Sukkot, Another High Holiday Following Others

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

This says "Chag Sukkot Samayakh or Happy Sukkot!  It's in cursive Hebrew;   the way people write Hebrew.  The roof is shaded but opened up to the sky.  
  

"The holiday of Sukkot begins tonight, last for 7 days and is followed by the holiday of Shmini Atzeret – Simchat Torah (which share one day in Israel and are 2 days everywhere else). During Sukkot Jews live (eat and sleep) in a hut-like structure called a Sukkah.  

The only time I experienced a Sukkah was when I lived in Israel from 1980 to the end of 1985.  It seems that as soon as Yom Kippur was over with, Sukkah plans started by everyone.  Sukkahs were created by everyone.  A prize was given to the best Sukkah by the towns.  Schools were on vacation and we spent time visiting friends in their Sukkahs and eating cookies and drinking tea.  The sides of the Sukkahs were usually made of brightly colored blankets or rugs.  People slept in them. Our leader in this was our 13 year old neighbors who was fatherless, and had adopted Danny and directed him in all this.  It was a great experience for all. 

The Talmud states two reasons for the mitzvah of living in the Sukkah for seven days.

The first is to commemorate that our ancestors dwelled in Sukkahs in the wilderness. The second is to remember the “clouds of glory” that surrounded and protected the Jews in the desert. The Talmud seems to lean towards the second explanation. If this is the case, then why do we use a hut to represent the clouds? Wouldn’t it make more sense for us to live out in the open air, under the clouds? Wouldn’t that give us more of a feeling of complete dependence on the protection given us by God?

Although, in truth, living out “under the clouds” does starkly represent total dependence on God, real life isn’t as clear cut. We all try to build structures to provide us with security and protection. We live in these structures and feel safe and in control. We view these structures as permanent and without them we could not function. The reality, however, is that our structures are really just flimsy huts that create for us the illusion of permanence and security. They fall apart when we least expect them too.

The Sukkah that we live in for seven days reminds us that our own structures of security – our houses, careers, social status – are just temporary. They last for a week, a month, a year, several years, but are then taken down. The Sukkah reminds us that our real security and protection comes not from the walls that we build but from the graces of God.

May we all be blessed with the wisdom to differentiate between the security that is true and comes only from God and the false security of the hut that just looks real, but is only an illusion.     

"Rachel Neiman wrote, "We can only imagine what life might have been like for the Children of Israel, as they wandered the desert for 40 years following the exodus from Egypt. Or maybe we don’t have to imagine.

The desert traveled by the Israelites exists to this day. And each year, Jews relive their experience by housing themselves temporarily in open-roofed booths during the holiday of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles."                        

            A late 19th century Bedouin tent as captured by the Bonfils Studio."

Resource:

Israel am News.  

Stanley Goldfoot and The Times of Israel Remembered

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

This is my 3rd cousin, Stanley Goldfoot.  When I made aliyah in 1980, the first thing I did was search for him in the telephone directory and found him.  We met at the King David Hotel.  I was lucky enough to meet him several times after that at his lovely home in Jerusalem. We had an intermediary 2nd cousin of mine, Ian Goldfoot, who was closer to Stanley that I've also met.  They both were from South Africa.  It appears my grandfather was the only one to opt for the USA after their Dublin, Ireland residence after Telsiai, Lithuania.   

On November 24, 2006 at the age of 92, Stanley Goldfoot  passed away, but his memory and his words are truly for a blessing.  His dream was to establish a Zionist English newspaper in Israel, called “The Times of Israel”.  In his first issue he wrote words that are as relevant today as when they were first written – perhaps even more so.  It is there he placed his essay, Letter to the World.  So wrote Jack Berger of the Times of Israel.  

Jack Yehoshua Berger remembered his words, and added his thoughts updating Stanley's letter, calling it Jerusalem 2019.

With further digging, I found what I was looking for;  proof that Stanley started The Times of Israel.

