Tag: Israel

Again?

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It looks there will be new elections in Israel for the 4th time in as 2 years. 

This is a mark of the bitter decisiveness of Netanyahu’s (יִמַּח שְׁמו) politics as well as the inability of the opposition to offer the electorate a positive reason to vote for them. (Sound familiar?)

Israel faced the prospect of political chaos once again Wednesday when lawmakers approved a preliminary measure that would dissolve the turbulent coalition government, putting the country on a path to its fourth election in two years.

The vote of 61 to 54 to advance the proposal marked another escalation of a political crisis that has left the country with only a caretaker government for more than a year and a largely dysfunctional unity coalition during the mounting coronavirus pandemic and accompanying economic collapse.

………

But the push to topple the coalition got a major boost when Benny Gantz, leader of the Blue and White party that shares power with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, announced he would support ending the government.

Gantz, who battled Netanyahu to inconclusive results over three previous elections, agreed to join his rival in a coalition government in April as coronavirus cases were beginning to spiral. He became both the defense minister and an “alternate” prime minister scheduled to rotate into the top job in autumn 2021.

But after seven tumultuous months, he effectively declared the power-sharing effort sharing a failure, accusing Netanyahu of bad-faith political maneuvers meant to prolong his grip on power.

This is not a surprise.

In addition to being outrageously evil, Netanyahu is outrageously crooked, and he knows that when leaves his post as PM, he will be in the dock, and in jail shortly after that.

My advice to the opposition is to actually have a platform beyond, “Netanhahu bad,” because you need to offer voters a reason to vote FOR you beyond the fact that the other guy is a corrupt evil SOB.

Bad Day at the Office

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Ouch

There was a mishap when a 70-ton Merkava tank rolled over after screwing up getting onto a transport trailer.

Thankfully, the only person on the tank was the driver, and he was not seriously injured:

An Israel Defense Forces tank flipped over on Sunday while trying to drive up onto a transport truck, the military said.

No one was injured in the incident, the IDF said.

In a video of the incident (above), the tank can be seen slowly driving onto the transport truck in the Jordan Valley. After it boards the truck, however, the tank continues traveling forward, gaining speed and flying over the side of the truck before landing upside down.

The tank’s fire suppression system was then apparently activated.

The driver of the tank, 24, was taken to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Mt. Scopus. He was lightly bruised, but was not found to be seriously injured. “He will remain for treatment and observation until tomorrow,” a hospital spokesperson said.

I did not expect a tank to move that way.

It Looks like Bibi Is Going to Jail

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As additional returns have come in in the COVID-19 quarantine delayed election results in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has lost seats in the Knesset, and now it appears that in a historical team up with the Arab Joint List, not only will he not get his seat, but they will be passing a law preventing an indicted politician from forming a government, so Bibi’s just become a sh%$ load more likely to end up in a cell:

An elated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu roared, “This is the biggest victory of my life!”—but that was Monday.

By Thursday, his voice hoarse, a tired Netanyahu growled, “We won’t let them steal the election!” In the words of Netanyahu’s centrist rival and Israel’s probable next prime minister, Benny Gantz, “Someone here celebrated too early.”

Then came a remarkable cascade of bad news for Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, and its first to be indicted while in office.

Avigdor Lieberman, his onetime defense minister and now a fearsome nemesis, announced his support for a law proposed by Gantz, a former army chief of staff, which would bar an indicted legislator from being appointed to form the government.

Such a law would eliminate any route to immediate political survival for Netanyahu, whose trial in three separate cases of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust is scheduled to open in Jerusalem District Court on March 17.

In an almost never seen instance of Israeli multi-partisanship that Israeli media call “the anti-Bibi coalition,” this law enjoys the support of 62 members of the 120-member Knesset, from the majority-Arab Joint List through the left-wing Labor Party, and now, unto Lieberman, a hardline secular right-winger.

………

Alon Pinkas, Israel’s former consul general in New York and adviser to former prime minister Ehud Barak, noted in an interview with The Daily Beast, that, “For the third time in one year, Netanyahu pushed for an election with one goal in mind: getting a 61-seat majority to grant him an immunity from prosecution over three severe indictments he is facing. For the third time he failed.”

