This week's postings on JfJfP.com


January 24, 2016
Sarah Benton

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This week, January 18-24, 2016 the usual background has shifted slightly – although the pattern of stabbings and immediate execution seems to have become part of the usual background.
My son had no freedom or dignity

A new element is the verbal attack, by Jewish Home leader and member of the coalition government Naftali Bennett, on Netanyahu and Moshe Ya’alon, both Likud.
Right wing splinters

The pair have ignored military advice on the ‘knife intifada’ and the IDF is having to deploy considerable forces in another siege, this time of Hebron:
Hebron villages held under military siege

The Likud couple keep exclusive control over military/security policy. Bennett, who is to the right of them politically, condemns their policy as lacking strategy and reality.
Israel’s defence policy stuck in outdated groove

He’s not the only one who says the siege of Gaza has utterly failed in its purpose – to undermine Hamas:
Jewish Home – just drop the Gaza siege

The siege of Gaza has cost Israel its reputation – and left a dreadful legacy of death, destruction and trauma:
The legacy of bombarding Gaza

The focus on military solutions by the government supremos means little attention is paid to the ordinary business of running a country. Lack of housing, a soaring cost of living, poor educational results all speak of serious neglect. Given the 2015 election result it seems that Israeli citizens can still be misled by the ‘security’ beacon:
The unbearable price of security

Making little contribution to the economy or military are the ultra-Orthodox or haredim who, like any extreme religious group have little respect for secular authority, insist on gender separation and withdrawal from society to study the Torah is a life well-filled.  Their high fertility rate means they will constitute one third of Israel’s population by 2050. The Jerusalem Institute for Policy Studies published a study:
What a load of haredim

While the government persists in its refusal to face reality the EU continues, step by step, to implement its policy that settlement products cannot be labelled Made In Israel. Labelling is the generous alternative to boycott.
Label – or boycott

Israel’s response to the EU’s demand for correct labelling of place of origin (antisemitic etc) is clearly insulting to the European Ministers and bureaucrats who make the decisions – confirmed by the European parliament. Those who will be hardest hit are the settlers on whom the Israeli government has expended so much money – for what else does it have as a domestic strategy other than settlements?
Israel’s pro-settler policy backfires
and
With no law, carpet-baggers grow rich

A number of companies are enjoying the state-provided benefits  and cheap Palestinian labour of operating in a settlement. Human Rights Watch is the latest NGO to warn them to find a more solid footing elsewhere:
Get your business out of the oPt says Human Rights Watch

While some fear that chaos and violence will overtake Palestine when Mahmoud Abbas finally retires, others are hopeful that a new post-Abbas era will renew political life and engagement – which might possibly make the knives irrelevant. Here are some of the presidential candidates:
Rivals to lead Palestine into new era

 

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