This is a love story between a land and her people, a people and their land
Thursday, October 18, 2018
- Thursday, October 18, 2018
- Elder of Ziyon
- Forest Rain, Opinion
HaShomer HaChadash:
This is a love story between a land and her people, a people and their land
This is a love story between a land and her people, a people and their land
There are some people who don’t hear when others speak the word, “impossible.” Instead they hear, “it’s possible” or “I am possible.” Their minds begin to race in search for solutions and when there is no logical reason to succeed, faith moves them forward.
Who could look at the barren hills of Eretz Yisrael and imagine that dead land awakened, brought back to life? What kind of people could look at rocky crags and see rolling vineyards, empty plains and see cosmopolitan cities bursting with Jews? How is it possible for people who never did a day of physical labor in their life to see themselves as farmers and know that one day their children would speak a language 3000 years old, as if it was the most natural thing in the world?
Dreamers. Crazy people. Our grandparents.
And today, the children of Israel grow up like children in any other first world country. With few of the discomforts of life, all the modern amenities and their faces buried in their phones, computers and tv screens.
What kind of modern child would willing put down their phone, turn off the tv and go outside to sweat in the sun? What for? They don’t know what hard work is and why in the world would they want to do any kind of physical labor? There is no necessity that could drive them, no demand.
And certainly, no teenager would dedicate a year of their life to creating a youth movement designed to connect the children of Israel to the land of Israel. Who would join a movement that doesn’t exist?
It could never happen. Or at least that’s what the founders of the Shomer HaChadash Youth Movement were told.
But it did. And today, after just one year, it’s the fastest growing youth movement in Israel, a country with well established youth movements existing for every sector of the population. Their signature shirt has become the most desirable branded piece of clothing among Israeli school children – a shirt emblazoned with the words: “I am my brother’s keeper” and a symbol of Alexander Zaid, one of the great original Zionist leaders, a man the children of today no longer learn about in school.
How can this be? What is going on here?
The malaise of screens, passivity, low interest and little knowledge seems to be an epidemic of the advanced world (and some of the developing world as well). Where once people were independent at a very young age, today young people remain “children” for a very long time, dependent on their parents, expecting guidance from someone else – a parent, an authority, the State.
In Israel, just two generations ago it was impossible to know whether the State would continue to exist. Three generations ago, the State was just a dream. Today, many take it for granted. Schools teach very little (if anything) about the visionaries who created what we have today. Children know the names of those who shaped our existence as the names of streets and institutions rather than the content of their works or the stories of their endeavors.
It was this gap that the founders of the Shomer HaChadash recognized. Originally founded as a revival of the original Shomer, the organization was designed to assist Israeli farmers in protecting their land from agricultural crime – through knowledge of history and understanding that the solutions that worked for our grandparents would work today, that while the State has difficulty to address all the challenges at hand, many can be solved and even prevented by friends and neighbors stepping up and declaring: “I am my brother’s keeper.”
The demand was so large, the Shomer HaChadash grew at an incredible pace and yet, as the fight to protect the connection of farmers to the land grew, it became more and more obvious how disconnected the younger generations already are.
Here too, the founders of the Shomer believed, the solution from the past would work. Just as the generations who came before us managed to breathe vitality into the land through reigniting the love story between our people and this land, now it has become time to ask the land to give purpose and direction to the children who need to deepen their roots.
While the malaise of screens is a global issue, our story is deeper than the challenges of city-dwellers who don’t know where their food comes from and the entitlement of millennials. Ours is a relationship with the land, a centuries old love story – the connection of an indigenous people returned to the land that gave birth to our nation. A Jew is a Jew anywhere in the world but there is a special kind of fulfillment, a completeness that comes from connecting to the land of our ancestors.
As I watched the ceremony concluding the first year of the Shomer HaChadash Youth Movement I found myself thinking: “How many people does it take to create a revolution? To change an entire society?”
There stood before me a group of some 30 people: the managers of the program and high-school graduates, boys and girls, who had volunteered to postpone their army service for one year in order to give an additional year of service to the country via the Shomer HaChadash program. This year does not count as part of their army service and the only thing they get for the year is the experience they gained.
