The news is reporting that the Meretz and Labor parties are uniting into one party under the name "Hademocratim" - the Democrats.

Defining exactly what is right wing and what is left wing, what is conservative and what is liberal, can be difficult and confusing. Especially in Israel, but not just. I can be liberal regarding economics, but conservative regarding security, while being somewhere else along the spectrum regarding social issues and governmental issues. Any combination of stances on issues can work. Just because I am conservative on one matter, does not mean I cannot be liberal on other matters. I always get confused when hearing claims of this person is right wing, or that one is left wing, when each person has varied positions on different issues, and he or she might be left wing, but could hold right wing stances on other issues. This is especially true of the frum community who is mostly conservative on security in Israel and on Land of Israel issues, but believes in more socialistic ideas regarding the economy with more handouts to be given to the weaker socio-economic sectors and affirmative action and other issues in that realm.

I don't determine for them whether or not they can meet with Abu Mazen - they shouldn't determine for me where there should be a building freeze in Judea and Samaria.

One of the things people dislike the most of election season is the incessant sms messages from political parties and candidates trying to garner support from the masses in a relatively efficient way. Why the parties do this, I do not know. It is hard to imagine that they actually think anybody finds such messages convincing or influential, and also it is hard to believe they are not aware of how much people find these spam messages annoying. Yet they continue to flood our phones with messages few of the recipients actually read and just make us frustrated with the parties.

I consider it part of the season about which nothing can be done, and I have gotten used to just ignoring them. I tried installing an app on my phone that claimed to block the political messages, but I never noticed any effect. Many people get really upset at these messages.

One of those people, as reported by Ynet, went to a parlor meeting of a randomly selected party that had sent him messages. The parlor meeting had about 50 people present waiting to hear from party chairperson Tamar Zandberg when this fellow stepped up and asked for the microphone. For unknown reasons, Zandberg gave it to him, and this fellow began reading a list of spam message she had received from Meretz, including the part that says "to be removed form the list, reply "remove" ".

At some point Zandberg took the microphone back and some Meretz activists who were present started manhandling the guy. There is video of the incident.

The fellow said he wont vote for Meretz because of the spam they sent him. He had just returned from abroad and went to the first parlor meeting he found, which happened to be that one of Meretz - he had received  spam from a number of parties.

I guess he found all that spam frustrating enough to do something about it, and he found a funny way of going about it. Meretz looked bad over this. They did not need to get physical with this guy who posed no threat.

this has somehow become the hot topic of this election season...

Deputy Mayor of Tel Aviv Meital Lehavi, from Meretz, is now targeting the shabbos sirens around the city. According to Lehavi, many new sirens have been installed on the shuls around the city and blare at the incoming of the Shabbos, disturbing the residents and violating the noise laws. Lehavi has reported this to the police.
source: Haredim10

This issue has been raised before and is not new, but it looks like it is soon going to come to a head.

I think there can be what to discuss. There is no obligation to have such sirens, and while  a religious area might want them, a largely non-religious area might consider such sirens to be disturbing or upsetting. There is no reason to cause fights, and the sirens don't really help anybody or cause any person to keep Shabbos. At most they create an atmosphere, and in a place that does not want that atmosphere, perhaps it should not be done.

That being said, when the Muezzin Law was proposed, to ban the blasting of the Islamic call to prayer from the muezzin, especially in the middle of the night or the wee hours of the morning, which disturbs many people in many places around the country, Meretz was one of the loudest and most vociferous opponents. Meretz leaders called it racism and nationalism... so when it is Jewish sirens, calls for the announcement of the incoming of the Jewish holy day, it is disturbing and must be stopped, while the Muslim sirens, with calls for the Muslims to pray, 5 times a day, is perfectly fine. Seems like blatant hypocrisy to me.

So a restaurant in Ranana decided last week to no longer open on Shabbos. The restaurant named "River" will now be closed for Shabbos and has converted to kosher under the Rabbanut hechsher.

Meretz did not like this change and has called for a boycott of the River restaurant, and calls on its followers to not patronize River during the week either.

