Name calling and egg throwing

Aweek from today, Israelis will go to the polls for the fourth time in less than two years. With polls showing no clear-cut front runner emerging with the ability to form a coalition – and with a number of parties teetering on the brink of elimination from the next Knesset – the scent of desperation is in the air. And when people are desperate, they tend to lash out.

As the Post’s Gil Hoffman reported, Likud activists verbally and physically assaulted New Hope supporters at a rally in Moshav Azarya on Saturday night. In addition to surrounding the car of party leader Gideon Sa’ar and attempting to damage it, the ruffians threw eggs and other objects at New Hope activists and disrupted their rally with a loudspeaker, calling the Likud breakaways traitors, among other epithets. Sa’ar later accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of sending the protesters.

In another telling incident, Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman unceremoniously told interviewers on Channel 12’s Ofira and Berko Show on Friday that “the haredim [ultra-Orthodox] and Bibi are on a wheelbarrow together to the garbage dump.”

The Post’s Jeremy Sharon reported that United Torah Judaism chairman Moshe Gafni and his colleague, Housing and Construction Minister Ya’acov Litzman, called on the attorney-general to investigate Liberman for incitement.

“His [Liberman’s] despair in his fight against Netanyahu is making him say things like this, but we haredim have for a long time treated him like someone who has lost his mind,” said Gafni.

Liberman responded by accusing the haredi leaders of hypocrisy and shedding “crocodile tears,” citing a recent video issued by UTJ comparing non-Orthodox Jews to dogs.

The final stretch of the election campaign is revealing how vacuous our candidates are and how totally devoid of issues, policy and ideas are their platforms. Even when a substantive issue is raised, it ultimately turns into an empty campaign promise.

In a transparent ploy to win the votes of right wingers who put settlements at the top of their list of priorities, Netanyahu on Sunday pledged to authorize illegal West Bank settler outposts if he will be able to form a coalition.

“I swear to you: If I create a strong right-wing government without a rotation, I will take care of the settlements and the authorization of the young settlements [outposts],” he said during a visit to the Givat Harel outpost in the West Bank’s Binyamin region, according to the Post’s Tovah Lazaroff.

Anyone listening to Netanyahu would be justified for reacting with skepticism. During the four years of former US president Donald Trump’s tenure – arguably the most blindly pro-Israel president in US history – Netanyahu didn’t legalize the outposts, despite similar promises.

The likelihood that he’ll ram through such a plan if reelected, with a more nuanced president in the Oval Office, is highly doubtful. But, in order to scrape away at support for Yamina’s Naftali Bennett and Sa’ar among those who live in settlements, Netanyahu is again making this promise. And maybe he’ll even gain a few votes because of it.

Because, with just one week to go, that’s what it’s all about: determining if either the left- or the right-wing blocs will be able to form a coalition, or whether we’re headed for an unprecedented fifth election.

Perhaps, if instead of promising anything to anyone and engaging in playground name calling, egg throwing and rally disruption, the candidates would actually discuss the vital issues that voters really care about in a calm and reasoned manner, it would be easier to make a choice and prevent another stalemate.

With the corona pandemic that has dominated everyone’s bandwidth for a year hopefully descending into the sunset, we must return to focus on repairing our frayed country.

In this last week until Election Day, it’s incumbent on all the candidates and parties running to make their case loud and clear about what ideas they have and what they’ll do to contribute to rebuilding the economy, protecting our borders and addressing the day to day issues that affect each and every one of us.

For Bianca from Chokolata, I would recommend setting up a sales website—not only for the COVID period, but as a channel for increasing regular sales for the business. I did not see package deals and/or offers for delivery on the Facebook page of the business. She stated that she kept in touch with her customers via Facebook, but we should distinguish between a post that only approximately 8% of those who have liked the page will see, and carefully segmented paid promotions that reach a far greater number of potential customers.

As a significant part of the customers in this case are old people who are perhaps not well-versed in digital media, I recommend distributing flyers around the neighborhood with appealing deals and delivery details.

The girls from Moroccan Fantasy do have an impressive sales website, as well as a decent Facebook page. There is a definite sense that they are not letting the restrictions of the lockdowns destroy their business. Their new offering—remote online design for the client—is creative, and I hope it is managing to help them. My tip for the business is to enable visitors to the north to “click and collect” in exchange for a discount, to encourage them to integrate it as part of a trip to the Galilee Panhandle.

The writer is a business consultant

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican said on Monday that priests and other Catholic Church ministers cannot bless same-sex unions and that such blessings are “not licit” if carried out.

The Vatican’s doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), issued the ruling in response to questions and moves in some parishes to impart such blessings as a sign of welcome to gay Catholics since the Church does not permit homosexual marriage.

Pope Francis approved the response, the CDF said, adding that it was “not intended to be a form of unjust discrimination, but rather a reminder of the truth of the liturgical rite.”

It said such blessings were not permissible even though they were “motivated by a sincere desire to welcome and accompany homosexual persons” and help them grow in the faith.

The CDF note said that since marriage between a man and a woman was a sacrament and blessings are related to the sacrament of marriage, they could not be extended to same-sex couples.

“For this reason, it is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex,” it said.