Summary of Editorials from the Hebrew Press
Yediot Aharonot comments that „In 2003 when Netanyahu was appointed, there were many who believed that, here, finally, we have a finance minister from the right. He cut child support payments, cut income stipends, tried to lower the budget deficit, cut the defense budget and primarily talked about the fat cats – those receiving support – and the thin – those who produce and work. Ronald Reagan and Margret Thatcher would have been proud of Benjamin Netanyahu. Time has gone by and today we have a Prime Minister whose socio-economic allegiances have totally disappeared. He enlarges budgets for the military and for ‘law and order’, all according to the right’s tradition. But when it comes to economy and society – here he favors a policy of allocations. The right-wing government has become the government of hand outs. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to blur the distinction between the thin majority who works and the fat cat minority that sits gurgling.”
Ma’ariv contends that „the Housing Minister should learn from [the late PM Yitzhak] Rabin. He must not turn housing into a political matter. And with all due respect to criteria, they are meaningless when there are no apartments.”
Yisrael Hayom urges that any debate over the current electoral system be focused less on personalities and more on issues and the process itself.
The Jerusalem Post comments on political aspirant and TV celebrity Yair Lapid’s accepted for a PhD program at Bar Ilan University without ever attaining so much as a bachelor’s degree: „It is one thing for an academic institution to hand out honorary titles but it’s quite another to enable the rich and/or famous to flaunt false intellectual trophies and glory in the highest academic degrees when they are anything but scholars. Bar Ilan, the Council for Higher Education found, was the only university to offer these curious catapults to academic prominence. With its shenanigans, Bar Ilan is only damaging itself. We congratulate the Council for ordering Bar Ilan’s ‘special PhD track’ to be discontinued.”
Haaretz comments on the report submitted by the Public Security Ministry comptroller Yitzhak Segev in April 2010, now made public, calling it „a harsh indictment against police conduct”: „The report cites hair-raising examples of complaints of police violence, which were not passed on to the Justice Ministry’s Police Investigation Department as required by law. It notes the strange hours that the forensic laboratories work, police procedures that have not been updated for over a decade, managerial failures and gaps in professional knowledge. There is no explanation why the report was not published earlier. Had it been any other ministry, we could demand a police investigation. But in view of the report’s findings, it is doubtful that we can rely on an investigation conducted by the police.”
BreuerPress-info