………

And Netanyahu was about to receive another blow.

Late Thursday, Moshe Yaalon, another former army chief of staff and the most hardline rightist in the Gantz centrist coalition, agreed to support a minority government led by Gantz, with the support of the Joint List, the Arab-majority party that leaped from 13 Knesset seats to 15 even as Netanyahu intensified his attack on Arab citizens, who form 21 percent of Israel’s population.

“Gantz is joining forces with terror supporters!” Netanyahu declared in a meeting of his coalition members. “Gantz’s move undermines the foundations of Israeli democracy and subverts the will of the voter. We’ll stand strong against it.”

………

As the situation unfolded Thursday night, Netanyahu asked his attorney general to “immediately” open a criminal investigation into alleged Lieberman electoral shenanigans a decade ago. Lieberman responded with a press release: seven laughing/crying emojis and not a single word.

By dawn on Friday, an increasingly cornered Netanyahu was accusing Supreme Court Justice Neal Hendel, who chairs Israel’s electoral commission, the body responsible for counting the votes, of criminal malfeasance. Netanyahu promised to petition the supreme court to investigate Hendel’s political affiliations.

The commission condemned any implication of impropriety, and Gantz posted that “counting all the votes, including those of citizens under quarantine due to fears of the coronavirus, is the basis of a democratic country, and one must respect the results and the voters’ choice—and no less the work of the Electoral Commission.”

………

How did this happen?

Relying on exit polls, Monday’s Netanyahu believed that counting his own party’s votes and those of his coalition partners, he had secured 60 out of the Israeli parliament’s 120 seats, and would find a way to squeak by on a narrow majority.

One route appeared to be poaching wavering opposition legislators. In a television interview on Tuesday, Netanyahu spokesman Yonatan Orich foresaw that “the establishment of a government is a matter of a few days.”

………

Meanwhile, votes were being counted. Over two and a half days, the Likud’s coalition slipped from an high of 60 seats to 59 to 58, where it hovered for a day before the pollsters’ disbelieving eyes.

Netanyahu is a cancer on Israeli body politic, and arguably the single greatest threat to the continued existence of the state of Israel.

That he is going on trial, and likely is going to jail, is an unalloyed good.

Pull Their Not-For-Profit Status

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The greatest danger to the state of Israel in the United States, AIPAC, has been revealed to be offering perks to people who make donations to an anti-Bernie Sanders PAC, which violates a sh%$-load of campaign finance and non-profit regulations.

The degree to which taxpayers are effectively funding fraudulent non-profit activities buggers the mind:

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is helping to fund a Super PAC launching attack ads against Sen. Bernie Sanders in Nevada on Saturday, according to two sources with knowledge of the arrangement. The ads are being run by a group called Democratic Majority for Israel, founded by longtime AIPAC strategist Mark Mellman.

The Nevada attack ads, which will air in media markets in Reno and Las Vegas, follow a similar spending blitz by DMFI ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Like the ads that aired in Iowa, the Nevada ads will attack Sanders on the idea that he’s not electable, Mediaite reported.

DMFI spent $800,000 on the Iowa ads, while the spending on the Nevada ads remains private. AIPAC is helping bankroll the anti-Sanders project by allowing donations to DMFI to count as contributions to AIPAC, the sources said. As is typical with most big-money giving programs, the more a donor gives to AIPAC, the higher tier they can claim — $100,000 level, $1 million level, and so on — and the more benefits accrue to them. A $100,000 donor gets more access to members of Congress at private functions, for instance, than someone who merely pays AIPAC’s conference fee. A $1 million donor gets still more, which means that it is important to donors to have their contributions tallied. There is also status within social networks attached to one’s tier of giving. The arrangement allows donors to give directly to DMFI, which is required to file disclosures naming its donors, without AIPAC’s fingerprints.

Rachel Rosen, a spokesperson for DMFI, said she was unaware of any AIPAC encouragement to donate to the organization. “As far as we know, what you are suggesting is completely untrue,” she said. “But because we are a separate organization, we can’t know exactly what other organizations are doing. Therefore, we are the wrong address for the the specific questions you ask — they need to [be] directed to AIPAC.”

