"The IDF is led only by its commanders; rabbis should not try to take their place.”
--Yesh Atid MK Ofer Shelah blasts the Chief Sephardi Rabbi's declaration that it's a 'mitzvah' to kill a terrorist.

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You Must Be Kidding: 
"Judea and Samaria are not occupied territories."
--Said Likud MK Nava Boker, who is leading the struggle for the Jordan Valley farmers against European labeling of their products as 'Made in Occupied Territories.' 

"The institute known as Ariel University is not located in the borders of the state of Israel, and so it is not a part of the sociological society's activities, which associates only with Israeli sociologists and institutes."
--Prof. Uri Ram of Ben-Gurion University, the new president of the Israeli Sociological Society, ruled to 'refresh' a decision from 2010 not to work over the Green Line. 

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You Must Be Kidding: 
“If I go in, I’ll say I’m pro-Israel and I’ve told that to everybody and anybody that would listen. But I would like to at least have the other side think I’m somewhat neutral as to them, so that we can maybe get a deal done.”
--Republican candidate for US President, Donald Trump, says publicly he will pretend to be neutral in negotiating an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

"The trouble with the Palestinian teacher is twofold. She has trained many other teachers in how to use her teaching method, thereby spreading the culture of nonviolence under the noses of the Israeli rulers. But the real failure in this story is that Israel didn’t detect her activity in time, didn’t realize she was competing for the Global Teacher Prize and didn’t monitor the judging process."
--Haaretz analyst Zvi Barel writes a biting satire about Israeli attitudes to a Palestinian woman winning the Global Teacher of the Year Award for teaching children how to deal with the violence of the Israeli occupation through non-violent methods.

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You Must Be Kidding: 
One of the main sources of water in Israel, the desalination plant in Ashkelon, has recently stopped working. The reason: Israel does not supply electricity to the sewage purification plant in Gaza – and sewage from the Gaza Strip disabled it.

"Here the regime has no intention of “supporting” the art world. It wants to buy it off. To domesticate it. To shut its insolent mouth, or at least compel it to deal only with “circuses” so that it’s thrown some crumbs in return."
--B. Michael writes in Haaretz+ that Israeli artists shouldn't let the state buy their silence, their collaboration, their fear, obedience and principles.

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"We are not commenting on the issue."
--The response from Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon's office to a query about a Peace Now report that Israel has just made the largest land confiscation in the West Bank in recent years.

“We have a leader who is fighting only one battle: the battle for his own political survival. In the name of this battle, he is bringing us to a bi-national state and the end of the Zionist dream...I do not want us to become an apartheid state. I do not want to control another three million Arabs."
--Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who died yesterday, was considered remarkable in his vocal opposition to the leadership of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for his obsession with Iran and for not moving towards a two-state solution. These words are from a speech he gave a year ago before elections.

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You Must Be Kidding: 
“You get to the village and there you look for a house. You break a glass door or a window and pour the gasoline inside, or simply light the Molotov cocktail and throw it in...In order to prevent the residents from escaping, you can leave burning tires in the entrance to the house.”
--From the Jewish terror manual, "Kingdom of Evil," written by Moshe Orbach, who was sentenced yesterday to two years in prison. Orbach was arrested in July 2015 and indicted on July 30th, 2015. The following day, Jewish right-wing extremists made an arson attack on the Dawabsheh family home in Duma, killing the parents and their baby. 

"This year, we brought fewer toy rifles and pistols; people are afraid of their children walking around with these things.”
--Toy store owners in Jerusalem decided to limit the sale of toy guns and knives for the Purim Holiday.

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You Must Be Kidding: 
"The orange ISIS prisoner costume sold like crazy. It also has a collar of blood. It's really a hit. The costume is designed for adults, but there were also parents who bought it for their children."
--Eliran Ben David, who works at an Israeli store that imports costumes and accessories, noted the demand in Israel for an unusual Purim costume.

“You see how more and more Israelis are being tempted to this way of looking at the conflict of abandoning their attempt to achieve some political, rational solution and rather they are more and more prone to fanaticism and fundamentalism.
--In an interview with EuroNews, Israeli author David Grossman, called the so-called cultural loyalty bill being promoted by Culture Minister Miri Regev “fascist,” supported labeling settlement products and blamed the government for the radicalization of Israeli society. 

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You Must Be Kidding: 
A 17-year-old Israeli stabbed to death a man riding his bicycle in Afula two months ago, because he thought the man was someone with whom he had a feud over money. The youth was indicted for murder Monday. Attorney Menachem Eyal, the lawyer of the family of the victim: “I don’t understand the issue of mistaken identity. You just jump on a man and stab him? Criminal terror is raging in the streets because people decide to take the law into their own hands.”