August 8

👉🏽 Channel 13 reporting that the Shin Bet warns of threats against judiciary leaders, particularly Supreme Court President Esther Hayut and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, both targets for their opposition to certain government stances.

👉🏽 Channel 12 reports that a planned visit by Likud Science Minister Ofir Akunis to Sheba and Ichilov Hospitals was canceled because of doctor opposition to overhaul.

👉🏽 Jerusalem Post has a piece on former IDF ombudsman, Major-General Yitzhak Brik, who
says Israel is unprepared for war. “The National Security Council has become the prime minister’s personal secretary… Billions of shekels escape, while there is no long-term army building.”

👉🏽 Channel 12 reports that despite government promises to the US to financially prop up the Palestinian Authority, and despite PM Netanyahu’s statement that preventing the collapse of the PA is in Israel’s best interest,
Religious Zionist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich refuses to allow the PA to delay their tax debts of $500 million.

👉🏽 Times of Israel reports that though Likud’s Minister for the Advancement of Women May Golan claimed she and her 76-year-old mother were assaulted by “anarchists” at the airport,
unedited video footage of the encounter actually shows Golan as the aggressor, being restrained from charging at the protesters, with her mother throwing a punch.while yelling that her daughter would soon be prime minister.

👉🏽 The Israeli Law Professors’ Forum for Democracy, composed of 140 legal experts and judges, denounced the Coalition’s claims that the Supreme Court does not have the authority to rule on Basic Laws, saying the Coalition was attempting to be a single branch of government, with no oversight limiting their actions, and improperly screening anything from judicial review by labeling it a Basic Law.

👉🏽 Israel Democracy Institute poll shows majority (58%) think Israel is in a state of emergency. (765 polled, 3.55% margin of error.)

👉🏽 Haaretz reports that two reservist Navy rear admiral deputies will no longer show up for their volunteer duty. One said since his discharge, he has volunteered 20-50 days per year, mostly at night and on Shabbat.
Over 10,000 reservists have said they would no longer volunteer.

👉🏽 Religious Zionist Party Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich contradicted PM Netanyahu’s earlier statement saying he had told Smotrich to release funds earmarked for Arab sector, saying the Prime Minister supported his decision to not transfer 300 million shekels, YNet reports.

👉🏽 Maariv reports that Likud MK and Chairman of the Economic Committee David Bitan is encouraging seniors to demonstrate in front of the homes of Religious Zionist party Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and Likud Minister of Transportation Miri Regev, if their promised discounts of free public transportation for the elderly are canceled.

👉🏽 Arutz 7 reports that the Palestinian Authority will boycott upcoming security talks if the Cabinet doesn’t put through the funding for the Arab sector that MK Smotrich just kiboshed. Unrelated, the government is considering increasing the number of workers allowed in from Gaza, already at a record high.

👉🏽 Though 71% support buses and trains on Shabbat, according to a Smith Institute poll,
YNet reports that the new Gush Dan light rail red line will not run on Shabbat.

👉🏽 Maariv reporting a growing belief that the Coalition is speaking out of both sides of their mouth, with PM Netanyahu and Likud Justice Minister Yariv Levin promising consensus-building and negotations, and simultaneously attempting to scuttle the court’s expected ruling on the Judicial Selection Committee.

👉🏽 Rumor mill says that for their vacation this week in Neve Ativ in the Golan, PM Netanyahu booked all 43 hotel rooms, at an estimated cost of 159,000 nis per night for the taxpayers, with some estimating much higher. Security have the area cordoned off, with the locals locked inside, and protesters (in tents) nearby. Protesters are petitioning the courts to be allowed to protest directly outside the hotel.

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