A PA Arab prisoners’ committee on Monday announced that Israel had agreed to hand over for burial the bodies of Arab terrorists still in its possession. The announcement did not mention a specific timeframe for returning the bodies, save for that of Muhammad Jamal al-Kalouti, 21, who was shot dead by police in March together with Abd al-Malak Saleh Abu Kharoub, 19, outside the Old City of Jerusalem.

Attorney Muhammad Mahmoud of the prisoners’ committee Addameer said that Israeli authorities would release al-Kalouti’s body to his family on Wednesday.

On March 9, 2016, these two terrorists shot at a bus from a car at the Ramot Junction north of Jerusalem. The bus was not hit but shell casings were found at the scene. They then drove their vehicle to the Shechem Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem, and shot at police and civilians. Police returned fire and killed them. A passerby was seriously injured by police gunfire. Two rifles were found in the car. Both terrorists carried blue Israeli identity cards (Source: The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center).

According to Mahmoud, Israel agreed to release the body on the condition that the funeral be carried out at midnight Wednesday, with a maximum of 25 people attending, and that the body be buried in the al-Mujahidin cemetery near Herod’s Gate. According to the announcement, the family was charged $5,200 in fees for the processing of the body.

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has reversed the Israeli policy regarding the return of terrorists’ bodies to their families for burial, disregarding the recommendations from the security apparatus, including his predecessor Moshe Ya’alon (Likud). Liberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) preferred instead to embrace the contrary position of Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud).

It should be noted that the Jack Khoury story in Ha’aretz on the Muhammad Mahmoud announcement, which was published at 1:17 AM Tuesday, was titled, “Israel agrees to hand over bodies of seven Palestinians killed in confrontations,” with the sub-headline, “Police agree to transfer the remains held for months after negotiations with families under pressure from Israel’s High Court, according to the Palestinian prisoner administration.” Even the first paragraph continued the obvious lie that the release of the bodies was an official Israeli decision. It read: “The Israel Police has agreed to hand over the bodies of seven Palestinians from East Jerusalem who were killed in confrontations with Israeli forces and which were held for a number of months, the Palestinian prisoner administration said on Monday.”

The headline has since been modified to read: “Israel Reportedly Agrees to Hand Over Bodies of Seven Palestinians Killed in Confrontations.” Now we have to wait and see what Israel has to say about it.

Last week the Israeli Supreme Court issued a decree to show cause against the state prosecution, to explain why it would not release for burial the bodies of terrorists who committed violent crimes in Israel. Recently the Netanyahu government has adopted a policy whereby those bodies are not released automatically and are being kept at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Abu Kabir.

This renewed demand by the high court came following an earlier ruling where the court had ordered the bodies of terrorists be released in exchange for families’ commitment to conduct quiet funerals, without anti-Israeli incitement. The judges approved of the requirement seeing as the hearing was held during the holy month of Ramadan, when Arabs have customarily expressed their religious feelings through rioting in the streets and throwing stones and firebombs at innocent civilians.

But the reality of those cases has been a complete reneging of every commitment made by the families in almost every instance. A funeral that was conducted for terrorist Ala Abu Jamal from Jabel Mukaber, who carried out a bloodthirsty attack on Malkhey Israel Street in downtown Jerusalem, quickly deteriorated into a massive riot. As Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan later put it, “The terrorist families simply lied to the high court. It’s a shame that the court chose to believe them and pressured police to hand over the bodies before Ramadan.”

Interestingly enough, the terrorists’ families are using exactly that argument in their newest appeal to the high court, saying that since Ramadan is long over, there’s no more justification to release the bodies. Essentially, the Arab petitioners are saying that Arab funerals have always been huge and riotous, rife with incitements against israel, so why stop now?

According to NRG, Jerusalem Police this week approached the family of Baha Alyan, who carried out a murderous attack on a bus at the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood, to negotiate the body’s release. Police offered to hand over the body in exchange for a late night funeral, with only 15 people present. The family eventually refused those terms and police pulled back their offer.