They had split into communal living groups in different communities in Israel. Each group had built their own teaching farm, along with the children of that community and together they grew vegetables and spices. Very deliberately they chose to work with grade-school children (1st – 9th grade) rather than high-schoolers, to influence the new generation as they grow up, with an unadulterated connection to the land.
During the year, the volunteers (called in Hebrew Shin Shinim, an abbreviation of the term for year of service) were given lessons in agriculture, history and Zionism. No one told them how to manage their agricultural farm or how to teach the children. It was they who managed themselves - their schedule and budget, building lesson plans for the children and taking care of them every day, after school.
Everything they built, they built with their own hands.
Everything they grew was fruits of their planning, planting and nurturing.
Small children planted cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, watermelon, squash and more. They worked in the hot sun, patiently cared for the vegetables as they grew, learned to pick them at the right time and then sold them to members of their community. After school, instead of going home and turning on the tv, they stayed together and worked, creating new life.
In addition to working with the children of the community in which they lived, each group of volunteers spent time in schools, creating within the school a smaller version of their larger farms. The program was so phenomenally successful that for the next year additional communities are competing to see who will be able to have their own volunteers to create a farm with their children.
So few can create so much, for so many.
While elsewhere young people are being told that they can’t, that they are weak, that they need protection (not from physical threats but from having their feelings hurt, here are young people being told that they can do whatever they put their minds to – and they are being given the proof of experience to back up that statement.
The volunteers had spent a year studying the history of our people, the movement that led to the revival of our nation in our ancestral homeland and learning to care for the land. They were taught not what to think, but to make up their own minds after gaining their own personal understanding of the issue. Most of all, they were taught not to be afraid of standing in the gap, even if everyone is walking in one direction, if they are sure it is right – to walk in their own direction.
They are the embodiment of the great Jewish educator Janusz Korczak: “He who worries about days plants wheat. He who worries about years plants trees. He who worries about generations, teaches people.”
How many people does it take to create a revolution? To change a society? I don’t know.
What I do know is that those who don’t hear the word “impossible,” the dreamers, those who are crazy enough to believe they can change the world, usually do.
YOU can be part of this success!
Donate: https://bit.ly/2PGCiXW
Send your kids to a Shomer HaChadash pioneering program for overseas participants: https://bit.ly/2ASoVjV
- Thursday, October 18, 2018
- Elder of Ziyon
PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas met with J-Street leader Jeremy Ben-Ami and a J-Street delegation today at Abbas' presidential palace in Ramallah.
Abbas refuses to meet with the Israeli president or with US peace negotiators or even with Democratic members of the US Congress.
But he is eager to meet with those American Jews who he knows are solidly on his side in every single issue that real Zionists cannot possibly ever accept, like Jerusalem and "return."
Abbas treated Ben-Ami like a head of state.
Among the Palestinian delegation was a member of the Fatah central committee, Hussein Sheikh, who is not even in the government. Fatah's official platform supports terrorism. Sheikh supports terror explicitly:
The "pro-peace" J-Street happily met with terror supporters who say that "armed resistance" is their right.
Ben-Ami stressed how he is working to restore funding to UNRWA and to defeat the Republicans in the mid-term elections.
J-Street bitterly complains when Israeli officials won't meet with them. Here's one very good reason why they won't - J-Street identifies fully with, and openly cooperates with, Israel's enemies.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Abbas refuses to meet with the Israeli president or with US peace negotiators or even with Democratic members of the US Congress.
But he is eager to meet with those American Jews who he knows are solidly on his side in every single issue that real Zionists cannot possibly ever accept, like Jerusalem and "return."
Abbas treated Ben-Ami like a head of state.
Among the Palestinian delegation was a member of the Fatah central committee, Hussein Sheikh, who is not even in the government. Fatah's official platform supports terrorism. Sheikh supports terror explicitly:
The gun is the way to get rid of this occupation, the shortest way to get rid of this occupation. This is Abu Ammar's promise and this is his will and we will continue to be true to them, Allah willing.
The "pro-peace" J-Street happily met with terror supporters who say that "armed resistance" is their right.
Ben-Ami stressed how he is working to restore funding to UNRWA and to defeat the Republicans in the mid-term elections.
J-Street bitterly complains when Israeli officials won't meet with them. Here's one very good reason why they won't - J-Street identifies fully with, and openly cooperates with, Israel's enemies.
