SPOTLIGHT ON THE PERES GOVERNMENT ...Education Minister Amnon Rubinstein, speaking at the Tel Aviv Commerce and Industry Club on November 10, declared that he "does not consider Rabbi Moshe Levinger to be a rabbi or a Jew"... ...Yossi Sarid, Minister of Environmental Affairs, was furious when he heard that the directors of a campus clean-up project at Bar-Ilan University had advertised solely for workers who had completed their Army service. Sarid publicly charged that such a requirement was "racist" and vowed to deny the University future work contracts. Two days later, it turned out that Sarid had put his foot in his mouth once again: the campus clean-up job also included performing cleaning services at several Israeli Army bases, and it was the Army which had ordered the project coordinators to hire only those individuals who had completed their Army service. "A government minister should check the facts before attacking us in the newspapers," a student leader remarked... ..Shimon Peres explained to Israel Television, in November, his negotiating method: "Every offer which exists, dies. It is always necessary to come with new proposals to bridge the gap. What [proposal] already

exists, brings up opposition which already exists"... ...Shortly before his appointment as Foreign Minister, Ehud Barak declared that the government must "pulverize the extremists"... ...Likud MK Benny Begin has filed a complaint with the Knesset Ethics Committee following a threat by Industry and Trade Minister Micha Harish that "If the Likud lifts up its head, we will not be quiet and we will blame Netanyahu for the murder [of Rabin]"... ....The Laborite chairman of the Jewish Agency, Avraham Burg, commenting on the fact that Rabin's assassin was a student at Bar-Ilan University, declared that "a direct line runs from Teheran to Bar-Ilan University"... ..Cabinet minister Yossi Beilin told the Israeli daily Ha'aretz on October 24 that "in return for recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel the Arab residents of the city must receive Palestinian sovereignty"... ..."Inciting" bumper stickers should be outlawed, Labor's Knesset Speaker, MK Shevah Weiss, told Israel Radio on November 8. As examples of stickers that should be banned, Weiss cited those bearing the slogans "Nightmarish Peace," "Hebron, From Days of Yore and Forever," and "Rabin Does Not Have a Mandate"...

December 1995               - 11 -               Outpost