David Amsalem, a minister of nothing in the Justice Ministry, has called for the prosecution of the current president of the Supreme Court, Justice Esther Hayut, together with one of her predecessors in the position, Aharon Barak, for an attempted coup. Amichai Eliyahu, the minister of Zionist-Haredi heritage, canceled Israeli Shabbat, a program that enabled millions of people to visit museums and historical sites for free on weekends, and plans to replace it with one to encourage synagogue attendance.
It now turns out that there is also a minister of tradition, the Haredi politician Meir Porush, for whom a budget of 500 million shekels ($137 million) was found. Knesset Member Tally Gotliv has repeated her claim that leftists are traitors. The governing coalition is advancing a bill that would give Haredim a blanket exemption from mandatory military service, once and for all. This is a government that has declared war on Israeliness and cries foul when Israeliness fights back.
The truth is that it is not polite to demonstrate at Memorial Day ceremonies. That is to say, it was fine to protest in front of then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett at Mount Herzl, because he is a deceitful con man, and also outside of the Caesarea home of the gold-star Farkash family, on the orders of one particular neighbor. But to disturb Boaz Bismuth at the synagogue and other representatives of the Netanyahu government at public memorial ceremonies is an assault on bereavement and nonpartisanship.
I believe that there is no room for politics in military cemeteries. It’s not fair to the families coping with one of the most difficult days of their year.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply remove the politicians from the equation? They can speechify on Twitter, or on Channel 14. What do you want from all of the bereaved families, whose members and their loved ones have in the past few months been called traitors, anarchists, weaklings and haters of Israel? When elected officials who incited against them show up at the cemetery to recite cliches, should they stand at attention?
Miri Regev returned from Mexico to get the cabinet’s permission by phone to choose the people who will be asked to light torches at the Independence Day ceremony next week. They include Avigdor Kahalani, who sharply criticized the protest against the government’s judicial overhaul; the self-identified Likudnik Shalom Asayag and Vered Ben-Saadon, who owns a winery in the militant West Bank settlement of Rehelim, who boasts of her refusal to hire Arabs. Ben-Saadon, a member of the Likud Central Committee, hosted Regev at her winery for a work meeting on the minister’s birthday and appeared in her 2019 campaign video, lauded Sara Netanyahu online and served as deputy head of the Samaria Regional Council. Another honoree is Yossi Dagan, one of Likud’s most successful membership recruiters during primary season. Let them lighting torches at a Likud convention. At the very least, they can’t expect people who aren’t fans of the hilltop youth or the Netanyahu family to feel that this corrupt farce has anything to do with them.
Official Independence Day is dead. The ceremony is over. In any event it has come to be seen as grandiose and anachronistic, and in fact it has been dying a slow death for years – ever since Netanyahu asked to address the ceremony in person, in a break with tradition, was rebuffed by Yuli Edelstein and cooked up a deal with Regev whereby he lit a torch himself, while Regev preened in the audience with Sara. It’s important to understand where we are today. The consensus is over. Even the Independence Day air force flyover is controversial: There could be people in the cockpit who are unwilling to serve in a dictatorship. There are people threatening to boycott El Al Airlines if a pilot who linked Holocaust Remembrance Day with democracy is not fired immediately, and others threatening to boycott if he is.
This year, then, there should be two independence days, for those who celebrate in the first place. (Most Haredim eschew the holiday, and of course the Arabs have their own version.). Jewdoid Bibistan will celebrate in Jerusalem, and democratic Israel will celebrate on Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street: split-screen.
This is a historic, symbolic moment. You may be saddened by it, but you must not be frightened. This is simply Netanyahu’s legacy. People like President Isaac Herzog, and to a large extent also Benny Gantz, who under the savage attack on Israeliness continue their efforts to resuscitate a “unity” that no longer exists, are in effect accessories to the destroyer of the state. Happy Holiday.
The Slow Death of Israel's Independence Day
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23.04.2023
David Amsalem, a minister of nothing in the Justice Ministry, has called for the prosecution of the current president of the Supreme Court, Justice Esther Hayut, together with one of her predecessors in the position, Aharon Barak, for an attempted coup. Amichai Eliyahu, the minister of Zionist-Haredi heritage, canceled Israeli Shabbat, a program that enabled millions of people to visit museums and historical sites for free on weekends, and plans to replace it with one to encourage synagogue attendance.
It now turns out that there is also a minister of tradition, the Haredi politician Meir Porush, for whom a budget of 500 million shekels ($137 million) was found. Knesset Member Tally Gotliv has repeated her claim that leftists are traitors. The governing coalition is advancing a bill that would give Haredim a blanket exemption from mandatory military service, once and for all. This is a government that has declared war on Israeliness and cries foul when Israeliness fights back.
The truth is that it is not polite to demonstrate at Memorial Day ceremonies. That is to say, it was fine to protest in front of then-Prime Minister Naftali........
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