- Thursday, October 18, 2018
- Elder of Ziyon
This Twitter thread by Shlomi Ben Meir last week, slightly edited, remains relevant as the Lara Alqasem case drags on.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Britain, the mother of parliamentary democracy, has published in 2009 a list of 16 people who are barred from the country "for stirring-up hatred". 22 additional barred folks' names weren't published. And 101 more had been banned in the previous five years.
web.archive.org/web/2009050718…
web.archive.org/web/2009050718…
In the period from August 2005 to 31 March 2009, a total of 101 individuals have been excluded from the UK for having engaged in unacceptable behaviour. Of these 101 individuals, a total of 22 were excluded by the Home Secretary in the period from 28 October 2008 to 31 March 2009.This figure comprises 72 individuals excluded for fomenting, justifying or glorifying terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs; two individuals excluded for seeking to provoke others to terrorist acts; 18 individuals excluded for fomenting other serious criminal activity or seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts; and nine individuals excluded for fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK.The individuals concerned include animal rights extremists, right to life extremists, homophobe extremists, far-right extremists, as well as advocates of hatred and violence in support of their religious beliefs.
More people whose entry to the UK was denied: Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin,Dutch MP Geert Wilders, Louis Farrakhan edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/eur… and the antisemite French comedian Dieudonné.
More recently, the UK banned anti-Islamic activist Pamela Geller as well as some far right activists.
There are many more examples.
There are many more examples.
Banning entry is the British National sport. The UK banned a rapper
because of the lyrics of his songs; a martial arts instructor
because of his dangerous methods; and a pick-up artist
for encouraging sexism.
Let's move to other dark places. The USA has banned an Irish republican activist,
Swiss Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan (during 2004-2010)
, a South African professor , and a Welsh activist.
More people who are banned from the USA: a British teenager who wrote a rude letter to Obama,
a Canadian white supremacist,
and a Philippine MP who dared to level criticism at the USA.
In 2010, Canada barred an anti-Olympic reporter
. It also regularly bans American environmental activists from coming
and also an American pastor who preaches against Islam
Australia banned the 'world's number one anti-vaxxer'
and other anti-vaccine activists
In France, an aid convoy was denied entry to Calais over fears they will ‘facilitate’ migrants.
This was a very partial list of democratic countries, and for each one, a very partial list of cases. It happens literally all the time everywhere. For any other country, it is barely an issue,
Only for Israel, both her haters and lovers expect her to let everyone in.
Only for Israel, both her haters and lovers expect her to let everyone in.
Only when Israel does this is it front page news for over a week.
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
From Ian:
The Failure of Holocaust Education in Britain
New York Times Depiction of Moynihan as ‘Anti-Trump’ Ignores Jerusalem Embassy
The Failure of Holocaust Education in Britain
Pearce said that there is a fundamental problem in the British approach to the Holocaust. The focus wrongly gravitates to Britain’s role in the Allied forces, the liberation of the camps, and to the story of Kindertransport, in which 10,000 Jewish children were brought to the U.K. from the continent in the year before WWII broke out. For Pearce it is a positive and self-congratulatory approach that fails to address the story of the Channel Islands, which were occupied by the Germans, and what the British government knew about the persecution of the Jews and failed to do about it. It is no surprise, he said, that his team found that 32 percent of students in secondary school believe that Britain declared war on Germany because of the Holocaust. In fact, Britain entered the war on Sept. 3, 1939, in response to the German invasion of Poland.'Free Palestine' scrawled on Holocaust educational advertisement in London
Pearce pointed out that teachers who have no support tend to use films and books, like John Boyne’s novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, as teaching aids. The Holocaust Education Trust advises against its use in the classroom because of its historical inaccuracy, yet the UCL team found that over 80 percent of those pupils interviewed who had read a book on the Holocaust had read that one. The main character in the novel is a 9-year-old boy whose father works as a commander of a concentration camp. He has no idea of the tragedy unfolding around him and innocently befriends a Jewish boy in striped pyjamas. Pearce said the narrative reinforces an inaccurate perception of German ignorance of the Holocaust.
