"Using Palestinians as a tool, as raw material, in the hands of the occupier is a daily event. Any Israeli soldier who has carried out operational activity in the territories knows this. In my unit, for example, we were sent to break into the homes of innocent Palestinians to try out new tools designed for use in break-ins."
--Achiya Schatz, communications director of Breaking the Silence, writes that the Israeli police planting of weapons in Palestinian homes for the sake of an invented story in docudrama is similar to what Israeli soldiers do.*

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You Must Be Kidding: 
On Sunday afternoon, as the soccer players and the audience gathered for the opening of the annual soccer tournament between Palestinian families of Jerusalem’s Old City, Israeli police officers arrived at the order of Minister Gilad Erdan and ordered the crowd to disperse, confiscated posters and other equipment, claiming that the event was linked to the Palestinian Authority.**

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Front Page:

"Save us from the stale argument that the solution only passes through the gun barrel."
--Yedioth commentator Ariella Ringel-Hoffman derides the politicians calling for a third Gaza War instead of improving the lives of Gazans.*

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You Must Be Kidding: 
"There is a common denominator between those who want to separate from the Palestinians and perpetrators of terrorist attacks."
--Former IDF commander Gen. (res.) Gershon HaCohen likened the Israeli left to militant Palestinian organizations, saying that they both wanted to prevent coexistence of Jews and Arabs in the West Bank.**

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Front Page:

"Happily, Tlaib came to her senses and didn’t fall into the trap. The shameful proposal to let her visit her grandmother is a manifestation of colonialism: depoliticizing the Palestinian issue, transforming it from a national matter into a humanitarian one, and then portraying the occupation as merciful."
-Haaretz+ commentator, Gideon Levy, on the Israeli ban of BDS-supporting Muslim US Congresswomen from Israel and then the offer of a 'special permit' for Rashida Tlaib.*

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You Must Be Kidding: 
"He who decides who will be the next prime minister is the Holy One. I still don't know that people decide who the next prime minister will be."
--Culture Minister Miri Regev (Likud) reveals her views about democracy.**

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Front Page:

“We send our condolences to his family and to our friends in his yeshiva. As a group, we condemn such brutal actions; such violence hurts all of us. We build bridges between the peoples on this land and we hope that this tragedy will be the last.”
--Palestinian teens, who are members of a Jewish-Muslim interfaith forum that killed Israeli soldier Dvir Sorek was also a member of, wrote in a public letter.*

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You Must Be Kidding: 
“Attempted infiltration of 56 illegal aliens into Israel was thwarted"
--This was the headline of a breaking news story on Maariv and Israel Hayom websites today. The story: About nine or 10 Palestinian families from the West Bank, 56 children, women and men, riding in a rented bus were making their way to an Israeli beach when they were stopped at an Israeli military checkpoint in E. Jerusalem and were searched and held because they did not have permits to enter Israel. The last sentence in the Maariv article reads: “In a search of the bus they found items of clothing and other findings that increased the suspicion that this was a group that was making its way to one of the Israeli beaches.” The driver, a resident of Tzur Baher (Palestinian village in E. Jerusalem) in his 20's, and all bus passengers, 56 children, women and men, were detained in transit for further investigation. (Maariv and Israel Hayom Hebrew)

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Front Page:

“Military orders and regulations forbid the blindfolding of detainees, and action to clarify the rules to the troops acting in the region has been taken and will continue to be taken on a continuous basis.”
--Israeli army was forced to admit that soldiers blindfolded Palestinians against protocol, after Israeli activists petitioned the High Court against the numerous documented incidents of soldiers detaining and blindfolding shepherds, seemingly for punitive purposes, over the last two and a half years.*

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Front Page:

“Its name is a declaration that we aren’t hiding from that past. We’re acknowledging the history and clearly saying: This is our place, it belongs to us now, but we remember and respect what was here in the past.”
--Roni Gilat, a member of Kibbutz Zikim, where members decided that the beautiful and only Arab house in their midst would bear the name of the Arab family that built it a century ago.*

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Quote of the day #2:
"The fact that he was found dead with David Grossman’s latest book says a lot about him. But even in this case the whole truth must be told. The reaction of the settlers was absolute false naïveté: How is it possible to kill such a good person, who only went to buy a book. A gift for his rabbis? This is nothing less than a war of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness, against the angels of terror who harmed us only out of blind hatred. Esau is an enemy of Jacob. That is the Jewish destiny and we are the victims. As far as they’re concerned, there is no connection between the murder of the soldier and the occupation. They find no connection between the murder and the hopeless situation of the nearly 3 million Palestinians who are being crushed under the burden of the occupation of the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service. The fact that there is almost no family in the West Bank that hasn’t experience death and humiliation and harassment, and people wounded and maimed after being shot by the security forces, makes no difference to them. They want it all. Both to settle on land that doesn’t belong to them, and to live in peace and quiet, every man under his vine and fig tree."
--Haaretz commentator Nehemia Shtrasler wrote in an Op-Ed about the settler reactions to the Palestinian killing of Israeli soldier Dvir Sorek in the West Bank.**

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Front Page:

"Self-criticism and setting things right are the key to the survival and growth of any society. The State of Israel is not just any state, but a state that has a purpose."
-Israeli Ambassador to Panama, a member of the Druze faith, Reda Mansour, said regarding his own sharp criticism of the demeaning treatment he received by a security person when he was entering Ben-Gurion Airport.**

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Front Page:

You Must Be Kidding: 
Israel's public broadcaster Kan removed all episodes available online of a police docudrama set in Jerusalem and police apologized, following a report by Haaretz that officers planted a gun in the house of an East Jerusalem Palestinian in the course of filming the show.

Quote of the day: