David Landau has written a piece in Haaretz that I largely agree with, but one point in it was new to me.

The article is about the Women of the Wall fight about davening at the Kotel, Anat Hoffman being arrested. The article surprised me, especially considering it appears in Haaretz.

In it Landau posits that Hoffman and the other Women of the Wall are being provocative. Landau compares her, and their, antics, to imagining a Protestant Christian cleric leading a group in Catholic Rome. They wouldn't be tolerated, but would be removed. A protestant cleric in a Catholic church in America would also not be tolerated. The Satmar rebbe going into a Reform temple and leading a group according to the customs of Satmar would also not be tolerated.

Landau's position and argument is based on his statement that Israel's state religion is Orthodox Judaism. Considering that point, his argument makes sense, though it seems more like Landau is being cynical in order to get to his main point, the conclusion. A very important point he makes in conclusion is that the only way to change that is by more non-Orthodox moving and living in Israel. Only in that way will they be able to have more influence, and change things like this.

Israel's state religion is not officially Orthodox Judaism, but it seems to be so by default. As many have said, for many of the secular, the shul they don't go to is an Orthodox shul. Funding and governmental support is directed unequally in favor of Orthodox institutions to the detriment of the Reform and Conservative organizations that are really very small. The only way to change that is not to provoke the system but to get more numbers on the ground. If they bring more Jews associated with the Reform and Conservative movements to live in Israel, they will bring more equality to the distribution to those groups, and they will obtain more influence on society.

And, yes, I think more Jews should come to Israel regardless of their affiliation.


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The people in SHAS are upset about a satirical piece that was in the weekend edition of Haaretz. I did not see it, nor could I find it on the Haaretz website when I looked, but it seems to have been scoffing at the Prime Ministers consultation last week with Rav Ovadia Yosef regarding a possible Iran strike.

When it happened it was big news. Everybody was upset that it seemed as if Rav Ovadia is really the person deciding and signing off on such a crucial decision affecting the fate and future of Israel. Personally I just figured it was politics as usual. Netanyahu needs, or at least wants, support from SHAS, and the door to SHAS support swings through Rav Ovadia. That's just the way it is, and this was nothing new.

Anyways, so it seems that Haaretz scoffed at the consultation and specifically at Rav Ovadia. It seems that the scoffing by Haaretz must have been harsher than the scoffing in the general press and public, as it really got Shas's goat and knocked them off kilter a bit. SHAS people have been speaking out against Haaretz because of it.

I am not going to defend Haaretz, as while I read Haaretz fairly regularly I usually dont like their opinion. I am more in tune with the SHAS criticism in this instance than I am with Haaretz.

However, after Rav Ovadia last week called about 80% of the country wicked and evil, when he said that anyone who sends their children to the public schools rather than to Talmud Torahs is evil, along with the teachers who teach there, along with the students eventually becoming that as well, I am not sure why they think they can talk nasty about most of the country but nobody can talk nasty about them.

As we used to say when we were kids, don't dish it out if you can't take it...


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Anshel Pfeffer of Haaretz has written a nasty article about Rav Elyashiv, written practically before the body was even cold.

According to Pfeffer, Rav Elyashiv's legacy was an "empty one" and it seems that the only thing Rav Elyashiv was good for was encouraging high birth-rates, freezing progress in time and keeping members of the community from leading productive lives.

Pfeffer is judging Rav Elyashiv by the wrong barometer. Pfeffer seems to have had unrealistic expectations of Rav Elyashiv as a leader. It seems that Pfeffer expected Rav Elyashiv to lead the haredi community according to standards and expectations set by Pfeffer himself along with those of the general community.

According to Pfeffer, because Rav Elyashiv did not move the haredi community to be more in line with the general public, he was a failure, his was an empty legacy.

The problem is that the haredi community does not want to find a way to move in line with the general public. The haredi community does not choose it's leaders, whether they be political leaders or spiritual leaders, by their promises or stated abilities to lead the community towards modernization. That is neither a goal of the haredi community nor is it something the haredi community is interested in. The haredi community wants to stay separate, and its leaders operate under a different set of guidelines and priorities than do the secular or more modern religious communities.

One can argue and debate the ideas and philosophies, one can even criticize decisions made. However, the only way one can call Rav Elyashiv's legacy to be an "empty legacy" is by not having any understanding at all of the haredi community, and by looking at it from the wrong perspective. The haredi community does not consider Rav Elyashiv's legacy to be an empty one - far from it.

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I "like" how Haaretz labels pretty much anybody with a kipa, or a woman with a head covering, as a settler, or at least a "settler-type".

