💧News of the Crisis💧April 1st
We, along with over 100 thousand other Israelis, have ascended yesterday (Sunday) to Jerusalem - with sister rallies everywhere from New York City to Paris and Madrid - to demand the immediate return of the hostages, canceling the spring recess and immediate call for elections. This weekend, the most obtuse, uncaring knesset in our history is slated to take a spring recess because, evidently, all is peachy. We were there to tell them what we thought of them.
Family members of hostages told onstage of their broken family as well as their broken faith in Israel’s government; Head of Opposition Yair Lapid spoke onstage of all the victims who seem transparent to the government, and the host spoke of the overlying feeling between despair and hope. Even the chairman of the Histadrut trade union federation, who in the past was accused of being in cahoots with Netanyahu, made an appearance
It’s unbelievable that exactly one year ago, what the government fought for was the Chametz law, forbidding people from taking leavened food made from grain into hospitals during Passover. One tweeter quipped today: “I don't understand why thousands go out to demonstrate against the government when all it takes to topple it is one soldier who will enter Shifa Hospital with a Sambusak pastry in two and a half weeks”.
The death toll since October 7th of IDF soldiers has heartbreakingly reached 600 today (Monday), 256 of whom died during the Gaza ground offensive. Staff Sergeant Nadav Cohen, 20, from Haifa, was killed fighting in southern Gaza as part of the 7th Armored Brigade's 77th Battalion.
Enav Zangauker, mother of Matan who was taken hostage from his Nir Oz home on October 7, spoke to the weekend supplement of Yediot about her past love for the Prime Minister and of her current thoughts: "At first I thought it would be easier for me, I told myself that I was the first one he would listen to because I voted for him. I said 'It's my time to stand up as a mother from the right-wing camp whose son was kidnapped and tell her prime minister the truth inside'.
“I won't lie, he was a symbol for me. He was Mr. Security, Mr. Economy, this giant that I had in my head, I held on to. And from meeting to meeting I just got increasingly disappointed, and the more disappointed I get, my anger and frustration at Benjamin Netanyahu increases. Now, unequivocally, one of my goals is to topple him. I will not let him sit on his chair and breathe oxygen politically with a coalition that surrounds him with swaths of security while my son has no oxygen in the tunnels of Sinwar.
“Prior to October 7, when I was sitting at home and watching the blockades in Ayalon and the Kaplan protests on TV, I got angry. I said 'Why do they think that in the name of some goal it is right and appropriate to disrupt the public peace? Why protest near politicians' homes?' Today I understand their legitimacy, and use the same tool because I think it is a tool that has power. Today I understand their burning desire to cry out, to have their voice heard"
Under the pseudonym of “Feigie Lifschitz”, an ultra Orthodox female activist writes in an Op-Ed in yesterday’s Haaretz that the ultra Orthodox politicians are “pimping the Holy bible” in their stipulation that Torah can only be studied if you are well budgeted.
“That crooked model, that was introduced in Israel with the establishment of the state and increased significantly with the rise of the Likud to power in 1977, does not represent Judaism, its path. It certainly cannot be said that the Torah depends on it. The political budgeting model that was wrong in advance got out of control and caused a distortion and injustice to the whole holy concept of learning Torah for the sake of heaven.
“This injustice firstly harmed the ultra Orthodox community itself, led to degeneration, dependence on politics and politicians, and above all turned the study of the Torah from a being of love, passion, longing and pursuit of a noble thing, to a profession, a source of livelihood, a herd path without choice nor vitality”.