“Letting (US Ambassador David Friedman) carve out the West Bank and hand off vast portions of it to the settlers would be like allowing National Rifle Association Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre to distribute the U.S. military’s arsenal of assault rifles among America’s most fanatical gun enthusiasts.”
—Communications director for Americans for Peace Now, Ori Nir, writes in an Op-Ed why Jewish Americans must oppose the Trump administration’s policy for Israeli annexation policy in the West Bank.

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Quote of the day #2:
“The bottom line is that this, too, is racism. Not the sweaty, raging and violent kind that the emissaries of Balfour Street scream on the streets and on social media. This is an educated, buttoned-up, cultured racism.”
—Haaretz+’s political analyst, Yossi Verter, examines the decision of two right-wing lawmakers of Kahol-Lavan, Yoaz Hendel and Zvi Hauser, who would prefer to enter a government with Netanyahu, the man the party was formed to replace, than form a government with the party representing Arab citizens and some Jewish ones, too.**

"The talk by (Joint List leaders Ayman) Odeh, Ahmed Tibi and their friends about discrimination and racism are demagogic and unconvincing, but the fact is that it encouraged Arabs to go in droves to the polls."
--Maariv commentator Yossi Ahimeir writes that Arab citizens face no discrimination in Israel and that he can't understand why they elected representatives that say they do.**

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You Must Be Kidding: 
“You have to understand that before we showed up, knees were the hardest thing to rack up. There was a story about one sniper who had 11 knees all told, and people thought no one could outdo him. And then I brought in seven-eight knees in one day. Within a few hours, I almost broke his record.”
—Eden, who completed his military service in the IDF as a sniper, is one of six snipers who tells about his experiences shooting Palestinian demonstrators on the Gaza Strip border fence, where he was stationed much of his service.**

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood and scrawled his racism on the board for all to see. '58 seats for Zionist right, 47 for the Zionist left,' are, to his thinking, the election results and the basis on which a government should be formed. With the sweep of a marker, the prime minister erased the 575,500 citizens who voted for the Joint List alliance of Arab parties (20,000 of whom, incidentally, were Jews) and put them beyond the pale, as if they were lepers."
--In an Op-Ed, senior Haaretz political commentator Yossi Verter slams thinking that Arab citizens should be excluded because they are not Zionist.*

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Breaking News:
Syrian soldier killed, 4 others wounded in alleged Israeli strikes in Quneitra, Homs
State media in the country reports that IDF jets fired a number of missiles 'from northern occupied Palestine' targeting airport, army sites; Qatari aircrafts were en route to Syria at the time of the alleged attack. (Ynet and Haaretz+)

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"Now the Arabs are tasked with saving the Jewish state."
--Haaretz commentator Odeh Bisharat looks at the irony of how, during the campaigning, Kahol-Lavan rejected forming a government with the support of the mostly Arab Joint List, but now some of its members look to it for hope for forming a government - or at least for preventing the right-wing from forming one.*

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"Israel is a right-wing country, where racism is politically correct and personal corruption is irrelevant. When generals fresh from the army are the alternative, there is none. We must hope a true Jewish-Arab partnership will emerge."
--Gideon Levy in today's post-election Op-Ed.*

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"Every occupying state has gone down this path – a coarsening of the soul, a loss of good character, burgeoning violence and oppression, an addiction to authority, hatred, evil and lucre. And then, riding on all this, a contemptible man always attains power, a corrupt man devoid of restraint who gathers evil men in his own image around him – people who market hatred and wickedness, who dance on the blood of others, holy priests with the greatness of God in their mouths and bribes in their pockets. And the masses are always drawn to their charm, because hatred is always stronger than enlightenment."
--B. Michael writes about the occupation in today's Haaretz.*

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You Must Be Kidding: 
Israel halted the removal of an illegal West Bank outpost at the request of a settler, but did remove a Palestinian protest tent in the area, based on the same regulations by which it originally planned to remove the outpost.**

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You Must Be Kidding: 
The IDF Spokesperson Unit falsely claimed that a video clip of an Israel Defense Forces bulldozer pushing rocks at high speed through a Palestinian village had been edited and sped up. Haaretz investigated and found that the claim was false.*

"The logic that holds that if terrorists don’t obey the laws of war, the laws of war must be adapted to the war on terror, ignores the fact that a country that does so undermines the very thing that distinguishes its army from a terrorist organization."
--Haaretz Editorial today slams Defense Minister Naftali Bennett for 'collecting' (Bennett's word) bodies of Palestinian militants.*

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