This has raised quite an uproar, calling the move hypocritical (considering Meretz's statement when others called for a boycott on Arab businesses that expressed solidarity with a Palestinian strike against the security situation), calling it secular coercion, or just calling it too harsh a response.
source: Kipa, Srugim, Kooker

I am not a fan of boycotts, though I recognize they have the right to boycott a business that does not live up to their ideals, just like the religious often boycott businesses that are open on Shabbos, for example.

This will most likely have a boomerang effect, as boycotts often do. The religious community in Ranana and its environs will most likely rally around River restaurant and go there more to support it against Meretz. This boycott is probably the best publicity River could have ever hoped for.

As well, the supporters of Meretz have far less of organized buying power than the religious. When the haredim call to support or boycott a place that goes along with or against its ideals, it often has a powerful effect, as their organized power is very strong. With the non-religious, their organized power is not quite so strong, and even the general "left" does not necessarily support an act by Meretz. So, this call for boycott will most likely be ineffective even among the non-religious, but also will have that boomerang effect.

This reminded me of something a rosh yeshiva (of a dati leumi/modern orthodox yeshiva) once told me - he said he encourages people to rely on the Rabbanut hechsher and eat in restaurants that are under the Rabbanut hechsher. He explained that it is tremendous mesiras nefesh for a restaurant owner to decide to close on Shabbos and take a hechsher, and they should be supported for doing so.

There are not many restaurants in Raanana that are open on Shabbos. I don't know if his closing this restaurant on Shabbos is a result of economics - not enough patronization on Shabbos to make it worth losing all the kosher business during the week, or if it is because the owner is religious or just wants the day off or for any other reason - it is probably some sort of combination of reasons. At the end of the day, most of the time economics play the largest role in these decisions, and Meretz can call for all the boycotts in the world, but if they are not there supporting the non-kosher restaurants, they have nobody to blame but themselves when those restaurants choose to go kosher.



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Arutz 7 picked up on, and posted on the Arutz 7 Facebook page, a fascinating example of hypocrisy and self-contradiction...

side by side they posted two posts from Meretz, posts that happened 3 months apart, one by its leader Zahava Galon, and the other by a Meretz city branch.

In the words of Arutz 7:

מקרה 1: דתיים לא יכולים להשתתף במירוץ עירוני כי הוא מתקיים ביום שמקודש להם.
עמדת מרצ: לעזאזל הדתיים, יחי החופש!!

מקרה 2: דתיים לא יכולים להשתתף במירוץ עירוני כי הוא מתקיים ביום שמקודש להם.
עמדת מרצ: ביזיון!!!! הדרה!!!!


Case 1: religious people are unable to participate in a city race because it is taking place on their holy day.
Meretz's position: the religious should go to hell, freedom is more important!!

Case 2: religious people are unable to participate in a city race because it is taking place on their holy day.
Meretz's position: Shame! Exclusion!!

Guess which religion each case is referring to..

The two cases refer to the following posts..

Meretz Kfar Saba posted on March 14 about the Kfar Saba race taking place on Shabbos. They described it as protection of the freedom in the city, as Meretz standing as a wall for the freedom of the city residents and protecting their lifestyle.

It seems the religious people wanted Kfar Saba to move the race to another day,. so they could participate, and Meretz fought against the change and was proud to announce that the freedom of others to race on Shabbos was more important than the sensitivity to and participation of the religious elements in the city.

Zahava Galon, head of Meretz, posted on June 11, in praise of an alternative race arranged by an organization in protest of the Jerusalem Municipality shamefully deciding to hold its annual night race on a night that falls out on the first night of Ramadan. Doing so ensures that Muslims will not be able to participate in the race.

The organization, Ratzim llo Gvulot, is one that is a mixed running group - mixed with Muslims and Jews - and Zahava Galon encourages people to register for their alternative race in order to promote equal rights and coexistence..

So, as Arutz 7 pointed out, freedom is more important when it is religious Jews who want to participate, and they must be stopped in their attempt to curtail freedom, while coexistence is more important when it is religious Muslims who want to participate.

