It should be noted that this douche is the most senior appointee in the Health Ministry for the Netanyahu government.

Namecalling, Jason? For this? Come on.
You got your free punch at bibi. You finished, buddy?
Feygele, I agree it’s moronic, but it’s also so ridiculously pathetic to have to post this as some sort of weird story indicative of Israel, or for me to leave a comment on the post of a story like this… ugh… i’m gonna take a shower.
There are problems in the world.
Let’s get a move on em.

Come on. This guy has no experience as a public health official, no experience in medicine, and no experience with epidemics or pandemics. He’s a UTJ MK who was appointed to the post as part of coalition negotiations between Likkud and UTJ. His main experience is as the head of a yeshiva and as the Gerrer Rebbe’s right hand man.
The reporter may not have done a good job of drawing the proper connection, but it’s pretty clear that this guy has decided to change the name of a flu virus because swine are treif.
And this is what happens when you elect a guy who lets UTJ hold seats like deputy health minister. Maybe they should be working harder on keeping the virus out of Israel then on whether or not it’s named after a treif animal.

ML–
Move to Israel and vote for better candidates then. Israel would be a much, much better place if 100,000 people who think like you would move there…but you won’t…so things won’t change.

the flu came from California (US) just to clear that up

It gets better.
It also brings up the issue putting a man who can?t say the word “vagina” in charge of a ministry that supervises gynecological issues. How can a man whose usage of the Hebrew language is governed by his own interpretation of Jewish law deal with issues like teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, or post-natal care for women?
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasen/spages/1081546.html

http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasen/spages/1081546.html

For everyone’s information, the European Commission is now referring to this as the “Mexican flu”.

I wrote a blog connected to this issue at:http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/conservative/entry/rabbis_running_our_government_god
You who blame the Deputy Health Minister (since he is non-Zionist he refuses to be an actual Minister) know not what you do.
In Judaism we have a concept of “Tinok Sh”Nishba.” The Deputy Minister grew up in an environment that denied him the ability to think critically about complex issues that go beyond Talmudic discussion.
Can we fault him for his lacking education and his desire to keep the rest of Israel in the dark ages?
Two main things effect a person – genetics and environment. His parents provided both. Let us blame them. 🙂

Jonathan1: I’d love to but my (Jewish) fiancee quite likes her job here (educating young Jews) and the house we’re purchasing.
I’ll readily admit that Americans have our fare share of loonies in government as well. I say the same things about my friends across town in regards to their US rep.

Somehow this reminds me of freedom fries, freedom toast, freedom bread, freedom wine, bus tour of freedom, etc.

Sorry – don’t know how to put in quotes.
AP: U.S. officials said Tuesday they may abandon the term swine flu, for fear it’s confusing people into thinking they could catch it from pork — which is flat-out wrong.
Fox: U.S. officials trying to contain the swine flu are now trying to contain the use of the phrase “swine flu” itself.
At a briefing with reporters Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack pleaded with the media and others to start identifying the illness as “H1N1 flu.”
“This really isn’t swine [flu], it’s H1N1 virus,” said Vilsack, referring to the strain’s scientific classification. “And it is significant because there are a lot of hard-working families whose livelihood depends on us conveying this message.”

Firouz,
I officially condemn the official(s) for you! Is that good enough?
Do you have a name? And was it an administration official or a representative from the Swine lobby?
I still think it’s less than desirable having an MK from UTJ administer the Health Dept., but to each his own.

jonathan
your comment on why i don’t want american jews to come to israel is condescending and false. I hope you are not a psycologist.
Maybe MK would be a terrible Israeli. Baruch Goldstein was an American immigrant and so is half of the Jewish community in Hebron. I owuld take our crazy deputy minister of health over them any day.
Many american immigrants into this country have in, my opinion, hurt this country’s democracy greatly (and others have helped) Why do you think that this place would be better if more americans would come by virtue of them being americans? You are the patronyzing one.
Stop telling people to come to our country just because they can. Do you live in Israel? If not, don’t promote mass migration into my country.

And, to disagree, almost every American Jew I have met is nothing like the crazies in Hebron…they are much more like ML, KFJ, Justin, et al….personally, I think Israel would be a much better place if those types of people were citizens…but, as a whole, American Jews don’t move to Israel.

Americans… sabras… I’ll tell you this, a Soviet emigre friend of mine who is an “up and coming” mid-level administrator at the Jewish Agency swears that Russian Jews built Israel, and everyone else has done nothing but leech off that work.
“If only everyone else thought like me,” we all say to ourselves, “Israel would be perfect.” Well, no one else thinks exactly like you, and so long as we can make free choices, no one will. You can deal with this in two ways, create a system to force others to submit to your way of thinking, or be a normal person who accepts the differences of others.
Jonathan, I didn’t ask you when you realized that settlers need to be ethnically cleansed by force to pry at your private life. I wanted to understand what in your life led you to conclude that forcing Jews out of their homes at the point of a gun was acceptable. I thought maybe there was something – an incident, a moment of clarity… It’s one thing to say, let’s set Israel’s borders and whoever doesn’t want to come over to our side of the line can live with the Palestinians. But to forcibly expel people, our own people… why is me trying to understand your thought process considered beyond the bounds of a reasonable conversation?
More importantly, why did it bother you so much that you still remember my question three weeks later?

