When incoming Prime Minister Ehud Barak needs to talk things over with Gen. Shaul Mofaz, the military chief of staff, he won\’t have to go far: Mofaz lives 12 houses away from him in the town of Kochav Yair.
During the wild victory party in Tel Aviv\’s Rabin Square on Election Night, a chant went up in the crowd: \”Just not Shas!\” Ehud Barak heard the same chant when he spoke early this week to a gathering of campaign activists. A booth with a fax machine in Kikar Rabin has already sent more than 20,000 faxes to Barak from his supporters, who urge him not to invite the meteoric Sephardic fervently Orthodox party into his governing coalition. Thousands of e-mails have been sent to Barak with the same message.
Knesset Member Arye Deri\’s appeal to the Supreme Court is expected to take about a year, maybe more.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry has recalled Uri Oren, its ambassador to South Africa, for questioning regarding his much-publicized alleged liaison with a member of the South African military.
For the first time ever, an Arab citizen of Israel is running for prime minister. He is first-term Knesset member Azmi Bishara, one of the leading intellectuals in the Arab world, and one of the most provocative politicians of any ethnicity in Israel.
Until the last couple of weeks, the best thing one could say about Ehud Barak\’s campaign for prime minister was that it couldn\’t get any worse.
Thirty-three Reform rabbis, men and women from the United States and Canada, held their mixed-gender minyan at the Western Wall on Monday, protected by police barricades and dozens of cops, as a mob of more than 100 haredi yeshiva students hollered abuse at them.
Now that the race for prime minister is on, the main challenger, Labor Party leader Ehud Barak, has suddenly become dynamic.
At the beginning of this week, dozens of Israeli university students entered the third week of their hunger strike. The country\’s 175,000 university students entered the second month of their strike from classes. Along the way students have been clubbed and even horsewhipped by police. They\’ve blocked major intersections in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. At times some have even demonstrated in the nude.
It\’s remarkable: Palestinian terrorists set off three bomb attacks in as many weeks, yet Binyamin Netanyahu, of all people, goes ahead with his plans to relinquish 13 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.