"Very interesting" as they used to say on the Rowan & Martin Laugh-In

With apologies to readers far too young (most of you) to remember the "Laugh-In" show (it must have aired some 40+ years ago - I was watching it in 1966-69) - only Snoopy is old enough to remember, and he probably didn't have access to US television back then.

Mind you, with the satellite/cable tv networks insatiable demand for content, given how many channels there are, it may still exist out there, somewhere in cyber space. Anyway, that phrase, "very interesting" was usually voiced by Otto Preminger, film director, in a heavily accented Germanic accent: ironic, given that he was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish emigre from Nazi Germany (check him out on the net, youngsters).

To more serious matters (having displayed his grasp of contemporary cultural history): Algemeiner argues that: "Realizing that he cannot break an alliance between Yesh Atid and Jewish Home, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is ready to build a coalition with these two parties and exclude the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism, sources close to the coalition negotiations said on Wednesday night."

Further, "Netanyahu has been hampered in the coalition talks by the joint insistence of Jewish Home’s Naftali Bennett and Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid that they will only enter the government if Netanyahu commits to legislation that will see almost all young ultra-Orthodox males required to perform military or national service — anathema to the prime minister’s familiar ultra-Orthodox coalition partners."

The article offers a far more complex analysis than these brief extract would imply, so see for yourselves.

By: Brian Goldfarb