Yediot Aharonot discusses recent recommendations of the latest committee that has dealt with the relocation of the country’s Bedouin population. The author maintains that "This last committee, for the time being, was the most serious of them all. It was headed by former Supreme Court Judge and State Comptroller Eliezer Goldberg. It was the first in which Bedouin participated in the committee’s proceedings, not as a fig leaf, but as interested parties." However, for the sake of comparison, the author notes that "The average compensation being offered for the 80,000 Bedouin candidates for relocation is smaller than the compensation which was given to the 8,000 Jews who were evacuated from Gush Katif. A Bedouin inhabitant, being moved from land on which he and his forefathers lived, will receive less than a Jew received. Why? What is the moral justification?"
Ma’ariv laments "As if we don’t already have enough problems, we are witnesses of late to attacks on two religious precepts central to the Jewish religion, paradoxically, from the heart of the enlightened Western world, from two countries considered supporters of Israel: Various elements in the US are advocating outlawing circumcision, and in Holland – an initiative to outlaw kosher slaughtering on the claim that it causes unnecessary cruelty to animals." The author opines that "Unlike a private citizen, the State of Israel has no other option. It must publicly combat international legislation which in this case creates discrimination against Jews."
Yisrael Hayom argues that "Even if the leaders of China, Russia and India ultimately decide to join the condemnation of the Syrian regime and to support the UN Security Council condemnation proposal by Britain and France – the international picture is distorted. Assad does whatever he damn well pleases, and in any case, the empty symbolic act of condemnation will not prevent Assad, who has already slaughtered 1,200 of his own countrymen, from continuing."
The Jerusalem Post discusses the the attempt to adjust annual school holiday periods, initiated by Minister of Education Gideon Sa’ar, and later stymied by the Histadrut Teachers Federation, and states: “We can only hope that Sa’ar, one of Israel’s better education ministers in decades, isn’t discouraged from pursuing other reforms he has introduced and whose significance far outweighs the incidental silly season summer-vacation kerfuffle.”
Haaretz declares that “Israel’s economic future is gray and threatening,” and notes that “Things are good right now, and short-range predictions are rosy, but Israel is very dependent on the world economic situation, and the Israeli economy is built on exports. If the United States and Europe go into a recession and demand for products and services declines, Israeli manufacturers will suffer severely.”
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