To quote Haaretz, writing about last night's Likud Convention and how they claim the settlers work within the Likud to embarrass Netanyahu without any intention of even voting Likud, "Hundreds of settler-types, men and women in skullcaps and kerchiefs of all sizes and colors, crowded into the hall and settled on the plastic chairs, leaving veteran party members no room to sit".

And, of course, they are taking over where they should not be. They went to a convention for a party, of which they are members don't forget, and they took all the seats! They did not leave any empty seats for veteran party members! Oh my! Netanyahu called for a meeting of the Likud membership and ordered too small a hall without making sure "his own people" would show up, but it is the settler (or settler-type" members fault for actually showing up and participating, and not playing according to Netanyahu's playbook.

Many of these people have been members for a long time. I have no idea how many vote Likud in actual elections and how many do not. In democratic elections a person's vote is private - what he says outside the polls does not necessarily indicate what he actually did inside the polling station, and it does not matter.

"They came early and grabbed most of the seats to signal to him that he cannot do as he pleases in his party." Of course it is their fault that Netanyahu did not prepare a hall large enough for the crowds that came. They came and grabbed the seats and proceeded to embarrass him. Wait - no, it is the fault of his consultants as  the article closes wondering who Netanyahu's consultant's are that could not plan this without avoiding this fiasco.

Haaretz's version of democracy is allowing, or expecting, a leader to be able to do whatever he wants with no checks and balances. Haaretz does not even like Netanyahu, but if he cannot put down the settlers, or the settler types, then he must really be bad.


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Haaretz newspaper, like probably all the Hebrew newspapers in Israel, print the times for Shabbos (in and out) every Friday. Last Friday the printed their normal box of candlelighting times, but the title of "Shabbat Parshat Truma" said "Parshat Blah Blah" instead.

Parshat Blah Blah

That upset some people, including the head of Rabbanei Tzohar, as it indicates that they treat such information with a lack of importance. As Rav Moshe Be'eir said, "...This square, with the times for the beginning and the end of Shabbos, even though it is small relative to the page of the newspaper, contains within it a connection to the religion and tradition of Israel, a connection to generations upon generations of those who were, and continue today to be, careful about keeping the Shabbos, and to the Jews who even gave up their lives for the sake of keeping Shabbos. Treating it lightly, whether done intentionally or lackadaisically - and I don't know which would be worse.  I request you investigate this shameful incident, how such a mistake could happen in your important and worthy newspaper..."

It seems to be making a big deal out of a simple mistake. Newspapers make mistakes all the time. I can even imagine how this happened - they had not yet checked the calendar to find out the name of the parsha, and inserted "blah blah" as a placeholder. Then when they checked the calendar for the times they forgot to replace the placeholder with the right information. It happens to me sometimes, hopefully rarely, in a paper I edit, and I can imagine that is what happened in this incident. Though Haaretz is important enough that they should not have such mistakes, at the end of the day we are all human and mistakes do happen. At least they did not get the times of Shabbos wrong, as that would have possibly caused  people to be mechalel shabbos without realizing it...

  -- Haaretz

really? a spy vulture? after the Zionist sharks... what's next?

Did Palestinian PM Fayyad Attend The Ceremony in East Jerusalem Or Not?

To answer that question, you probably had to be there yourself, because if all you are doing is reading the newspaper reports, you would have no idea. Nor would you know what he said (and whether he said it from the ceremony or from elsewhere)..

Looking at the two main English news sites of Israeli news, you would get conflicting reports. Here are screen shots from both Haaretz and Jerusalem Posts front page headlines.

Haaretz reports Fayyad skipped the event and said that Jerusalem suburbs will one day be part of the PA:

Yet the Jerusalem Post reported that Fayyad did participate in the ceremony and he said that the suburbs of East Jerusalem are part of the Palestinian capital:

Which is it? One of these "respectable" newspapers is clearly running the wrong headline..

Interesting. When religious neighborhoods, or haredi people, request visitors to the area dress modestly, not dress inappropriately, respect the way of life of the locals, or any such style of asking/telling people to not wear miniskirts, tank tops, and the like, the world goes up in arms how backwards they are, how they want to control everyone, how oppressive they are of women, etc.

Yet, the left wing organizations who organize the protests with Arabs against the IDF are calling on participants to not wear tank tops when they come out to protest, and not only does nobody care, but Haaretz is even very supportive of it, and analyzes why and how and if, rather than just condemn them for telling women how to, or not to, dress.

Organizers were quick to point out that the request was made by Palestinian women who take part in the demonstrations and do not feel comfortable with their bare-shouldered partners.

Those opposed noted that any request for modesty in dress is in itself problematic, an oppressive tool stemming from the idea that women are temptresses and men those who are tempted.

There are more arguments, all of them good ones. They mentioned of course the problem of the standing of women in Palestinian society.

