Tel Aviv is a really cool and progressive city in contrast to Jerusalem. I've spent a few hours on the beach there but didn't get a chance to hang out anywhere else in Tel Aviv. In Jerusalem, the people were extremely warm and friendly so I'd expect the people in Tel Aviv to be even more warm. The only reason the hard right gets elected in Israel is because of the small extreme orthodox population has a voter turnout of over 90%.
Tel Aviv is a really cool and progressive city in contrast to Jerusalem. I've spent a few hours on the beach there but didn't get a chance to hang out anywhere else in Tel Aviv. In Jerusalem, the people were extremely warm and friendly so I'd expect the people in Tel Aviv to be even more warm. The only reason the hard right gets elected in Israel is because of the small extreme orthodox population has a voter turnout of over 90%.
There's also weird fluky stuff. Meretz barely missing the threshold basically was the difference between a hung parliament and the current coalition. Meretz was in talks with Labor to merge but Labor refused so they stuck it out as separate parties and Meretz missed the threshold. Also Balad sitting out of the Arab List resulted in at least one lost seat for the Arab parties. Basically, the Arab parties and the Left shot themselves in the foot and if they'd just stuck together, Netanyahu probably doesn't get his majority (or he gets something like a 1 vote majority which probably isn't enough for substantive judicial reform).
Biden says BIBI isn't invited to DC and he needs to back off. Strong words from biden LOl Bibi is embarrassed. **** off bibi . Youre embarrassed. A Israeli PM not being allowed to visit DC is a EMBARRASSMENT
Nice bibi taking a playbook out of the trump book! Cry fraud and spin conspiracies! It's amazing what the right wing terrorists aka MAGA have exported to the world now. This is the new playbook. Cry fraud and spin conspiracies.
didn’t the military reserves said they wouldn’t serve if the law to strip (check and balance) power away from the Supreme Court pass?
Police are clashing with protesters in the streets. I just saw on another news broadcast that people also been driving into crowds protesting https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-july-24-2023/
What is ironic about this law is that many of those inside and outside Israel who have supported Netanyahu and Israel as bastion of Western values in the Middle East is that this law could lead to the reduction of those Western Values to orthodox religious values. Israel being a secular progressive state with a thriving LGBTQ culture could instead become more theocratic. This is an op-ed from Haaretz. https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/202...emocracy/00000189-8738-d430-a59b-a7398f230000 Fundamentalist Orthodox Judaism Is Dealing a Death Blow to Israel's Democracy Netanyahu is beholden to ultra-Orthodox parties and extremist religious settlers who have taken Israel to the precipice. The moral collapse of Israeli Orthodoxy is at the heart of Israel’s current, ugly crisis
Religious fundamentalism is the worst…. Orthodox Jews are trying to carve out a special place in Israel society where they don’t work, don’t serve in the military, but get all the benefits. These people vote and have lots of babies….
More reporting about how Israel is gradually becoming a theocratic state rather than the progressive liberal culture that it projects. This is also a potential warning sign to the US about tying Rightwing political movements to narrow religious views. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/12/world/middleeast/israel-women-rights.html Growing Segregation by Sex in Israel Raises Fears for Women’s Rights Ultra-Orthodox members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition want to expand the powers of all-male rabbinical courts, and to bar women and men from mixing in many public arenas. The trains from Tel Aviv were packed one evening last month when Inbal Boxerman, a 40-year-old mother of two, was blocked by a wall of men as she tried to board. One of them told her that women were not allowed on — the car was for men only. Ms. Boxerman was stunned. It was a public train operated by Israel Railways, and segregated seating is illegal in the country. The men stopping her appeared to be protesters going home from a rally supporting the governing coalition, which includes extremist religious and far-right parties pushing for more sex segregation and a return to more traditional gender roles. “I said, ‘For real?’” said Ms. Boxerman, who works in marketing. “And my friend came up and she also said, ‘Are you for real?’ But they just laughed and said, ‘Wait for the next train — you can sit in the way back.’ And then the doors slammed shut.” Public transportation is the latest front of a culture war in Israel over the status of women in a society that is sharply divided between a secular majority and politically powerful minority of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who frown on the mixing of women and men in public. Although the Supreme Court has ruled that it is against the law to force women to sit in separate sections on buses and trains, ultra-Orthodox women customarily board buses in their neighborhoods through the rear door and sit in the back. Now, the practice seems to be spreading to other parts of Israel. “I’m all for the rabbinical courts — they are a symbol of Israeli sovereignty in our own land and our eternal connection to Hebrew law,” he said on Twitter earlier this year. Incidents like the one described by Ms. Boxerman have received widespread media attention since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu included extremist right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties in his governing coalition late last year. As part of an agreement with ultra-Orthodox allies that underpinned the formation of the coalition, Mr. Netanyahu made several concessions that have unsettled secular Israelis. Among them are proposals to segregate audiences by sex at some public events, to create new religious residential communities, to allow businesses to refuse to provide services based on religious beliefs, and to expand the powers of all-male rabbinical courts. Supporters of expanding the rabbinical courts’ jurisdiction — such as Matan Kahana, a former religious affairs minister who remains in Parliament but is not in the governing coalition — argue that as a pluralistic society, Israel should tolerate sex segregation in some arenas to accommodate the ultra-Orthodox, for whom it is a way of life. Although some women within the Likud-led coalition are loyal to carrying out its agenda, much of the push to strengthen the rabbinical courts is by the two ultra-Orthodox parties, which don’t allow women to run for office. Israel’s laws have not been amended to reflect the concessions, but some fear that the changes are already coming, at the expense of women. The Israeli news media has been full of reports in recent months about incidents seen as discriminatory. Bus drivers in central Tel Aviv and southern Eilat have refused to pick up young women, because they were wearing crop tops or workout clothes. Last month, ultra-Orthodox men in the religious town of Bnei Brak stopped a public bus and blocked the road because a woman was driving. And Israel’s national emergency medical and disaster service is for the first time segregating men and women during the academic part of paramedic training undertaken to fulfill a national service requirement, the Israeli news media reported last week. A spokesman, Nadav Matzner, said that many of the students were religious, and emphasized that all of the clinical training will be in mixed-sex settings and that paramedics must provide care for everyone. more at link.
