This section of the website includes statements, articles, and letters from members of Meretz in Israel. Visit the Meretz-Yachad website by clicking here for English or here for Hebrew.
The Israeli Cabinet's decision to
deport 400 children of foreign workers, many of them born in Israel, has caused
a stir in the country, and beyond, including criticism from Holocaust survivor
and Nobel laureate Elie
Wiesel.
Although the decision represents a reduction from the 1,200
originally slated for expulsion, opponents of the move, such as Meretz chair, Haim Oron, argue that the number is still 400 too
many:
Still smarting from the drubbing it received at the polls in
the February 2009 elections, Israel's New Movement-Meretz party has marked the
summer of 2010 as its time of renewal.
Spearheading a membership drive that ends on August 30,
Meretz leaders - including MKs Chaim Oron, Nitzan Horowitz and Ilan Gilon, and
former MKs Naomi Chazan, Abu Vilan and Mossi Raz - have been crisscrossing the
country, addressing crowds large and small, seeking to solidify the party's
base and re-grow its rank and file.
It won't be easy, but it's crucial that the party succeed,
since Meretz today represents the last true bastion of progressive Zionism in
Israel's Knesset (notwithstanding the smattering of progressives in Labor and
Kadima).
New Movement-Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz has presented a new bill that would amend the "Holy Places Law" and allow for tolerance and pluralism at the Kotel, the Western Wall, among all streams of Jewish practice.
Today the Knesset plenum witnessed an embarrassing display. The most important arena for public debate in
Israel became an arena for brawling and verbal abuse.
Last week, Kadima MK Yulia Shamalov Berkovich introduced an urgent motion to the Knesset plenum, accusing "organizations supported by the New Israel Fund" of, "treasonous behavior", "involvement in subversive activity against ... officers in the Israel Defense Forces," and, "making common cause with our greatest enemies to realize their goal - the obliteration of Zionism". The Kadima MK compared the NIF to the Nazis ("we won't go like sheep to the slaughter").
Knesset members from the Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu, National Union, and United Torah Judaism parties joined the ominous chorus.
New Movement-Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz rose to an impassioned defense of the New Israel Fund. Comparing the Knesset members' attacks to a "witch hunt", he said:
The Meretz party's Knesset faction will be submitting a motion of no-confidence in the Netanyahu government over its ongoing massive construction in East Jerusalem. This week, Israel authorized the construction of 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem's Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, creating a diplomatic crisis during the visit of US Vice President Biden. The Meretz faction termed the Netanyahu government's moves, "the policy of a pyromaniac".
Meretz chair, MK Haim Oron, attacked the government in a press release: "This is an inebriated government ["Adloyada government", in Hebrew], which, by its own hand, is making a dangerous mockery of its professed desire to renew diplomacy."
The Meretz party's electronic bulletin this week boasted, sadly, that Meretz is the only party in Israel that has been united in defense of Israeli democracy, following the attack on the New Israel Fund and its President, Naomi Chazan. Here are sections of the bulletin:
This week, we mark a full year since the Knesset elections that dealt us a sharp blow. The McCarthyist campaign of lies and hatred of the last two weeks against the New Israel Fund and ... its President, Naomi Chazan, clarified the meaning of last year's election results: A dangerous and frightening erosion of democracy in Israel.
Meretz chair, MK Haim Oron, has called on Israel's Minister of Public Security to release from jail the protesters who demonstrated against Israeli settlement activity in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
Asking the Public Security Minister to defend their freedom of expression, Oron complained that, "each and every week, demonstrators from the Left are prevented from expressing a legitimate protest, while demonstrators from the Right, who are crassly and wildly violating government decisions, are being indulged."
Click here to read more about the issue in YNet. Click here to see this item on the Meretz party website.
The Meretz party has submitted a motion of no-confidence in the Binyamin Netanyahu government. This came after his Cabinet revised Israel’s list of “national priority zones” on Sunday to include more West Bank settlements. Inclusion within a ‘priority zone’ guarantees preferential governmental treatment and tax incentives for education, housing, infrastructure and employment. Over ¾ of all West Bank settlements will now be eligible for this treatment.
In a recent op-ed, Meretz party chair, MK Haim Oron, termed the Israeli government's 10-month freeze of new West Bank construction (excluding East Jerusalem and construction already underway) a "minor" development that was "too little and too late" and apparently born of Netanyahu's tactic of "playing for time".
The Israeli Cabinet's 
New Movement-Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz has presented a new bill that would amend the "
The Meretz party's Knesset faction will be submitting a motion of no-confidence in the Netanyahu government over its ongoing massive construction in East Jerusalem. This week, Israel authorized the construction of 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem's Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, creating a diplomatic crisis during the visit of US Vice President Biden. The Meretz faction termed the Netanyahu government's moves, "the policy of a pyromaniac".
The Meretz party's electronic bulletin this week boasted, sadly, that Meretz is the only party in Israel that has been united in defense of Israeli democracy, following the attack on the New Israel Fund and its President, Naomi Chazan. Here are sections of the bulletin:
Meretz chair, MK Haim Oron, has called on Israel's Minister of Public Security to release from jail the protesters who demonstrated against Israeli settlement activity in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. 
In a recent op-ed, Meretz party chair, MK Haim Oron, termed the Israeli government's 10-month freeze of new West Bank construction (excluding East Jerusalem and construction already underway) a "minor" development that was "too little and too late" and apparently born of Netanyahu's tactic of "playing for time". 