The story begins in early April 1968 as United Nations journalist David Horowitz departed for Israel. This was to be his 10th visit and his first since the Six-Day War. Among the many items on a busy agenda was a scheduled meeting with leaders of The Israeli World Union for the Propagation of Judaism. There was however, another important meeting on Horowitz’s agenda, one with another fellow journalist with a storied past.

1968: UIWU turns 25 and Horowitz meets with legendary Zionist Stanley Goldfoot.

 

Horowitz had founded United Israel World Union in the mid nineteen-forties as well as the World Union Press to produce the regular issues of the United Israel Bulletin. His scheduled appointment was with Stanley Goldfoot, a journalist turned publisher-editor of a projected new Israeli English daily that Goldfoot wanted to call The Times of Israel. He needed Horowitz’s input and advice.

Goldfoot was born in May of 1914 in Johannesburg South Africa to Sarah, a descendant of the Mayor of Liverpool, and Shimon, born in Vilnius and a direct descendant of Rabbi Eliahu, the Gaon of Vilna. He studied at King Edward School. In 1933 he made aliyah to Palestine illegally. He felt the genetic legacy of Zionism, inherited from the Gaon of Vilna, pushing him to come to Eretz (the land) Israel. There he joined Kibbutz Degania.......By the end of 1968, The Times of Israel was launched by Stanley Goldfoot and co-operator Dr. Yisrael Eldad. It reached a circulation of approximately 50,000 copies in the US and Israel before it folded after seven years of publication. That means it ended in 1975.  

"Fast forward to the year 2012. Social media had come of age in less than a generation. EMarketer, a reliable market research company, predicted there would be a massive 1.43 billion social network users, representing a 19 percent increase over 2011 figures. Social media platforms were springing up worldwide. One was a new online newspaper with an old familiar name: The Times of Israel."

                 Stanley Goldfoot; LEHI ALIAS: Yiermiahu

Stanley was Chief of Intelligence for "The Stern Group."  

"This reincarnation of an older news daily has enjoyed steady growth and success. Along with its original English-language site, The Times of Israel now publishes in Arabic, French, and Persian editions. In May 2019, it launched a Hebrew news site, Zman Yisrael. By the end of 2021, the paper had on average over 9 million unique users each month and over 35 million monthly page views".

Ralph Buntyn is executive vice president and associate editor of United Israel World Union. An author, historian and researcher, his many articles and essays have appeared in various media outlets. He's the author of The Times of Israel, Acts I and II.  

Jack Berger had recognized that Stanley started "The Times of Israel," a fact the newspaper has not acknowledged in my searches about their history. Jack has a blog on today's Times of Israel.  

 

Resource:

https://unitedisraelworldunion.com/the-times-of-israel-acts-i-and-ii/excellent information in agreement with what he told me....

Genesis 1948 by Dan Kurzman; p. 557, 561, 564, 568 on Stanley Goldfoothttps://www.bethrishon.org/post/yiddish-historian-jack-berger-connects-with-polish-familyhttps://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-letter-to-the-world-from-jerusalem-2019/https://www.jewishpress.com/author/yehoshuaberger/

https://womeningreen.org/a-jewish-hero-in-our-time/

LETTER TO THE WORLD from Stanley Goldfoot "Eliezer ben Yisrael"

Stanley  Goldfoot                                     

               Stanley with his family at an Israeli beach  I first met my cousin Stanley at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.  After that, we met at his home in Jerusalem. This was after September 1980.  This picture is earlier.  By Eliezer Ben Yisrael- aka Stanley Goldfoot  Monday, May 12 2008 @ 12:54 CDTContributed by: JDLViews: 397

The following was written by Stanley Goldfoot,my 3rd cousin,  using the pseudonym Eliezer Ben Yisrael. Goldfoot, a Jew from South Africa who emigrated to Eretz Yisrael after hearing a speech by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, published this poem in the first issue of his English language newspaper, The Times of Israel, in June 1967. Goldfoot passed away in 2006, at the age of 92. His words live on today, and they will live on forever and ever. . . .                                                

Stanley and his wife of Jerusalem:  Born in South Africa, Stanley graduated high school and then made aliyah to Israel. He became Chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group in Israel's first days. In his years before 1980, he spoke in many places; football field-sized stadiums.               