The UCL team also examined what teachers hope to achieve by teaching the Holocaust. Pearce noted that educators have “a tendency to slip into rhetoric. There is a belief that if we study the Holocaust it will stop it happening again.” He added, “It is laudable but it reduces and simplifies history and is something that again comes from wider popular culture.” Indeed the recent decision to build a striking new national Holocaust memorial next to the Houses of Parliament in London was described by the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission as a “sacred duty” and announced by a government press release as a “permanent statement of our British values.”
In order to tackle these issues, Pearce said, we must totally rethink the way we teach children about the Holocaust. Mike Levy, a Holocaust educator based in Cambridge, sees the passing of the last Holocaust survivors as an opportunity to do this. He said that rethinking needs to start now, before Holocaust education simply stops when the last survivor dies.
Levy said that there is “an atmosphere of fatigue in the air when it comes to talking about the Holocaust and that students and teachers want to learn more about other genocides and contextualize the Holocaust.” Children need to be taught that there is not a competition about which genocide is worse. “The important thing educationally about the Holocaust is it teaches us a lot about the mechanisms because it is so well documented,” he said. “It is the mother of all genocides.”
An educational advertisement for a Kristallnacht exhibit was defaced in London's Russell Square, social media images showed on Tuesday.
The subway advertisement, circulated by The Wiener Library, was written on by a passer-by, inscribing the words "Free Palestine" with a heart drawn to the side of the statement.
Displayed within the elevators at Russel Square Train Station, the Wiener Library has said that the posters are, "Definitely vulnerable to vandalism (it has happened multiple times in the past) but as the vast majority of people who visit us do so because they see the posters ceasing would be hugely detrimental to us."
The Wiener Library has expressed their disdain and sadness with the vandalism of the poster. The poster was purposed to advertise an exhibit on Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass" recalling the pogrom that occurred against the Jewish community in Nazi Germany November 9th-10th, 1938; a topic related closely with the Holocaust.
New York Times Depiction of Moynihan as ‘Anti-Trump’ Ignores Jerusalem Embassy
An article by a New York Times reporter uses the release of a new documentary about Daniel Patrick Moynihan to describe the former senator from New York as, according to the Times headline, “the anti-Trump.”
The article ignores ways that Moynihan and Trump are similar.
President Trump moved the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, implementing the Jerusalem Embassy Act that was introduced by Senator Moynihan. Moynihan’s aides used to describe this as Moynihan’s “signature issue.”
A front-page article in The New York Times itself from 1984 reported on President Reagan’s threat to veto the Moynihan Jerusalem embassy legislation, and reported, “The bill, introduced by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, a Democrat, has more than 30 sponsors in the Senate and more than 200 in the House.”
Senator Bob Dole’s press release introducing the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act of 1995 said, “Today, I am introducing S. 1322, the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act of 1995. I am pleased to do so with the distinguished senior Senator from New York, Senator Moynihan, as the lead co-sponsor. As the Senate knows, Senator Moynihan has been the expert and the leader on Jerusalem for his entire career.”
Moynihan was famous for defending Israel at the United Nations as America’s ambassador there in 1975 when the General Assembly passed its infamous resolution describing Zionism as racism. Trump too has been a staunch defender of Israel at the United Nations, as has his ambassador there, Nikki Haley.
- Wednesday, October 17, 2018
- Varda Meyers Epstein (Judean Rose)
- Judean Rose, Opinion, Varda
Google the phrase “arab infant
mortality rate” and step into Wonderland gone wrong. The featured snippet is from a Times of Israel piece: “In Israel,
infant mortality rate 3 times higher among Arabs.” Based on the title alone,
without further investigation, who wouldn’t curse a blue streak, damning Israel
to hell for its villainy against the Arab people—damning Israelis as baby
killers?
Unless you were a thinking
person, that is, who knows better than to accept what the Times of Israel wants you to believe about the disparity between
the Arab and Israeli infant mortality rates. If you were a thinking person, you’d
look to confirm the statistic. And assuming it were true, well then you’d want
to know the context.
But of course, it’s ever so
much easier to blame Israel. Or alternatively, the “occupation,” another thing you
might read about in the media and accept as true without a second thought.
After all, you think, a news site wouldn’t print something untrue. They’d get
caught. They’d lose credibility, you are sure. And so you believe what you
read.
That’s if you’re a regular joe.
But what if you were someone who lived in the ivory towers of academia? Someone
with a higher education who had successfully defended a PhD thesis, someone
entrusted with teaching young students. Wouldn’t such a person know better than
to accept at face value what he or she reads in the news?