A new joint ministerial task force has been formed to address the increasingly damaging phenomenon of Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement activists entering Israel and organizing activities to delegitimize and destroy the country from within.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Interior Minister Arye Deri announced in a joint statement Sunday that the news task force will be focused on tracking down the hundreds of BDS activities who already exist within Israel and who organize events calling for boycotts of the Jewish State.

The task force “is a necessary step in light of the malicious intentions of delegitimizing activists who work to spread lies and twist the truth about the reality in our region,” Erdan said.

“We have a responsibility to do everything possible to crush any boycott and to state clearly that we will not allow the State of Israel to be harmed,” added Deri. The Interior Minister is responsible for the Population, Immigration and Borders Authority as well.

Both were firm that it is time to put a stop to the boycotts against Israel, and each expressed determination to fight the phenomenon via the laws and agencies at his disposal.

The move comes as the realization sets in that Israel is increasingly being seen in the international arena as a pariah state — an existential threat that must be turned around if Israel is to survive.

Speaking to the Knesset Committee for the Transparency and Accessbility of Government Information, Sima Vaknin-Gil said the goal of the Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy Ministry is to replace that image with one that is more positive, hopefully within the decade.

Vaknin-Gil, director-general of the ministry, said that if all goes as planned and the current “narrative” is replaced, by 2025, no one will question whether the State of Israel has the right to exist.”

Meanwhile, as a start, the lawmakers will work to deport those involved in the BDS movement in the country, according to the statement released by the ministers. In addition, BDS activists will be barred from entering the country. Boycotting Israel, said Erdan, “must have a price.”

At least two dozen NGOs receive more than half of their funding from foreign government and other sources outside the State of Israel, and use the money to delegitimize and further isolate the Jewish State.

Erdan — who doubles as Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy Minister — added that BDS activists make a point of traveling to Judea and Samaria to incite violence among citizens of the Palestinian Authority, and to block operations by the IDF and Border Guard Police.

A Swiss BDS activist was deported from Israel for the first time this month before she was able to enter the country after landing at Ben Gurion International Airport.

Rita Faye has visited Israel a number of times in the past and is well known to the IDF for her harassment of Israeli soldiers at checkpoint crossings into the Palestinian Authority around Jericho. When it became known that she was on her way to Israel, the IDF requested the Interior Ministry block her entry into the country.

Faye is a member of a pro-BDS Christian organization. She was put on a plane and sent back to where she came from, with a deportation order signed by the Interior Minister.

American-Israeli journalist Jeffrey Goldberg (New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly) is probably the closest thing today to a traditional, secular Jewish American journalist, hated equally by the right and the left. His view of Israel is sober, and he often gets the Israeli mindset more accurately than most American fellow travelers. On Monday night, Goldberg lost it over a story in the English language Ha’aretz, which has been consistently further out there on leftwing planet than its Hebrew language sister.

“I think I’m getting ready to leave Ha’aretz behind, actually,” Goldberg tweeted, linking to a Sunday Ha’aretz story titled “We’re American Jewish Historians. This Is Why We’ve Left Zionism Behind.”

Written by Hasia Diner and Marjorie N. Feld, the article included blatantly hostile statements, reminiscent of drivel issued by Neturei Karta and any of the varieties of “American Rabbis for Peace” groups out there. Taking into account that Diner is a professor of American Jewish history at New York University, and Feld is professor of history at Babson College, we should probably sit shivah on our expectations of sane evaluations of Israeli history emanating from those two learned ladies.

“The death of vast numbers of Jewish communities as a result of Zionist activity has impoverished the Jewish people, robbing us of these many cultures that have fallen into the maw of Israeli homogenization,” was one of Hasia Diner’s paragraphs, fit for a KKK Wizard.

And, another from Diner: “I feel a sense of repulsion when I enter a synagogue in front of which the congregation has planted a sign reading, ‘We Stand With Israel.’ I just do not go, and avoid many Jewish settings where I know Israel will loom large as an icon of identity.”

Hasn’t she heard the adage, If you don’t have nice things to say, don’t say anything?

Marjorie Feld, who wrote that “in all facets of my very Jewish upbringing I was immersed in Holocaust education,” taught her readers that “the founding of Israel was the Nakba, the great catastrophe, for Palestinians, with ethnic cleansing, destruction, and no right of return.”

