Lapid Aims to Announce New Government With Bennett at the Helm

 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/LIVE-lapid-aims-to-announce-new-government-with-bennett-at-the-helm-1.9866751

 As negotiations to secure a coalition continue, lawmakers and party members say they expect Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett to announce a government before a Wednesday deadline expires and even as early Wednesday at 11 A.M., sending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the opposition benches after 12 years in power.

This would mean the confidence vote for the new government will be slated for next  Wednesday at the latest.

In case talks are delayed and no final agreements are reached by that time, the Knesset speaker could formally inform the parliament of the new government on Monday, effectively postponing the vote by another week.

Judicial appointments the only remaining snag as Lapid set to declare government

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/judicial-appointments-the-only-remaining-snag-as-lapid-set-to-declare-government/

 Negotiations by the various parties set to make up the so-called change coalition advanced dramatically overnight Tuesday, leaving a disagreement over a judicial appointment panel as the sole remaining issue.

Yamina No. 2 Ayelet Shaked is demanding she be given Labor chief Merav Michaeli’s spot on the Judicial Selection Committee and has threatened to block the formation of the new government if she does not receive the posting.

Though Labor officials have said they would not back down on the committee position, having already completed their negotiations and agreed to join the government, a compromise was nonetheless expected, with political sources telling Hebrew media outlets that the formation of the government would not be prevented by the dispute.

As Israelis Await Netanyahu’s Fate, Palestinians Seize a Moment of Unity

 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/world/middleeast/palestinians-netanyahu-government.html?action=click&module=In%20Other%20News&pgtype=Homepage

 To Israelis, Mr. Netanyahu’s possible departure constitutes an epochal moment — the toppling of a man who has left a deeper imprint on Israeli society than most other politicians in Israeli history.

 The Palestinian polity has long been physically and politically fragmented between the American-backed Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank; its archrival, Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza; a Palestinian minority inside Israel whose votes have increasingly counted for making or breaking an Israeli government; and a sprawling diaspora.

Yet alongside last month’s deadly 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and the worst bout of intercommunal Arab-Jewish violence to have convulsed Israel in decades, these disparate parts suddenly came together in a seemingly leaderless eruption of shared identity and purpose.

In a rare display of unity, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians observed a general strike on May 12 across Gaza, the West Bank, the refugee camps of Lebanon and inside Israel itself.

Yamina issues ultimatum as unity government talks stall

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/307328

 With Lapid's mandate set to expire Wednesday night, change bloc remains deadlocked over judicial appointments committee.

A Clash of ‘Alternative’ and ‘Facts’

 https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-clash-of-alternative-and-facts-1485454691

 When Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump, went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last Sunday, she uttered two words that critics found emblematic of a new “post-truth” era in American politics: “alternative facts.”

Ms. Conway was commenting on a series of false statements that the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, had made inflating the size of the crowd at Mr. Trump’s inauguration. “You’re saying it’s a falsehood, and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that,” she told NBC’s Chuck Todd. He responded, “Look, alternative facts are not facts. They’re falsehoods.”

Ms. Conway found a more receptive audience for her phrasing in a Monday interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, who said that “alternative facts” simply provide “a different perspective.” But the damage had been done. The phrase swiftly became a full-fledged meme on social media, with the #alternativefacts hashtag humorously deployed to satirize Orwellian doublespeak. (An example from Twitter : “Officer, I am not drunk, I am alternative sober, #alternativefacts.”)

Donald Trump Insists It’s Entirely Possible Democrats Are Running a Satanic Pedophile Cult

 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/donald-trump-qanon-town-hall

 “Let me ask you about QAnon,” Guthrie said, referring  conspiracy theory that a cabal of Democratic politicians, liberal Hollywood actors, and high-ranking government officials, who worship Satan, are running a child-sex-trafficking ring and simultaneously plotting against Trump, who is planning a day of reckoning in which thousands of members of the cult will be arrested. “It is this theory that Democrats are a satanic pedophile ring and that you are the savior of that. Now, can you just, once and for all, state that that is completely not true and disavow QAnon in its entirety?” To reiterate, the thing Guthrie was asking the president of the United States to reject was the completely insane, entirely baseless claim that his political enemies and other liberals are running a satanic child-sex-trafficking cult. Which is not hard to denounce, unless you (1) believe it and/or (2) are counting on these deeply disturbed individuals to vote for you. And yet:

 Trump: Can I be honest? [Sasse] may be right. I just don’t know about QAnon.

