Yediot Aharonot discusses the possibility that US President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party will suffer severe setbacks in next week’s mid-term elections and suggests that President Obama might turn his back on the Israeli-Arab dispute. The author asserts that „All of the State of Israel’s past and present strength in the world stems from its being the 51st state,” and cautions that „A wounded American President means, as far as we are concerned, a weakening of Israel’s status among the nations.”
Ma’ariv comments on the controversy over proposed legislation to reinstate stipends for married-with-children, full-time ultra-orthodox yeshiva students and reminds its readers that Maimonides wrote: „Whoever thinks to engage in Torah study and not work, and live off charity, this is a desecration of the Almighty and shows contempt for the Torah.” The author wonders how many of the reported 11,000 aforesaid students are actually full-time students.
Yisrael Hayom commends both French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 and his leadership in the face of the resultant strikes and unrest: „One may assume that not many governments would withstand such violent and widespread public pressure. Thus Sarkozy’s greatest hour has arrived. He did not capitulate and passed the necessary amendments through the legislature with determination. His leadership should inspire those responsible for running the national economy and shaping labor relations in Israel.”
The Jerusalem Post reminds its readers that the Education Ministry has banned a high school history textbook designed for both Israelis and Palestinians which aspires to present both peoples’ ‘narratives’ because it presents falsehood as fact. The editor states that „we must be careful to ensure that our high school students do not confuse fiction with fact, distortion with reality,” and adds: „the objective of history should be the striving for the attainment of historical truth through sincere scholarship and intellectual honesty. That is the message we should be giving our youngsters.”
Haaretz discusses the proposal before the Knesset to amend the law relating to small communities’ absorption committees, which would effectively ratify and institutionalize the committees’ right to accept candidates according to criteria of suitability to the community’s fundamental outlook, and declares that the „New bill aims to preserve communities’ ‘Jewish purity’ by means of willful exclusion that traduces Israel’s Basic Laws,” and is both is prejudiced and unnecessary.
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