It has already been legal for a long time for Jews to pray on Har Habayit. The courts have decided that and supported it for many years. The problem preventing it was that the courts deemed it legal while at the same time laying the responsibility at the feet of the Israel Police - the court said it is legal but at the discretion of the police, as safety issues are involved.

the police took that discretion and turned it into a blanket ban on Jewish prayer on Har Habayit, claiming public safety issues, with the Arabs threatening to riot. Instead of dealing with the threats or assumed threats of violence, they took the easier route and banned Jewish prayer.

In Yehuda Glick's lawsuit against the police, in which he was awarded half a million shekels yesterday, the courts changed their position on this matter. According to a report in Srugim, the courts basically took the issue away from the discretion of the police and said the police have to figure out how to make it happen.

Maybe now if the police keep their hands to themselves and stop raping women they'll have the time and focus to deal with the threats of violence on Har Habayit and not take the easy way out...

When Rav Dovid Yosef went on his diatribe yesterday against secular Jews and against Eli Yishai, I had two thoughts;
      1. I can't believe non-religious Jews actually continue voting for Shas, after Shas representatives have said such things repeatedly. And that they say these things and then Shas goes out with its team campaigning in non-religious areas...
      2. what an embarrassing and shameful thing to say about Eli Yishai. There are a lot of ways they can disagree. Rav Dovid can argue with Yachad. he can say many things about them. He can talk about how bad their policy ideas are, how unfaithful they are to his father, and even that they have brought amalek into their party by bringing in dati leumi people (who in their opinion are amalek).. but to talk about Eli Yishai not knowing how to read? shameful. Embarrassing.

Those were my thoughts.

Eventually I even expected Yishai to use it, perhaps not directly but through people close to him, to publicize how low Shas has gone. I did not expect a response. How can you respond to such an idiotic attack? Release a Youtube video of Eli Yishai reading from a book without nekudot? I thought better to just ignore it and let the Shasniks appear to be childish.

And sure enough this morning Rav Mazuz felt he had to respond. His response - Eli Yishai knows how to read even without nekudot.

Thank you for that clarification.

The only thing worse than the original childish and shameful attack is a childish and shameful response to it.

And now it is a machloket in metziut! I demand this be  resolved. Now that the response has been issued, the only way to resolve it is to check the reality - I demand Eli Yishai's people release a YouTube video of him reading without nekudot!

Yahadut Hatorah
UTJ stops the decrees
(pretty good video.. as I watched I was expecting them to add more "players" or goalies, as per how many seats they'd like to expect to win, showing that the more seats they get the better they can protect the community from the decrees)


Likud
stopping Iran


would we be here if Begin hadn't done the right thing?



Habayit Hayehudi
behind the scenes


the derby


the true story, part 4



Meretz
exclusive exposure of Netanyahu's speech in front of Congress


a million Israelis are not criminals


Yesh Atid
a message to olim


Kulanu Kahlon
we loved Likud, vote Kahlon



Aleh Yarok
we'll give everyone back the right to sleep respectfully




citizens for change


forum of guardians of the land
Eli Yishai's costume

I love it!

This elections is a perfect example of how destructive elections can be to a society. Instead of each party showing what they can do better, most of the discourse is based on attacks and negative , argumentative, speeches.

There is very little positive in this current election cycle.

Perhaps the greatest example of this can be seen when looking at Shas and UTJ. Funnily enough, in the general press one hardly hears anything from UTJ, and they have barely even started any public campaign, yet they and Shas have found numerous opportunities to bitterly fight with each other.

UTJ and Shas have worked together very nicely for a very long time. Even though they do not work out a block to run together as one party, they have had a very close working relationship. They are well-coordinated with each other, usually in elections as well but especially after the elections.

Yet now they are fighting. Fighting over ovters. While UTJ generally sticks to its natural voter base, this time they have agressively campaigned to people outside their natural base - those who are thought to be in Shas's natural base. For example, Gafni and his people have been going to the towns on the periphery - normally considered Deri and Shas's home court.

It has already led to a few verbal spats. Deri accused Gafni of stealing his voters. Gafni said UTJ helps all these people and communities and they are naturally turning to people and communities they have helped and asking for their vote. And vice versa.

The latest is Gafni commenting in a UTJ meeting abotu Shas's claim of having created a "revolution" in the peripheral towns. Gafni says "what revolution? maybe they created a revolution in the jails".Gafni was commenting on the fact that he went to a community and Shas had no presence there yet everyone says Shas turned things around.

Deri responded, after Gafni apologized, by saying Gafni was his assistant in southern Israel, and basically said Gafni is lying and knows very well about Shas's revolution.

The Yachad party is another sore point. UTJ has not been clear on its position on Yachad, even though they have clearly supported Shas. If this fighting continues, and if Yachad is deemed stable in its expectation to pass the electoral threshold, I can envision a scenario in which UTJ also supports Yachad, and further upsets Deri.

bkitzur, my point is, these two parties that until now have worked closely together, are now fighting.

The question is if their coming campaign of daas torah, that always happens at the last minute before elections, will resolve all this. Also, will they be able to work together afterwards, if they create all this bad blood now?

This is a great example of how divisive this election season has been. Even two parties that are really natural partners and have worked as partners for so long are now fighting with each other.

What happened on the Irair flight (regarding the women who screamed at the fight steward over a bar of chocolate) is a result of the division and the rifts that Bibi is bringing us to.

  -- Labor chief, and PM candidate, Yitzchak Herzog at Sharbatut event

Herzog must be crazy, blaming Netanyahu for what happened on the Israir flight..

PM Benjamin Netanyahu makes a stop at the Kotel to offer some prayers before leaving on a trip to the United States to speak before Congress against the deal with Iran

the one thing I took from the hassidim is Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev..

Likud
if Levi Eshkol had done what the US wanted, would we be here today?


Habayit Hayehudi
nostalgic Purim broadcast


the true story, part 1


the true story part 2


the true story, part 3



Hamachane Hatzioni
Herzog compares himself to David Ben Gurion, Levi Eshkol, Albert Eintein and Menachem Begin


Kulanu Kahlon
Michael Oren - House of Cards  (this is a weird, and poorly done, clip, in my opinion)


Aleh Yarok


what happened in Colorado?



and the non-party anti-Netanyahu campaign videos

V15
what didn't you understand?


Bibi's scare tactics
(this one, in my opinion, was surprisingly poor compared to the high quality videos they've been putting out until now)


people behind V15



Commanders for security of Israel
I like these videos.. especially when they say they are non-political yet go on to make a political statement






MyIsrael
what is Dr. Left planning for us now?

the debate was kind of pointless, as I expected it to be. Not because Netanyahu, Herzog and Livni weren't there, but because the format was not good. It wasn't productive for any real debate.

For a real debate, I would have liked to see the same question presented to each party head and to hear how his/her party would deal with that issue. Then we could get the differences clear.

Pitting one against one is good for an interview, but not good for the debate this was supposed to be. I mean, are Bennet and Galon really fighting over the same potential voters? Lieberman and Aida?Do we really have to have a debate include whether Maran is happy with Yishai or Deri?

That being said, there were good moments..

At one point Yonit Levi mentions that only Herzog and Netanyahu didn't agree to come.. that is not entirely true - the head of UTJ, Yaakov Litman also did not agree to participate.




Overall I think Bennet did well, I think Lieberman did well despite his monotonous tone, Uman Aida did well... Kahlon was ok. The rest could have skipped the debate entirely.

pretty funny