for the first time an Israeli minister spoke at a conference in Indonesia

In Quebec a new charter prohibits public employees from public displays of religious affiliation, meaning, for Jews, no wearing a kippa in public...

Tit for Tat. That's how government and politics work.

MK Nissim Slomianski (Habayit Hayehudi), head of the Knesset Finance Committee, has decided to hold on to 211,000,000 NIS that was designated for the Prime Ministers Office for certain projects that encourage aliyah, such as Birthright and Masa.

Why?

Slomianski is holding on to it until the government agrees to reinstate the 48,000,000 NIS budget that was designated for yeshivot to fund the study of foreign students.

Being that we are at the end of the year, if they don't resolve this quickly and transfer the money, at the end of the year it will go back into the government coffers and will not go to its designated projects...
(source: Kikar and Ladaat)

Tit for Tat.

What's strange is that just over a month ago Yesh Atid agreed to revive that budget for foreign students, though it would be made dependent on the yeshivot teaching courses in Zionism .. Either the budget cut was not actually canceled, or Slomianski is saying he wants ti revived immediately and left unconnected to the implementation of a Zionist curriculum.

I just don't understand if it was or was not canceled, or if that was all just a distraction.

If you are a vacation-home owner in Israel, the State is about to dig a bit deeper into your pockets..

The State does not actually want to just find ways to take your money. What they actually want is that these vacation homes should not sit empty all year round. They think that by doubling th taxes on empty apartments, the owners will be encouraged to rent those apartments out instead of letting them sit empty. The thought is that rental prices of apartments, for example in Jerusalem, are high due to a shortage of available apartments. At the same time there is a significant number of apartments that sit empty for much of the year while the owners live elsewhere, perhaps even abroad. Those empty apartments have a significant part in crating the shortage of available rental homes, thus driving prices too high to be considered affordable..

The Finance Committee of the Knesset yesterday approved the collection of double taxes on such empty apartments. The details presented show that in Israel there are 46,855 empty apartments, with the 3 main cities grabbing a large portion of those numbers: Tel Aviv has 4746 empty apartments, Haifa has 3445, and Jerusalem has 3429.

The rule will be that any apartment that sits empty for 9 months out of the year will be taxed double the normal arnona rates. This new system of double arnona will be in place for a period of two years, after which the entire issue will be reevaluated to see how the change actually affected the real estate market.

Local authorities will have the ability to decide on which apartments to charge double arnona, as well as having the ability to grant exemptions based on unique circumstances.

So, if you have apartments that sit empty, be prepared to pay more arnona. Or rent it out. Or leave your lights on. From what i understand, the method to be used for determining if an apartment sits empty is based on how much or little electricity usage will be recorded. If an apartment registers below a certain amount of electricity, it will be considered empty and its arnona will be doubled.

Will this help? Surely some people will decide to rent out their empty apartments, or maybe sell them, while surely some will be willing to be double arnona to avoid having people mess up their vacation home. Not everybody wants to or can afford to pay double taxes (that are probably already high anyway) just because they have a vacation apartment or might be rich. At the same time, if they agree to rent out these apartments, will renting out luxury apartments at high rental prices really solve the problem of affordable housing for regular people? Will these owners rent out their luxury apartments to students and young couples who cannot afford the high rental prices? I am not so sure that targeting these apartments is the solution that will have a significant effect on the market..

I've been casually following the proceedings in the court case of the Bet Shemesh election fraud (via some websites and via few journalists updating on twitter and Facebook).

To be honest, most of what has been said, by both sides, is pretty boring and exactly as was expected. There was fraud, there was not fraud, there was this much fraud, there was that much fraud, evidence is strong enough, evidence is not strong enough...

There was one argument Attorney Yaakov Veinrot, representing Moshe Abutbol as respondent to the petition, said that surprised me. He said:
I represent the mayor, and not the various parties that are here. The results regarding Abutbol are definite, that even if all the real owners of the captured identity cards had come themselves to vote, they definitely would have voted for Abutbol. Even if 956 votes, which is the differential between the candidates, had not come to vote at all, they would have a tie and a no decision. The fraud had no affect on the results.

Being that the real owners did not come to vote, I do not understand how he can claim them as Abutbol voters, if they would vote. Shmuel Pappenheim, a leader in that specific community, declared openly his support for Eli Cohen (despite not actually voting) and has expressed more than once how Abutbol is bad for the city. Maybe others in his community think the same or would have been influenced by him - "if they were to vote". Maybe some like Abutbol and some do not, for any other reason. Maybe they would have voted Abutbol, maybe not. How can he claim them as Abutbol voters. How does he know what they would have done if they would have voted?

And, don't they have the right to not vote? Living in a democracy allows one to take part in the democratic process of participating in elections. Just like a person has the right to express his opinion via his vote, he also has the right to express his opinion by withholding his vote. If they choose not to vote, it means they also do not want to vote for Abutbol - for whatever reason.