Guthrie: You do know.

Trump: I don’t know. No, I don’t know. I don’t know. You tell me all about it.Guthrie: Let me ask you another thing.

Trump: Let’s waste the whole show. You start off with white supremacy. I denounce it. You start off with something else. Let’s go. Keep asking me these questions. But let me just tell you, what I do hear about it is they are very strongly against pedophilia. And I agree with that. I mean, I do agree with that, and I agree with it very strongly.

Guthrie: But there’s not a Satanic pedophile cult being run by—

Trump: I have no idea. I know nothing about them.

Guthrie: You don’t know that? Okay.

 

Saudi Arabia: Authorities defend mosque speaker restriction

 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-57311683

 The country's Islamic Affairs Ministry announced last week that all loudspeakers should be set at only a third of their maximum volume.

Islamic Affairs Minister Abdullatif al-Sheikh said the measure was in response to complaints from the public.

Judges to report false accusations in divorce cases to police

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/307190

In the meeting, it was emphasized that alongside the war on domestic violence, the police are also faced with a phenomenon of false allegations, the exact scope of which is unclear. These allegations are filed against normative individuals who are in the process of separation or divorce.

 

Amazon removes Holocaust-themed anti-vaccine shirts

 https://www.ynetnews.com/article/S1Al2Wb5d

Amazon retailer has removed from sale a novelty shirt emblazoned with a yellow star patch bearing the words “Not Vaccinated” that mimicked the badges that the Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust.

Right-wing Israeli leader joins coalition to oust Netanyahu

 https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2021/05/30/israel-coalition-government-benjamin-netanyahu-gold-sot-vpx-nr.cnn

 Israeli opposition leader Naftali Bennett says he's ready to join parties on the Left to form a new unity coalition government that could unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. CNN's Hadas Gold reports.

Bennett announces plan to form gov't with Lapid that will oust Netanyahu

 https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/yesh-atid-new-hope-teams-to-meet-669589

 Yamina leader Naftali Bennett delivered his long-awaited announcement on Sunday that he would join a government with Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid and seek to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who he accused of leading Israel to national suicide for his own personal reasons.  

Yesh Atid and Yamina began negotiations immediately following the announcement on Sunday night in an effort to reach an agreement by Wednesday’s deadline.

A vote of confidence in the government and a swearing-in ceremony could take place that day. But legally, once Lapid tells President Reuven Rivlin he can form a government, he has a week to do it.

הרבי לנגיד שנכנס לכלא: "אשלח לך קוויטלך"

https://www.bhol.co.il/news/1228069 

כינוס נדיר ומיוחד במינו התקיים ביום שלישי השבוע בהיכל ביהמ"ד מרכז חסידי ויז'ניץ בבני ברק, שם ביקש הרבי להוקיר ולחזק את גדול תומכי המוסדות בכל הזמנים ר' חיים שטרן שנכנס לכלא למחרת באשמת עבירות מס | הרבי הפתיע בדברים שטרם נשמעו אי פעם מאדמו"ר על חסיד • 'בחדרי חרדים' עם השיחה המלאה

Forty-five people died at Meron. Why are Haredi parties blocking a probe?

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/bid-to-block-meron-disaster-inquiry-sparks-first-glimmers-of-a-haredi-rebellion/

 Sunday marks 30 days since the disaster at Mount Meron in which 45 people were killed and 102 wounded as thousands tried to squeeze through a narrow staircase at the annual Lag B’Omer festival.

It was the worst civilian disaster in Israel’s history. Yet 30 days on, as the traditional shloshim mourning period draws to a close, all attempts to establish a formal state investigation into what went wrong have failed.

Perhaps most shocking of all: Though the dead are almost all Haredi, it is the Haredi political parties who have resisted most fiercely a formal probe.

Study finds nearly one-in-five Americans believe QAnon conspiracy theories

 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/study-finds-nearly-one-five-americans-believe-qanon-conspiracy-theories-n1268722

Washington, we have a problem — politically, informationally and societally — when 15 percent of Americans agree with the QAnon statement that the U.S. government, media and financial worlds “are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.”

Or when 20 percent agree with this statement: “There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders.”

Or when another 15 percent agree that “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”