                  Letter to the World from Jerusalem                                  I am not a creature from another planet, as you seem to believe. I am a Jerusalemite -- like yourselves, a man of flesh and blood.  I am a citizen of my city, an integral part of my people.  I have a few things to get off my chest. Because I am not a diplomat, I do not have to mince words. I do not have to please you, or even persuade you. I owe you nothing. You did not build this city; you did not live in it; you did not defend it when they came to destroy it. And we will be damned if we will let you take it away.                                   

 There was a Jerusalem before there was a New York. When Berlin, Moscow, London, and Paris were miasmal forest and swamp, there was a thriving Jewish community here. It gave something to the world which you nations have rejected ever since you established yourselves -- a humane moral code.  Here the prophets walked, their words flashing like forked lightning.                       

 Here a people who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, fought off waves of heathen would-be conquerors, bled and died on the battlements, hurled themselves into the flames of their burning Temple rather than surrender, and when finally overwhelmed by sheer numbers and led away into captivity, swore that before they forgot Jerusalem, they would see their tongues cleave to their palates, their right arms wither.                                     

For two pain-filled millennia, while we were your unwelcome guests, we prayed daily to return to this city. Three times a day we petitioned the Almighty: "Gather us from the four corners of the world, bring us upright to our land; return in mercy to Jerusalem, Thy city, and dwell in it as Thou promised. "On every Yom Kippur and Passover, we fervently voiced the hope that next year would find us in Jerusalem. 

                                                   

Your inquisitions, pogroms, expulsions, the ghettos into which you jammed us, your forced baptisms, your quota systems, your genteel anti-Semitism, and the final unspeakable horror, the Holocaust (and worse, your terrifying disinterest in it) -- all these have not broken us. They may have sapped what little moral strength you still possessed, but they forged us into steel. Do you think that you can break us now after all we have been through? Do you really believe that after Dachau and Auschwitz we are frightened by your threats of blockades and sanctions? We have been to Hell and back -- a Hell of your making. What more could you possibly have in your arsenal that could scare us? 

                                             

I have watched this city bombarded twice by nations calling themselves civilized. In 1948, while you looked on apathetically, I saw women and children blown to smithereens, after we agreed to your request to inter-nationalize the city. It was a deadly combination that did the job: British officers, Arab gunners, and American-made cannons. 

                                              

      Jews fleeing from Old City of Jerusalem

And then the savage sacking of the Old City, the willful slaughter, the wanton destruction of every synagogue and religious school; the desecration of Jewish cemeteries; the sale by a ghoulish government of tombstones for building materials, for poultry runs, army camps -- even latrines. And you never said a word. You never breathed the slightest protest when the Jordanians shut off the holiest of our places, the Western Wall, in violation of the pledges they had made after the war -- a war they waged, incidentally, against the decision of the UN. 

Not a murmur came from you whenever the legionnaires in their spiked helmets casually opened fire upon our citizens from behind the walls. Your hearts bled when Berlin came under siege. You rushed your airlift "to save the gallant Berliners." But you did not send one ounce of food when Jews starved in besieged Jerusalem. You thundered against the wall which the East Germans ran through the middle of the German capital -- but not one peep out of you about that other wall, the one that tore through the heart of Jerusalem. 

       Arabs attacking synagogue

And when that same thing happened 20 years later, and the Arabs unleashed a savage, unprovoked bombardment of the Holy City again, did any of you do anything? The only time you came to life was when the city was at last reunited. Then you wrung your hands and spoke loftily of "justice" and need for the "Christian" quality of turning the other cheek. The truth is -- and you know it deep inside your gut -- you would prefer the city to be destroyed rather than have it governed by Jews. No matter how diplomatically you phrase it, the age-old prejudices seep out of every word. If our return to the city has tied your theology in knots, perhaps you had better reexamine your catechisms. After what we have been through, we are not passively going to accommodate ourselves to the twisted idea that we are to suffer eternal homelessness until we accept your savior.                          

