Yediot Aharonot says that Yitzhak Rabin „was re-elected in 1992 only because his voters identified him as a right-winger who knew how to break Arab bones.” The author lauds the 1995 National Health Insurance Law as his greatest achievement and suggests that „In everything else, Rabin got it wrong. Several months before he was murdered, Rabin admitted that he made a severe mistake with the Oslo agreement. Not with ‘excessive concessions’ as his right-wing opponents claimed but in the concept of making an interim agreement when you do not know where it is going.”
Ma’ariv commends former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s „leadership and his contribution to the revival of Israel,” on the occasion of his 95th birthday and, „regrets that our younger generation perhaps no longer recognizes the great leaders who arose and looked after their people and not after their own.”
Yisrael Hayom believes that Thomas Friedman’s column in Tuesday’s New York Times, in which he wrote that Israel „is behaving like a spoiled child,” was part of „the last effort to save Barack Obama’s democratic majority in the November 3 Congressional elections,” and „was written in response to what it does not mention – the steep fall in American Jewish support for their President.” The author notes that Friedman is an active supporter of the Saudi peace initiative and asserts that „The problem is that there is no uniformity in the claims of Friedman and his colleagues, which are entirely directed at Israel…Thomas Friedman and columnists like him assume in advance that there is justification, rooted in Palestinian politics, that prevents Abbas from being flexible. It is similar with Obama. Only Netanyahu’s domestic political difficulties are illegitimate in the eyes of important columnists in the West. Due to their considerable influence on the American Jewish public, such articles are a cumulative burden on Israel’s shoulders.”
The Jerusalem Post discusses Shas-party bureaucratic nitpicking, emphasized by the rejection by the Ministry of the Interior of an Aliya application of a Swiss pediatric nurse who recently discovered that her paternal grandmother, a Jewess, was murdered by the Nazis, and states that „Instead of being impressed with a young Swiss professional’s fervent resolve to dwell with her slain grandmother’s people, [Ministry officials] characteristically nitpicked with all the petty antagonisms for which the Shas-run bureaucracy has become so infamous.” Noting that the Law of Return accords automatic Israeli citizenship to anyone with even a single Jewish grandparent, the editor declares that „descendants of Holocaust victims should be welcomed among us with open arms and embraced with all the affection reserved for [the Biblical] Ruth.”
Haaretz states that it is the duty of the opposition Kadima party to lead the fight against racism in the Knesset. The editor notes, however, that „Kadima’s commitment to human rights and citizen equality is cast in doubt, owing to party members’ support for proposed racist and anti-democratic laws,” and adds that „The opposition should not cooperate with anti-democratic legislation, either in deed or tacit consent. Kadima faces the test of presenting a forceful position against racism.”
BreuerPress-info
