meeting–thereby satisfying its condition for voting for the budget.
The debate on that vote began last night, and if a prolonged session takes place today and tonight, the budget could be approved by Wednesday before the Shavuot holiday on Thursday.
What’s the bottom line?
Unless some unforeseen development occurs, our current government will thankfully be in place until October 27, 2026.
Everyday, the level of Opposition vitriol against the orthodox parties of United Torah Judaism and Shas increases as does the sheer hatred directed against Otzma and its head Itamar Ben Gvir and National Zionism and its head Bezalel Smotrich. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist for these parties and leaders to realize that they have never had it so good.
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.