Middle East

Arab bloc support endangers the Jewish state 

Benny Gantz’s current tactic (antithetical to what he campaigned on) is to cooperate with the anti-Zionist Arab parties to form a minority government; those Israeli Arab parties would remain outside of Blue and White’s coalition but would back it up. Is this a big deal, and if so, why? Because the anti-Zionist Arab parties will demand serious payback for backing the Blue and White coalition. [Steve Kramer]

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Middle East, Steve Kramer

Universities urge Pass/No Pass grades this semester

With in-person classes transferred to Internet learning at UC Berkeley, my grandson, Shor Masori, is back home in San Diego, monitoring his classes via computer.  Recently, he and his fellow undergraduates received a notice from Bob Jacobsen, Letters & Science Dean of Undergraduate Studies.  It began, “The chair of the Academic Senate has written to explain that for this semester only, the default grades that instructors will give are Pass and No Pass.” [Our Shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, Shor M. Masori, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, Travel and Food

Bibi hanging onto the PM’s office by his fingernails

Benny Gantz is a week into his month-long effort to form a government. Dynamics suggest that we’ll have no clear information for a while. Bibi continues to operate as if he has a life-time hold on his block and the office of the Prime Minister. He and his supporters are proposing a joint arrangement whereby Gantz joins him. His party colleague, the Speaker of the Knesset, has been holding off meetings destined to remove the Speaker from office. Gantz is muttering about Bibi’s offer. Speculation is that he supports it, but that it would split his party. Lapid and Ayalon are firmly against joining with a Prime Minister Netanyahu. [Ira Sharkansky, Ph.D]

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Ira Sharkansky, Middle East

Incompetence riddles Israel’s temporary government

It seems that, all things considered, Prime Minister Netanyahu is having a good coronavirus crisis or, at least, is using it to his advantage. To start with, the courts have been closed, which means that his trial that should have started last week has now been postponed for at least a couple of months and probably longer. His minister of justice is a most faithful servant who takes every opportunity to run his master’s errands.No doubt other ministers do it also, if for no other reason than to stay in office. Should a unity government come about – which is reasonable and desirable at this time yet by no means certain – several of them will have to go back to the back benches. Their retirement will greatly benefit the country. Thus, for example, the present defense minister seems more interested to protect the settlements than the country. [Rabbi Dow Marmur]

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Middle East

Russian-Saudi oil competition damaging domestic producers

By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans have had fairly stable energy prices for the past few years, and fairly low ones, in part due to the tremendous increase in energy production in the United States – both natural gas and oil. In 2018, the U.S. produced 95% of its domestic energy requirements, the largest

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International, Middle East, Shoshana Bryen, USA

Political machinations in Israel during c-virus pandemic

The nightly news programs on TV here in Israel are full of gloom and doom, with predictions from health and financial experts of the awful fate awaiting many of us. The icing on the cake comes in the form of the almost-nightly harangue from our ‘beloved leader’ telling us of the latest restrictions and attendant penalties awaiting us on the morrow. Each such harangue is peppered with supposedly casual references to that person’s wonderful relations with foreign leaders, great achievements in Israel’s general situation and transparent digs at his political opponents.  The fact that Israel’s current political situation is a mess is due in no small measure to the manipulations and shenanigans of that particular leader. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Middle East

Kibbutz with San Diego connections subject of new memoir

Located south of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) and about a kilometer west of Israel’s border with Jordan, Kfar Ruppin, a kibbutz with San Diego connections, is the subject of an enchanting memoir by Rachel Biale, a Berkeley, California, resident who grew up there. [Our Shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish History, Middle East, San Diego County, Travel and Food

Coronavirus in Israel complicated by government crisis

Like apparently in most other countries, life is coming to a near-standstill in Israel. But, as I’ve written before, unlike in most other countries, the coronavirus crisis in Israel is interwoven with the political crisis that, after three general elections within a year, still has only a transition government with its long-serving prime minister desperately clinging to power. [Rabbi Dow Marmur]

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Jewish Religion, Middle East

Coronavirus prompts delay in Netanyahu’s trial

By all accounts, Prime Minister Netanyahu may turn out to be one of the beneficiaries of the coronavirus crisis. Benefit #1: As his sidekick the minister of justice has closed the courts, his trial, due to have started this week, has been postponed for a couple of months or more. Benefit #2: The call for a unity government to better respond to the crisis will mean that he may stay in office for a considerable time, even though his bloc doesn’t have the required minimum 61 votes of the 120 Members of Knesset. [Rabbi Dow Marmur]

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Middle East

Politics and coronavirus in Israel

It’s been two weeks since the election, and just now the President has interviewed party heads, and selected Benny Gantz to have the first chance at forming a coalition. Earlier signs of a minority government with Blue and White, Meretz-Labor, and Israel Our Home, with outside support from the United Arab List, have faded, but not completely.Two members of Blue and White and one of Meretz-Labor have indicated their opposition to allying with the United Arab List, and that brings Gantz’s vote down to 59. [Ira Sharkansky, Ph.D]

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Ira Sharkansky, Middle East

JAFI brings teen emissaries in SD County home

Three Israeli youth who have been serving in San Diego County as shlichim (emissaries) for the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) left for Israel on Sunday — their one-year tours in the United States interrupted by the shutdown of many area Jewish institutions in reaction to the spreading coronavirus.  Opportunities to interact with Jews on an organized level having been greatly reduced in San Diego County, the three 18-year-olds will return to Israel where, after a mandatory 14-day quarantine for all returnees to Israel, they will be able to do volunteer work and have Pesach seders with their families. [Our shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Jerry Klinger, Middle East, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, The World We Share, Travel and Food, USA

Stocking up for emergencies an Israeli constant

I’m ready. I had no need to stock up on toilet paper, pasta, tins of food or any other staple, as I am always certain to have good supplies of those items. Anyone, like myself, who has lived in Israel, and especially Jerusalem, for over fifty years, has learned to always be well supplied with good stocks of foodstuffs. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Lifestyles, Middle East, Science, Medicine, & Education

Israelis, Palestinians join forces against coronavirus

When Israel was hit by a monstrous fire, Palestinian firefighters crossed the Green Line with their firetrucks and risked their lives to save Israelis. And when Palestinians are hit by COVID-19, Israel’s public health professionals work side by side with their Palestinian colleagues, supplying them with test kits, medicine and knowhow. “There are no borders here…There is no ‘them’ and ‘us,’” Brig. Gen. Ghassan Alian, the commander of Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank, told Israel Radio last week. In such times, you cannot but wonder why Israelis and Palestinians do not harness their shared humanity, their common sense and their sense of common future to end the bloody conflict between them. Unlike pandemics, wildfires and earthquakes, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is manmade. And this manmade calamity can be undone by humans – if they find it within themselves to relate to the other as humans, as equals, as equally human. [By James B. Klutznick and Aviva Meyer]

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Middle East, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA