Geula
Birthpangs
Here are some things that happened in Israel in the past seven days.
Item: some religious youths were hanging a sign over bridge calling for the release of Yigal Amir who is serving a life sentence for assassinating Yitzchak Rabin.
They say he didn’t do it, that he was tricked by Shabak into doing it, that he did a tremendous mitzvah in doing it. For all these reasons, and perhaps more too, he should be released immediately. However, some old dude objected, and they beat him up.
He subsequently developed a brain bleed and was hospitalized.
Item: Defence Minister and inarticulate buffoon who fidgets queerly when he talks, or doesn’t talk, Israel Katz, was on Channel 14 and was asked why he had not dealt with insubordination by Avi Bluth, military governor, so to speak, of the West Bank. Here is the background. Bluth has presided over a policy of decriminalising settler violence and incorporating the network of pioneer farms into the IDF’s security architecture. One can argue about the rights and wrongs of such a policy following October 7th, but either way he has given the settler movement everything it could reasonably demand and some more. However, a week or two ago he ordered Yinon Dardik to leave the West Bank. Dardik is suspected of some serious crimes including affixing a cable tie to the penis of a bedouin Arab and parading him in front of his extended family. Dardik refused to leave the West Bank and was placed in administrative detention upon which he commenced a hunger strike. This was unacceptable to Otzma MKs so Katz told Bluth to let him go home, but Bluth renewed the order. Katz, who is facing primaries in Likud and needs support from the core Likud electorate, was asked why he put up with that, so he said he’d fired Bluth like the massive boss he is.
IDF head, Zamir (appointed by Netanyahu) pointed out that the Defence Minister can’t fire generals on TV because the studio audience is giving him gyp. Katz dealt with the media fallout by blaming it on Leftist lies and denying he said what he said even though he said it on TV and everyone can see.
Item: On motzaei Shabbos, a group of religious teens surrounded a bus with no passengers at a red light, hit the side of the bus, and, when the Arab driver opened the window, they beat him unconscious and knocked out four of his teeth.
Item: A group of Breslev teens, who object to the deification of the wrong man and perhaps the relative coherence and intelligence of Christian theology, spat on the door of a monastery in the Armenian quarter in Jerusalem. When an elderly lady filmed them through the window, they threw rocks at her and called her the daughter of a whore.
Item: The Minister for prisons and police, Ben Gvir, who has presided over the largest spike in murder in the history of the country, did some nonsense with alligators that’s too ridiculous even to detail.
This could be any week more or less. The mayor of a major city was not arrested this week for fraud and embezzlement; no Palestinian grandmas were beaten unconscious with a baseball bat; I didn’t see anything about HaTzel (oh bugger, I did). So it’s not even a bad week. Just a week.
You have probably seen this video.