Last night they counted the votes of the IDF soldiers, of diplomats, and of other special votes. While overall most things are more or less the same, both the Likud and Meretz went up by one mandate each - Likud to 30 and Meretz to 5.

As a result of Meretz's ascent to 5 mandates, Zahava Galon retracted her resignation.

Impressive! That was even quicker than Aryeh Deri's retraction!

(the above is humor. I know her resignation became irrelevant when their number went up to 5 - as her resignation was only based on the failure of dropping to 4. And, I am happy she is back in the Knesset and in charge of Meretz. Despite my not agreeing with her or Meretz, I find that they really believe what they say, they seem to be clean, and they have integirty. A strogmn democracy needs a strong opposition to keep the ruling power in check. I like that Meretz is part of the opposition)

I want to die from the thought that Baruch Marzel might get into the Knesset while Meretz might not... but no, I don't think that will happen..

  -- MK Zahava Galon (Meretz)

this is hilarious. I am surprised, and impressed, they let him go through the entire thing and don't throw him out early on...

very nicely done video by Michal Rozin from Meretz. I am impressed that all those other MKs were willing to play along..

אל תבחרו במיכל רוזין from shira makin on Vimeo.

In the end, everything comes down to mixed dancing...

The Interior Committee of the Knesset held a session to analyze the level of police preparedness for the activities of Yom Yerushalayim.

According to Srugim, 2 of the issues discussed were the local Arabs and the dance circles.

Regarding the local Arabs, MK Tamar Zandberg (Meretz) complained that during the parade to the Old City, revelers call out names and insults against the Arabs. As well, their freedom of movement is limited. Zandberg demanded the police work during the parade on behalf of the safety and security of the nearby Arabs.

MK Zevulun Calfa (Habayit Hayehudi) responded accusing Zandberg of ignoring the Jews and favoring the Arabs, saying that when the Arabs up north recently paraded with Palestinian flags and called out curses to the jews, on Yom Haatzmaut, it passed without protest. When Jews have their movement limited on Har Habayit, and the same committee recently discussed that issue, Zandberg was not protesting to ensure the freedom of movement of the Jews!

Calfa demanded that the police reinstate the original route of the parade, which would bring the revelers into the Old City via Lions Gate.

Regarding the dance circles, members of the Reform movement who were present protested the gender-separate dance circles, called "rikudegalim", or the "flag dance". They claimed it is illegal to separate man and woman due to it being considered "hadarat nashim". Whomever wants to dance "mixed" should be able to, they said..

Protest was registered, calling it secular coercion.

I don't know what, if any, conclusions were arrived at... but it seems like Yom Yerushalayim celebrations should be banned because it might lead to mixed dancing.

It is difficult for me to define the results of the elections - we went together with the Labor and the Green parties and we thought the unity would bring better results... politics is not mathematics, and one plus one is not necessarily two..
The mandate we lost went to the parties of the youth: Hit'Orerut, and Rachel Azaria, against whom we did not know how to compete properly. The ideological situation that obligates us to prioritize the issues of coexistence and dividing the city between east and west,and our strong position in the fight against the haredization of the city chased away votes to the more compromising parties.. it is true we too could have been quiet about these things, but our faith is above all else..


  -- Jerusalem City Councilman Peppe Alou (Meretz), expressing his disappointment in having achieved only 2 seats in the recent municipal elections



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Donate to the Schneider Hospital so I can run the Schneider benefit marathon..

right on the money...

Strange - just the other day Peppe Alou, Jerusalem city councilman from Meretz, said he had been offered a million shekels by haredim to run for mayor of Jerusalem, thus potentially splitting the secular vote and paving the way for a Moshe Le-On victory, and that he rejected the offer.

Today, Peppe Alou has announced he is running for mayor of Jerusalem, though he says he would not take the money from the haredim. Alou also rejects the claim that his candidacy will split the cote from Barkat and bring Le-On and his Haredi supporters to power.

