ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 364
Michael Bachner is a news editor at The Times of Israel
The Times of Israel is liveblogged Wednesday’s events as they unfolded.
A Jerusalem court extends the remand of a Palestinian teenager suspected of carrying out a terror stabbing attack near Jerusalem’s Old City yesterday.
The 17-year-old from East Jerusalem will be held for another seven days, until September 13.
The terrorist attacked people with a cleaver on a promenade near the Jaffa Gate entrance to the Old City, seriously wounding an Israeli man and lightly hurting a tourist.
He was detained by officers after tossing the knife and attempting to flee the scene.
Police say officers also detained a friend of the assailant, also 17, from East Jerusalem, on suspicion that he knew of his intentions to carry out the attack and did not report it to authorities.
The second suspect’s remand is also extended by the court, by six days.
The head of Morocco’s senate, Enaam Mayara, will not visit the Knesset tomorrow as planned due to his ongoing hospitalization in Jordan, the Knesset spokesperson’s office says in a statement.
The office said Sunday that Mayara was set to make an official visit to Israel’s parliament. His trip would mark the first visit by a Moroccan leader to Israel’s legislative body, as well as being one of the most high-level visits by a foreign Muslim politician to the Knesset.
But Mayara has been at a hospital in Jordan since yesterday, forcing the cancellation of his trip to Ramallah today and of the Jerusalem stop tomorrow.
“I’m saddened to be prevented from arriving at the Knesset,” Mayara says, according to the Knesset statement. “I know many efforts have been invested in preparations for my visit, and I want to express my appreciation to all the partners.”
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana hails the countries’ booming ties and says Mayara’s visit was planned to be a highlight, “but we are of course following his medical condition with concern and wishing him a speedy and full recovery.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issues a terse statement eulogizing former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit, almost 24 hours after news broke of Shavit’s death at the age of 84.
“I send condolences to the family of Shabtai Shavit,” Netanyahu says. “Despite our deep disagreements, I always appreciated his important service and his contributions to the security of Israel. May his memory be a blessing.”
Shavit had been a vocal critic of Netanyahu in recent years.
The White House condemns fresh Russian strikes on Ukraine, after at least 17 people were killed in an attack on a market in the east of the country.
“These brutal Russian attacks underscore the importance of continuing to support the people of Ukraine as they defend their territory,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre tells a daily briefing.
As part of the now-rejected compromise plan by the President’s Residence regarding the judicial overhaul, Channel 13 news reports that one of the bones of contention was a demand by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to keep the so-called recusal law in effect under any circumstances.
The compromise, as reported, aimed to freeze all further judicial overhaul legislation in return for granting the coalition more power on the Judicial Selection Committee in the form of veto power on the selection of the Supreme Court president and lower court judges.
But today’s report says Netanyahu was adamant that any freeze still allow a potential “override clause” to be legislated with a regular majority, in the event that the High Court of Justice nullifies the government’s law shielding the premier from being ordered by courts or the attorney general to step down. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for later this month.
The network says Netanyahu associates are convinced that given the opportunity, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara will order Netanyahu to recuse himself over violations of the conflict of interest agreement he signed to prevent him from dealing with matters that could affect his own ongoing corruption trial down the line — which parts of the overhaul could do.
The report doesn’t say what the opposition’s reaction was to this demand.
The government has no way to fund its Haredi-demanded plan to lower the exemption age for yeshiva students’ enlistment to the army, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said according to the Kan public broadcaster, which cites an unnamed source familiar with the discussions.
IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi has made public comments against blanket exemptions and in favor of broad enlistment, with Kan saying this is against the backdrop of the treasury’s warning about the unfeasibility of the plan — which the Haredi parties are threatening to topple the government if it isn’t advanced before any further judicial legislation.
Kan adds that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to publish the bill after the upcoming Jewish holiday period, which ends on October 7.
A man is killed and two are seriously injured in a shooting in the central city of Ramle.
Paramedics arrived on the scene to find the 20-year-old in critical condition and began efforts to resuscitate him, according to a statement from the Magen David Adom ambulance service.