He cannot seriously be claiming that their non-votes should be counted in a way that will help Abutbol (not by actually adding their numbers but by saying what would have been). Can he?

I landed a few minutes ago from a working visit to Indonesia and Australia, and I see a top  headline in Walla, where they say that 'Bennett traveled the world at the taxpayers' expense, more than any other minister.' Yeah. That makes sense. That is why I joined politics. In order to 'travel the world at your expense.' Because I suffer from a lack of money, after selling my company for 145 million dollars, and I couldn't pay for it myself....
I promise to do what is good for the nation of Israel, and not to be influenced by newspaper headlines. I will not let journalists keep me from working for you. Forget about it. I just got home from the airport and baruch Hashem, I managed to see my four children. I am going to shower now, because I have a work day ahead of me.

  -- Minister of Economic Trade Naftali Bennet

Today is a big day for Bet Shemesh. In just a short while, the Jerusalem District Court is going to open its session to discuss the matter of the claims of fraud in the recent Bet Shemesh elections and the request to overturn the results. This could be the first session of several, or it could be the sole session. A decision could be announced today, or they might not and it could take up to 3 weeks or so until a decision is made.

There are also a lot of other unknowns... they could:

• overturn the elections completely
• leave the election results declared as valid
• call for new elections in certain parts of the city or in just certain ballot boxes
• invalidate the results of certain ballot boxes

you must have seen the Van Damme commercial for Volvo trucks. With nearly 59 million hits, it's likely that you have..



Here is a Palestinian spoof of it about Gaza (click cc to turn on English subtitles if they dont appear automatically)..

So, the army has started to make arrests f yeshiva bochurim who refuse to register with the army..

1. One thing commonly said in recent months was that there is no way they would arrest so many haredim. looks like the plan backfired. It does not even take "so many". The IDF has arrested 3 and everyone is up in arms.
2. Didn't those promoting refusal of service say that they would be happy to sit in jail rather than register with the army? I even remember them saying that they would be able to sit and learn completely on the government dime while in jail, as they would then be completely funded, rather than the only minor funding received outside of jail.

So what's with all the protests? It seems the IDF called their bluff and now we see they are not actually so happy about sitting in jail...

Who even invented this wall? one could call it a conspiracy. 200 years ago they took a place and decided it is holy to Jews. Why? Where is it ever mentioned? Have you ever read about it in the writings of Chazal? By the Rishonim? by the Achronim? Professor Yeshaya Lebovitz decided it is a "disco-wall" and I agree with him. It is nothing... to go to har Habayit one must immerse in a mikva and take off his shoes. This is a holy place. What rules are there for going to the Kotel?

  -- Yehuda Glick, about the Kotel, during an interview about Har Habayit

despite my following his point from an historical and technical point of view, I do think the Kotel has at least the holiness of a beit knesset. it has been used for tens or hundreds of years, as a gathering place for Jews to pour out their hearts and to meet in prayer. It must have some holiness just because of that. Granted, that is not anything near the holiness of Temple Mount, but it must have some level of holiness

Could it be? People "surrounding Rav Rabinovitch" are saying that the Haredi consensus on Har Habayit has been broken...

According to INN, more and more groups of Haredi people can be seen regularly ascending Har Habayit. This has led to a group of Haredi rabbonim, instigated by Rav Rabinovitch, rav of the Kotel, to renew their call prohibiting aliyah l'har.

Haredim visited Har Habayit on Hannukah

According to Rabbi Rabinovitch, some are saying that the prohibition that has been in place is no longer relevant, therefore they have decided to renew and strengthen that prohibition. And it seems the reason they need to do this now is because the consensus has been broken.

Interestingly, he does not just say that they think its ok so we are refreshing the prohibition - he adds a couple of words and says [their thinking the original prohibition is no longer in effect] "for whatever reason, and I do not disparage that".. in a certain sense he even validates their right to an opposing opinion, but says this group of rabbonim believe it is prohibited.

this past week has seen the arrest of a couple of yeshiva bochurim who are officially AWOL from the army. While technically all bochurim are AWOL, since the Tal Law was rescinded and no new system has yet been put in place to replace it to allow yeshiva bochurim to continue learning instead of army service, , most bochurim at least have followed the guidance of Rav Shteinman who says bochurim should show up to the army draft board and go through the process, until the last stage of being drafted. These students just arrested followed Rav Shmuel Auerbach's guidance that bochurim should not appear before the draft board at all and should ignore all notices to that effect. Hence, the arrest of a couple of yeshiva bochurim, and we will probably see more...

The arrests sparked protests in various Haredi areas around the country, including RBS... here is some video from local photographer Yaakov Lederman



and some of his images..
















(same comment for all the pictures - at least their hats are safe..)