Congratulations are due to former Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat and his wife, Beverly, on the engagement of their pastry chef daughter Amit to her significant other of the past three years, Yarden Avishai.
The proposal was made far from home, when the couple was vacationing in Tanzania. The engagement may have been a birthday present for dad, who turned 66 on October 19.
Another reason for congratulating Barkat, currently the economy and industry minister, is his acquisition of a NIS 2 million technologically advanced car.
Moshe Lion's daughter gets married
■ ONE CAN’T help wondering how much time Mayor Moshe Lion spends in his office. Based on the number of events that he attends, and the fact that he was absent this week from the inauguration of Hadassah’s Gandel Rehabilitation Center because he was abroad, it would seem that he is seldom at City Hall – though he does attend nearly all the concerts held at Safra Square.
He also visits schools, most recently the Netzach Educational Network’s newest school, Bnot Yerushalayim, to view the spacious new building provided by the Jerusalem Municipality.
While touring the facility with Rabbi Menachem Bombach, the founder and chairman of the Netzach Educational Network, Lion affixed a symbolic mezuzah on the school door. Shaped in the form of the map of Israel, it is fashioned from metal salvaged from a fallen missile. Lion explained that it symbolizes the reviving effect of education and its positive impact on the future of the city.
Presumably, there are many events that Lion is unable to attend, but there was one last week that he and his wife, Stavit, would not miss for anything – the wedding of their daughter Shirael to Noam Muskovich.
After posting their joy and blessings to the newlyweds on social media, Lion received numerous good wishes in response, most of which were of the usual “mazal tov” kind. However, one reflected the reality of life in the city. After wishing him mazal tov, Stephen Flatow wrote: “Hope no one got delayed because of traffic and the rail construction.”
Itzik Larry's new job
■ WHEN ITZIK LARRY, the former CEO of the Jerusalem Municipality, suddenly announced his resignation last August, there was considerable speculation as to the reason. But last week it became clear, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed Larry’s appointment as chairman of Mifal Hapais.
The National Lottery is the central Israeli source of funding for social, educational, cultural, health, and sporting projects in cooperation with government ministries. It also promotes the arts and sciences through various financial awards to outstanding people in these fields.
World Zionist Congress
■ THERE WAS record attendance this week at the 39th World Zionist Congress, both in terms of the number of people and the number of national federations. This includes Uganda, which, in 1903, during the Sixth Zionist Conference in Basel, Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, proposed as a temporary refuge from antisemitic forces. The proposal, initiated by British colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain, faced opposition from others in the Zionist movement.
The 23rd Congress, held in 1951, was the first to convene in Jerusalem, three years after the establishment of the state. From struggling to achieve a Jewish state, Zionist movement adherents in the 1950s had to grapple with their role within the Jewish state.
There were serious disagreements between the delegates from Israel and those from the Diaspora – a situation that has not really changed, though many of the differences have been overcome over time.
A compromise was eventually reached, forming the basis for the Jerusalem Program that was approved in 1968 at the 27th Congress, which continues to define the fundamental principles and aims of the Zionist movement today: the unity of the Jewish People, the ingathering of exiles through immigration from all countries, the strengthening of the State of Israel, the preservation of Jewish identity, and the protection of Jewish rights everywhere.
Israeli Conference on Intelligence Studies
■ WHILE A state commission of inquiry on what led up to the catastrophe of October 7, 2023, has yet to be held – if at all – the subject was discussed in detail at the annual Israeli Conference on Intelligence Studies, held this week at the Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus. The theme was “Intelligence Transformation after Failure.”
Organized by the Leonard Davis Institute of International Relations at the Hebrew University, the Israeli Forum for Intelligence Studies, the Institute for Research on Intelligence Methodology, and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the conference brought together academics and leading figures from the intelligence community to assess how intelligence should be formulated in the aftermath of the intelligence failure that permitted the depraved Hamas onslaught.
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