AIPAC denied the arrangement. “AIPAC is not and has not been involved in the ad campaigns of any political action committee,” spokesperson Marshall Wittmann wrote in an email. “The accusation that AIPAC is providing benefits to members for donating to fund these political ads or this political action committee is completely false and has no basis in fact.”

If you believe AIPAC’s denials, I have some prime swamp land in Tel Hazor to sell you.

Seriously?

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The man is indicted for corruption, he is clearly the most toxic person in Israeli politics, but still Likud cannot see beyond him.

That is profoundly sad:

Benjamin Netanyahu has won a landslide victory in a primary election for leadership of the ruling Likud party in Israel.

Official results announced early on Friday showed Netanyahu capturing 72% of the votes, compared with 28% for challenger Gideon Saar. Earlier, Netanyahu had declared a huge victory following an exit poll that put him on course for more than 70% of the vote.

The prime minister, head of Likud for the past 14 years, retained the famously loyal rightwing party’s leadership in the internal ballot, despite battling three damning corruption indictments.

This is f%$#ed up and sh%$.

F%$# Yeah!!!!

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All those years of hypocrisy and dishonesty have finally caught up with Benjamin Netanyahu:

For the first time in Israel’s history, a sitting prime minister is accused of bribery: Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit announced Thursday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be charged with bribery, fraud and breach in three corruption cases, dubbed Cases 4000, 2000 and 1000.

The indictment comes after a four-day hearing with Netanyahu’s defense team last month, followed by weeks of intensive discussion at the attorney general’s offices.

Laying out the charges in a press conference, Mendelblit said he made the decision to indict the prime minister “with a heavy heart, but wholeheartedly,” stressing it was not an issue of left-wing or right-wing politics and that enforcing the law is not a matter of choice.

The attorney general lamented that “while conducting a professional hearing process, we’ve witnessed repeated attempts to delegitimize the people who were involved” in the investigations. He defended his colleagues, saying “These people acted out of proper motives.”

This man has been a pox on the Middle East, and a clear and present danger to the state of Israel, subsuming both human decency and the well-being of Israeli society to his ambitions.

Now that he has been indicted, maybe a government can be formed without his sorry bigoted ass.

Yes!!!

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Netanyahu has failed to form a government, so Benny Gantz gets 28 days to attempt to form a coalition:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday gave up his struggle to form a governing coalition after last month’s dead-heat national election, opening a possible path to power for his rival, former army chief of staff Benny Gantz.

 Israeli President Reuven Rivlin immediately said he would give Gantz a chance to assemble a majority of lawmakers, making him the first person other than Netanyahu authorized to form a government in more than a decade. Gantz will have 28 days to do what Netanyahu could not: entice at least 61 members of the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, to support his bid.

 ………

 “This is new: This broadens the political imagination to include the possibility that someone not named Netanyahu could be the prime minister of the state of Israel,” said Mordechai Kremnitzer, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. “But I think Gantz will also find it extremely difficult to shape a coalition.”

………

 Netanyahu warned in the video that Gantz could assume power with the support of Israeli Arab lawmakers, whose party emerged as the third-largest in the Knesset, and that those parliamentarians “encourage terror and oppose Israel’s existence.”

………

 Negotiators for the two parties met in several sessions without progress. Gantz, after an initial meeting with the prime minister, spurned numerous invitations from Netanyahu to negotiate one-on-one. Gantz insisted that his rival was less interested in compromise than in ensuring he would serve first in any power-sharing rotation. Netanyahu, who could be indicted as early as November, was more keen on “immunity” than unity, Gantz said.

Netanyahu is a crook and a hate-monger.

Any coalition should not involve Netanyahu in any capacity.

He’s an unspeakably bad person, and he has made Israel a far worse place.

Worse than a Crime, It’s a Mistake

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This Business Will get out of Control. It Will get out of Control and we’ll be Lucky to Live Through It.