Goldberg’s distancing himself from the rabid Ha’aretz crowd (in English — the Hebrew version may be aggressive, but it’s still quality journalism, just remove the attitude and you can figure out what really happened — the way folks used to do with Pravda, or Yisrael Hayom) was met with nasty responses from the nuts community.

Peter Kofod tweeted that Goldberg was “Warmonger/former prison guard who lied to cover up, is also an idiot re anti-Semitism”

He provided a link to a website called S.H.A.M.E. Project, which drags out the cherry picked negative comments from its target’s body of work, sans context (because context requires deliberation and examination, comparison and evaluation, which, like, take time). If the reader is interested, the disgusting hatchet job is up there.

Goldberg tweeted back: “I like a lot of the people at Haaretz, and many of its positions, but the cartoonish anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism can be grating.”

Thereafter, Goldberg entered a string of alley fights with short knives:

Seth Frantzman (Jerusalem Post) rehashed an old grievance: “Jeffrey Goldberg has accused me of ‘enabling baseless hatred’ when I’ve done more than most to help victims and refugees.”

Goldberg: “It’s difficult to acknowledge that you enable sinat hinam. I understand.”

Lisa Goldman: “Are there any women participating in Jeffrey Goldberg’s rumble in the jungle over Haaretz’s allegedly Jew hating ways? Right. Thought not.” Ah, discrimination, because the two history hate mongers were gals, and Goldberg is part of the patriarchy. She also suggested: “Haaretz friends: Jeffrey Goldberg is not that important. Clearly anyone who tweets it’s an *anti-Semitic* paper is an anti-intellectual.”

He works for the Atlantic, lady. You work for 972 Mag, a website only a shaheed’s mother can love.

At some point, Goldberg became entangled in a one-on-one with Ha’aretz publisher Amos Schoken, and tweeted a message of peace: “There’s a lot of good journalism in Ha’aretz, however. Mixed in with the nutty stuff.”

Schocken tweeted: “I wouldn’t call it nutty. I don’t agree with it, I think they ignore history of the Jews,” adding, “But when Israel has such problem in American universities, how can one ignore it?”

To which Goldberg snapped back: “Amos, what you don’t understand is that the problems on campus are caused in part by crap like this.”

Schocken: “Maybe it adds but it is a position of two university teachers, it has to be argued with, not discarded.” Ha’aretz is probably the only newspaper with decent-distribution in Israel that devotes equal if not more coverage to the Nakba point of view, versus the normative Israeli narrative.

At which point Ami Kaufman, co-founder of 972 Mag, tweeted, “How ‘Trump-esque’ to call a legitimate position ‘crap’ and ‘nutty.'” Then: “Israeli policies cause ‘problems’ on campuses, not the opeds that critique them.” Spoken like a man who never faced crowd-wilding by SJP thugs on his way to the dorms.

Goldberg: “That is not an accurate statement. Visit campuses, talk to university presidents, and learn.”

Goldberg tweeted a response to Ha’aretz correspondent Anshel Pfeffer: “Look, when neo-Nazis are emailing me links to Ha’aretz op-eds declaring Israel to be evil, I’m going to take a break, sorry.” He included a link to a column by Gideon Levy titled, “Stop living in denial, Israel is an evil state.” Gideon Levy is that shaheed’s mother’s other favorite read.

Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) entered the fray, quite unexpectedly, praising Goldberg: “Wow. No words.” Truth be told, a tweet on the back from a Likud cabinet minister was probably the last thing Goldberg needed at that moment, and he scolded Erdan: “Thanks for the retweet, but I’d prefer it if you spent more time protecting democracy in Israel.”

Gilad Erdan is Minister of Public Security, so, yes, he is in a good position to mess up or protect democracy in Israel. But why S.H.A.M.E. a man for being nice to you?

Yes, you can get the boy out of the red diaper summer camp, but not vice versa .

