Meet the Pillay Committee. True, the UN Human Rights Council is traditionally biased against Israel. True, the person who will be representing the council as head of an investigation into the events of Operation Guardian of the Walls this past May is Navi Pillay, a judge on the UN's International Criminal Court who has not expressed friendly sentiments toward us. But if Israel boycotts the committee she is heading, it will just play into the hands of those who claim we have nothing to say.
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Participation won't lead to a positive report for us, but what is said before the committee will have an influence. Who knows better than we do that boycotts boomerang? The Bennett-Lapid government can allow itself to be a little more original than its predecessor and host the committee, present what we have to present and publish it widely. After all, recalcitrance has not led us to stunning diplomatic successes.
The similarity between what is happening in American politics and what has been happening here in the past few years is surprising, even if it's not original. The public, as well as its representatives, is divided almost 50-50 and this makes it hard to make decisions. The current political battle focuses on legislative efforts by some Republican governors to use procedure to reduce the number of voters who tend to cast ballots for the Democrats.
Less than 10 years ago, the authority to pass laws about presidential and congressional elections was handed over to the state legislatures. As a result, election laws are not identical in all 50 states.
US President Joe Biden has made it a goal to restore the exclusive right to pass federal election laws to Congress. Theoretically, he could accomplish this by a vote on Capitol Hill – his party has 50 senators, and so do the Republicans, but the Democrats control the House of Representatives because in the case of a tied vote, the Constitution gives the vice president the ability to tip the scales.
The parliamentary game on the Hill allows the Republicans to use the filibuster tactic, but the Democrats have a chance to eradicate this method by a simple majority if it weren't for two rogue senators (Joe Manchin from West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona) – who oppose the cancellation of the filibuster, arguing that it could come back to haunt them. If they aren't convinced, the system will remain as-is, and there will be no way of handing the Senate back the authority to decide on laws for general elections. Does anyone want to offer these two a job as a cabinet minister or deputy minister?
Anyone who was worried that right-wing activist Itamar Ben-Gvir becoming a lawyer and an MK would hurt his boyish charm could calm down this week at the sight the horror show he put on at the Knesset podium overnight Monday. The boyish charm was unaffected.
Uri Ashi is an illustrator and a high-tech entrepreneur. In 1996, he voted for Benjamin Netanyahu because he believed the clear answers he was given about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The years that passed made his start asking questions about the truth of the simplistic answers he had heard from the former prime minister, so he wrote his book, Hatikvah. More than anything else, it is a dialogue between himself, as a young soldier, and himself, a quarter-century older.
But because he is an illustrator, this is a very illustrated book, easy to read, with a sense of humor uncharacteristic of the other books that try to explain the roots of the conflict and propose solutions. This book is highly recommended for anyone who want to know a little more about the elephant in our room, but aren't willing to bore themselves with hundreds of footnotes.
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