The Joint List is in turmoil and its infighting has gone public.

The complex agreement binding the Arab parties that make up the Joint List began is fraying at the edges, with a rotation of MKs put on hold.

Last week, Joint List lawmakers Osama Sa’adi and Abdullah Abu Marouf were supposed to resign and be replaced by two new MKs.

However, since MK Basel Ghattas (Balad) resigned from the Knesset earlier this year, after being convicted of smuggling cellphones and documents to Palestinian security prisoners, the Joint List is in turmoil over who should resign or not. Continue reading 

Both trials turned into cases before the court of public opinion.

Twenty-two years after O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman, the trial of the former football star still has major social and cultural resonance in the US.

A documentary about his life in the context of race relations in America even won an Oscar this year, and a fictionalized account of the murder trial was a hit cable miniseries last year. Less than two weeks ago, headlines declared “The Juice is Loose!” when Simpson was granted parole after nine years in prison for offenses related to an armed robbery in Las Vegas.

With O.J. in the headlines again, it’s hard not to compare the response to his getting away with murder to the hubbub over the so-called “Hebron shooter,” Elor Azaria.

Before delving into similarities, the differences are clear. Despite his acquittal – famously ill-fitting leather gloves notwithstanding – there is overwhelming evidence that Simpson brutally murdered Brown Simpson and Goldman and had a history of violence against his ex-wife. No matter what one thinks of Azaria’s shooting of a terrorist who had already been subdued after attempting to stab an IDF soldier – hero, murderer, or fatally confused young man – killing someone while in the line of duty is substantially different. Continue reading

With corruption scandals dominating headlines, contenders are waiting in the Likud’s wings, but the party believes Netanyahu when he says it’s all “fake news.”

If you want to see a senior Likud MK’s face go white, ask him what he’s doing to prepare for the day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tenure ends.

“Don’t get me in trouble” is the answer you’ll most likely get. Then, inevitably, you’ll hear some variation of the Likud talking-points about the scandals involving Netanyahu and some of his closest allies – attorney and cousin David Shimron, Bezeq majority shareholder Shaul Elovich, and Communications Ministry director-general Shlomo Filber. The usual ones include “there won’t be anything, because there isn’t anything,” Netanyahu is not a suspect in either the submarine or Bezeq scandals, and the media are trying to bring the Likud down.

It wouldn’t be far-fetched to think that the Likud would be busy with internal politics and a race to the party’s top slot, as one headline after another screams that the prime minister is in trouble, but it turns out that Likudniks’ faith in their leader – or for top politicians, fear of him – is strong enough to keep competition at bay. Continue reading

After Gabbay won the Labor Party leadership primary 10 days ago, Yesh Atid dropped in the subsequent polls and Labor surpassed the party by far.

Never let them see you sweat” is a famous deodorant-ad slogan, which is also pretty good political advice that Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid seems to have forgotten lately.

Lapid is extremely polished; his speeches are prepared and soundbite-able, and he takes the unusual-for-Israel step of occasionally using a Teleprompter. He is, in a way, a political leader straight out of central casting.

But lately, Lapid seems to be letting us see him sweat. And with good reason, since Avi Gabbay was elected Labor leader. Continue reading

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swooped in at the last minute to block Bayit Yehudi’s bill making it nearly impossible to divide Jerusalem, one could be forgiven for thinking a coalition crisis was brewing.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett had been hyping the bill for weeks – but when it didn’t end up going to a vote, he didn’t threaten to rock the coalition in any way. Bennett just said his party would persist in trying to push the bill through.

When it comes to Netanyahu and Bennett, drama is almost to be expected, as the two have long been at odds with one another.

Yet Bennett was almost uncharacteristically calm after Netanyahu stopped the bill.

Thirty-three years ago, Soviet dissident Yuli Edelstein was arrested by the KGB and sent to the gulag for committing the “crime” of being a religious Jew and a Hebrew teacher. Last week, Edlestein, now the speaker of the Israeli Knesset, addressed the Russian parliament in Hebrew.

It was a memorable reminder of the free world’s victory over Communism. And its timing was apt. Edelstein took the Israeli press on a brief tour of his life as a refusenik, and eventually we found ourselves in the courtroom in which Edelstein was convicted and sentenced.

I couldn’t help but notice the important lessons Edelstein’s story holds for those trying to make sense of another totalitarian prisoner whose fate was much more tragic: Otto Warmbier, the American man sentenced in North Korea in 2016 to 15 years of hard labor under the pretense that he stole a poster. He was released while in a coma last month, and died days after reaching the United States. Continue reading

MOSCOW – Emotions were high throughout Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein’s visit to Moscow this week. Sometimes, Edelstein seemed to be at a loss for words, but when he found them, he said things like “mirage” or “not in my wildest dreams.”

What could describe the feeling of standing before the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament, and speaking in Hebrew, 33 years after he was sentenced to hard labor in the gulag for teaching that very same language?

His speech was only the first of a series of touching moments on Wednesday. The Knesset and Israeli Embassy in Russia organized a day that may as well have been titled: “Yuli Edelstein – This is Your Life.” The delegation made stop after stop at sites from his life as a refusenik, and Edelstein was a fount of stories and details. Continue reading

The haredim may be celebrating a victory, but Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid and his secularist agenda stand to gain from their aggression.

The ministerial votes to freeze the Western Wall compromise and approve a bill giving the Chief Rabbinate a monopoly had reverberations throughout Israel and the Jewish World, but in the political sphere, one of the most interesting figures to watch following these decisions is Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid.

These decisions can be seen as another move on the chessboard in a long-running game between Lapid and the haredi parties. Continue reading

The newly reelected French MP boasts of his connections to the Jewish state and its premier in the face of harsh criticism in France, which he says has to change its “anti-Israel line.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s confidant and newly reelected French MP Meyer Habib spoke this week in defense of his relationship with the Israeli prime minister as well as his strong ties to the Jewish world in response to what he deemed to be undue criticism from the French media.

According to Habib, the French media was being hypocritical in its bashing of his long-standing friendship with Netanyahu, who also filmed an endorsement of the French MP’s reelection. “It didn’t bother anyone” when former US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel backed French President Emmanuel Macron ahead of his election earlier this year, Habib noted. Continue reading

Earlier this week, The Jerusalem Post asked lawmakers from every faction in the Knesset what they expected from US President Donald Trump’s visit. Now that Trump and his entourage have left, the same MKs say whether their expectations were met. Continue reading