In general, when people ask me what Israel from the Inside is “about,” I tell them, as we’ve often written, that the idea is to show the “mosaic” that makes up Israeli life. Israel, I noted a couple of years ago when we started this project, is much more than the conflict, or issues with the rabbinate and the like. But those kinds of issues, far too often, are all we speak about when we speak about Israel.
The goal of Israel from the Inside would be to show more: history, leading personalities past and present, literature, poetry, music. New sites, new projects. How Jews live, how Arabs live. The world of the religious, and that of the secular—and the meeting between them. Art, geography, and much more.
But that was before this unprecedented time, before the deepest crisis ever in Israel’s history. So in the past few months, in addition to all of the above, we’ve also been striving to share with our readers and listeners some of what is being discussed, said or heard in Israel that does not make the English press.
On more than a few occasions, now, we’ve done that by sharing a video that Israelis are speaking about, and today is another example of that. Hadas Meiri, an Engineering Project Manager at Elbit Systems Ltd., spoke to the Tel Aviv rally a few weeks ago.
Her speech went viral, because she’s religious, she’s right wing, she’s a Likud voter—and she had a surprising message for the crowd, and an important one for the government.
We’re sharing her message with you, English subtitles added. (We do transcripts for podcasts, but not for these videos.)
We’ll keep other videos coming—because they appear at a rapid rate.
The point here is not whether one agrees with her, or not. The point here is for us be as aware as possible of the mosaic of views that Israelis hold, and in some cases, like this one, the ways in which those views seem quite at odds with what one might expect from any particular segment of society.
With the High Holidays just weeks away, we wanted to share the schedule for Israel from the Inside during that period.
During the week of Rosh Hashanah and the Fast of Gedaliah (on Monday, there will be no written column on Monday, September 18th, but we will post our regular Wednesday podcast on September 20.
During the week of Yom Kippur, there will be no written column on Monday, September 25th (which is the day of Yom Kippur), but we will post our regular Wednesday podcast on September 27.
During the week of the holiday of Sukkot (Monday, October 2 and Wednesday, October 4), we are planning not to post.
The regular schedule of written columns on Mondays and podcasts on Wednesdays will resume the following week.
To all who are observing and celebrating, our wishes for a meaningful and joyous High Holiday season.
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She's religious, she's right wing, and she told the protest crowd that she'd made a huge mistake. What was it?