Approximately Jerusalem residents, including Meretz party supporters, protested on front of City Hall Saturday night against a plan to close a new movie theater complex on Shabbat and Jewish holidays.

The complex, which includes restaurants and a 15-screen movie theater, is set to open this summer. It will close on weekends in keeping with an agreement between the Finance Ministry, the property developer and the Jerusalem municipality.

Among the groups protesting were Awakening, the Meretz political party and Be Free Israel.

Likud Knesset Member Miri Regev announced Wednesday she will visit the Temple Mount to try to understand the problem with Jews praying at the holy site. The Jerusalem Islamic Waqf officially controls the Temple Mount, a power granted to it by the Israeli government shortly after the Six-Day War in 1967.

MK Regev, who chairs the Knesset Interior and Environment Committee in the new government, said, “I don’t understand why a Jew is not allowed to pray in his most sacred place.”

After MK Regev’s announcement, Meretz MK Michal Rozin said the idea of a Knesset Member ascending the holy site is “a perverse attempt and cynical use of religion and political measures.”

She said that an appearance by Regev at the Temple Mount with the intention of clearing the way for Jews to pray there would incite Muslims.

The Waqf forbids Jews from praying on the Temple Mount or even carrying with them a prayer book, religious articles or acting as if they are praying.

The Chief Rabbinate has ruled that Jews are not allowed to ascend the Temple Mount because it still is holy despite the destruction of the First and Second Temples and that no rituals can be performed because it is impossible to be ritually pure today according to guidelines set out in the Torah.

Many national religious rabbis permit ascending to certain areas of the Temple Mount.

Following the arrest of five Women of the Wall on Thursday, during the Rosh Chodesh prayer, the women were taken to Magistrate Court, where police accused them of disturbing public order and asked the judge to ban them from the Western Wall for three months.

After examining the evidence, Judge Sharon Larry Bavly stated that there was no cause for arresting the women, WOW Director of Public Relations Shira Pruce reported.

In a groundbreaking decision, the judge declared that Women of the Wall are not disturbing the public order with their prayers. She said that the disturbance is created by those publicly opposing the women’s prayer, and Women of the Wall should not be blamed for the behavior of others. The women were released immediately, with no conditions.

MKs Tamara Zandberg and Michal Rozin of the left wing Meretz party accompanied the women, to bear witness. Rozin said, “I think this place should be equal for everybody, every Jew, women and men.” Zandberg stated, “We are here to show our identification and solidarity with Women of the Wall. They have been praying here for years now… and we will continue to come here every month, until this place is free.”

“The judge said today what we have been saying for many years: women’s prayer, with talit and even with Torah, is not a disturbance,” said WOW director Lesley Sachs. She added, “We hope that the police will think twice before arresting women mid-prayer at the Western Wall again.”

Four Women of the Wall were detained on Thursday morning as they were engaged in the Rosh Chodesh (first day of the month) prayer at the Western Wall. Police also detained an ultra-Orthodox man and woman, who allegedly burned a prayer book that held by one of the women.

Among those detained was the director of the Women of the Wall organization Leslie Sachs, who said: “This is reminiscent of dark periods in our history when they took away the Jews’ holy words and didn’t let them pray. We want to pray at the Western Wall in the women’s section, as we always have done. It should not bother anyone.”

The five women were detained after violating the rules of the Kotel area and wrapped themselves in talitot. Meretz MKs Tamar Zandberg and Michal Rozin attended the ceremony.

The Jewish Press received the following email from Shira Pruce, Director of Public Relations at Women of the Wall:

I hope that you will join us and send representatives/photographers to our Rosh Hodesh Prayer tomorrow, Thursday April 11, 2013 at 7 AM at the Western Wall. We will be joined by two members of Knesset, MK Tamar Zandberg and MK Michal Rozin (Meretz). While we always hope for a peaceful prayer, the Jerusalem Police have asserted that they will enforce the law to the fullest extent.

Women of the Wall also offered a statement regarding Natan Sharansky’s proposed plans for the Western Wall, which would turn an archaeological site adjacent to the main Western Wall plaza into a permanent place for mixed worship:

“We have not yet received the recommendations from JAFI Director, Natan Sharansky, but we will be happy to respond in full when we see the final proposal. With that, we are hopeful at the possibility of a major advancement in pluralism at the Western Wall.”

The statement continues: “All plans and major changes will take time and resources to be completed. Until then, it is crucial to end the arrest and detainment of all women in acts of prayer at the Western Wall. There is no solution that will unify the Jewish people so long as women can be arrested for wearing prayer shawls and reading from the Torah at the Western Wall, a public holy site in Israel.”