Just when you thought that the political opportunism of Benyamin Netanyahu could not get any more short sighted and destructive, he is promising to annex most of the West Bank as a campaign promise:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Tuesday that he would move swiftly to annex nearly a third of the occupied West Bank if voters returned him to power in the election next week, seizing what he called a historic opportunity from a sympathetic White House to give Israel “secure, permanent borders.”

His plan to annex territory along the Jordan River would reshape the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and would reduce any future Palestinian state to an enclave encircled by Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu’s rivals on the left and right largely greeted the announcement, made in the heat of a campaign in which he is battling for survival, as a transparent political ploy.

Mr. Netanyahu said he planned to annex all Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and that he would move immediately after forming a new government to annex the Jordan Valley, a strategic and fertile strip of territory along the border with Jordan that runs from Beit Shean in northern Israel to the shores of the Dead Sea.

He said he wanted to capitalize on what he called the “unique, one-off opportunity” afforded him by the Trump administration, which has expressed openness to Israeli annexation of at least parts of the West Bank.

“We haven’t had such an opportunity since the Six Day War, and I doubt we’ll have another opportunity in the next 50 years,” Mr. Netanyahu said at a news conference in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan. “Give me the power to guarantee Israel’s security. Give me the power to determine Israel’s borders.”

Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war. Most of the world considers it occupied territory and Israeli settlements or annexations there to be illegal.Mr. Netanyahu, who is in a dead heat or slightly behind in the polls against Benny Gantz, a centrist former army chief of staff, has tried mightily to shift the focus of the election from the corruption cases against him to his strong suit: national security.

………

This time, Mr. Netanyahu boasted that thanks to “my personal relationship with President Trump, I will be able to annex all the settlements in the heart of our homeland.”

Assuming that Netanyahu isn’t lying, and Netanyahu lies like the rest of us breath, the end game for this strategy seems to be the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.

Not good.

The Pooch Has Been Thoroughly Screwed

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I’ve always felt that Benyamin Netanyahu has been clear and present danger to the state of Israel, but I never imagined that he would do something so bone-headed that AIPAC would condemn his actions:

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Thursday broke with Israel’s decision to bar Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) from visiting the country, saying “every member of Congress should be able to visit.”

“We disagree with Reps. Omar and Tlaib’s support for the anti-Israel and anti-peace BDS movement, along with Rep. Tlaib’s calls for a one-state solution. We also believe every member of Congress should be able to visit and experience our democratic ally Israel firsthand,” AIPAC tweeted Thursday.

Well, that’s what he gets for listening to Donald Trump.

It Appears that Voting Him Immunity was a Bridge too Far

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Benjamin Netanyahu has been unable to form a government, so there will be snap elections.

I think the fact that he was going to use the new government to grant himself for immunity for impending corruption charges was a major contributing factor:

Israel’s parliament has voted to dissolve itself after Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a government, in a move that will lead to a second round of elections just one month after the country held a national poll.

At a suspenseful gathering that ended weeks of unsuccessful bartering and brinkmanship, the Knesset voted to disperse and call new elections, set for 17 September.

Coalition talks stalled after far-right former defence minister Avigdor Lieberman, a Netanyahu ally-turned-rival, refused to back the prime minister.

Netanyahu needed support from Lieberman’s ultranationalist party, Yisrael Beiteinu, for a majority in Israel’s parliament.

………

Lieberman, whose party’s base includes largely secular Russian-speaking Israelis, wanted guarantees that the prime minister would back legislation to insist ultra-Orthodox Jews, also known as haredi, undertake mandatory national service like other Israelis.

Netanyahu, however, also needed the 16 seats from ultra-Orthodox parties for a 61-seat majority of parliament’s 120 seats. Those parties demanded that the existing exemption from conscription for seminary students stays in place.

“The Likud surrendered completely to the haredi,” Lieberman said before the parliamentary vote on Wednesday.

………

This time, Netanyahu, 69, was under additional pressure to form a government as he faces potential indictments for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three cases. He denies any wrongdoing, labelling the accusations as a “witch hunt”.

His loyalists had been planning to grant him immunity in the next parliament. A draft law they proposed would overrule court decisions and in effect protect the prime minister, although Netanyahu has not publicly backed the plan.

I cannot but think that the plans for immunizing Bibi were giving his coalition partners some serious concerns that they would pay for giving him a get out of jail free card.