Alou explained his move to Haaretz saying that they expect Le-On to disappear back to Givatayim, as his campaign has been going nowhere. Alou says he has polls that show Le-On is not a serious threat. Despite that, Alou says that if he sees Le-On and the haredim  on their way up, he would then withdraw his candidacy, as he has no intention of giving the city to the haredim.

Alou surely knows that he has no chance of winning, but he says sometimes a candidate runs not to win but for fruits that might be reaped a few years down the line. Alou says his candidacy is part of the fight to keep the city pluralistic, to show that he and Meretz do not agree with the policies of the people in place currently.

To NRG Alou said that there is a problem in jerusalem of the city going through a process of Haredization, and this problem had already had started at the foundation of the State. Alou says they have been fighting it for a long time - they fought to have the city pool open with mixed swimming, they fought to have streets open on Shabbos and they will continue fighting to keep freedom in jerusalem.

Talk about a flip-flop.. will run, wont run... Alou seems to usually be pretty consistent. While I would not call this a gimmick, he must surely be angling for something, whether it is a better negotiating position against Barkat for better positions in city council, or if it is something else..

A strange situation is developing in the Jerusalem municipal elections.

It looks like Nir Barkat is set to win Jerusalem and be mayor for a second term. Many Haredim prefer his opponent, Moshe Le-On, but his chances of winning, at this point, seem fairly slim.

the Alou brothers

The best hope for them right now is to find a way to split the vote on Barkat's side of the electorates. To that end enters Peppe Alou, not related to Felipe, Matty, Moises or any of the others, Meretz city councilman in Jerusalem, who has expressed interest in running for the mayorship. Alou has expressed interest, and when a group of Haredim met with him to encourage his candidacy, he said he wont be running due to a lack of funds - he said he needs a million shekels to run a campaign. They said to Alou that a million shekels is not a problem and they can look into getting it for him.

Haredi activists confirmed that such an option is possible and that they are looking into whether Alou would run to the end or drop otu in the middle - they would only arrange the money for him if he would definitely run to the end, splitting the vote, and not drop out before the election.

For Alou to take such an offer would be a big move, as has has been behind a campaign to prevent Jerusalem from becoming more Haredi. Knowing that this offer is for the purpose of helping the haredim get their preferred candidate in, would be very personally selfish of Alou and would be hypocritical - he'd never live it down among those who would tar and feather him for "handing the city over to the haredim".

Peppe Alou

To that end, Alou says that he won't take an agura from the Haredim, and Meretz has said they will not be running a candidate for mayor but only a party list for city council.

The amount of money they would have given him doesn't bother me. Some are saying that what business do they have offering so much money for this when there are a lot of other things that could be done with this money, such as supporting kollels or running their own campaign. Giving it to Alou could have been looked at as an investment for the future. Getting their preferred mayor in would, expectedly, bring them more money in return in the form of money for schools and the like.

I am a bit surprised by the offer, if it really happened as said in Mynet and Kikar. They must have known it would become public and make them look bad. They must have known Alou would reject the offer - a million shekels is a lot of money, but there is no way Alou could take it after his anti-haredi campaign. I don't see any serious upside to the making of this offer. Being that the group behind the offer is not named - the articles do not say that it was the haredi city councilmen or specific askanim - it just says Haredi subjects. Maybe it was a small group of people looking to make someone look bad or who didn't think making an offer would be a problem - it might even help build a working relationship... Either way it is strange.

Does a mehadrin hechsher indicate increasing levels of extremism in a city?

Meretz thinks it does.

According to Kikar, a coffee shop in Ranaana recently got a mehadrin hechsher. The manager of the shop used Facebook to spread the word around town and sent out invites. Among the many pages on which the invitation was placed, the page of the Ranaana branch of the Meretz party was included.

As a response, the Meretz person wrote that they wish the coffee shop much success and plan to come visit, but it is a shame that they got a mehadrin hechsher.

If it was me reading that, I would have just moved on, no surprise there, after all it is Meretz. In fact it was relatively nice - they did not ban the shop or badmouth it. They expressed their disfavor with the extra religious hechsher, which they feel is unnecessary, but still said they would come visit and wished the owner success.

