For new followers, I'm on this platform since 2009 posting about Jewish/Israeli stuff, but be prepared, I also post about pro-cycling. If you are not interested in those posts (or the inverse), scroll by. There is little joy over the past 18 months, but we find it where we can. For me, it's in this sport.
Irene Rabinowitz ๐ฎ๐ฑ retweeted
Listen to Yitzhak Rabin just 3 days before he was assassinated. Could not be more relevant today.
BREAKING: ๐ณ๐ฟ New Zealand stops funding to UNRWA, joins ๐บ๐ธ๐ธ๐ช๐ซ๐ฎ. FM: โWe want to know our money is going for a legitimate purpose. And you donโt have to be a rocket scientist to work out it certainly was not. We're not financing cases where they actually engage with terrorists.โ
Irene Rabinowitz ๐ฎ๐ฑ retweeted
Vรคrldens vackraste nationalsรฅng - Hatikvah.
"...det tvรฅtusen รฅr gamla hoppet:
att vara en fri nation i vรฅrt eget hemland,
Sion och Jerusalems land."
Irene Rabinowitz ๐ฎ๐ฑ retweeted
For the Naza people: The Mossad is calling terrorists in Gaza giving them the choice to isolate themselves or to stay where they are and risk harming their family/friends.
This is happened to Muhammad al-Bayuk, a Hamas terrorist from Khan Yunis killed a few days ago by the IDF. Al-Bayuk received a phone call giving him a 2-minute ultimatum. Al-Bayuk went up to the roof alone and was killed by a missile.
(Saudi paper Asharq Al Aswat).
May Hashem guide President Herzog with the wisdom of Solomon and bless him with much rest and a good night's sleep. Shabbat shalom, MOT.
Ultra-Orthodox protesters clash with police, block roads over arrest of draft evader timesofisrael.com/ultra-orthโฆ A female journalist was injured when a rock was thrown at her head by a haredi protestor. Their leaders encourage this & sit in Bibi's present coalition. This has been going on for years in Bnei Brak & Jerusalem. Understand, these guys don't even respond to draft notices & have refused to discuss alternative national service (volunteering in hospitals, for example). Because they are anti-Zionist. So all the foreign Bibi lovers have bolstered what is essentially a government that has 2 anti-Zionist parties. Learn about how our government works before crowning kings.
Eisenkot: I will do my utmost to form a Zionist government, with national service for all; Netanyahu should step down timesofisrael.com/eisenkot-iโฆ What we have now is not a fully Zionist coalition with anti-zionist ultra-orthodox parties included as Bibi has done. However, Bibi can't get to 61 wihtout them. And Eisenkot can't get to 61 without Arab parties. Ergo, deadlock. Unless, the President can convince them to join blocs, leave out Shas & UTJ & Arab parties and form a unity government. I'm sick of Bibi lying to us & avoiding an inquiry, but this may be the only way we avoid a round of elections as we have had in the past.
Irene Rabinowitz ๐ฎ๐ฑ retweeted
I was expecting Israel to be a little Americaโmostly English-speaking, a land full of convenience.
What I found was distinctly Middle Easternโthe people are brash, speak with their hands, and often don't know a lick of English. There are stray cats everywhere, mopeds, and graffiti. The street signs are in Hebrew, English, and Arabic. There is a mosque on prime beachfront property in Tel Aviv.
There is every kind of citizen imaginable. I saw Ethiopian Jews serving in the IDF. While touring an ancient Jewish site, I ran into a group of Arab schoolchildren also there to learn. I met a Mizrahi cab driver whose parents fled Morocco in the 50s.
Douglas Murray famously made Americans irate when he flamed Dave Smith on an episode of Joe Rogan for having never traveled to Israelโbut heโs right. Visiting Israel shows you just how wrong the west is about the Jewish state.
Just go there.
Central Elections Committee publishes final election results, Knesset to be sworn in Nov. 10 timesofisrael.com/liveblog_eโฆ via @timesofisrael
This is, without a doubt, the most intelligent analysis of this election I have seen. By one of the smartest women in Israel.
The vote count is complete. The Reservists and Economic Party received the support of approximately 152,000 voters, who appear to have come in roughly equal numbers from both political โblocs,โ and from socioeconomic clusters reflecting the full political, economic, and identity spectrum of those who rushed to the front lines to defend the country on October 7. In doing so, we became the only party in these elections whose agenda and voters alike transcended the division into political โblocs.โ
But it is possible that, despite not being represented in the Knesset, the election results will nevertheless allow us to achieve the very thing for which we sought to enter it. The results hold enormous political potential. Precisely because neither side got what it wanted, an opportunity has opened up to form the government Israel needs: a broad, centrist Zionist government that will finally begin confronting the country's fundamental challenges.
What do the results tell us?
Netanyahu's coalition does not have a majority to return in its current composition. That is over.
The change bloc does not have a majority to form a government without relying on parties and members of Knesset who hold explicitly antizionist and Palestinianist positions.
And it seems it will take time to fully grasp the significance of the scale of political support for anti-Zionist Arab and ultra-Orthodox parties, especially in a scenario of their full voter mobilization. The possibility of political cooperation between anti-Zionist Arab and ultra-Orthodox parties, and the emergence of an โantizionist blocโ that increasingly places the interests of these two groups above the shared Zionist interest, represents a strategic threat to the future of the State of Israel. For Zionist parties to rely on anti-Zionist parties in order to defeat a Zionist political rival is dangerous behavior.
And here lies the paradox: an outcome that makes almost nobody happy individually could turn out to be an excellent result for the State of Israel and Zionism. Precisely because neither side can get everything it wants, the necessity of working together has emerged.
