"One day in the future, when we are rescued from these terrible days, they will ask: So how was the holiday of freedom of 2016? What will we say?"
--Yedioth commentator Igal Sarna takes a look at the last year ahead of Passover, the holiday of Jewish freedom from slavery.**

"A publisher of children's educational materials had forced its triumphalist and intolerant fantasy of Jerusalem into our homes and the minds of our children."
 --After his daughter received a Passover Hagada from kindergarten that had a photo of the Old City with the Dome of the Rock removed, Rabbi Leon A. Morris writes that his family moved to Israel to give his children a stronger Jewish identity, but now he’s scared that here, their Jewish and Israeli identity won't allow space to see and to respect Muslims and Christians. 

"We extend our hearty greetings to you for the holiday of freedom. May the Palestinian people also win freedom, and that we will establish our state next to the State of Israel and peace would prevail in our region.”
--PLO sent Passover greetings to Jewish Israelis Sunday.*

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"The attempt to argue that teaching Ze’evi’s legacy focuses solely on its “positive” aspects — that is, his love for the Land of Israel, as his family has claimed in media interviews — recalls the children of a Mafia don praising their father as an exemplary family man."
--Haaretz Editorial today calls to repeal the law that requires commemorating Rehavam Zeevi.

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You Must Be Kidding: 
"...here there is one country which is like an island of stability, an island of sanity, an island of progress, an island of security - this is the State of Israel under the leadership of the Likud government."
--Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told Likud supporters Sunday.

"The words would sound banal even in the Knesset, were they not being uttered by a serious presidential contender on the eve of a crucial primary vote, in, of all places, New York."
--Haaretz+ commentator on US politics, Chemi Shalev, writes that the novelty of US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ statement that Palestinians need to be treated with “respect and dignity” was that it violated the accepted norms for candidates running for President.

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You Must Be Kidding: 
Israel spends more money to commemorate Rehavam Ze’evi, a controversial far-right former general and cabinet minister who was assassinated by Palestinians in 2001 and whom an exposé aired on Israeli TV on Thursday night portrayed as a sexual predator, associate of organized crime, violent antagonist of journalists, and even as a cold-blooded killer - than it does on Theodore Herzl and Ze’ev Jabotinsky.

"This place, which belongs to all of us, is bleeding from many months of frustration and despair, from hatred, from blindness and from fear. And let's not fool ourselves: this place, our home, is also burning from incitement. And some of that incitement comes from the statements of well-known religious leaders and officials, who claim to speak in the name of religious truth."
--Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said in a meeting with religious leaders of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

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You Must Be Kidding: 
"When the midwife brings a just born Arab baby to the nursery, they say to her, 'What did you bring? Another terrorist?’”
-Dr. Lina Qassem spoke at a Knesset hearing on the subject of the illegal practice of ethnic separation in Israeli hospital maternity wards.**  

"Of course, I agree that this (the West Bank) is our country, but as long as the sovereign (in the West Bank) is an Israeli general, it is difficult to say that it is not occupied land. As long as the occupation continues, Bahlul is not wrong."
--Far right-wing former MK Moshe Feiglin supports the statement of maligned Zionist Camp MK Zuheir Bahloul that Palestinian attacks on Israeli security forces is not terror.**

"The Smotriches spoke of the holy and pure moment of the birth of a Jewish child. Of the demand that Arab hands not interfere and pollute this holiness and purity. Of the refusal to share the physical space with Arabs, because Arabs are by necessity enemies. Of the baby that is born to an Arab mother and in another 20 years will murder the baby of the Jewish mother. This is not just ordinary racism. Racism is always offensive and it is important to fight it. But racism has its degrees, too. This is the vocabulary of the master race.”
--Haaretz+ commentator Uri Misgav writes that the time has come to recognize the phenomenon of a Judeo-Nazi movement that exists in the margins of Israeli society. 

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"The terrorists choose to attack weak and defenseless civilians: old people, women, etc - essentially anyone, except soldiers...Guerilla fighters are not terrorists. They are irregular soldiers, who fight against regular army forces and not civilians."
--Excerpts from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's 1986 book about terror, which Yedioth revealed to show that once, he, too, made the distinction. 

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