Word: knesset
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Beginning in April, under the terms of a new law passed by the Israeli Knesset last month, anyone who offers any "material inducement" to an Israeli to change his religion will be liable to a $3,200 fine and five years in prison. And anyone convicted of converting to another faith for nonspiritual benefit may spend three years behind bars. Explaining his country's first antimissionary law, Orthodox Knesset Member Meir Abramowicz, the bill's sponsor, says: "We are the remnant of millions of Jews from the past. We merely want to protect our children." But Israel...
...lives in the northern Sinai settlement of Yamit. Cried an American emigrant who also lives in Yamit: "I didn't come from Miami Beach to live in Egypt!" As settlers demonstrated outside, a member of Begin's own Likud coalition, Moshe Shamir, argued their case in the Knesset: "My heart is laden with pain as I see our settlers in Judea, Samaria and Sinai cry out in agony as their dreams are shattered before their eyes...
...fact is that the current peace activity has made Begin stronger than he ever was before. After an 11 ½-hour debate in the Knesset, one of the longest sessions in memory, Begin won endorsement for his plan by a vote of 64 to 8, with 40 (mostly opposition Labor Party members) abstaining. With that kind of support at home, Begin would be in a position to negotiate from strength-and to make further concessions, if he can be persuaded to do so-when the political and military committees meet this month...
...only started again this year with his election to the premiership." With the backing of the 15 Deputies from Yigael Yadin's Democratic Movement for Change, who joined the government in October, Begin's ruling coalition now commands a healthy 78 votes in the 120-seat Knesset. Moreover, Begin is autocratic in running his government. He has banned smoking at Cabinet meetings, and Lord help the luckless minister who is discovered leaking a secret to the press. In domestic policy, the Premier has moved rapidly to cut through his country's well-entrenched bureaucracy and replace...
...beneath Begin's disarming good manners are a quick, disciplined mind, sharp tongue and a will of tempered steel. He is so savage in the give-and-take of political debate, for instance, that his Knesset speeches became famous as bloodlettings. These dramatic personality contrasts have earned Begin the description "inverted sabra"-after the Israeli desert fruit that is prickly outside but soft and sugary within. The Premier's sweetness is on the surface; the toughness is inside...