First among Netanyahu's current priorities this is the Nation-State Bill. As its name suggests, the proposed law has everything to do with extreme nationalism, and with the exercise of raw, explicitly unequal power. It has nothing to do with what we used to know as Judaism.
So ill-advised is the Nation-State Bill, so giant a step it is toward the implementation of fascism – and, in fact, so anti-Jewish is its essence - that President Reuven Rivlin, a lifelong advocate both of enhanced democracy in Israel and of Netanyahu's right-wing Likud Party, wrote in an open letter Tuesday that a central clause of the bill "could harm the Jewish people and Jews around the world and in Israel, and could even be used by our enemies as a weapon." [...]
- Science Minister Ofir Akunis - interfering with and ruining the work of a German-Israeli committee which could have brought millions in funding for neuro-science research in Israel - this week barred one of the country's foremost brain researchers, Prof. Yael Amitai, from the panel. Akunis' explanation? In 2005, along with hundreds of other Israeli academics, she signed a petition supporting soldiers who, while continuing to serve in the military, refused to serve in the territories. [...]
The measure would allow her ministry to cut off funding to institutions and films which, in her view, "participate in incitement against the state," "delegitimize Israel," or violate the Nakba Law, which is meant to defund any institution which views Israel Independence Day as a day of mourning for the Palestinians who fled or were forced to flee in 1948. [...]
Rivlin singled out for particular condemnation a clause which Knesset Legal Advisor Eyal Yinon declared Tuesday apparently has no "equivalence in any constitution in the world." It would explicitly legalize what the Attorney General's office has called blatant housing discrimination in towns and communities, which would mean that "the residents 'selection committee' can hang up a sign saying ‘no entry to non-Jews.’”
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