Yediot Aharonot says that the public response to the Turning Point 5 home front exercise has been lackluster and writes: "What is this [home front] exercise for, someone said. Perhaps so that you can see that your shelter has become a storage room and you’ll clean it, they answered him. I have no shelter, he replied, and my protected area is my stairwell. I don’t need an exercise in order to go to my stairwell."
Ma’ariv discusses the controversy over the prices of certain dairy products and asserts that "When competition is boosted, the price will fall."
Yisrael Hayom, discussing the potential return of convicted ex-Shas minister Aryeh Deri to politics, argues that "The pitiless man who crudely helped himself to the public’s funds, is seriously seeking to return. Now he wants to become, once again, a legitimate elected official. Now he is seriously setting his eyes on the government benches, and that must not happen. Even in failed, dark, backward states there has never been such a precedent."
The Jerusalem Post discusses the hike in the price of dairy products which caused a consumer whiplash, and states that importing dairy products to increase competition will likely reduce prices but is not the ideal solution. The editor points out that as most retailing is carried out by giant monopolies or cartels, it can be assumed that price-fixing is rampant. He declares that “it’s time bureaucratic snarls were undone to facilitate deterrent antitrust enforcement,” and asserts that “Turning the spotlight on actual cartels or quasi-cartels is a strategy that demands extraordinary political courage given our specific circumstances. But this is what must be done. It’s not prices that need to be regulated but anti-competitive conduct.”
Haaretz criticizes the intent of Interior Minister Eli Yishai to add the term ‘Jew’ to Israeli ID cards to those who request it and are Jewish according to Yishai’s definition of ‘Who is a Jew’, and states: “A Jew can’t be identified by an ID card stamp.” The editor declares that distinctions between citizens on the basis of faith and belief “completely undermines Israel’s definition not only as a democracy but also as a Jewish state,” and adds that “An individual’s beliefs are his own private business, and his sense of national belonging is determined by his own identification, not by the order of the interior minister.”
[Ariela Ringle Hoffman, Nadav Haetzni and Mordechai Gilat wrote today’s articles in Yediot Aharonot, Ma’ariv and Yisrael Hayom, respectively.]