Beside him were a 40-year-old and a 25-year-old in a serious condition.
The three are taken to Shamir Medical Center in Be’er Ya’akov, where the 20-year-old is declared dead after arrival.
A senior coalition partner of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly threatens to bring down the government if a law providing a blanket exemption from military service for Haredi yeshiva students isn’t legislated before any further judicial overhaul legislation.
United Torah Judaism party chief Yitzhak Goldknopf tells the Kikar Hashabbat news site that the ultra-Orthodox parties made a mistake by not insisting on legislating the enlistment law before the current government was formed in December.
He says the law has been postponed time after time, with coalition officials explaining that the atmosphere was too volatile for such a move.
He says the instruction from UTJ rabbis that “without a draft law, there is no government” is still in effect, rejecting any softening of the planned legislation.
The interviewer then asks: “Does this mean that without a draft law there is no government?”
“It’s possible, yes, it seems like that,” Goldknopf answers.
“This is a commitment by Likud to us that nothing else will pass” before the draft law,” he says, presenting a document signed by the government secretary.
Pressed by the interviewer, Goldknopf says all Haredi parties have told Netanyahu that they will vote against any judicial overhaul bill as long as the draft law hasn’t passed.
A liberal group filed a lawsuit to bar former US president Donald Trump from the primary ballot in Colorado, arguing he is ineligible to run for the White House again under a rarely used clause in the US Constitution aimed at candidates who have supported an “insurrection.”
The lawsuit, citing the 14th Amendment, is likely the initial step in a legal challenge that seems destined for the US Supreme Court.
It will jolt an already unsettled 2024 primary campaign that features the leading Republican candidate facing four separate criminal cases.
The chief of the Israel Defense Forces responds to calls by hundreds of teenagers who have announced they will not serve in the military as protest against the government’s judicial overhaul push and Israel’s decades-long military rule over the West Bank.
“For the youth who are considering not enlisting, there is a clear statement: We will always live here, in the State of Israel. Because of this we must defend [it],” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi says at a ceremony.
“Anyone who is considering not enlisting should ask themselves what would happen if everyone behaved like them,” Halevi continues.
“In days of controversy, however difficult they may be, one must not lose their direction. The IDF is the right place to be,” he says.
Halevi also says Israel must continue the so-called “people’s army” model — one in which all Israelis are meant to serve in the military — amid plans by the government to lower the age at which ultra-Orthodox men can gain permanent exemptions from drafting to the army.
“This is a model that requires drafting from as many parts of the Israeli population as possible. With the right adjustments, there is a place and a way to implement this in the developing Israeli society,” he says.
“Our position is clear, draft for all,” Halevi adds.
Israel has signed a cooperation agreement with Russia on cinema, local and Israeli media reports, appearing to break a united Western front against Moscow’s ongoing bloody invasion of Ukraine.
A photo shared by the Kan public broadcaster shows Israeli Ambassador to Russia Alexander Ben Zvi signing the deal alongside Russia’s Culture Minister Olga Lyubimova, who is currently sanctioned by the United States and European Union.
שימו לב לסיפור הזה: רוסיה וישראל חתמו היום במוסקווה על הסכם לשיתוף פעולה בתחום הקולנוע. שרת התרבות של רוסיה, הנמצאת תחת משטר סנקציות של ארה"ב והאיחוד האירופי, היא זו שחתמה על ההסכם אל מול שגריר ישראל ברוסיה, אלכס בן-צבי -> pic.twitter.com/eZkMrpnFVM
— Gili Cohen (@gilicohen10) September 6, 2023
The agreement gives film directors from both countries access to archives and facilitates collaborations on creating joint movies.
Lyubimova is quoted by Russian media saying the talks on the deal have been ongoing since 2009, hailing the agreement as “important” and adding: “We are eagerly awaiting Israeli directors in our cinema competition programs.”
Ben Zvi is quoted as saying: “I’m convinced we will have many joint movies. Producers are interested in collaborations.”
A group of 1,340 reservists for elite special operations units in the Israel Defense Forces hits back at Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana’s warning that the coalition won’t accept a potential High Court of Justice ruling nullifying judicial overhaul legislation it has passed into law.
