Israel News Insights - Now on Elephant
We’ve added the Israel News Insights to Elephant. This is a twice-weekly newsletter with updates on the situation in Israel and the effects of Oct. 7 worldwide. For those who want to receive the newsletter directly into their mailbox, you can subscribe at http://eepurl.com/iFphtI .
The mismanagement of the war Gaza for political motives seems more like a satirical musical than real life. Israel clearly needs to get the hostages back - even if it means ending the war before Hamas is destroyed. Partial deals for a handful of hostages in return for a 50-day ceasefire is the equivalent of a death sentence to those left behind - so a full-scale military operation ramped up faster than Netanyahu is willing to do is the best option until a deal can be made - but Bibi won’t allow that either. He chooses slow death and threats over action (either making a deal or full-scale military action).
In the meantime, the government is doing everything it can to distract the Israeli public from the most important existential issue - the hostages. He is allowing Yariv Levin to move forward with the divisive “Judicial Reforms” that are designed to subjugate the judicial branch to the whims of the politicians. Although he publicly supports ending UNRWA’s mission to perpetuate the “Palestinian conflict”, the government quietly refuses to implement the new laws to end UNRWA’s presence inside Israel’s border and prevent the government institutions from cooperating with them in any way.
The list of crisis headlines that Netanyahu’s coalition has managed to create this week is too long to list, but the most significant is the 2025 budget that the Knesset recently passed just before the deadline. It is not just because failure to pass the budget would have resulted in long overdue elections, but the budget raids the public coffers so deeply that those who serve are left behind and the sectors that refuse to serve are rewarded. The communities of the war-ravaged north and south of Israel are left to fend for themselves, the crime wave in the Arab communities that threatens to spread to nearby Jewish communities is left unchecked, the education and health systems are being starved in order to provide billions for useless ministries whose sole function is to provide patronage.
In order for you to understand what is happening in Israel and how Israelis view the Trump administration, you need to realize that Israelis are in Survival Mode. This doesn’t mean that our viewpoint is wrong. After all, our physical security is threatened in the worst way possible — the memory of the Holocaust is no longer recent history to learn from, but an immediate threat.
In many ways - it is still Oct. 7, 2023 here in Israel. And the world’s silence over the fate of the hostages as THE Humanitarian Crisis paints the way we view the “Rules Based Order” that former President Biden tried to defend and that current President Trump is threatening to destroy if it does change. It also paints the way we look at the rise of antisemitism in Europe and North America (not to mention Australia, S. America and everywhere else). Most of you (our readers) are concerned and possibly even feel threatened by the antisemitism of the “Free Palestine” movement, but do not appear to take it as seriously as we (Israelis) think you should.
Who’s right?
We don’t really know and only time will tell. We hope that your viewpoint is correct and that we are just a little paranoid. But the stakes are high. Over the past week or two, the attempts to deport non-citizens like Mahmoud Khalil who organized the anti-Zionist protests on university campuses and elsewhere that made Jews “uncomfortable” and “unwelcome” in the public sphere are being targeted as a First Amendment issue of Free Speech.
To Israelis, this looks ridiculous even if the power to deport could be abused in the future. The same is true of the $400 million being withheld from Columbia for failing to fulfill its duties under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Under that act, universities accepting federal funding are required by law to prohibit practices that have the effect of discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin. The Civil Rights act was specifically designed to prevent this type “Academic Freedom”, whether it be done in the name of “Free Palestine” or for the promotion of “racial purity”.
The conclusion of the first stage of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal has many looking anxiously to the release of the remaining living hostages and the bodies of those killed in captivity. Sources in Israel believe that 24 hostages are still alive in the Gaza Strip, including 22 Israelis, one Thai and one Nepali.
In a significant escalation of protests, thousands of demonstrators have surrounded the Kirya, Israel's Ministry of Defense compound and IDF headquarters, demanding the immediate release of all hostages held by the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza. In what they named "Operation Kirya Envelope", the protesters established encampments last night next to each gate of the Kirya, following the massive nationwide demonstration in which Israelis took to the streets in a plea to bring their loved ones home without further delays, partial deals, or drawn-out negotiations.
Meanwhile #qatargate continues in full force, with Netanyahu aides reportedly suspected of recently receiving six-figure sums from Qatar. Investigators say they were surprised by the size of the payouts, amounting to hundreds of thousands allegedly paid through outside firms.
Time for New Leadership - Call for Volunteers
It is time for a new leadership to replace me. In addition to the great work that Mark Levinson is doing, we have a new volunteer, Eitan Greenberg, who will manage the Event and Course Calendars. There is definitely a demand for meetings (any volunteers to start organizing them?) We also need a volunteer to take over the Job Opps section and post jobs (with preference for listings with salary information and jobs from the actual employer/customer and not intermediaries).
Translation, proofreading and writing organizations/mailing lists that would like write permissions to use elephant.org.il as a resource to promote their events should contact me directly.
95 seconds of comic relief.
Foreign relations in a nutshell - from the Animated Cookbook at the Big Cartoon Festival.
Cover credits for translators?
Should a translated book name the translator on the cover? If you something to say about it, join the discussion here.
Building a megalist of translators/editors
The folks over at CIWI are attempting to build a comprehensive list of translators of all stripes, as well as editors and copywriters working in Israel. It’s being maintained on a Google Sheet and anyone is free to write/edit/comment. Link here. It will be a great resource for anyone looking to hire someone quickly. Share widely.
A slangy way of translating nim’as li uses“over,” as in “I’m so over this place” and “I’m over your patronizing tone, okay?” I think that’s a recent usage; I don’t remember it from when I was young. And speaking of getting old, “getting old” is another way of saying nim’as about something.
“Netanyahu hasn’t learned the lesson of five months ago, that drinking up too many of his so-called natural partners’ votes can hurt him,” said a Jerusalem Post article. But there’s a better expression in English, and it’s been in use since well before this election year. “Ralph Nader was siphoning votes from Gore,” a 2004 book by William Saletan notes.
The dictionaries have more to say about translating hekel as applied to a problem — alleviate, mitigate, palliate, etc. — than as applied to the person who has the problem. If you find a software program complicated to use, and the company supplies shortcuts to reduce that difficulty, then actually none of the dictionary definitions of hekel can describe what the shortcuts do for you.
Yeshayahu Ben-Porat’s book about the Yom Kippur War, called HaMekhdal in Hebrew, was published in English translation under the title Kippur. English-language journalists and scholars never did come up with a thorough consensus on what to call the Mekhdal, and sometimes we see it transliterated from Hebrew and glossed in English.
Morfix defines hitlabet as “to have doubts, to be uncertain, to weigh possibilities; to think over, to deliberate, to ponder, to mull, to debate.” Still I think of the meaning as commonly more specific than that. When I leave the house, it’s not so much that I mitlabet about whether I fed the goldfish. I mitlabet about whether or not to go back.
Young animators bring Israeli animation to a new level!
The Fenesta Family is a high quality animation series created by group of young Israeli animators with the support and help of the Kan Digital incubator. With only the first two episodes out, the series has already gone viral.
Animation is a time consuming art, especially when done at the level of this series. In my opinion, they have brought Israeli animation to world class level. Hopefully this is only the beginning. In Israel the Kan Digital link is recommended. Outside of Israel you may need to find the episode on facebook.
For Hebrew speakers read
Jennifer Croft, who translated Nobel Prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk from Ukrainian, has announced that next time if her name won’t be on the cover, she won’t be translating. And together with novelist Mark Haddon, she started a petition. Columnist Pamela Paul believes that better visibility for translators can also lead to better pay.