Personally, I have no idea why we, the Jews, are arguing over the back yard of our ancient temple, when the actual Temple Mount is waiting for its rightful owners to come back and reclaim it. We have enough knowledgeable rabbinic scholars who can show us where we may set foot and where we shouldn’t. The rest is up to us. But I’m digressing.

Are Haredi Jews going to accept what is, in effect, a Reform synagogue, next to the Kotel? Is everybody realizing that with the Sharansky proposal we’ll be trading a relatively harmless monthly event for a year-round “egalitarian” prayer area, which is code for Reform?

Also, regarding Shira Pruce’s call for Israeli police to restrain themselves – I pray that they do, but I won’t hold my breath.

Populism is a double edged sword, as likely to stab the politician who brandishes it as it does his targets. Israel’s new Finance Minister Yair Lapid is a case in point. One of the ways Lapid has distinguished himself as a practitioner of “new politics” has been his Facebook presence. Of course, every Israeli politician, with the possible exception of the Haredim, has a robust Facebook presence, but Lapid, formerly a successful journalist and TV host, actually writes his own entries.

It’s been the secret of his success, being one of the people, the ultimate citizen-politician coming to the aid of his country. He spoke ingratiatingly to the “middle class” (in Israel, with its Socialist and classless history, the term is “middle strata”), singing the familiar tune about the most productive chunk of Israeli society, who pay the bulk of the taxes, serve in the military (including reserve duty, well into middle-age) and carry the national burden on their shoulders.

Who were not among those prized citizens? The populist answer that brought in 19 Knesset seats to his brand-new “Yesh Atid” party was simple: The tycoons, who make millions but manage to evade honest taxation with savvy lawyers who know all the loopholes; and the Haredim, who give nothing and just take, take, take.

Mind you, populist messages don’t have to be true, they only have to sound good. In the case of who is to blame for Israel’s inequality in sharing the burden, it should be noted that the local tycoons pay a whole lot more into the state coffers than do their fellow fat cats in the U.S.; and while the Haredim comprise a mere 8 percent of the population, the majority of Israeli Arabs, comprising more than 20 percent, contribute even less. And as to reserve duty, it has been established that residents of the settlements—who are also vilified as an unfair burden on the state budget—comprising 5 percent of the population, shoulder about 30 percent of the reserve duty burden.

Following his celebrated victory in the last (his first) elections, and then following a brutal stretch of coalition negotiations, Lapid landed one of the top three government jobs that aren’t Prime Minister: Foreign Minister (reserved for the embattled Avigdor Liberman), Defense (retained by Likud and given to former IDF chief Moshe Yaalon), and Finance.

Many Israeli pundits surmised that this was a clever trap laid out by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to force Lapid (who fought to get the foreign office) into the worst and most ungrateful spot as the man in charge of the budget (currently in arrears to the tune of $15 billion), or, more accurately, of cutting the budget, and worse yet – of raising taxes. Wouldn’t that tarnish some of this cocky winner’s sheen?

Possibly. The new finance minister was in a bit of a shock after his first encounter with Israel’s budget ailments, which he called “monstrous.” Incidentally, in a world in which the U.S. public debt is estimated at $11.917 trillion, or about 75% of the GDP, going gaga over a puny $15 billion seems a stretch – but Israeli law prohibits a government deficit of more than 3 percent of the budget, which is part of the secret of Israel’s remarkable success, posting a 3 point growth even in 2012 (more than 5 points in 2010).

After his initial, well publicized shock, Lapid’s solution to his Finance job woes was to employ his tried and true, unabashed populism, speaking directly to the voters over the heads of his civil servant experts at the finance ministry. In short, rather than cower before their superior knowledge of economics and markets and all that boring stuff (I’m not making this up, I’m practically quoting verbatim), Minister Lapid forced them into his arena.

Here’s Lapid’s Facebook entry from Monday (while the rest of us were in shul, celebrating the splitting of the Sea of Reeds):

“I want to talk about Mrs. Cohen,” I told senior Treasury officials few days ago.

They paused, surprised.

We were in a large meeting that dealt, as usual, with trying to close the deficit. The long table was littered with cups of long since chilled coffee, and the big screen was showing yet another infinite column of numbers.

“Who is Mrs. Cohen?” someone asked from the far end of the table.

“Ricky Cohen from Hadera,” I explained. “She is 37, a high school teacher. Her husband has a minor hi-tech job and they make together a little over 20 thousand shekel (exactly $5,538.94) a month (or $66,467.28 a year). They own an apartment and they travel abroad every two years, but they have no chance of buying an apartment for any of their three children in the future.”