The Likud party has been attacking its coalition partner Habayit Hayehudi party over the memorable debate in Sunday’s cabinet meeting of the establishment of a new Israeli Broadcasting Corporation. The official announcement from Likud called Ministers Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked the “favorites of the left and of [Yediot Aharonot owner] Noni Moses” who support the indefatigable efforts to harm the prime minister and the Likud rule. It was in response for Bennett’s and Shaked’s decision to abstain during the vote to postpone the date when the new corporation starts broadcasting.

One of the most celebrated quotes from Sunday’s debate, all of which reached unusually shrill tones, was from Likud Minister Miri Regev who reportedly cried out: “What’s the point in having a corporation if we don’t control it? The minister should be in control, or what, we’ll give money and then they’ll broadcast whatever they want?”

As the minister in charge of culture (and sport), Regev exhibited a particularly narrow understanding of freedom of the press and possibly of the entire concept of what a public corporation is. One of the fundamental principles of such corporations, outside Zimbabwe and, recently, Moscow, is that the ministers are strictly in charge of budgeting and monitoring public satisfaction of the corporation, but they are absolutely prohibited from dictating and controlling anything.

Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan couldn’t help himself and made fun of the vociferous yet thin-skinned Regev. He told her, “Yes, live with it. There’s no law saying the public broadcasting authority will do what Miri Regev tells it to do.” The two Likud ministers continued to yell at each other (they both ranked in the top slots in the last Likud primaries), until Prime Minister Netanyahu had to shut them up.

Ayelet Shaked on Monday shot back at the Likud’s attack press release, saying that Likud should stop whining, and, anyway, they have their own daily newspaper (tycoon Sheldon Adelson’s pro-Bibi Yisrael Hayom).

Shaked was the second female politician in Israel yesterday who told a fellow lawmaker to stop whining. The other was Shelly Yachimovich, who said she’d had it up to here with her party chairman, Isaac Herzog’s whining about an insult she shot at him last May. She called him Bibi’s lap dog. He threatened to expel her.

But the media’s focus on Sunday centered on that cabinet meeting where Regev let the world know what’s her take on democratic institutions. And just to show you that you don’t have to know democracy to thrive in one, Miri Regev’s culture ministry on Sunday received control over the entire government advertising budget, which comes to about $80 million. That’s everything the Netanyahu government spends on ads, foreign and domestic, despite the fact that the bulk of those ads have nothing to do with the culture ministry.

Minister for Social Equality Gila Gamliel (Likud) told Army Radio on Monday that Regev’s statements were borderline fascistic and that she had warned Netanyahu none of those statements should be allowed to stick to the Likud party.

Incidentally, the reason the Netanyahu government has been attempting to establish a new broadcasting authority was because the current authority is considered inefficient and infested with leftists. But having been under the coalition gun for several years now, the IBA has gone a long way to become more efficient and to sprinkle all its high-ratings hours with rightwingers. So the Kol Israel one hears today is more balanced politically than what it was only a year ago.

Which is the reason Coalition Chairman MK David Bitan (Likud) announced Sunday that he was going to advance a new bill to dismantle the new public broadcasting corporation in favor of the one Israel has had since the British mandate (1948).

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon summarized that unhappy cabinet debate in an interview with Army Radio, where he said, “This entire government has to go on vacation. They must urgently go on summer holiday, before the entire government would end up in hospital.”

Using hi-tech terminology, former startup mogul and current security cabinet minister Naftali Bennett (Habayit Hayehudi) described the young Arab terrorists who have been attacking Israeli civilians as entrepreneurs whose murderous attacks are a form of “exit,” as in the much yearned for exit of hi-tech startup ventures.

“In other words, this one terrorist, who usually suffers from psychological and other problems, decides to do an exit for his family, because when he goes out and gets killed his family starts receiving a monthly stipend,” Bennett told Israel Radio Sunday morning.

According to Bennett, he presented the Saturday late-night meeting of the cabinet with a list of solutions, many of which have been adopted. “Significant decisions have been made,” Bennett told Israel Radio, adding, “The test will be in how they are carried out.”

“We’re talking about a new kind of terrorism, viral terrorism,” Bennett explained. “It’s not organized from above the way we’ve been accustomed to in the past. It emanates from a general inspiration over the Internet, on Facebook and on the social networks, followed by local, personal initiatives. The main inspiration is when an attack succeeds and then this success is reported over the networks.”