Bad Day at the Office

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The Brereshet space probe crashed into the moon.

There was some sort of failure, and the engine shut down on descent:

On April 11, an Israeli lander named after the Hebrew word for “Genesis” attempted to mark a new beginning for space exploration by becoming the first privately funded spacecraft to touch down on the moon. Built by the Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL, the Beresheet lander tried to softly land within Mare Serenitatis, a vast volcanic basin on the moon’s northern near side—but as it made its descent, the spacecraft’s main engine failed. Engineers reset the spacecraft but lost communications, and the 330-pound lander ultimately crashed.

On April 12, SpaceIL released preliminary data from the last few moments of the mission, which show that despite resetting Beresheet, the spacecraft was descending at more than 300 miles an hour while it was less than 500 feet from touchdown, leading to “the inevitable collision with the lunar surface.”

This really sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.

I am a Jew and a Zionist, and I am With Rep. Ilhan Omar

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Her statements about AIPAC, and about the rent-a-crowd outrage machine, are at worst a fairly anodyne statement about the politics over this issue.

They are pretty much the same as Dick Durban’s statement how, “The banks own the place,” in response to the finance industry lobbying Congress.

But it doesn’t matter, the right wing is driving this narrative, and the Democrats are, as always, in the fetal position in the middle of a panic attack.

But the Democrats are still going to put a motion on the floor as a rebuke to Omar.

Seriously, if you took the entire Democratic caucus, I think that you would not be able to assemble one single complete set of testicles.

Be Still My Beating Heart

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Israelis were confronted with a rude new reality on Friday: a prime minister running for re-election while facing indictment for corruption.

While there were hints that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could be losing support, his right-wing allies appeared to be sticking with him and no one was foolish enough to write off a politician who still retains a strong base and has shown Houdini-like skill in escaping seemingly impossible jams before.

The only certainty was that Israel was in for a wild ride between now and the April 9 ballot, with analysts predicting that the country’s political scene — loud, fractious and heated at the best of times — would become only more divisive as Mr. Netanyahu, who is seeking a fourth consecutive term, fights for his political life.

“He splits the nation,” said Yehuda Ben Meir, an expert in public opinion at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “His are the politics of polarization and exaggeration. If he got any more polarizing he’d fall off the planet.”

………

After the announcement by the attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, on Thursday that he intends to indict Mr. Netanyahu on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, polls have pointed to a growing shift away from Mr. Netanyahu and his conservative Likud party and toward Mr. Gantz, whose military record could inoculate him against Mr. Netanyahu’s strongest line of attack, that he is the only one who can protect Israel’s security.

………

The details of three separate, but interconnected, corruption cases in which Mr. Netanyahu is a suspect were spread over a 57-page document released by the Justice Ministry on Thursday.

It included a chart with a monthly breakdown of the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cigars and Champagne supplied to the Netanyahus by a Hollywood producer and a millionaire businessman; back-room dealings with the publisher of a rival newspaper, Yediot Ahronot; and a dinner with an Israeli telecommunications mogul that led to a yearslong “give and take” relationship, as Mr. Mandelblit put it, with Mr. Netanyahu allegedly exchanging lucrative regulatory favors for positive coverage.

………

The announcement on Thursday was an interim step in the prosecution. Mr. Netanyahu is now entitled to a hearing to challenge the charges before a formal indictment can be handed down.

I expect Netanyahu’s campaign to get even more negative than it already has, which, considering the fact that he has officially thrown his lot in with fascist racists labeled terrorist by the United States, is saying quite a lot.

The next month might very well be the ugliest in the history of Israeli politics.

The Term is Mensch

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Bernie Sanders, who, when asked about Representative Omar’s tweets about AIPAC, offered her his unqualified support:

SCOOP: HEARD LAST NIGHT — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on a conference call hosted by Jim Zogby, Co-Chair of the DNC’s Ethnic Council, when asked about the controversy over Rep. Ilhan Omar’s tweets about AIPAC:“I talked to Ilhan last night to give her my personal support. We will stand by our Muslim brothers and sisters.”

He really is a stand-up guy.