Other Facebook users who saw the interaction got upset with Meretz for badmouthing the hechsher and wrote so in responses to the Meretz comment.

Meretz responded to the complaints by saying "Israel has a Rabbanut with religious councils who are responsible for the kashrut system. The mehadrin kashrut is run by private groups who cause prices to increase due to the cost of the mashgiach (and we all know how thorough their work is) on to the consumer and the products. There is no reason to support mehadrin products, and definitely not for organizations like the Badatz Eida Hachareidis which is an extreme and closed organization... The restaurants choice to get a mehadrin hechsher in Ranaana is a phenomenon that has not existed before and it testifies to a certain level fo increasing extremism and a stringent approach by which the religious community in town is being pulled.. It is important to differentiate between kashrut and mehadrin kashrut."

What do you think - does mehadrin automatically mean extreme? Maybe the issue is not in Ranaana. Near Ranaana there are many office buildings bringing people form around the country. Maybe the proprietor of this shop saw an opportunity to bring in business from the office buildings that nobody else was attracting, and it has nothing to do with extremism in Ranaana. Or maybe it does. Or maybe there are some "more religious" people in Ranaana, people who have always been there but never ate out because there were no restaurants catering to their culinary needs. This restaurant decided to attract them locally instead of watching them all leave town to go eat in places like Netanya, Bnei Braq, Ramat Gan and others.

Does one restaurant getting a mehadrin hechsher indicate anything specific other than that the proprietor thinks he will have enough new customers to justify the additional cost?

Rav Shmuel Eliyahu, Chief Rabbi of Tzfat, has the solution to the political mess of the coalition negotiations, and to all our other problems.

According to Rav Eliyahu it is really just about a change in attitude.

Rav Eliyahu says:

Politics is about both the sacred and the profane, and the government must comprise itslef as both Mordechai and Esther, who dealt in government as chulin, profane, and as well like Moshe and Aharon, who dealt with government as kodesh, sacred, and thereby desire to build the Beit Hamikdash. The same anointing oil was used to anoint the kohein gadol who entered the Holy of Holies, and to anoint the king who dealt in politics.
In order to save the world, we must have the Beit Hamikdash, and for that we need talmidei chachomim, army, holiness, and not just to ask from others.
Some think our need for yeshivot is as a way to avoid army service, but others understand that it is in order to bring redemption to the world. If we speak the right way, the political debate will be turned around - Yair Lapid will want to expand the number of yeshiva students and he will claim that there is not enough Torah being learned! If you pay attention to what Yair Lapid is saying, you will see that he says that if they would be learning Torah l'shma, he would be in favor. These are the days of Mashiach!
A government that wants to bring Mashiach must be broad - from wall to wall. The State began with exclusions and bans - without Heirut (Menachem Begin's right-wing party) and with Mak"I (communist party), and specifically in the year that a national unity government was established with Menachem Begin they recaptured Jerusalem.
If everyone would be in the government, even Meretz, we would see great miracles for the Jewish nation. Suddenly we would hear about the nuclear reactor in Iran exploding and destroying Tehran.

(source: INN)

There you have it. The solution to our government coalition problems, and all our other problems. And I think he is right!

Weirdly enough, at the same time, Rav Eliyahu wrote for the "Olam Kattan" pamphlet that they are not against the Haredim and want the Haredim in the government, in the form of UTJ just not Shas. Shas, Rav Eliyahu says, cannot be trusted - they sold us out via the Oslo Accords, and he says he want to all the rabbonim and haredi MKs and askanim in order to try to work out an arrangement where they could all sit together, and he could not get a guarantee from anybody, including from nobody in Shas, that Aryeh Deri would not pull a fast one behind their backs and deceive them and renege on the agreements. But that is Shas, whereas UTJ is fine and should be warmly embraced and included i the government.
(source: Kipa)

So, on the one hand, everyone, and he means everyone even Meretz, should be in the government, in order to be able to accomplish miracles! While on the other hand, anybody but Shas...

hmmmm