The right government for Israel at this moment is a government of Likud, Yashar, Lieberman, and Bennett. A broad, centrist Zionist government, without the ultra-Orthodox and Arab parties, and also without the less centrist Zionist parties.
Such a government could, if it chose to, commit to preserving the existing legal situation, under which there are no longer any arrangements granting exemptions from service and the law currently in force is the Defense Service Law. It could ensure that state services and public-sector positions are reserved for those who serve and defend the country. It could guarantee state Zionist education, in Hebrew, for all Israeli children. And it could put an end to the economic mechanisms through which Israel's welfare state has, for decades, encouraged draft evasion and separation from the Zionist enterprise. (And it certainly wouldn't hurt to lower the electoral threshold to encourage Zionist Arab and Zionist ultra-Orthodox political representation.)
Such a government could confront the enormous diplomatic and security challenges ahead, finally begin working to dismantle Palestinianism at home and abroad, and return Israel to a Zionist and productive path.
There are no serious security or economic differences between the parties of Netanyahu, Eisenkot, Bennett, and Lieberman that justify continued paralysis or another election. They have far more in common than our political discourse allows us to see. If they wanted to, they could form an excellent government.
But for that to happen, both sides would have to give something up.
Netanyahu cannot insist on preserving every component of his current coalition and expect everyone else simply to join it. The election results neither allow nor justify that.
Conversely, the change bloc cannot insist on boycotting Netanyahu at the price of relying on antizionist and Palestinianist forces.
The danger now is that, instead of seizing the opportunity, both sides will choose escalation, which could look like this:
Netanyahu will entrench himself in a coalition that lacks a majority, while the other side will use its parliamentary majority to pass confrontational legislation and paralyze the government. Each side will respond with further escalation, and Israel will find itself in a prolonged political and institutional crisis, precisely when it needs a functioning government more than ever.
This is exactly where we wanted to play a political role.
We did not seek to be the kingmaker who determines who becomes prime minister. We sought to be the spearhead for establishing a broad, centrist Zionist government. A political force capable of standing up to either side that refused to compromise, and making it clear that refusal carries a price.
This was our message throughout the campaign: What, not who.
Israel is a parliamentary, coalition-based democracy. The prime minister, as the English name suggests, is the first among ministers, not a president and not a king. The identity of the prime minister matters, but the composition of the coalition and the policies it advances matter far more.
Therefore, the question of who will be prime minister is secondary to the question of what kind of governing coalition we will have.
Will it be a government that continues subsidizing draft evasion and separation from the rest of society, or one that restores service, Zionist education, and shared responsibility to the center of Israeli life? Will we continue postponing the confrontation with our fundamental problems, or will we seize the opportunity to halt processes that have been endangering our future for decades? These are the questions that truly matter. And if we fail to confront them now, the future price will be far higher โ and the damage may not even be reversible.
We ran in these elections to change the direction in which Israel is heading. We had hoped to do so from within the Knesset, and we are disappointed that we will not be able to. But the results have created a genuine opportunity to achieve the very goal for which we embarked on this journey.
The responsibility now lies with the leaders who were elected. They can continue to entrench in political blocs that have led Israel into repeated election cycles and governments dominated by the extremes, or they can recognize that the new political reality requires them to do something different.
If a broad, centrist Zionist government is formed here, without the ultra-Orthodox and Arab parties, and finally begins confronting the fundamental questions facing the State of Israel, that will be the achievement we sought.
And that will be reward enough for us.
Listen and learn. What foreigners think about Arab Israelis is mostly wrong.
Irene Rabinowitz ๐ฎ๐ฑ retweeted
President Herzog must assign the mandate to form Israelโs ๐ฎ๐ฑ next government within seven days of the official election results.
If published November 4 as scheduled, his deadline is Wednesday, November 11.
Highway 4 near Bnei Brak closed as Peleg Yerushalmi protest blocks traffic | The Jerusalem Post jpost.com/israel-news/articlโฆ Ah, they know that if Bibi is PM, he will protect them from having to serve their country.
๐คฃ๐คฃ It's amazing that so many critics of Israel have no idea that those who live in Gaza or the Palestinian Authority have their own citizenship, own govrnment, own registry of motor vehicles, & are not Israeli citizens, although many were offered that right. Those Arabs who accepted citizenship in Israel voted yesterday, have decent jobs, education & can vote. Citizens of Gaza/Palestinian Authority haven't voted since 2006 the elections that were supposed to be held were cancelled by the PA about 2 weeks ago.
UTJ sources proposing to back Eisenkot from outside the government โ report timesofisrael.com/liveblog_eโฆ SMH. This gets more messy as the days go one. Can't wait for the Shabbat break from all this horse trading.
Here is one of the most unhinged people on X. She has blamed everything bad on the planet on us. Just nuts and obsessed. I wish this was satire, but it's not. That's the thing about these unhinged haters, they fervently believe these ridiculous assertions.
Does anyone one else think Israel might
have had a hand in the train crash in Spain?
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Transport officials determined the crash was caused by a computer failure in the rail safety system and human error by controllers who authorized one train to proceed at full speed into a stationary one. apnews.com/article/train-โฆ reuters.com/world/two-highโฆ bbc.co.uk/news/articles/โฆ
Irene Rabinowitz ๐ฎ๐ฑ retweeted
This is quite a disturbing account, apparently in New York. Suggests Israel caused the train crash in Spain today. Sometimes this platform makes me feel like one of those people who went to Bedlam to gawp at the lunatics.




