Great. The Syrian War is Going to Run Into Netanyahu’s Electoral Ambitions

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A Snowboarder Caught this On Tape

We now have a report that Iranian forces fired a rocket at Israel, and Israel responded with air-strikes:

Israeli forces bombed targets belonging to Iran inside Syria early Monday morning, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement, as tensions on the northern border continued to skyrocket.

The Israeli army said at 1:30 a.m. it was “now striking Iranian Quds targets in Syrian territory,” and warned Syrian forces not to intervene.

………

The attack came less than a day after Israel reportedly carried out a rare daylight strike on targets near Damascus, after which Iranian forces in Syria fired a retaliatory missile at Israel, according to the IDF. The exchanges ratcheted up concerns of a wider confrontation between Israel and Iran in Syria. The Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported Monday that the Iranian missile, intercepted en route to the Golan by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, carried a nearly half-ton warhead.

I do not think that this is unrelated to the fact that Knesset elections will be in less than 3 months.

Say what you will about Binyamin Netanyahu, but he has an almost preternatural knack for tapping into the Israeli electorate fears to further his own political career..

This is a Wicked Bad Day at the Office

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Remarkably calm and matter of fact

There, you are, in your office, and suddenly, your canopy blows off, and there you are at 30,000 feet and -40° without pressurization.

This us not how you want your day to end:

The Israel Air Force has grounded its fleet of F-15 fighter jets after an incident last week in which an F-15’s canopy, the transparent enclosure over the cockpit, dislodged while the aircraft was flying at 30,000 feet, requiring the crew to make a harrowing emergency landing.

The Israel Defense Force Spokesperson’s Office said that at that altitude, with temperatures of minus 45 degrees Celsius (-49 degrees Fahrenheit) and strong wings, the crew was in danger. The commander of the air force, Amikam Norkin, has ordered a halt to all training flights with the aircraft pending an investigation.

The army released sound recordings of the incident in which shouting is heard followed by the pilot, who has been identified as Capt. Y, telling the ground: “Coming in for a landing at the nearest base without a canopy. Please confirm.” The plane’s navigator, 1st Lt. R., then asked the pilot if he was all right. “Yes, everything is all right,” he replied. The navigator then confirmed that he too was all right. The pilot was asked to slow his speed and then said: “We have no problem getting to base.”

………

The crew underwent a medical exam following the incident and were found to be in good condition.

If that had been me, I would have gone to pieces so fast that there would have been a risk of shrapnel.

Another Day, Another Corruption Allegation

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No, it’s not Trump, it’s Benyamin Netanyahu:

The Israeli police recommended Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted on bribery, fraud and other charges, accusing him of trading regulatory favors for fawning news coverage, in what is potentially the most damaging of a series of corruption cases against him.

It was the third time this year that the police have urged that Mr. Netanyahu face criminal prosecution. And it dealt another blow to his teetering governing coalition, which narrowly averted collapse last month and is clinging to a one-vote majority in Parliament while edging closer to calling early elections.

Mr. Netanyahu, who has dominated Israeli politics for a decade and continues to lead all potential challengers in opinion polls, must now await the decision of the attorney general, whom he appointed, on whether to indict him in all three cases. Depending on the decision, which could take months, he could be Israel’s first sitting prime minister to be indicted.

………

In the other cases, he is accused in the first of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts in exchange for political favors, and in the second of trading influence for favorable coverage in a leading Israeli newspaper.

………

In the new case against him, Mr. Netanyahu is not accused of getting rich himself, but of enriching the country’s biggest telecommunications company, Bezeq, at the public’s expense and for the sake of his own image and that of his wife and family.

Between 2012 and 2017, Mr. Netanyahu “intervened in a blatant and ongoing manner, and sometimes even daily,” in coverage at Walla, a news website owned by Bezeq, the police said. This ensured “flattering articles and pictures” were published and critical content about him and his family was removed.

The police said Mr. Netanyahu and his associates sought to sway Walla’s hiring of senior editors and reporters. In return, Mr. Netanyahu, who personally oversaw the communications ministry from 2014 to 2017, rewarded Bezeq with enormously lucrative concessions, the police said. Those included approval of its merger with Yes, a satellite television company, despite the objections of lower-level ministry officials.