“The first incomprehensible thing is that until this day, for every terrorist that was killed, his family started to receive a stipend from the Palestinian Authority. … We now decided that the families of terrorists in the PA will no longer receive this money. We’ll make sure to prevent it.”

Asked how long the IDF could maintain its closure of the Hebron area, with its estimated 700 thousand Arabs, Bennett said the closure is not a solution to the viral problem. “If we proceed with antiquated action it won’t block terrorism. We must adopt new actions to deal with this new kind of terrorism.”

“It is unacceptable that the family of a terrorist will celebrate while we are in mourning. It is unacceptable that the family members of the murderer of Hallel Areil would praise him — and, indeed, they have been arrested and are under interrogation at the moment. This is something we didn’t do in the past. I’d like to see this not as a one-time thing, but as part of the protocol from now on. … These are family members who have contributed to the murder in active and passive illegal ways.”

Regarding the thawing of a construction bid that was frozen a year and a half ago, for 42 new housing units in Kiryat Arba, where the murder of Hallel Ariel took place last Thursday, Bennett told the interviewer, Aryeh Golan, who wondered how this move would prevent terrorism, that the aim of the terrorists is to kick the Jews from Judea and Samaria, and so the proper response is to make certain, with action, that the reverse is taking place.

“You wanted us to leave, but instead we are deepening our roots,” Bennett said, adding that 42 housing units are not nearly close to the number of new housing units that should be built to enhance Jewish life in Judea and Samaria.

“The history of Zionism is filled with examples of new communities that were erected in places where our people have fallen,” he told his interviewer. “Kiryat Shmona, Givat HaShlosha, Ma’ale HaKhamisha,” Bennett cited Jewish communities inside the green line who were named after eight, three, and five victims of Arab violence, consecutively. “The Zionist response has always been to build. For the past one hundred years that’s what we do and will continue to do.”

As to Facebook, which Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) has accused of adding a monstrous contribution to murder of innocent Israeli civilians, Bennett agreed that users of Facebook and other social networks have been instructing Arab youths on how to carry out murderous attacks on Jews, with clear technical details.

“Just as Facebook are using algorithms which automatically and semi-automatically block pornographic material from being uploaded, so can they decide—at a moment’s notice—to impose the same controls on content that encourages terrorism,” Bennett said.

The security cabinet is meeting Saturday night following the two murderous attacks on Jewish civilians in Judea and Samaria last Thursday and Friday. Two ministers, Naftali Bennett (Habayit Hayehudi) and Gilad Erdan (Likud) have pointed a finger at one of the culprits in the wave of terror — Facebook, or, rather, the entire Internet and its social networks. Bennett plans to present a plan to take care of “viral terrorism,” including a demand to deny the use of Facebook and the Internet throughout the Hebron Mountain area, where so many terrorists have originated.

Appearing on Channel 2’s “Meet the Press,” Internal Security Minister Erdan attacked Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg, saying, “Facebook is sabotaging police efforts to capture terrorists.” He even added that “the blood of the murdered is on Zuckerberg’s hands,” and called for a citizen’s rebellion against Facebook.

Bennett plans to demand at the cabinet meeting tonight the arrest of every Hamas activist in Judea and Samaria released in the Gilad Shalit deal who have since committed any violations. This has been done once before during the “Return, oh brothers” operation to locate the three Israeli boys kidnapped exactly two years ago, an act that preceded the 2014 Gaza War.

Bennett also insists on a full-scale military operation in areas A and B which are under PA control officially. He also demands blocking Arab traffic on Route 60, where the drive-by murder of Michael Mark was carried out Friday. “We can no longer continue with the old program,” he said, “we must switch the disc.”

The government meanwhile has ordered several steps in response to the attacks. Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Liberman approved a bid for 42 new housing units in Kiryat Arba, the late Hallel Yaffa Ariel HY”D’s home town. The bid had been frozen 18 months ago and thawed on FRiday.

The IDF has imposed a complete closure on Hebron and neighboring villages, which includes roughly 700 thousand Arabs. In addition, the IDF has moved two paratrooper units and one infantry unit to the Hebron area.