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Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett lost his razor-thin parliamentary majority on Wednesday after a lawmaker from his nationalist party quit, leaving his government with a more precarious grip on power but in no immediate danger of collapse.

The walkout by Idit Silman, a step she said she took on ideological grounds, left Bennett in control of 60 of the 120 seats in the Knesset.

“a land for which the Lord your God cares; the eyes of the Lord your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year.” Deut. 11:12

(Idit Silman, head of the Knesset Health Committee)

As the assembly is in spring recess, the premier was spared any imminent no-confidence votes.

To succeed, such votes would need the backing of at least 61 lawmakers, including Arab legislators who are outside the ruling coalition but also long-time political enemies of the current opposition leader, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But by abandoning her post as Knesset coalition chairwoman in the name of preserving “the Jewish identity of the State of Israel,” Silman dealt a blow to Bennett’s efforts to keep together a rare alliance of liberal and Arab deputies who opted to join his government last June.

Assembling that coalition empowered Bennett to end Netanyahu’s record 12 years in power.

Read More @ Algemeiner HERE

In his column in Haaretz last Thursday, Gideon Levy bemoaned that terrorism “is the only way open to the Palestinians to fight for their future … the only way for them to remind Israel, the Arab states and the world of their existence. If they don’t use violence, everyone will forget about them.”

Levy was reacting to the killing spree in Israel that claimed the lives last week of 11 innocent people and left many others either physically wounded or psychologically traumatized. He failed to point out that two of the deadly attacks were committed by Arab citizens of Israel, not Palestinians, who had pledged allegiance to ISIS.

“and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who live on the earth?” Rev. 6:10

Though Levy has an extremely dim view of the Jewish state, he is well-versed in its history and current events. His failure to make the above distinction, then, was not due to ignorance or oversight.

No, the reason that he left out the identity of the perpetrators of the attacks in Beersheva and Hadera was that neither could serve as an example of the so-called ills of Israeli “occupation.” And he certainly wasn’t going to rethink his position on the Islamist angle to the story.

Instead, he was able to imply a natural affinity of Arab Israelis to their Palestinian brethren. And while at it, he—like his left-wing colleagues—could allude that Israel is at fault not only for a lack of a Palestinian state, but for abuse of its Arab citizens.

In this case, however, he also blamed the international community.

“When [the Palestinians] are quiet,” he wrote, “interest in their cause evaporates and fades from the agenda of Israel and the rest of the world.”

Read More @ Daily Caller HERE