"So much restraint, the world needs to learn from our soldiers. The proof of the humanity of the Jewish people."
--A social media post by an Israeli, quoted in Maariv, reacting to the video clip of the incident Friday where Palestinian girls cursed and hit Israeli soldiers, who were in front of a village home in Nebi Saleh, and the soldiers did not respond with physical force.*

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You Must Be Kidding:
A settler teen who attacked a human rights activist rabbi at knife in the West Bank point got sentenced to community service. A Palestinian who threw stones at a group of settler hikers near his West Bank village, according to him, after one of the settlers shot dead a village farmer, was charged with attempted murder. The IDF closed the case against the settler who killed the farmer. **

"Allow us to question, allow us to doubt and allow us to hear others, even if we disagree...We are opinionated and concerned youth who want to dream of peace. Please don’t take away our dream. Do not underestimate the value of knowing the other, do not harm democracy."
--Students at a Nesher high school wrote to the Ministry of Education to protest the Ministry's cancellation of a meeting for bereaved parents—both Jewish and Palestinian - at the school.*

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You Must Be Kidding: 
11,000 Arab teachers are waiting for placements by the Education Ministry, which has a shortage of teachers. Many educated Arab teachers wait over a decade for a job, Haaretz+ reports.**

"He stood out among the crowd of demonstrators, for sure: A double amputee, he was advancing in his wheelchair, getting off it and moving quickly with the aid of his arms, going eastward across a sandy mound. Did his courage and fearlessness unsettle a soldier on the Israeli side of the fence?"
--Haaretz reporter Amira Hass looks at the shooting of a legless man, Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, killed by a bullet to the head Friday and asks what danger did he pose.*

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You Must Be Kidding: 
Shocked parents discovered: Israeli 4th-graders' book for Torah studies included an explanation of the term 'whore': "A woman who has sex with men in exchange for payment."**

Quote of the day:

"Why? Why are you beating him on the head? Do you want me to beat you on the head?"
--Palestinian woman yells in Hebrew to Israeli soldier in Hebron after he struck a 15-year-old youth on the head with his weapon, as seen in a chilling video clip filmed by B'tselem that went viral.

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"What we should fear, as an aftershock of his reckless overturning of standing U.S. policy on Jerusalem, is a further tightening of the chokehold on the Palestinian population through midnight raids, demolitions and child arrests; the Israeli government support of radical settlers evicting Palestinians from their homes; continued settlement building; and the fast tracking of plans to simply dispose of one third of the city’s Palestinians in one legislative stroke."
--Betty Herschman, Director of International Relations & Advocacy at Ir Amim, writes in an Op-Ed in Haaretz+.

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You Must Be Kidding: 
The head of media for Israel's 'Burning Man Festival' is a member of the far-right and racist organization Lehava, which encourages hatred of Arabs and xenophobia.

45.
Percentage of Israelis who fear that their democracy is in “grave danger.” Most concerned were Jewish left-wing voters (72%) and Arabs (65%). Less than a quarter of Jewish right-wing and religious voters harbored such concerns.*

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You Must Be Kidding: 
“We were supposed to come to (the high school in) Nesher like we’ve been doing for more than a decade. Apparently someone in Nesher posted something on Facebook this morning, asking people to show up at the school. There were five or six people at the school entrance, yelling intolerable chants. They wished an Arab would kill me, as well as telling me that my mother was a whore.”
—Aharon Barnea, whose son was killed in Lebanon, was to give a lecture along with other Israeli and Palestinian bereaved parents from the Parents Circle Family Forum, but instead was sent home by the Education Ministry.**

“We do ourselves a disservice, in my opinion, when some of us focus our attention – primarily, if not exclusively – on the anti-Semitism generated by the anti-Israel left, while minimizing the impact of the bigotry and xenophobia emanating from the extreme right.”
— Menachem Rosensaft, the general counsel of the World Jewish Congress and an expert on genocide, said at a Tel-Aviv conference on anti-Semitism organized by a right-wing organization. He also said that “white supremacist ideology that holds African-Americans and Hispanics to be inferior to Caucasians is every bit as reprehensible as anti-Semitism.”*

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You Must Be Kidding: 
Settlers say they will vacate a contested building in Hebron, which they claim they bought from Palestinians and which the settlers infiltrated again after already being expelled from it by the Israeli army, if the state agrees to demolish an adjacent Palestinian-owned storage facility and allow the settlers to station their own guards at the building until a final decision is made on the building's rightful ownership.**

“They should understand that they are not wanted here, they are not part of us...(They) have no connection to this country.”
--Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said about the Arab-Israeli citizens who live in the Wadi Ara region, where a few dozen residents protested this week against the Trump Declaration by throwing stones at police cars and buses.**

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"True, it was just a few teens, but we mustn’t be naïve. They represent our society. They were taught this undemocratic civics, in the spirit of the commander. Faced with tens of thousands of demonstrators in Tel Aviv, they wouldn’t have dared, but faced with a few parents with young children, they did. Because in our aggressive reality, the most violent side wins."
--Israeli citizen Dana Genosar writes about what happened when a few families held their own little protest in Kfar Saba Saturday night against the government.*

"Trump's historic declaration came for Netanyahu exactly in time, but when the champagne bubbles pop and it becomes clear that Jerusalem remains the same Jerusalem, the Prime Minister will have to stand again in the face of the reality that is closing in on him."
--Maariv's senior political analyst, Ben Caspit, connects between the 'Trump Declaration' and the corruption investigations Prime MInister Binyamin Netanyahu faces.*

Quote of the Day #2:
"For the first time, we are identifying daring and covert will to penetrate the centers of government. There are dangerous buds of the combining of interests between senior criminal organizations and government officials in the State of Israel. To say such a statement in public requires a foundation, and indeed, there is a foundation (of evidence). We will not allow it."
--Head of the Israel Police investigations and intelligence department, Commander Meni Yitzhaki, in his retirement speech Wednesday at the Police National Headquarters.*