A few smiles broke through around me.

“We sit here,” I said, “day after day, talking about balancing the budget, but our job is not to balance Excel sheets, but to help Mrs. Cohen.”

“We need to help her,” I continued, “because she is helping us. It’s because of people like Ms. Cohen that our state exists. She represents the Israeli middle class – people who get up in the morning, work hard, pay taxes and do not belong to any interest group, but carry on their backs the Israeli economy. What are we doing for her? Do we remember that we’re her employees?”

The smiles were replaced with thoughtful looks.

“I want us to hold a special meeting about Mrs. Cohen,” I said, “where each of us will suggest how we—as the Ministry of Finance—can help her. I want structure for her programs and reforms to help her make ends meet, to improve the quality of her life, to lower her cost of living, to make her feel that her tax money really works for her.”

Now, that’s well written populism. And it was rewarding to imagine Minister Yair Lapid, in his leather jacket and James Dean hairdo, forcing his Finance bigwigs and wizards not merely to sit through the kind of stump speech one could hear anywhere there was a barn and a bale of hay on the great American prairie, anytime between 1920 and 1928 – he actually made them turn it into a policy discussion. Bravo.

But he who lives by Facebook would most likely die by Facebook. And he who makes populist brownie points using Mrs. Ricky Cohen can end up staring into the unamused gaze of an altogether different Mrs. Ricky Cohen.

“Finance Minister Lapid, look into my eyes and tell me how we get from here to a new reality in Israel? It’s unacceptable that children would come to school hungry,” this Mrs. Ricky Cohen, a social activist and a single mother of five children, said to Lapid through the kind services of a Channel 2 morning show.

She added that, unlike the Mrs. Ricky Cohen from Hadera who vacations abroad every two years, she only dreams of vacationing, and while she’s at it, she’s also dreaming of one day maybe owning a car. Because she only makes 4 thousand shekel a month ($1,107.79, or $13,293.48 annually before taxes).

Lapid’s Facebook entry has been bombarded with mostly angry, make it livid, responses, each one putting the self-made wealthy journalist deeper in his place. It also turned out that with her and her husband’s combined income, Mrs. Ricky Cohen from Hadera is nowhere near Israel’s median, income wise – she is closer to the top 80 percent.

Lapid’s enemies on the left quickly showed him what real populism sounds like.

“The post published by Lapid reveals that our new finance minister has no idea who the Israeli middle class is,” accused Meretz Chairperson MK Zehava Gal-On. “Lapid’s remarks are arrogant and out of touch,” she said.

“It must be that an income of 20 thousand shekels is not a lot of money for Lapid and his millionaire friends,” accused Gal-On’s fellow faction member MK Issawi Farij. “Lapid said today clearly for whom he came to work: for the top 20 percentiles of Israeli society – not for his imaginary Mrs. Cohen from Hadera, but for Mrs. Levy from Ramat Hasharon and Mrs. Berkowitz from Ramat Aviv,” Freij slammed the new finance minister.

I must admit it’s fun to watch Lapid doing his first public stumble in his new job. It’s probably a thousand times more fun to watch if you’re a senior Finance Ministry official who’s just been lectured on your civil service duties by a guy without a high school diploma.

But don’t expect this embarrassing Mrs. Cohen incident to come even near sealing Yair Lapid’s stint as the man who authors Israel’s budget plans. True, his name and both Mrs. Cohens’ will remain forever together on Google, but Lapid has already shown the kind of political skill you don’t get from a high school diploma, and he’s going to learn the lesson and come back with a better thought out tune.

Perhaps a tweet this time.

The headlines roll out, the journalistic warfare continues, and the Jewish State once more is cast in the starring role of “evil, Apartheid empire.”  This time the story is that Israel is forcing the Arab Palestinians to ride separate buses from the ones Jewish Israelis ride.

The reality is exactly the opposite – there are no “Palestinian only” buses. Instead, with its new bus routes, Israel is reducing crowded buses, attempting to relieve ethnic tensions and security concerns, and is assisting Arab Palestinians enter Green Line Israel to work. But we’ll get to the facts – which exonerate Israel from “Apartheid” charges – in a minute. For right now you can rest assured that despite efforts to cast the Arab Palestinians in the role of Rosa Parks, a closer fit would be to cast the purveyors of this latest attack as peddlers of the Big Lie.

