You Must Be Kidding: 
On a scale of 1 to 10, fully 82% of Israeli Arab youth surveyed rated minority rights either a 9 or 10, in terms of importance. Among Israeli Jewish respondents, the figure was 37%, while in the Palestinian Authority, it was 34%.*

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"Because of the prosecutor’s decision in The Hague, the issue of the Jordan Valley annexation will be put on a long hold."
--A government source revealed that the announcement of a probe into war crimes by Israel in the Palestinian Territories has caused Israel to make policy changes.*

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"It was very exciting and it smashed stigmas. I fell in love with Saudi Arabia and with Saudis."
--An Israeli man who was interviewed after watching the screening of a Saudi film at the Jerusalem Cinemateque. The Israeli Foreign Ministry uploaded the Israelis' reactions to its Arabic social media profiles and got excited reactions from the Saudis.*

"I am shocked by the positive reactions of the Israelis. Maybe because of the younger generation. I want to believe that the reactions were not dictated (in order) to bring the peoples closer together."
--Juwaher, a Saudi female wrote on the Israeli Foreign Ministry's Arabic social media profile in response to the video clip of Israelis who reacted positively to a Saudi film they saw at the Jerusalem Cinemateque.*

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Breaking News:
Syria says it intercepted missiles fired from Israel; 3 foreign nationals killed in IDF strike in Syria
Four cruise missiles were said to have been launched across the coast through Lebanese airspace toward Syria. Monitoring group says attack before midnight targeted Iranian and Syrian military positions near the capital. Three foreign nationals, believed to be Iranians, were killed. (Haaretz, Ynet and Israel Hayom)

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"(Justice Minister) Ohana decided to stomp on the appointment process of the acting State Prosecutor, using the guise of naively saying it was his authority. He ignores the fact that the Knesset did not imagine it would ever need to legislate a law that would break the judicial legal public crisis like the one that exists today. Ohana also signals that strategically, he or his replacement, if Netanyahu wins the third election, will charge at the fortress - the head of the State Prosecution. In a paraphrase of Leonard Cohen: “First we’ll take the State Prosecution, then the Attorney General."
--Yedioth legal affairs analyst, Tovah Tzimuki, writes in today's paper about the Justice Minister's controversial decision to appoint someone 'contentious,' low ranking and not who the Attorney General had proposed.*

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You Must Be Kidding: 
“Safety reasons.”
—The reason the Jerusalem Municipality gave for removing a sign it had posted at the entrance to the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City wishing all the Christian residents “a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year." In its place a new sign was placed in honor of Hanukkah.**

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"(Everyone) worked here together in agriculture. There was no difference between them. After a hard day's work in the field they sat together on the ground, each one took out the food he had brought from home, and everyone ate some of the other’s food. One told a joke, another told a story, and that’s how they passed time pleasantly. They liked one another, they laughed and they cried together.”
--Shfaram Mayor Ursan Yassin, 65, described to a group of visiting Jewish descendants his father's description of the shared life of Jews, Christians, Druze and Muslims, who lived "like one family" in the town until 100 years ago, when the Jews left for other parts.*

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“Everyone in the room understands that if we begin to look in depth at every target, they won’t leave for the next two weeks. So in many cases, it becomes a sort of automatic activity…Everyone understands that a high number of targets will result in the senior command being satisfied and it always adds to the advancement of the planning team commanders.”
—Two anonymous IDF airmen revealed to Haaretz why the IDF decision-making teams that choose Palestinian targets to attack are not interested in validating old targets and why they are motivated to create as many news ones as they can, which leads to the deaths of innocent people, such as the nine members of the al-Sawarka family killed last month in Gaza.*

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“Some parents are afraid of the influence we might have on the youth. It’s simply appalling. We visit other schools, and one of the first questions we ask is whether the teens have ever met a Palestinian. Everywhere we go, the answer is no, and then they realize that the person in front of them is a human being. Apparently that scares the government."
-Aharon Barnea, member of the Bereaved Families Forum, reacted to the cancellation of a meeting of bereaved Israeli and Palestinian family members with high school students in a town in Israel's north.*

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"Netanyahu did not work to sow seeds of compromise, to produce reconciliatory rhetoric or charge at the rifts before they expand into a chasm. He took advantage of these failures to increase his power."
--Commentator Nadav Eyal writes in Yedioth that the first challenge facing leaders in the post-Netanyahu era will be to deal with the hatred in society and the way in which public debate is conducted.*

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