“The Knesset speaker expressly announced now that he won’t respect the High Court ruling,” says a statement from the group of reservists, which has long been threatening to stop showing up for volunteer duty in protest of the overhaul.
“We know for a fact that a government that doesn’t obey the High Court will find itself the next day without an army, without a Shin Bet and without a Mossad.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party issues a scathing response to former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo’s assertion that Israel’s policies in the West Bank amount to “apartheid.”
“We firmly condemn the shameful and false remark by Tamir Pardo,” Likud says in a statement. “The IDF acts morally to defend Israeli citizens while preventing harm to innocents. Hospitals in Israel treat Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians. Arabs and Jews study and work together in Israel
“Instead of defending Israel and the IDF, Pardo is slandering Israel. Pardo, shame on you.”
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana warns that a potential High Court of Justice ruling next week to nullify the coalition’s reasonableness law could “plunge us into the abyss,” and that the Knesset “won’t submissively accept its trampling.”
Ohana makes the remarks in a press conference convened at the Knesset ahead of a September 12 hearing on petitions against the law, part of the government’s controversial judicial overhaul, which bars courts from intervening in government and ministerial decisions based on their “reasonableness.” Later, a separate hearing will be held on petitions against a law shielding prime ministers from forced recusal.
Both pieces of legislation are amendments to Israel’s quasi-constitutional Basic Laws, which the country’s top court has never voided.
“Israel is at a crossroads, and the need to balance the branches of government is becoming clearer than ever,” Ohana says. “Tonight, as Knesset speaker, I want to put up a stop sign.”
Ohana, of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, argues that since 1977, the justice system has unilaterally been siphoning off powers from politicians to itself.
“Now, we are facing a new and dangerous junction, which could plunge us into the abyss, with the High Court soon holding discussions on Basic Laws,” he says.
“Israel is democratic, and in a democracy, the sovereign is the people. In a democratic state, the justice system respects the sovereign, the people and its elected officials, and this respect is mutual. There is no debate, and there cannot be one, over the question of whether the Knesset has authorized the court to nullify Basic Laws,” he says, arguing that the court possesses no such power.
He appeals to politicians to find a compromise deal that will avert the constitutional showdown, but adds that even if these efforts fail, “this doesn’t allow the court to make a decision instead of the elected officials.”
A serving member of the British Army awaiting trial on terrorism charges and for allegedly breaking the Official Secrets Act has escaped from prison, local police say.
Daniel Abed Khalife, 21, is thought to have absconded from Wandsworth prison in south London this morning.
He appeared in court in London on January 28 and was remanded in custody over two incidents at the Royal Air Force (RAF) base in Stafford, central England, near the army barracks where he lived.
Khalife is accused of “attempting to elicit information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism” in August 2021.
He was also charged with a bomb hoax by placing a suspect device at the RAF base on January 2 this year.
The Metropolitan Police says in a statement that he is likely to still be in the London area, although they do not rule out the option that he has traveled outside of the British capital.
They advise the public not to approach him and to call police immediately.
“We have no information which indicates, nor any reason to believe that Khalife poses a threat to the wider public,” says Dominic Murphy, the head of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command.
Foreign investment in Israel has dived by 60% in the first quarter of this year, a report published by the Finance Ministry shows.
Israel lured about $2.6 billion in foreign investment in the first three months of the year, reflecting a 60% decline compared to the average quarterly figures recorded in 2020 and 2022, according to the data. A drop was seen in both the number of foreign transactions and the number of foreign investors during the first quarter of the year.
The report does not compare 2023 figures with 2021 as it was a record year and is seen as an outliner.
Citing data by the Central Bureau of Statistics, the report notes that foreign direct investment in the first quarter of 2023 fell 34% to $4.76 billion, versus the quarterly averages recorded in 2020 and 2022.
In addition, the average size of exit transactions — mergers and acquisitions or initial public offerings of shares — in the first quarter plunged 80% to $56 million from about $307 million in 2020 and 2022. The Finance Ministry attributes part of the sharp drop to the decline in the valuations of many technology companies in the US.
