The nation-state bill could inadvertently give Jewish religious law legal standing over the Knesset’s laws, Kulanu MK Rachel Azaria warned, as the special legislative committee working on the bill began brushing up against religious and state issues this week.
“The nation-state has one intention, but it can come out differently,” Azaria said Monday.
The so-called “French bill” may or may not pass in the end, but there was never for a moment a true danger that it would be the reason for new elections.
Coalition chairman David Bitan and MK David Amsalem, both from the Likud, have been very busy for the last 10 days or so going from microphone to microphone, reporter to reporter, blustering to anyone who will listen about how they are ready to go all the way with the bill giving a sitting prime minister immunity from criminal investigations, even if it means calling an election.
Anyone with the most elementary political interests could have called their bluff at any point last week, because the boisterous duo has very clearly been overplaying its hand. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly does not want an election right now.
A Bayit Yehudi source said the party is somewhat perplexed as to why Netanyahu isn’t reining in Bitan more, since his constant threats are poisoning the atmosphere in a coalition that is relatively homogeneous, and – while it might not seem that way to political neophytes – has relatively little internal strife.
One possibility is that this bill is a “goat.” In Knesset parlance, a “goat” is a proposal that was planned to be withdrawn from the get-go.
Zionist Union MKs have already begun to grumble about Avi Gabbay’s leadership, less than four months after he was elected to head the party.
Labor, the main constituent of the Zionist Union, has a long history of not giving its leaders much time to acclimate to their new job, and none has served two consecutive terms in the 21st century.
Even the unhappy lawmakers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, say they want to give Gabbay a chance, but they expressed disappointment and frustration after a series of controversial statements and appointments of MKs to various positions in the Knesset. Continue reading
Anyone living in Israel knows what “aharei hahagim” (literally, “after the holidays”) means: It’s time to stop procrastinating and get back to work, for real.
The Knesset’s “after the holidays” is a week after the rest of the country’s, with the winter session beginning on Monday, and the legislature is going to be working overtime.
On Sunday, the Prime Minister’s Office gave us a hint of the tempestuous months ahead, with a long list of announcements of things the coalition and the cabinet agreed to work on, much of which have already sparked controversy.
A few meters from where Ben-Gurion is memorialized upside-down, where Frishman turns into Bograshov Beach, is an older, fading memorial that may remind them that right on those shores is where, in 1948, the IDF sunk the Altalena, a ship of Irgun fighters – some of whom had escaped the horrors of Europe – on Ben-Gurion’s orders.
It’s been an active few months for the Supreme Court, overturning laws and government decisions on everything from the Western Wall to haredi conscription in the IDF to the fate of illegal migrants, which means Tourism Minister Yariv Levin has had an aggravating few months.
Other than his main tourism portfolio, Levin is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-hand man in the cabinet, who, in his capacity as the minister connecting between the executive and the Knesset, helps juggle and negotiate between the coalition partners. On Sunday, he was tasked with coming up with a bill regarding the ultra-Orthodox and IDF service that will satisfy the demands of both the High Court and Shas and United Torah Judaism.
Along with all that, Levin has time and attention to dedicate to what has been his passion and his goal since he entered politics in 2009: cracking down on judicial activism.
With controversy about women singing in the headlines again, the Knesset’s confusing policy on the matter is worth another look.
Earlier this week, rabbis in Rosh Ha’ayin called to boycott a Yemenite culture festival because popular singer Eden Ben Zaken, along with other female singers, are scheduled to appear, which could lead to “forbidden relations through mixed dancing.”
Meretz MK Michal Rozin came out against the phenomenon of banning female singers because of religious sensitivities, something that has happened in youth group, IDF and other events over the years.
“People say it’s a personal, cultural, religious preference, but if you replaced the statements with any other group, like Jews or blacks, no one would agree to it,” Rozin said on Army Radio. “There’s a process of hiding and excluding women that’s being justified in the name of religion, and then people tell us we should be considerate.”
Keren Peles at the Yom Hazikaron ceremony in the Knesset. (photo credit:KNESSET SPOKESPERSON’S OFFICE)
Zionist Union MK Ksenia Svetlova found herself in the middle of police violence against voters during the Catalan independence referendum she was observing on Sunday.
“We saw a group of people who weren’t being allowed to vote. So they sat in the middle of the road and sang the Catalan anthem and other patriotic songs,” she said.
“Without any warning or provocation, the police started shooting rubber bullets. I was right in the middle of it with other parliamentarians.
“I saw a rubber bullet on the ground right near me. I saw people, young and old, being beaten with clubs,” she said, recounting the scene in Barcelona at about 10 a.m.
MK Ofer Shelah is worried about history repeating itself – again – but his warning is being drowned out by political controversy.
Shelah leads the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Subcommittee on Building Defense Strategy and Power, which drafted a report following up on how the IDF is implementing its five-year “Gideon” plan, two years in. The subcommittee held more than 30 meetings and site visits in 2015 and 2016 to examine the plan’s implementation at all levels of the IDF.
It sounds straightforward enough, but while the classified version of the report focuses more on the IDF, the parts that could be made public highlight a shortcoming on the political, not the military, level.
The problem, Shelah explained on Thursday, is that the government hasn’t set any strategic goals for the security forces, and in a democracy, the military is supposed to follow the government’s instructions, not its own.
Lahav Harkov 