Wouldn’t a college professor be
aware, when reading a title like that in the Times of Israel, or a similar one in Haaretz, “Huge disparities between Israeli Palestinian health
systems,” that media bias may be in play here? When the title contains such a
glaring smear, thinking people are supposed to stop short and think: wait a
second—is that really the whole story?
Often it is not. As in this
case. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
Two University of Michigan staff
members are currently in the news for refusing
to write recommendations for students hoping to study in Israel. TA Lucy
Peterson and Prof. John Cheney-Lippold both originally agreed to write recommendations
and then changed their minds, saying they were committed to the academic
boycott of Israel. Cheney-Lippold also cited the infant mortality rate
disparity, “linking it to Apartheid,” according to writer Rob Shimshock in Campus Unmasked. Shimshock asks,
“Does that mean America is also an apartheid state? That black infant mortality
rate is nearly three times higher than the Asian one.”
This is a good question. And
actually, it gets pretty close to the heart of the matter, namely that a
disparity in infant mortality rates doesn’t mean that one sector is victimizing
the other. (This is similar to the dumb idea of proportionality as applied to
the Gaza border riots: if more Arabs are dying than Israelis, then Israel must
be the big bad wolf. No one stops to think that if violent Arabs would only
stop rushing the border with explosives, the IDF wouldn’t be forced to kill
them. No one thinks about the fact that Israel is minding its own business but
these Arabs are rushing to become martyrs and draw pay-to-slay stipends from their
government. Oh no, the world thinks, it takes two to tango, and if so many
Arabs are dying and so many Israelis are not, then we know who is in the wrong!
Things will only be fair when more Jews DIE! So says Europe, the UN, et al.)
Since Peterson and
Cheney-Lippold first agreed to the recommendations and then backed off, giving
the same reason for their refusal, one has to assume that someone got to them.
Someone recited a lot of crap about Israel at them and they swallowed it whole
without bothering to check whether or not the tales had merit. Who knows why
they believed what they were told? Perhaps they were frightened. But a closer
look at the facts would have yielded a quite different picture of Israel, in
particular as regards the disparity in the Arab infant mortality rate.
In a 2014 Ynet piece, Yaron Kelner writes:
The reason for the gap, according to Health Ministry
officials, is the high rate of congenital defects and genetic diseases among
babies in the Arab population. One of the main reasons for that is cousin marriages.
Another reason is that Arab parents tend not to terminate the
pregnancy in case of a defect or disease detected in the fetus.
In addition, Arab women usually give birth at a very early
age (below 20), and are therefore more prone to complications compared to
Jewish women.
The report states that narrowing
the gap between Jews and Arabs is one of the Ministry's main tasks. (emphasis
added)
"We encourage the Arab population to take folic acid
which helps prevent congenital defects, and in (the southern predominantly
Bedouin city of) Rahat we subsidize the addition of folic acid in
bakeries," said Prof. Itamar Grotto, head of public health disease
prevention and health promotion at the Health Ministry.
"In addition, several vaccinations have been added to
the health basket in recent years, and the response in the Arab population has
been very high. We expect it to reduce the mortality rate."
To summarize, the factors that
have tripled the Arab infant mortality rate in comparison with that of Jewish
Israelis are Arab consanguinity; the Arab refusal to terminate pregnancies gone
wrong; and the Arab propensity for marrying off underage girls, which dooms
them to high risk pregnancies. In other words, it is the Arabs who are
responsible for the disparity in Israel’s mortality rates. Far from being the
villain in the story, Israel’s health ministry has tasked itself with
addressing the disparity through measures offered only to the Arab population
such as adding folic acid to baked goods produced in the Bedouin-only town of
Rahat. Folic acid, taken during pregnancy, is known to prevent neural tube
defects. But if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, and Arab women won’t take
supplements, the supplements come to them, courtesy of the Israeli government.
They get the goodness baked straight into their baked goods.
Israel is actually protecting
Arab pregnancies, ensuring that Arab babies live (to grow up and hate the Jews,
in all too many cases).
But this too, is not the whole
story. The Arab mortality rate has well nigh plummeted since the Six-Day War in
1967. But don’t take it from me. Take it from Al-Najah University's Dr. Wael R.
Ennab, a consultant with UNCTAD.