I absolutely do think that forcing Jews out of their homes at the point of a gun is acceptable–let there be no confusion about that…
There never was. What you never explained was how you arrived at such a conclusion. In fact, that’s the part you first refused to address, and then disparaged as an inappropriate intrusion into your personal life.
You desire to ethnically cleanse Jews. What would be the point of criticizing you? All I can do is cry. I’m just trying to understand how you arrived at such a conclusion.

Firouz–I’ll answer you at that other blog later today. Believe me, I cry for you if you think that the Jews should stay in Judea and Samaria
Yael–You can criticize me and make psychological remarks on anything I’ve written; if you don’t want pschological spins made about personal remarks don’t explicitly state, in every Israel-related post, that you live in Israel.

jeez i give up

This is nuts, huh Firouz?
Ok, I can’t find that other blog so I’ll try to answer you here:
Zionism, to me, means the attempt to create a Jewish sovereignty in our historical homeland. It means trying to create a society for Jews built on socialism, a society that can create some common language between “religious” and “secular”; a society that cares for the physical environment; a society that values scientific innovation; a society that values honesty in business and politics…to me, such an Israel would be a kiddush HaShem…but to get to that kind of Jewish sovereignty we have to ensure that most of the people in Israel are Jews. We have to ensure that we don’t spend another generation holding another people down under a military occupation. Look at the direction in which Israel is headed now versus the 1970’s, when Gush Emunim took off. It’s not the only reason, but there is a connection. Maybe for you Zionism means something else totally. There is no way to judge what is right or wrong with this.
So, what’s the only answer according to my Zionism?: We need to divide the land between the River and Sea into two political entities–Israel and Palestine. The partition should be based on demographics as much as possible.
That means that most, if not all, of the Jews currently living in Judea, Samaria, and parts of Jerusalem will have to move. That’s the only way.
“It’s one thing to say, let’s set Israel’s borders and whoever doesn’t want to come over to our side of the line can live with the Palestinians.”
Really? Even if the Palestinians were to agree to this, are there actually such settlers? Rabbi Fruman is the only one I can think of who might agree to such an arangement. Maybe you know of others? The community in Betar Illit? Who are you talking about? I guess that makes sence then. If those Jews want to stay in Palestine and trade their Israeli citizenship for Palestinian, and agree to turn over all weapons, and agree to abide by Palestinian law, etc. they should definitely be able to stay.
Otherwise, they’ll have to move.
” Jews out of their homes at the point of a gun was acceptable”
But why should anybody need to point a gun? Maybe this time, if that day arrives, the Jews in Judea and Samaria will cooperate with the authorities and leave the moment that the police knock on the door, as Rav Aviner stated. Maybe they’ll act like adults this time.
Maybe the national-religious community can return to what it was when Yoseph Burg was running the NRP?
Since it seems to be of great interest to you, btw, I’ll tell you when it really became obvious to me that the national-religious community has lost its way: It was when I was in the Israeli army in the summer of 2005. It was listening, for months, to representatives from Gush Katif insist that HaShem would stop the Disengagement, and hearing how they refused to cooperatate at all with the authorities in terms of compensation plans and job retraining. It was having a rare few days off in Jerusalem, and being stuck in the bus station there because two soldiers had placed a fake bomb, inscribed with the words “the Disengagement will blow up in our face” in a bathroom. It was hearing kippah-wearing soldiers joke about wishing Sharon dead. It was seeing the furor over Rav Aviner’s statement about leaving the second that the police arrive. It was watching parents shove their screaming babies into the arms of 19-year-old female-soldiers and yell “hear, expel him, this is what you want!” It was watching families leave their homes hands raised, calling border police Nazis–as if moving from one home to another in the Land of Israel, with hundreds of thousands of sheckels in their pockets had they wanted, is the same thing as being gassed to death. It was having teenages boys pelt me with stones and later explain to me that my problem is I’m an Israeli but not a Jew. It was hearing about Elazar Stern’s family being attacked at the Kotel, and how the police there had to rush to save them from a Jewish mob….those were the days.

Jonathan, thank you. I’d rather not comment on what you’ve written, except to say that I much prefer your words above to the usual linguistic trench warfare that is more typical of blogging.

Jonathan, related to what you just wrote, you may be interested in the following post on Jewlicious. The comment section is infinitely better than the post, as it brings in a true spectrum of Jewry, from wacko lefties to hard core settlers, and everything in between.

How have you been vindicated exactly?
One of the top doctors at Medical College of Wisconsin is a hassidic Jew and respected expert in medical halacha. The only thing you’ve convinced us of is that you don’t understand what halacha is and what role it serves.