Yediot Aharonot
Summary of Editorials from the Hebrew Press
(Israel Government Press Office)
Yediot Aharonot dismisses Education Minister Gideon Saar’s initiative to have primary and middle school teachers devote five minutes at the start of every school day to improving students spoken Hebrew, and says that spoken, as opposed to written, Hebrew is „acquired automatically, not taught, without effort.” The author argues that teachers would do better to improve students „self-expression and original thinking abilities,” by teaching them „how to read a newspaper in a critical fashion and how to identify clichés and linguistic manipulation by seasoned politicians.” The paper asserts that „Teachers should teach logic, rhetoric [and] semantics,” while students „should improve their analytic thinking, and ability to draw conclusions and make links between various fields.”
Ma’ariv cites Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman’s recent remarks to the Foreign Ministry Heads of Mission Conference on „the need to change disks, to shift from obsequiousness and defense to the attack,” and reminds its readers that „The Jordanians, those of the September and peace variety, are demanding ownership of the Dead Sea Scrolls [some of which recently completed a tour of Canada] because they claim that they were stolen from occupied territory. Now, any normal person might find it hard to understand this brazen gall. The Hashemite Kingdom, a Franco-British invention, initiated by Lawrence of Arabia, in order to provide employment for a Bedouin family from the Hejaz in the Arabian peninsula, a state that lacks a real history, and which rests on the spear points of the Israeli army and aid from an American espionage organization, is demanding ownership over ancient Hebrew scrolls that prove that confused dealings over colonialism and occupied territory is simply a question of timing.” The author adds that „It is also becoming clear that not only is the cartoon kingdom from the east claiming ownership of the Qumran scrolls, but that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad sent a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister asking for the Canadian government to intervene on the matter. It seems to me that a Palestinian cognitive dissonance has been created here. They vociferously claim that there is no Jewish history here, that the Temple never stood on the Temple Mount, etc., but the scrolls themselves, which – inter alia – deal with the same imaginary Temple and discuss the purity of its priests, to say nothing of the view of some researchers that the scrolls themselves are the property of the Temple and were taken away due to the Roman siege. The Palestinians, an invented people, a collection of immigrants, the large majority of which arrived in the 19th century as settlers brought by Ibrahim Pasha from Egypt, deal endlessly in the rewriting of history.” The paper declares that „The time has come for the Foreign Ministry to listen to the minister appointed over it…Stop the excuses and the obsequiousness right now. It does not work.”
Yisrael Hayom analyzes the recent clash at the Rafiah crossing between Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and Egyptian security forces against the of Cairo’s relationship with Hamas. The author says that the Egyptians are upset – inter alia – that Hamas has been intriguing with northern Sinai Bedouin in contravention of official policy and avers that „Hamas’s refusal to reconcile with the PLO has angered Mubarak, who feels that the bandits from Gaza are lying to his face.” The paper notes that Egypt opposes Hamas’s links with Hezbollah, which openly agitates against the Mubarak government, and Iran, and believes that, „Egypt and Hamas are on a collision course.”
The Jerusalem Post discusses the possible return of ex-convict and former Shas leader Aryeh Deri to political life, and states that „we don’t live in an ideal world. What should be self-evident is obviously far from it.” The editor notes that the Knesset is now mulling a bill, dubbed the „Deri Law,” which is intended to ban convicted MKs from Knesset, and declares that „The new bill is eminently worthy and will, once passed, apply to any dishonorable ex-politician who lacks the elementary self-awareness to recognize that his or her parliamentary career was ended by their prison term.” The editor adds: „If Deri chooses to belong to the above category it is his doing, and not the fault of parliamentarians striving to insure by law what some voters sadly fail to comprehend on their own.”
Haaretz criticizes the new criteria adopted yesterday by the Knesset Finance Committee, under which fiscally stronger cities will forgo a share of the state budget for religious services, instead of funneling the money to poorer towns, and states that „The little that the government can do now is to halt the implementation of the latest regulations. If it doesn’t, they will certainly have to undergo the scrutiny of the Supreme Court.”