According to Ennab, in a paper he published in 1994,
the Arab infant mortality rate in 1967 was between 152-162 per 1,000 live
births. By 1974, infant mortality had seen a slight improvement of 132 per
1,000 live births. By 1985 the infant mortality rate had dropped to an
incredible 53-56 per 1,000 live births. And by the time the Oslo Accords were
signed, in 1993, the infant mortality rate had dropped to 30.
This is not the end of the
story. By 2002, the rate had dropped to 25. But as you can see in the
screenshot of the Times of Israel
snippet that accompanies this piece, by 2014, the rate was just “6.4 deaths per
1,000 live births.”
That’s flipping INCREDIBLE.
That is what Israel has accomplished for its Arab population. Even though Israel is
demonized by the whole world as some kind of monster, a baby-killer who oppresses
the Arab people. Even as we have Arabs attacking us in malls, on buses, and in
the streets. With rocks, knives, car-rammings, bombs, axes, Molotov balloons,
and missiles. Still, the Israeli government has fought to drop the Arab
mortality rate from 152-162 to just 6.4 deaths per 1,000 live births in the 51 years
since we won the war.
That’s on us. On Israel!
And it’s on you if you report
that out of context. Or believe the lie that Israel is the villain, when
actually, Israel is the hero in the story of Arab infant mortality.
You don’t have to believe what you
read.
It’s a choice.
Especially when you’re a
Cheney-Lippold or a Peterson. Someone with a higher education.
Someone responsible for young
minds.
It’s a choice to accept the
stats without context and to regurgitate them to your students. To use them to
hurt and wound. To demonize the hero.
This is an evil of great
proportions. A lie that covers an uncommon good in our contemporary world: the
good of Israel and its exceptionally good governance.
Here is the truth: The Jewish
State deserves the widest recognition possible for protecting and nurturing its
largest minority population, a sector that is overwhelmingly hostile to Israel
and the Jewish people. Israel’s methodology for lowering the Arab population’s infant
mortality rate is one that might well be emulated throughout the Arab world and
studied in the halls of academia.
If only we could find an honest
teacher.
(h/t to Arthur Toporovsky for questioning whether the mortality rate
was really triple, and to Dov Epstein for finding me the trail that led to Ennab’s
paper.)
- Wednesday, October 17, 2018
- Elder of Ziyon
- humor, Preoccupied
Jerusalem, October 17 - Israeli parliamentary work resumed Sunday following a holiday recess, with the legislative minority predicting that the next corruption charge against the prime minister will bring him down, unlike the hundreds before that came to nothing.
Opposition figures voiced bold predictions that the current government, now in its fourth year, will topple any day now, given new accusations against Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, in addition to the countless other accusations he has accepted bribes, violated transparency requirements, condoned corruption, abused employees, or steered government contracts to family and supporters, none of which have generated enough evidence of criminal, or enough political pressure, for him to step down.
"This time we've got him," predicted Opposition leader and Zionist Union chief Tzipi Livni. "This isn't like the other I don't know how many times - this one will stick. I'm sure of it. Just wait and see. Law enforcement will catch up to him, despite his attacks on the institutions investigating him. We must defend their independence and functionality at all costs. Our police and prosecutors will indict him for corruption. And if they don't, we need new police and prosecutors, because they don't know how to do their jobs properly."
"I give it two, maybe three months, tops," pronounced Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid. "The man is a lame duck, no question. You think just because he's managed to escape being implicated in criminal activity for years and years, that he'll manage to escape the newest scandal? I've got a bridge to sell you."
Media figures have also joined the chorus foretelling Netanyahu's political demise. "We've got him now," boasted journalist Nahum Barnea. "I know we've said more or less the same thing a hundred times before, but now I'm really, really sure of it. You just wait and see. 338th time's the charm."
Some voiced reservations whether this new set of allegation will spell doom for the Netanyahu government, which is expected to serve its full term, with elections in the fall of 2019. "Perhaps this won't be the final nail in Bibi's political coffin - he's a survivor, I'll give him that, " averred Zahava Gal-On, formerly the head of the Meretz party and still a voice in progressive politics. "But sooner or later - and most of us are betting on sooner - this government will no longer be in power. By this time next year there will be a date already set for elections, mark my words."
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