“This is our moment to look to the future, to put all other issues aside and do what’s right for Israel,” Gantz said.
By STEVE LINDEBlue and White leader Benny Gantz was given the mandate and 28 days to form a new government by President Reuven Rivlin(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)GANTZ’S TURN Blue and White leader Benny Gantz was given the mandate and 28 days to form a new government by President Reuven Rivlin on October 23 in a ceremony at the President’s Residence. The move came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned his mandate to Rivlin on his 70th birthday two days earlier, after failing to cobble together a coalition. “This is our moment to look to the future, to put all other issues aside and do what’s right for Israel,” Gantz said, calling for a national unity coalition.FREE NAAMA! Israeli officials have urged Russia to release Naama Issachar, who was stopped in April while transiting through Moscow on her way from India to Israel carrying nine and a half grams of marijuana, and was recently sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. “The punishment... is disproportionate and does not fit the nature of the offense being attributed to Issachar,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who urged President Vladimir Putin in a telephone call to free her.YITZHAR VIOLENCE Two IDF soldiers were wounded when they were attacked by Jewish extremists near the settlement of Yitzhar on October 18 and 20, military sources said. The assailants reportedly threw rocks, slashed an IDF jeep’s tires and blocked the path of an army vehicle. Politicians across the spectrum, settler leaders and security officials condemned the attacks. Also near Yitzhar, Rabbis for Human Rights reported that Rabbi Moshe Yehudai, 80, was injured when Jewish radicals attacked five of its volunteers participating an olive harvest with Palestinians from the nearby village of Burin.BYZANTINE CHURCH Jerusalem’s Bible Lands Museum opened an exhibition on October 23 that included findings from a 1,500-year-old Byzantine church in what is today Beit Shemesh. The Israel Antiquities Authority called the structure, which has spectacular mosaics featuring flowers and birds, the Church of the Glorious Martyr after a mysterious figure to whom the church was dedicated, according to a Greek inscription. “The martyr’s identity is not known, but the exceptional opulence of the structure and its inscriptions indicate that this person was an important figure,” said excavation director Benjamin Storchan.LEADING GIVER Morton Mandel, a billionaire businessman and philanthropist, died in Florida on October 16 at the age of 98. With his two brothers, the Cleveland-born Mandel founded Premier Industrial Corporation in 1940, later merging it with Farnell Electronics in a $3 billion deal. He established the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation in 1953 to fund leadership programs around the world. The Jerusalem branch of the foundation, formed in 1991, has donated more than $500 million to Israeli causes, including the Mandel Leadership Institute.REVERED SCHOLAR Tens of thousands attended the funeral in Bnai Brak on October 22 of Rabbi Nissim Karelitz, a respected leader and arbiter of Jewish law in the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox community, who died the night before at the age of 93. A member of Degel Hatorah’s Council of Torah Sages, the rabbinical court he established in the city in 1967 ruled on a range of issues from marital disputes to conversions, and was called “the greatest halachic authority of his generation.’’ Born in Vilnius, his mother was the sister of Rabbi Avraham Yishayahu Karelitz, known as the Chazon Ish, and he moved to Israel in 1935 with his family.TOP JURIST Former Supreme Court President Meir Shamgar, considered Israel’s leading jurist, died on October 18 at the age of 94. After serving as military advocate general and attorney-general, Shamgar was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1975 and served as chief justice from 1983-95. His successor, Aharon Barak, called him “the Ben-Gurion of Israel’s legal system.” In 1996, Shamgar chaired the Commission of Inquiry into the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, whom he considered a close friend.GENESIS PRIZE
