The State of Israel chose to open the Holocaust Memorial Day events at Yad Vashem last night with a particularly heavenly speech from someone who was catapulted to the prime ministership in a coalition whose repulsive stench has yet to dissipate, with six seats behind him and those too are dwindling.
This is the first prime minister to wear a kippah, but also the first prime minister who did not bother to mention the name of God in this speech and did not incorporate a single verse from the sources into his words. Instead, Bennett's words were full of resentment and bitterness, a reckoning with his new enemies, a divergence from his predecessors, and even an unclear message in the face of the horror that is actually taking place these days on Ukrainian soil, in an arena in which he willingly chose to be the errand boy between the two leaders who are fighting in it, the slaughterer from Russia versus the one who is fighting for his own from Ukraine.
Moments after calling for no war to be compared to the terrible Holocaust, Bennett chose precisely the day when state-owned Israel seeks to commemorate the Holocaust, to mourn his own bitter fate as someone who received, not from us, a threat to his life in one way or another.
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It was precisely in the slot of the president's speech that the masses of the people were rewarded. In recent years, this part of the ceremony has been fraught with suffering for everyone exposed to it. A congestion of tedious words, full of sloppy movements, full of accented consonants; a choking intonation reminiscent of a demented old man clinging tightly to the remnants of sanity in his consciousness; sighs suffocated by involuntary pitch increases; hiccups that seemed to be intended to stifle yawns that were about to erupt; and above all, a tired, panting effort to create tasteless headlines, winking at one side of the population and despising the other. All of these were part of this moment in recent years when the man and the belly who answer to the nickname Rubi Rivlin would stand in front of the podium.
This year, this dubious pleasure was spared when Yitzhak Herzog took to the podium. The challenge placed before Herzog was not an easy one. He had to both fill the great void left by the Prime Minister's speech and also give a place of honor to the words that were supposed to come from the mouth of someone who is considered the number one citizen in Israel. Herzog met both of these criteria, and he was also the one who chose to quote verses and quotations from our sources in his speech.
It was an extraordinary opportunity to witness the startling difference between someone who is completely filled with himself and his personal impulses and someone who brings some baggage with him and is aware of the status and the hour, and not just of his own excitement at having been able to fulfill his dream and sit on the throne he had longed for since the day his awareness first dawned.
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Israel and Jordan will jointly form a committee to discuss developments on the Temple Mount in an attempt to cool the situation.
From now on, the tension can be saved. The Jordanian demands will be happily adopted by a ten-degree right-wing government that will say yes to every demand, big or small.
For those who don't know, one of the main demands was already made before the committee was established: the Waqf people should be reinforced with additional reinforcements on their behalf, which would obviate the need, they say, for a police presence to enforce order. Why do we need police officers who are just trying in vain to stop rioters and those throwing stones, blocks, and rocks if we can put Waqf people on the right side of the rioters, who will only assist in their important mission?.
After all, it was the Jordanian Prime Minister who, in an official speech, took the trouble to salute the Arab rioters from the stone-throwing emissaries and strengthen their hand. There is no doubt that the committee, which will include his representatives, will take the trouble to echo this salute and provide tools for the continuation of the good reasons for it.
