Light vs. Darkness

'The left is no longer in charge'

MK Motti Yogev [...] stresses that the government will promote Israel's Jewish roots.

'Some' Light at the End of the Long Dark Tunnel

"They tried for years to highlight the democratic side and hide our Jewish roots,” said Yogev, noting that the previous civics textbook “did not include one word about Judaism. So Minister Bennett did well by deciding to balance things and add Jewish content."

"That’s the nature of democracy; majority rules and the majority is nationalist. It’s true that the left still dominates academia and universities, as we saw this week in the harsh statements made by professors at the Hebrew University, and if it was the opposite they would have been fired long ago. There is an attempt to erase our Jewish roots and it will not succeed. The same will happen with the Attorney General, who will step down within a few days, and [the new one] will come and balance the Jewish roots in the courts, which until now have been controlled by the elites in an undemocratic fashion," he concluded.


Ideology of Light

First Person Account: "The wife of the suspect came running out of the hearing, quickly scooped up her baby daughter who was being looked after by a good friend, and ran back inside with her. A few hours later, in the couple's small apartment in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem, she said in her quiet voice that after she asked the judge, he allowed her to bring her daughter in for a few moments so she could see her father.

"He's very close to her, very involved in her upbringing," she said. "He plays with her, tells her stories, spends a lot of time with her. Everyone in the courtroom became very emotional when he held onto her tightly, and hugged and kissed her."

"That the land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel by divine command. So when I take a hilltop and settle on it, I bring a table, a few chairs, I build a small hut or put up a tent. That fulfills a command. I'm allowed to be there, to hold onto it, because it's ours. The 'hilltop youth' don't want to live in established settlements, behind fences, one on top of another. We break ground, break borders. It's a matter of faith. That's why I was there from the age of 13."

"My husband has known Meir for many years," she says. "They are absolutely friends." The ideology is the same one.

"Yes, we want a state based on Jewish law here, and a king as written in the Torah. But we are not anarchists, without a care. We aren't against the law, neither me nor my husband. We don't do whatever we feel like, burning and attacking people. What happened in Duma is a serious incident and I'm against it."


Hiding in the Darkness

Jewish suspects in the case were tortured under the express authorization of Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, Haaretz reported. PM was only notified after the fact. "In response to the Haaretz report, the Justice Ministry issued a statement that said “decisions on the methods of interrogation were made by the head of the Shin Bet… with the oversight of the most senior officials in the Justice Ministry, including the attorney general.”

I am not a regular reader of Martin Sherman; however, it caught my eye this morning and should be read by everyone.

SPOTLIGHT: Martin Sherman's (partial) Analysis in JPost:

I have no idea who set the Dawabsha family’s home ablaze. But neither, so it would seem, has the Israeli authorities – from the state prosecution, through the police force to the internal security services.

For this to be a plausible scenario, what we would have to accept? We would have to believe that these youths – apparently minors or barely out of their teens – without any special forces training, managed to –

(a) infiltrate, undetected, the center of a hostile village; 
(b) execute a presumably noisy arson attack on two buildings (one uninhabited); 
(c) brazenly spray a large Hebrew slogan on one of the walls of the targeted structures; and 
(d) then, make a phantom-like escape, egressing the village without a trace, never mind without being apprehended, without leaving any trail or clue to indicate where they had vanished to.

The houses burned [in Duma] 

aren’t in the outskirts of the town 

where it is easy to make a getaway. 

– Amira Hass, Haaretz, July 31

Really? All this, apparently, without any back-up contingent, standing by to extricate them, should they be discovered and set upon (read “lynched”) by the inhabitants of the village?

If that is not implausible enough, consider this. Having committed the dastardly deed, these youthful renegade radicals, who presumably have not been extensively schooled in the tradecraft of clandestine activity, apparently have the iron discipline not to let slip the vaguest hint of what they had perpetrated. No boastful bravado, no indiscreet phone call in a moment of weakness – only sphinx-like silence for months on end, while the county’s entire law enforcement apparatus, together with the formidable internal security services, was hunting them.

For months the law enforcement agencies, with all the measures at their disposal – covert surveillance, phone tapping, insertion of undercover agents, enlistment of group members to become informers (either willingly, by positive persuasion or unwillingly, under duress) – could not come up with any incriminating evidence.

[...]....no indictments have been filed.

WE ARE AWAITING THE FACE-SAVING CHARGES AND INDICTMENT OF THE COURT