Netanyahu, Lieberman and the IDF - The Backstory

April 9th with the Likud party capturing 36 seats in the Knesset, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared ready to capture a fourth consecutive term, with a clear path to build a coalition government with his traditional political partners. But a crisis with his longtime ally and erstwhile rival Avigdor Lieberman thrust the country into unchartered territory. Without Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party and the five Knesset seats it won in the April 9th election, the Prime Minister’s Likud party could not muster a 61-seat majority and new elections have been called for in mid-September.

The New York Times — Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

The New York Times editorial board said in an editorial that the newspaper’s recent pub-lication of “an appalling political cartoon” [right] is “evidence of a profound danger — not only of anti-Semitism but of numbness to its creep.” The newspaper also acknowledged its own historical contributions to the rise of anti-Semitism. “In the 1930s and the 1940s, The Times was largely silent as anti-Semitism rose up and bathed the world in blood,” it wrote. “That failure still haunts this newspaper.”

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Unit 9900 - The Israeli Army Unit That Recruits Teens With Autism

For eight hours a day, E., 21, sits in front of multiple computer screens, scanning high-resolution satellite images for suspicious objects or movements. As a decoder of Israel’s complex and often heavily civilian battlegrounds, he’s been critical in preventing the loss of life of soldiers on the ground in several different situations, his officers say. For many people, combing through each millimeter of the same location from various angles would be tedious work—but E., who is on the autism spectrum, describes the job as relaxing, “like a hobby.”

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