First, the hysteria:

One headline, from the magazine formerly known as Newsweek, and now known as – more accurately – the Daily Beast, “West Bank Buses Only the Latest in Israel’s Segregated Public Transport,” and one from the uber-leftist +972, “Israel’ new ‘Palestinian only’ segregated bus line,” and even the Israeli news media outlet YNet fans the flames: “Ministry launches ‘Palestinians only’ buses.”

The claims are exactly as you would expect them, and made by those whom you would suspect.  For example, Jessica Montell is the director of the anti-Israel, pro-Arab B’tselem Rights group. “Creating separate bus lines for Israeli Jews and Palestinians is a revolting plan,” Montell told Army Radio. “This is simply racism.”

And the far-leftist political Meretz party chairwoman Zahava Gal-On reamed Transportation Minister Israel Katz, demanding that he “immediately cancel the segregated lines in the West Bank. Separate bus lines for Palestinians prove that occupation and democracy cannot coexist,” she said.

What are the facts?

HISTORICAL FACTS

First of all, all Israeli citizens are permitted to ride all Israeli transportation vehicles, whether they are Arab, Finnish or Lithuanian, Jewish, Muslim, Christian or Buddhist.

Second, any non-citizen of Israel, just as is the case with every other country in the world, has to show identification when entering Israel’s official borders – it is true for American citizens entering Canada and Mexico, just as it is the case for citizens of the Palestinian Authority who wish to enter Israel.

Third, Israeli citizens who live in Judea and Samaria pay taxes, a portion of which subsidize the transportation infrastructure and vehicles, whereas Arabs who live in the PA towns do not.  In fact, taxes paid by Arabs in Israel are turned over to the PA to support their infrastructure, which includes – or should – transportation services for their residents.

One consequence of the preceding points is that the Israeli bus lines travel from and to all areas in which tax-paying Israeli citizens live – from Jerusalem to Shilo, from Tel Aviv to Efrat, and so forth.  The Israeli bus companies do not stop at, for example, the Arab town of Ramallah, just as they do not stop at non-authorized Jewish towns such as Givat Har-el.

WHAT IS NEW?

The bare fact: the Israeli government added two bus lines (so far, there was overcrowding on Monday, March 4, the first day the service was instituted, and the Transportation Ministry said more buses will likely be added) that will serve Arab Palestinian towns with transportation into central Israel.  The Israeli bus lines previously did not stop in towns controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Despite the efforts of BDS advocates, there are tens of thousands of Arab Palestinians who work in different parts of Israel.  Arab Palestinians with work permits would previously have to travel first to a place where the Israeli buses stop, or would be dependent on the much higher-priced Arab buses to get into central Israel.

So why the hysteria?  Because some see this as an evil plot to segregate Jews and Arabs.  But non-citizens are not entitled to use Israeli public transportation into central Israel without showing border identification, and prior to the provision of these new bus lines, Arab Palestinians were dependent on transportation services by “pirate” (Arab, by the way) companies which charged the Arabs far more than the Israeli lines do.

At last, the Likud-Beitenu coalition negotiations team has pulled the biggest rabbit out of its hat, exposing in the process that on the two-state solution there’s no daylight between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and super-leftist Meretz Chairwoman Zehava Gal-On.

As Yesh Atid negotiators have told the daily Makor Rishon, the Likud-Beitenu team threatened them on Thursday that their political pact with Habayit Hayehudi will end up thwarting the possibility of dismantling Judea and Samaria settlement as part of a future agreement on a Palestinian state.

According to Yair Lapid’s representative at the coalition talks, two Likud reps told them on Thursday: “We’re going towards tough decisions. If you don’t break up your pact with Bennett, we won’t be able to uproot settlements should there be a need for tough decisions. Together – we could do it.”

Makor Rishon noted that a similar statement was attributed to Prime Minister Netanyahu himself during his chat with Yair Lapid immediately after the elections, but it was later denied. Yesterday, Lapid’s people stated unequivocally that they’d heard that same, explicit argument from the Likud-Beitenu team.

Meanwhile, on Thursday the Likud negotiators have enhanced their efforts to bring the Haredi parties into the government, as a means of pressuring the Jewish Home team.

If you detect a note of hysteria in the Likud’s scrambling efforts to cobble together a government, you are not mistaken. On Saturday, Netanyahu is expected to ask President Peres for a two-week extension to be able to continue his efforts, and the White House has not been helping to alleviate the pressure by leaking that President Obama would be staying home to improve his golf game if a new government is not at hand before his visit to the Holy Land.

Naturally, this bodes very well for the Lapid-Bennett team, whose cue at this point is simply to stay the course, don’t flinch, and Netanyahu would have to capitulate.

Better him than the settlements.