This man has been a pox on Israeli politics for over 3 decades.

Here’s hoping that he will finally get his comeuppance.

Another Reason to Hate Netanyahu

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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attempted to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to start a conflict with Hamas in Gaza as part of a plan to divert attention from the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, sources inside Saudi Arabia have told Middle East Eye.

A war in Gaza was among a range of measures and scenarios proposed by an emergency task force set up to counter increasingly damaging leaks about Khashoggi’s murder coming from Turkish authorities, according to sources with knowledge of the group’s activities.

The task force, which is composed of officials from the royal court, the foreign and defence ministries, and the intelligence service, briefs the the crown prince every six hours, MEE was told.

It advised bin Salman that a war in Gaza would distract Trump’s attention and refocus Washington’s attention on the role Saudi Arabia plays in bolstering Israeli strategic interests.

The fact that this plan was even discussed says a lot about the relationship between the Israeli PM and the prodigal son of the House of Saud says a lot about the dysfunction of the current Israeli leadership.

A Good Start

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In response to repeated instances of racist law enforcement against Ethiopian Jews, the Israeli President and Justice Minister are looking to purge Ethiopian Jews’ records for minor crimes.

Implied, but not directly stated is that these crimes were basically racist cops busting kids because they were black.  The vernacular term is, “Contempt of Cop,” and this is a well-deserved f%$# you racist law enforcement:

President Reuven Rivlin and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked called on members of the Ethiopian community who have criminal records for disturbing public order to submit requests to have them purged, in honor of the holiday of Sigd.

“Out of a desire to complete a process of healing the rifts, and to increase Ethiopian immigrants’ trust in the law enforcement and judicial authorities, the president and the justice minister call on Ethiopian minors and young people who have been tried in the past for disturbing public order and who were not given jail terms to submit requests to purge their criminal record,” the statement said.

………

Two years ago, the Committee for Eradicating Racism Against Ethiopian Immigrants published a report stating that the Israeli authorities discriminated against Ethiopian immigrants in various areas, including law enforcement. 

The report, which was adopted by the government, noted that the number of criminal cases and indictments against Ethiopian Israelis was significantly higher than their proportion of the population.  

………

“The power of the institution of pardons is the ability to discuss Israeli issues that demand going beyond the letter of the law to serve the public interest,” said Rivlin. “Ethiopian immigrants have experienced discrimination from the establishment and Israeli society; they suffer from stigmas and negative stereotypes and are exposed to exclusion and prejudice, and even from physical and verbal violence.” 

“It is our duty as a society to do everything to deal with the racism within us and uproot it, and all the authorities are obligated to combat the phenomenon of labeling, exclusion and discrimination of any kind,” Rivlin continued. “Our call is another step in the war against labeling and exclusion, another step toward healing the rift that has been created between Ethiopian immigrants and the establishment and society.”

Retraining the police, and firing the racist ones would be a good next step. 

Needless to say, not even this weak of this could possibly happen in the United States, because it would be followed by a sh%$ storm from the racist right, including hand wringing from the right wing talking heads, and death threats from their followers.

What About Her Husband?

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Sara Netanyahu, Benyamin’s wife, is going on trial for fraudulently getting meal reimbursements:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, appeared in court on Sunday for the first hearing in the fraud trial against her, in which she is alleged to have misused state funds in ordering catered meals.

According to the indictment, Sara Netanyahu, along with a government employee, fraudulently obtained from the state more than $100,000 for hundreds of meals supplied by restaurants, bypassing regulations that prohibit the practice if a cook is employed at home.

………

She was charged in June with fraud and breach of trust and of aggravated fraudulent receipt of goods. If convicted, Sara Netanyahu could face up to five years in prison.

She had a state supplied cook but was still charging hundreds of thousands of dollars to restaurants, and Bibi had a budget for ice cream that boggles the mind, at least until it became public.

My guess is that the food was either resold, or never delivered, and kickbacks were received instead.

I am kind of hoping that Sara flips on her husband, but I’m not holding my breath.