Last year, foreign investment transactions amounted to $29.3 billion following a record year in 2021 which saw a staggering flow of $47 billion, according to the data. That compares with the $26.4 billion in foreign investment recorded in 2020.
In the second half of 2022, investments in private companies slowed amid rising interest rates, a global stock market fall and tech layoffs. Adding to this is the local political uncertainty around the contentious judicial overhaul announced earlier this year, which has been pushing foreign investors into a wait-and-see position about deal-making.
In 2022, about 72%, or $21 billion, of foreign investments to Israel came from the US, similar to the percentage in the previous year. Another 8%, or $2.4 billion, made up investments from the UK.
Saleh al-Arouri, the head of the Hamas terror group’s West Bank operations, gives a rare interview to a news outlet that isn’t affiliated with his or other jihadist groups, telling the Qatar-based Al Jazeera website that the group’s current political goal is to expel Israel from the West Bank by means of attacks.
“The resistance is not merely an expression of anger at the occupation, but rather it has a political goal,” al-Arouri, who also serves as the terror group’s deputy political chief, says in a transcript provided by the Hamas-affiliated Shehab news outlet. He later explains this goal to be the expulsion of the “occupation” authorities from the West Bank.
Al-Arouri also boasts that the group today constitutes the backbone of the Palestinian “resistance,” thanks to its guerrilla operations and its war of attrition in the West Bank, under the steering of its political leadership.
He adds that “today, Hamas is present throughout the West Bank, but it has grown mostly in its northern section due to Israel’s withdrawal from parts of the area in 2005,” referring to the dismantling of four settlements in parallel with the disengagement from Gaza. The northern West Bank, the region of Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarem, is the area where the highest level of coordination takes place between Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam brigades, and other factions, al-Arouri notes.
He adds that Israel’s aim to “restore deterrence through killings is delusional,” citing the example of the Jenin refugee camp, which was destroyed in 2002 and today is a hotbed of Palestinian terror activity.
Al-Arouri slams the United States for its “attempts to dismantle the resistance and protecting the Zionist project” and criticizes successive Israeli governments for not having the “courage” to conclude a prisoner exchange with the terror group, stating that Israel “continues to lie to the families of the soldiers when it says that it is making every effort to determine their fate.”
The terror group in Gaza currently holds two living Israelis — Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed — as well as the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin.
The conviction last year and imprisonment of the former Gaza head of a major US-based aid agency violates international law, UN rights experts claim, demanding that Israel release him immediately.
The four independent experts describe the proceedings leading to World Vision’s Mohammed el-Halabi’s conviction last year as “deeply flawed” and argue that the verdict and his lengthy prison sentence are “egregious violations of the right to a fair trial.”
El-Halabi was sentenced to 12 years behind bars in August 2022, after being convicted of funneling millions of dollars and tons of steel to the Hamas terror group, which has controlled the Palestinian enclave since it took over in 2007 in a bloody coup.
El-Halabi, who was arrested in June 2016 and indicted in August that year, has denied any irregularities, and an audit ordered by World Vision found no evidence he had diverted any charity funds.
The UN experts, including the Special Rapporteurs on the rights situation in Gaza and on protecting human rights while countering terrorism, point to “the lack of evidence against him presented in open court.”
They also highlight “the extensive use of secret evidence, closed-door hearings, restricted communication with his lawyer, severe restrictions on the lawyer for the preparation of his defense and the failure to try him without undue delay.”
The head of Morocco’s senate, Enaam Mayara, has been hospitalized in Jordan after his health deteriorated, casting doubt on his landmark scheduled visit Thursday at the Knesset.
The Knesset’s spokesperson’s office said Sunday that Mayara was set to make an official visit to Israel’s parliament. His trip would mark the first visit by a Moroccan leader to Israel’s legislative body, as well as being one of the most high-level visits by a foreign Muslim politician to the Knesset.
But according to Walla, Mayara has been at a hospital in Jordan since yesterday and doctors will soon decide if he will be able to continue to Israel.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service says a 56-year-old Israeli man was seriously hurt in the Jerusalem terror attack after being stabbed in the upper body and a 17-year-old tourist was slightly hurt after sustaining a superficial stab wound to his abdomen.
