he speaks more yiddish than me...

Good news out of Israel today. Thus morning the Health Ministry announced that they have approved official recognition of Physician Assistant as a profession. They are finishing training the first group of 33 PAs who will operate working alongside doctors, performing the initial examinations of patients before the doctor sees them and will deal with recommending further care. The goal is to shorten the waiting time and relieve the bottlenecks in hospitals.
source: Ynet

This is big news. Many immigrants, and potential immigrants, have been hampered by the lack of recognition of their certifications as PAs and left them potentially without jobs when moving to Israel. That in addition to the benefits to the medical field itself if it can be successful in shortening waiting times.

Israel has yet to make peace with the PA, but they are making peace with the PAs...

I am watching with interest what is happening in the Labor party with Avi Gabbay as the new chairman and his recent statements, and the opposition developing because of them.

Gabbay is saying things not quite in tune with the Labor party mainstream ideas.

When he ran for chairmanship of the party it was said that he was an outsider, not really a true or classic Labor person and had even been associated with the Right and Likud at earlier stages in his life, though being new to politics there did not seem to be anything clear on his actual positions or history regarding those positions.

It turns out now that at least on nationalist issues Avi Gabbay is pretty similar to a mainstream Likudnik, or even anybody on the Right such as a member of Habayit Hayehudi or Shas.

First he talks about not forming a government coalition with the Arab parties. Then he talks about not dismantling settlements. And now he is talking about how Abraham was promised all the land of Israel and we will need other creative solutions to come to peace besides for dismantling settlements.

People on the Left are livid, and I wait to see if they try to oust him from the chairmanship of Labor or if they give him a chance to come up with a plan that can challenge the Right in a realistic way. From that perspective, what they have been trying for the past 20 years or so has not worked and they have pretty much been kept out of power, possibly because of it. Maybe they need a new approach and maybe Avi Gabbay can bring it.

There were a lot of protests yesterday, in many parts of the country. Many of them were in protest of the arrest of 2 young yeshiva guys who had evaded the IDF draft registration. Those are old and boring news items by now. The more interesting and unusual protest was actually a small one in the area of Mea Shearim.

Actualic reports on a protest led by a small group of extremists (aka sikrikim). The city of Jerusalem, led by Mayor Nir Barkat and his deputies Yitzchak Pindros and Yossi Deutsch, both representing the Haredi community, inaugurated a new park on Strauss St, in the vicinity of Mea Shearim.

As an aside, interestingly, the name of the new park is "Gan Yoshke". However, the sikrikim were not protesting the name. I don't know who it is being named in honor of, but I will assume Yoshke does not refer to the person who first comes to my mind when hearing that name, and I will assume the sikrikim have no problem with that specific name.

Anyways, the sikrikim were protesting the new park because, according to them, the local community administrative body is destroying the Nation of Israel  via the children - and they warned parents that this park is the gateway to integration into the destructive army.

LOL

That's right. They claim the problem with the park is that it will lead to integration into the IDF. I am not even going to ask how the park is a gateway to the IDF.

I guess they found a way to make it interesting. Had they protested the park for any more expected reasons, such as a breach in tzniyus or whatever, the entire thing would probably have been boring and gone unnoticed. Now they might get some airwaves from it by making a ridiculous connection. It is still mostly unnoticed, probably dwarfed by the massive protests around the country blocking traffic at many intersections and also by the lack of interest into the idiocy of these people except as a weird sideshow, like the bearded lady at the circus...

the entire session is interesting discussion, but this is posted here specifically for what Michaeli says regarding children, families and safety between about minute 13 and about minute 20 where she says that the core family is basically the least safe place for children to grow up and she presents what she claims to be better alternatives than the traditional family. This is insane and I never heard, outside of the Kibbutz, somewhat, of such a claim. The discussion is usually around whether or not alternatives can provide the same loving environment as the traditional core family or not - not that the core family is bad and we need to take kids out of that and put them in other situations.

A Guest post by Dr. Harold Goldmeier