The Mess in Israel...Quebec's Infantile Premier. Wah, Wah, Wah...It's The Old Clock Trick...

The mess in Israel is at the bottom of this blog. While it's on the long side, we encourage you to read it to get a smidgeon of understanding as to what is going to happen in Israel in the next few weeks or months. It is truly off the wall.

The Canada–EU Summit is taking place in Montreal today and tomorrow. The last Canada-EU summit took place in Brussels, Belgium, on June 23, 2025.

As noted, this time we are the host city. This is not a quebec/Canada issue. This is a simply a summit or conference, like other conferences that take place in Montreal. It is to be noted that Montreal is a favorite city to hold such summits are we are both safe and charming.

Alas, our new premier has already decided that Quebec is its own country. Yes, you read that correctly. A referendum is merely a formality. And apparently, he decided this all on his own. Voting about this is not in his lexicon.

As such, Mr. Plamondon feels that he was snubbed by not being allowed to address the general summit. After all, according to him the summit is taking place in the country of quebec.

He got quite a wake-up call when he was told by Carney that no, he's not speaking.

What did the premier, the head of quebec do? He had a massive temper tantrum. Unlike children who have such tantrums, Plamondon not only stamped his feet, he also took to social media whining and complaining.

Carney, who we do not like, played his cards perfectly. He offered Plamondon a seat at the official dinner right beside him. That was not enough for Plamondon and he decided to forego the entire summit.

Can we talk? As Carney correctly said, if you are not at the table, which Plamondon was offered, then you are on the menu. Loosely translated it means that if you aren’t involved in making decisions, others will make them at your expense.

One has to wonder exactly how big a fool Plamondon is. Montreal and by extension Quebec was chosen as the venue to hold this summit. It has less than nothing to do with him as the premier. He's a host and like all good hosts he should have warmly welcomed everyone to his city.

Instead he became the laughing stock of the rest of the world. Wah, wah, wah.

There is a big gefufelment about changing the clocks, which we are doing this Saturday night.

Let's start with the definition: Daylight saving time begins in the spring when we move clocks forward one hour. Standard time returns in the fall when we move clocks back one hour.

If we stayed with daylight time all year, which it appears this government wants to do, the result would be sunrise around late December roughly 8:30–8:35 a.m., instead of 7:30–7:35 a.m. under standard time.

The trade-off would be sunset around 5:15 p.m. instead of 4:15 p.m. So you’d gain evening light but have much darker mornings.

Winter would stay as it is now. Summer sunrise and sunset would both be one hour earlier. If sunset is now at 9 p.m., it would be at 8 p.m. Mornings would get light earlier, and evenings would get dark earlier. So we would have exactly the same amount of daylight, just different times on the clock.

Personally, waiting until 8:35 for the sun to rise in the morning is simply awful. And all we gain is one hour in the afternoon? Not worth it.

Bell is doing the backstroke very vigorously.

Someone went on a trip to Israel and while in Jerusalem received this message from Bell: Welcome to Palestine.

Here are two headlines:

The first is that, for the hundreth time, palestine does not exist. Israel was called palestine before 1948. After that, it was Israel. Period.

Palestine is a figment of yasar arafat's imagination and proves the adage that if you tell a lie long enough, people will believe you.

The next headline is that somebody had to enter that text and someone in Bell had to have seen it and approved it.

If people are referring to gaza as palestine, good luck to you. gaza is a rat/terrorist-infested blight on the world. It serves no purpose other than to train islamist men to kill, mostly Jews, but also their own people. Cross them and you are a dead man walking.

Back to Bell. They have less than no business making any political statement. Zero. Take care of the phone business and shut the f up.

There was a very scary home invasion in Toronto during the night. Around 3:45 am, three men broke into a very expensive, very well protected home. After what must have been a terrifying struggle, the husband and his two daughters were shot and the mother was hit with a hammer.

The Bridal Path, where this took place, is the most expensive area in Canada to own a home. They range from $10 million upwards.

So far, nobody has said if this was random or the perpetrators knew the victims. It appears that it was a try to find jewels and money in a very rich neighborhood.

Either way, home invasions in Canada are mercifully few and far between. We hope and pray that everyone survives their injuries and those who did this are caught and sent to jail for decades.

And now...

The word mess is an understatement when trying to understand what is happening in Israel now. One thing was made abundantly clear on election night: People lied at the exit polls when asked who they voted for. They simply were afraid to say it was Netanyahu.

61 seats are needed for a majority government. So even though Bibi got 53, which was more than was expected, in the last election he got 68 seats, so he clearly lost ground but did better than the polls predicted.

To really dig into this mess, we read a very long but very comprehensive article in the Free Press. Here's one small part of it, which will give you a clear understanding of what exactly is going to happen in Israel over the next few weeks:

Israelis don’t vote for an executive branch or a prime minister. They vote for a party, and the parties then negotiate among themselves to form a parliamentary majority. In Israel’s case, a governing coalition needs 61 seats in the Knesset. Once a majority is secured, the coalition can vote in a government.

Netanyahu could form a minority government if 53 seats voted for him, 48 voted against him and, for some reason, the Arab parties abstained. But the Arab parties, which are diametrically opposed to Netanyahu, won’t do that. So he has no path to a governing majority unless he pulls people over from the Eisenkot coalition.

Had Eisenkot's Yashar party finished first, he could have demanded a rotation agreement.

And here's where the real complications start:

A rotation agreement is a deal in which two political leaders agree to take turns serving as prime minister during the same government’s term.

For example, Eisenkot could serve as prime minister for the first two years, then Netanyahu would take over for the next two years if that were their agreement.

But Eisenkot would have needed a stronger election result to demand the first turn. With Netanyahu ahead, Netanyahu has more power to dictate the terms.

Now add the Arab parties’ unexpectedly strong showing to an already tangled coalition picture.

Their seats complicate the arithmetic: the major Zionist parties are reluctant to bring them into government, citing their positions on Israel as a Jewish state and, in some cases, their refusal to designate Hamas a terrorist organization. More seats for the Arab parties can therefore mean fewer workable options for forming a government.

And the final nail in this coffin. President Herzog must ask either Bibi or Eisenkot to form a coalition but...

The candidate that Herzog chooses has 28 days to form a coaltion. The president can grant an extension of up to 14 additional days. If the candidate still hasn’t formed a government after that, a maximum of 42 days, the president can choose a second candidate, who gets 28 days with no extension. Wait, we're not done.

If the second candidate also fails, lawmakers have 21 days to rally at least 61 Knesset members behind a candidate. That candidate then gets 14 days to form a government. If no candidate wins that backing, or the final attempt fails, the Knesset is dissolved and another election is held 90 days later.

This is a total of 200 days.

Dizzy? At least you have an inkling was to what is going on in the backrooms. One thing we can say with certainty: Nobody is sleeping.

Update: We have read that the arab vote, which was very unusually high, could have come as a result of illegal payments to people to go and vote. As of this writing, we cannot verify if this is accurate.

Good Shabbos

We'll talk...