Another woman in her 50s was treated by medics for acute anxiety.
Police identify the terrorist who carried out the stabbing attack near Jerusalem’s Old City as a 17-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem.
After stabbing at least two people with a cleaver and fleeing, the terrorist was caught by officers, police say.
One Israeli man in his 50s is seriously hurt in the attack, and another man is slightly wounded. Both have been taken to Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital for treatment.
A former head of the Mossad intelligence agency tells The Associated Press that he believes Israel is enforcing an “apartheid” system in the West Bank.
Tamir Pardo says he’s concluded that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank amounts to apartheid, a reference to the system of racial separation in South Africa that ended in 1994.
Rights groups in Israel and abroad and Palestinians have accused Israel and its 56-year military rule of the West Bank of morphing into an apartheid system that they claim gives Palestinians second-class status and is designed to maintain Jewish hegemony from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
A handful of former Israeli leaders, diplomats and security officials have warned that Israel risks becoming an apartheid state, but Pardo’s language is even more blunt.
“There is an apartheid state here,” Tamir Pardo says in an interview. “In a territory where two people are judged under two legal systems, that is an apartheid state.”
Pardo, who served as head of Israel’s clandestine spy agency from 2011-2016, refuses to say if he held the same beliefs while heading the Mossad.
Pardo says that as Mossad chief, he repeatedly warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he needed to decide what Israel’s borders are, or risk the destruction of a state for the Jews.
In the past year, Pardo has become an outspoken critic against Netanyahu and his government’s push to reshape the judicial system, slamming his old boss for steps he said would lead Israel to become a dictatorship.
In a previous interview with Channel 12 news, he said apartheid “is in the interest” of the far-right coalition parties Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit.
An Emirates flight from Dubai to Singapore with 12 Israelis onboard was forced to land in Malaysia this morning due to bad weather, the Foreign Ministry reveals.
Malaysia and Israel do not have diplomatic ties.
According to the ministry, Director-General Ronen Levy oversaw efforts to reach the passengers and ensure that they were safe. Diplomats worked with Emirates to contact one of the passengers and stay abreast of their welfare.
The passengers on Flight 354 did not deplane, and took off again for Singapore after waiting on the runway for five hours.
A man in his 50s has been stabbed and seriously wounded in a suspected terror attack near the Jaffa Gate entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City, police and medics say.
According to police, the alleged terrorist has been arrested by police officers at the scene.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service says it is treating the man at the scene.
The US Embassy in Jerusalem broadcasts a State Department message warning its citizens against travel to Uman for the upcoming Rosh Hashanah holiday, saying the Ukrainian city “has been the site of multiple Russian missile attacks as recent as June.”
The State Department’s travel advisory for all of Ukraine is Level 4: Do Not Travel.
“The US Department of State recommends that US citizens do not travel to Ukraine,” reads the warning. “This recommendation applies to US citizens considering travel to Uman during Rosh Hashanah for the pilgrimage to the grave of Rebbe Nachman.”
“The US Embassy in Kyiv continues to operate with reduced staffing and has limited capacity to assist US citizens in Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s newly appointed Defense Minister Rustem Umerov vows to recapture all territory under Russian military control, in his first comments in the new role.
“I will do everything possible and impossible for the victory of Ukraine — when we liberate every centimeter of our country and every one of our people,” he says in a post on social media.
A senior government official in Hungary comes under sharp criticism for praising the country’s World War II-era leader — an ally of Nazi Germany who is believed to have imposed Europe’s first anti-Jewish laws of the 20th century — as an exceptional head of state and a hero.
Minister of Construction and Transportation Janos Lazar made the comments Sunday during a ceremony held on the 30th anniversary of the reburial of Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s regent during most of World War II.
A self-described antisemite, Horthy forged an alliance with Adolf Hitler and implemented laws that resulted in the deportation and deaths of thousands of Hungarian Jews.
