Sept 11

👉🏽 Just hours before tomorrow’s landmark Supreme Court hearing, PM Netanyahu’s office announced that he is exhausting every possibility to reach a consensus on judicial reform. National Unity leader Benny Gantz has announced his openness to accept a compromise to “save Israeli democracy” — if Netanyahu promises to obey whatever ruling comes out of tomorrow’s Supreme a court hearing. Cynics, amongst them Opposition leader Yair Lapid, consider the timing suspect, and the sole goal to buy Netanyahu international approval at the UN and slide out of tomorrow’s court hearing.

👉🏽 israeli media including Channels 12 and 13 have said Likud Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi’s accusation of the Public Broadcasting Authority of bias, is a thinly-veiled attempt to squash Israeli freedom of the press.

👉🏽 Maariv reporting that PM Netanyahu is expected, this evening before tomorrow’s landmark Supreme Court hearing on Reasonableness, and hours before his trip to the US, to announce the unilateral adoption of President Herzog’s compromise plan, freezing the judicial overhaul for 18 months and ‘softening’ the Reasonableness bill. The Coalition would then apply for a postponement on the Tuesday hearing, and theoretically avert a potential constitutional crisis, since most Coalition members have already announced their intention to not abide by the court ruling. Unclear from the article what is being proposed re the judicial selection committee changes.

👉🏽 Astonishingly, according to Times of Israel, just three Knesset members - Likud Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Likud Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel, and Shas Interior and Health Minister Moshe Aribel - have said they will obey the upcoming Supreme Court ruling. The rest of the Coalition have said they will not obey, or were noncommittal.

👉🏽 Fissures appearing in the Coalition, after PM Netanyahu’s discouragement of travel to Uman for Rosh Hashanah (“God hasn’t always protected us”) prompted a barrage of repudiation, including United Torah Judaism Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Yisrael Eichler’s statements that blamed Zionism for the Holocaust. Times of Israel: “Eichler said that the once-revered military had been revealed in its ‘incompetence and contemptibleness’ in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and that former top generals who oppose the current government’s judicial overhaul had recently shown themselves to be ‘rebels’ who are ‘inciting a bloody [civil] war’ in the country and giving it a bad name abroad ‘like the worst of our Islamic enemies.’” “If it weren’t for those who keep the Torah, Israel would have long ago been erased from the map of the Middle East,” Eichler said.

👉🏽 NIS 4 million was budgeted for Jerusalen Affairs and Jewish Tradition Minister Meir Porush to create a successful experience for those making this year’s trek to Uman.

👉🏽 Maariv survey reveals that, should the blanket Haredi yeshiva exemption from military service be codified, 40% surveyed say it is legitimate for young not to enlist (46% of whom are Opposition, but even 32% Coalition)

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