Here is another impossible juncture of nationalism and gender, feminism and colonialism: Jews with good intentions want to help disenfranchised Palestinians, but, alas, the society they want to aid does not match up to their liberalism, and they try to change that society. One hears echoes of Indian feminist philosopher Gayatri Spivak's statement about "white men trying to save brown women from brown men," made in connection to Indian women trapped between Indian patriarchy and British colonialism.

Aside from this, the question is raised: Who says that wearing tank tops is a feminist matter?

If one is talking about secular Jewish Israeli society, the problem is not one of coercing women to cover their bodies, but the opposite: the commercialization of female nudity, which may be seen on nearly every public billboard and influences grown men and women, and young people.

True, the issue is not really the tank tops, but the freedom to dress as you like. Here the well-known comparison may be reversed: The political is personal.Everyone must be accountable to themselves; those who feel that limitations on dress damage their freedom of self-expression can refrain from coming to Sheikh Jarrah. Whoever can abide by the request will act accordingly.

To my mind, respect for the culture of people who fight alongside you does no harm to feminism. In any case, one thing is clear: It is important to reject every attempt to ask women to wait for the realization of this seemingly tiny matter of feminism until all the national problems have been solved, as has been the Israeli custom for years. In practice, the opposite is the case: If the feminist struggle is advanced, there is a bigger chance that wars and national problems will move closer to solutions.

To Haaretz, and the rest of the left-wingers in the country, any issue raised by the arabs is fine, whereas the same issue raised by the religious is just plain backwards and oppressive.

It is amazing that Haaretz can have two articles running one so close to each other that show such extreme hypocrisy.

In one article (there has been more than one over the past few days) Haaretz blasts the "right-leanign" mayor of Jerusalem for planning to build a park in East Jerusalem and for his plan to evict 22 resident families of illegal buildings in order to build the park (a park that both Arabs and Jews will benefit from). Today there is added criticism that Barkat is destroying the peace process with a plan to increase Jewish presence in East Jerusalem and help the Jewish enclaves grow.

Haaretz also has been running articles, notably a very harsh one yesterday, about how horrible it is that Israel is building a sewage line to a yishuv in Samaria. There were some legal issues with the sewage processing line, and eminent domain had to be used to lay the line. The State says that the line is not just for this one yishuv (Ofra), but the local Arab villages will also be hooked up to it. Haaretz though criticizes the State for building a sewage line because it will destroy the chances for peace.

At the same time, Haaretz never misses an opportunity to demand Israel raze Jewish buildings, whether legal or illegal, in Arab areas. The "settlers" need to be evicted. Their houses must be destroyed. It is always the Jews who are the obstacle to peace, and it is always the illegal Arab houses that must be ignored so as not to harm chances for peace.

If illegal housing should be destroyed, it should be so in Arab areas as well. If some people are obstacles and it is ok to move them, then it should be ok to determine that other people are obstacles as well and it should be ok to move them. If a region needs a sewer line, it should be ok for the State to build the line, so that local residents won't need to be living with overflowing sewage in their playgrounds and yards.

I just lost whatever respect I had for Haaretz... Even though they were involved in stealing military documents...even though they have always been extreme left-wing...even though..even though..even though...

But now they have hit a new low...

They actually published a story using the National Enquirer as their source.

That's right. They picked up a story from the National Enquirer. And now they probably still expect to be taken seriously...

 The scandal that is rocking the country...

What a shame that the newspaper involved in stealing secret material from the IDF is Haaretz. Haaretz is the most professional and intellectual Israeli newspaper. Now we know why they were the most up to date with top notch military information, always hiding behind anonymous sources in the IDF.

On the one hand, at least Anat Kam was not giving over these sensitive documents to other countries, like what Mordechai Vanunu did. She was giving them over in Israel for publication in Israel. I don't know her motivation - maybe she really believed that this was information the public needed to know.
On the other hand, it doesnt really matter why she did it, she betrayed her position and the trust that had been placed in her, and she made accessible documents and information that should not have been.

She should rot in jail for a long time. And the directors of Haaretz should as well for their part in it. They should have known better.

-- Haaretz

Uh, that was the position of Deputy Minister Yaakov Litzman, the "Head of the Health Ministry" and his decision was passed. he is not quiting over it because he won the battle. Haaretz got it backwards.

Who would ever have predicted the day when this would happen? Ha'aretz has come out in support of Haredi candidate for mayor of Jerusalem Meier Porush!

True, they are endorsing him because they reject secular candidate Nir Barkat's recent run to the right in issues involving undivided Jerusalem and Jerusalem borders (I am not sure why Haaretz thinks Porush will be any different on those issues), and that leaves them nobody to enthusiastically endorse, but that the end of the day the secular, left-wing newspaper for the intellectual has come out endorsing the scary looking Haredi with the long white beard!