A video of the commemoration held in Kenderes, Horthy’s hometown, features Lazar, a cabinet member in the nationalist government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, heaping praise on the wartime leader while speaking at the ceremony in Horthy’s hometown of Kenderes.
“It is my conviction that a remembrance and homage is due to Miklos Horthy,” Lazar says in the video, which he posted yesterday on his Facebook page. “It is due to Governor Miklos Horthy because in Miklos Horthy we can honor an exceptional statesman who was a true heroic soldier and a true Hungarian patriot.”
The Israeli Embassy responds to Lazar’s comments, writing on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Glorifying a person who’s [sic] deeds brought a catastrophe upon the Hungarian people and especially the Jewish compatriots of which around 600,000 innocent men, women and children were murdered, has no place in a modern Hungary.”
The US ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman, also writes on X that Lazar’s participation in the event honoring Horthy concerns the US government.
“Miklos Horthy was complicit in the slaughter of Hungary’s Jewish population during the Holocaust. The United States is concerned by the participation of a senior Orbán government official in efforts to rehabilitate and promote his brutal legacy,” Pressman writes.
Police and the Shin Bet announce the arrests of three suspects in last week’s shooting of a candidate for mayor of Nazareth and his two relatives.
Musab Dukhan, his brother and his cousin were shot and lightly injured in the August 28 incident in the city.
The shooting came amid an unrelenting violent crime wave in Israeli Arab communities that has increasingly spilled into municipal politics.
In their statement, police and the Shin Bet say that after days of investigation, the three suspects were arrested overnight in an apartment that served as a hideout.
Other details of the case are gagged under a court order.
French-Israeli mining tycoon Beny Steinmetz has been released from Cypriot custody under restrictive conditions after being arrested last Thursday, the Reuters news agency reports, citing local police.
Steinmetz was arrested when he arrived at Larnaca airport on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by Romania for a corruption conviction.
The following day, a court extended his remand and declined to release him with restrictions, the Ynet outlet reported Sunday.
He is now expected to face a judge on September 14.
Romania convicted him in absentia for real estate fraud and in December 2020 sentenced him to five years in prison.
Ukraine’s parliament approves President Volodymyr Zelensky’s nomination of Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar, as Kyiv’s new defense minister after the resignation of Oleksiy Reznikov.
“Parliament approved Rustem Umerov as the Defense Minister of Ukraine,” senior lawmaker Yaroslav Zheleznyak says on social media. He posts a photograph of the voting board, showing 338 out of 360 lawmakers voted in favor of Umerov’s nomination.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelensky are slated to speak by phone this week to come to an agreement on the upcoming Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage to the Ukrainian city of Uman, diplomatic sources tell The Times of Israel.
The exact timing of the call is still being negotiated between the sides.
A decision on Ukraine’s policy toward Israeli pilgrims to the Ukrainian city had been expected over the weekend, but none was made.
Kyiv has threatened to close its borders to Israeli pilgrims making their way to Uman, in retaliation for Israel deporting Ukrainians, but Israeli officials have dismissed those threats.
Senior religious Zionist rabbis appear to argue that the government and the coalition will not be obliged to obey a potential High Court of Justice ruling against them in several upcoming high-profile cases that may herald a constitutional showdown between the branches of government.
A written statement on behalf of 14 rabbis, representing the more hardline flank of the religious Zionist community, is published days ahead of crucial hearings on petitions against the government — against the reasonableness law, which is the first bill of the judicial overhaul package that has passed, and against Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s refusal to convene the Judicial Selection Committee in its current form.
“The only authority in the state is the majority, as reflected in elections, the Knesset and the government,” they write, the Ynet news site reports. “There is no other state authority above them.”
The rabbis also note the need to take account of the minority, and urge “the entire public in the state to behave responsibly and try to reach agreement that enables every person to run their lives without any coercion and in accordance with the values of the nation of Israel over the generations.”
The rabbis — some of them affiliated with the far-right Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit coalition parties — include Ramat Gan Chief Rabbi Yaakov Ariel, Jerusalem Chief Rabbi Aryeh Stern, Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, and prominent rabbis Dov Lior, Elyakim Levanon, Yaakov Shapira and Zalman Melamed.
