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             A CONSCRIPTION LAW TO SUIT ALL SIZES
                       By: Dovid Hoffman
 
Since Prime Minister Netanyahu gave the government a new face last week, crafting a new conscription law for yeshiva students has switched from being the top plank of a new election, to being the top priority of a new coalition. The government is caught between a rock and a hard place. Leaving the conscription problem unfixed would be a direct violation of a Supreme Court order that the government must enact a substitute for the Tal Law by the end of July. On the other hand, fixing the problem according to the Supreme Court’s demand that the substitute “must be much more radical” is liable to spark anger and resistance in the Torah world that constitutes ten percent of Israel’s 7.8 million population.

 


 
By: Rabbi Yonason Rosenblum
 
Over fifty years ago, I was playing checkers with my father z”l on a Sunday morning. The next oldest brother in our family line-up, not yet five years old, sat on my father’s lap. Suddenly, he could not contain himself and shouted out, “Look, Daddy, look,” before proceeding to make a quintuple jump. I don’t recall ever playing checkers again.

 

I was put in mind of that quintuple jump last week, on Tuesday morning, when Israel awakened to learn that the elections in September voted on by the Knesset just the day before would not be taking place. Instead, the largest peacetime coalition in Israel’s history had been assembled in the small hours of the morning. Kadima head Shaul Mofaz, the official leader of the opposition when we went to bed, had joined the governing coalition, bringing his 29 Kadima MKs together with him. The day before, Mofaz had been lambasting Netanyahu as a “liar” from the podium of the Knesset. Now he had accepted the position of Netanyahu’s deputy prime minister.

By Mendel Levi
In many ways, Yanky Ostreicher, a 53-year-old frum father of five and grandfather of 11 has been suffering for almost a year the worst fate imaginable for a Jew from Boro Park. He has been held without charges in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, as the only Jew and the only American among the 3,200 inmates in Palmosola, one of the most notorious prisons in South America. Since his arrest on June 3, 2011, Ostreicher has been kept in a legal limbo, and US diplomats say they can do little to help him.

At least 15 court hearings have been scheduled, but only three have taken place. At a bail hearing last September Ostreicher’s lawyers presented convincing evidence to a Bolivian judge of his innocence of any wrongdoing. But just six days after the judge ordered that he be released, and his family paid his bail, the release order was countermanded and the judge re-assigned, while Ostreicher was left to rot in jail.
By Debbie Maimon,Yated
The May 4 filing of six amicus briefs calling on the Supreme Court to grant the Rubashkin case a hearing has triggered a spate of articles from prominent legal personalities supporting the cause, with several focusing on the prosecutorial and judicial misconduct in the case.

The burst of advocacy for Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin coincides with congressional scrutiny of the issue of prosecutorial misconduct which many say plagues the nation’s courtrooms.

The problem has become a hot-button issue in the wake of the investigative report condemning prosecutorial misconduct in the high-profile Stevens case. Ted Stevens was a former senator of Alaska whose conviction on fraud charges was vacated by Attorney General Eric Holder, after revelations surfaced that prosecutors had withheld important evidence from the defense.
By Chaim Bashevkin
The count is on
We’re halfway there
Excitement’s brewing
In the air

We’ve crossed the sea
We’re drawing near
And soon our mission
Will be clear

Oh! My friend
There’s what to fear
These days of Sefirah
Every year