Az Izraeli lapok vezércikkeiből angolul

The Jerusalem Post eulogizes Shmuel Benalal, a Venezuelan-born educator who “served as a senior adviser to the Mali government, helping to stem the growing dropout of students from local schools,” who was among the almost two dozen victims of Friday’s terrorist attack in the Malian capital of Bamako on Friday. The editor calls on the US, Russia and the whole international community to “unite now to stop what appears to be a wave of terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists intent on instilling fear around the globe,” and extends condolences to the families and friends of Shmuel Benalal and all the victims of the Mali atrocity.

Haaretz is astounded by the tyranny of the Rabbinical High Court, as expressed by its ruling to annul  annulled the conversion of an Israeli woman that had taken place 29 years earlier. The editor states that the ruling “demonstrates that when unlimited power is granted to an oligarchic group, it is exploited to the full, resulting in the extreme mistreatment of people and investigations that sometimes don’t even appear in court’s records,” and asserts: “It is crucial for the state to assign authority in the realm of religion to additional bodies, encourage initiatives like the alternative conversion courts that were set up a few months ago and allow other parties to register marriages.”

Yediot Aharonot asserts that Jonathan Pollard is the man Israel ‘left under the table.’ The author accuses the Israeli leadership of abandoning him before and during the first two decades of his prison term, and states: “Jonathan Pollard was a walking mishap, but the moment he passed information to Israel he became our mishap, a mishap which we failed to solve for 30 years.”

Israel Hayom discusses the sudden need of many European countries to increase security due to terror alerts across the continent, and contends that despite declarations by world leaders to the contrary, the West is losing the battle with the extremists: “if Islamic State is successfully moving the battle to Europe, it means the campaign to defeat it in Syria and Iraq has failed.” The author argues that a just war is a moral imperative, and adds: “The West had hoped the era of sending ground troops into battle was over; the West doesn’t want casualties in uniforms. But those who don’t want uniformed casualties eventually get civilian casualties.”