Summary of editorials from the Izraeli Hebrew press
BreuerPress
Ma’ariv asserts that the crisis at Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital „does not stem from the half-private character of the hospital and certainly not from the private medical services [offered there],” and adds: „This is primarily an administrative crisis,” that must not be exploited in order to nationalize the hospital.
Yediot Aharonot says that withdrawing to the 1967 lines means „presenting the State of Israel as a state whose borders are temporary and given to change,” and cautions: „From here, as far as the Palestinians are concerned, it is only a short way to trying to push the State of Israel to the UN partition lines of 1947.” The author suggests that the foregoing „is the main reason for the Israeli demand in the current negotiations to recognize Israel as the Jewish national state and to recognize the agreement – if one is achieved – as concluding the conflict and putting an end to all claims,” but adds: „Such recognition is likely to impede the Palestinians’ dream of portraying Israel as a temporary and provisional state, and international recognition of such a settlement would impede it even more.”
Yisrael Hayom believes that „The reports coming from North Korea are calling up the darkest memories of the previous century,” and adds: „Historians will yet settle accounts with the democracies for their inaction as hundreds of thousands of people are being murdered in Syria and North Korea. And now we can better understand how the annihilation of one-third of the Jewish People was made possible, how the silence and the refusal to bomb the railroads to Auschwitz were made possible. Never again, really?”
The Jerusalem Post discusses issues raised at the annual Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which is being held this week in Jerusalem, and states that while “pressing issues, which focus on the Jewish people’s relations with the non-Jewish world, are exceedingly important,” intra-Jewish relations, namely Israel’s ongoing relationship with non-Orthodox streams of Judaism both in Israel and in the Diaspora, particularly in America, are also of extreme importance. The editor points out that “While it is unlikely that we will succeed in ending anti-Semitism in Europe, neutralizing a bellicose Iran or solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict any time soon, Israel can take steps to make peace ‘“within the family,”’ and adds: “Fostering Jewish unity it eminently doable. Israel needs to revamp itself as the nation-state of the entire Jewish people, not just a strictly Orthodox stream represented by the Chief Rabbinate.”
Haaretz criticizes Minister of Education Shai Piron’s proposal to introduce some 1,200 national and civilian service volunteers to public preschools as a solution to the shortage of teachers’ aides in preschool classes, a shortage that has intensified since schooling was made free from age three. The editor states that “national and civilian service volunteers cannot be an alternative to salaried workers; they are not meant to be free replacements for teachers’ assistants, whose salaries are low and whose work conditions are difficult, and who have been struggling to improve both for several years,” and asserts: “The Education Ministry must demand from the treasury the additional funds needed to recruit teaching assistants at full salary; this is the education system’s obligation to the children, their parents and its employees.”