For the first time since the year 70 there is now complete religious freedom for all in Jerusalem. For the first time since the Romans put a torch to the Temple everyone has equal rights. (You prefer to have some more equal than others.)We loathe the sword -- but it was you who forced us to take it up. We crave peace -- but we are not going back to the peace of 1948 as you would like us to. 

                                                

We are home. It has a lovely sound for a nation you have willed to wander over the face of the globe. We are not leaving. We are redeeming the pledge made by our forefathers: Jerusalem is being rebuilt. "Next year" and the year after, and after, and after, until the end of time -- "in Jerusalem!"

Reference: Jewish Defense League

Why 1924 Jewish Immigration to USA was Slowed Down So Much

 Nadene Goldfoot                                       

  The idea of the United States as a nation of immigrants is at the core of the American narrative. But in 1924, Congress instituted a system of ethnic quotas so stringent that it choked off large-scale immigration for decades, sharply curtailing arrivals from southern and eastern Europe (Jews)  and outright banning those from nearly all of Asia.

The population of the USA in 1924 was 114,109,000.  

By 1930's, USA population was 131,669,000 of which 4,850,000 were Jewish.  

As it was, look at the typical case of Werner Oster who immigrated from Germany May 4-12, 1939, probably the last Jew out.  He had to have an American sponsor to be responsible for any finances.  My great uncle Max Turn took that upon himself and got Werner a job with my father who was just starting his own business.  Otherwise, Werner couldn't have entered or stayed in the USA.  He had arrived on the SS Washington at age 22. Werner married my father's sister, becoming my uncle. 

         Jewish refugees about the St. Louis Wikimedia Commons  Most notoriously, in June 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish, were turned away from the port of Miami, forcing the ship to return to Europe; more than a quarter died in the Holocaust.

It must be that a Jewish organization sponsored getting Jews into the USA.  In a long tradition of “persecuting the refugee,” the State Department and FDR claimed that Jewish immigrants could threaten national security. 

Under U.S. law today, every person who immigrates based on a relative petition must have a financial sponsor. If you choose to sponsor your relative’s immigration by filing a Form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative, you must agree to be the financial sponsor and file an affidavit of support when the time comes for actual immigration. If you do not meet the financial qualifications at that time, you still must file a Form I-864, Affidavit of Support, and accept responsibility, but you and your relative also must find other individuals who meet the requirements and are willing to make this commitment by filing affidavits of support. 

The population today is  estimated at 339,996,563 at mid year. the United States population is equivalent to 4.23% of the total world population. the U.S.A. ranks number 3 in the list of countries (and dependencies) by population. Jews make up 2% of the USA population or about 6 million.   

 The law was not modified to aid the flight of Jewish refugees in the 1930s or 1940s despite the rise of Nazi Germany.  Why didn't the House or Senate or President think of doing it?  No one?  Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president from 3/4/1933 to 4/12/1945, our most crucial years of help.  His vice presidents were John Garner, Henry Wallace and then Harry Truman who backed Israel when they went to the UN and pronounced the birth of Israel when he became president..

    Welcome to the land of Freedom:  
  

 In the 1880s, more than 200,000 Eastern European Jews arrived in the U.S. In the next decade, the number was over 300,000, and between 1900 and 1914 it topped 1.5 million, most passing through the new immigrant processing center at Ellis Island.

How did the USA slow down the immigration of fleeing Jews from Europe?  The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, , enacted May 26, 1924), was a federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, where the Jews lived that were trying to leave eastern Europe. 

The total annual immigration quota for the rest of the world was capped at 165,000—an 80% reduction of the yearly average before 1914. The act temporarily reduced the annual quota of any nationality from 3% of their 1910 population, per the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, to 2% as recorded in the 1890 census; which has been unavailable to genealogists.  The available

 census to us has  been 1880 and the next one has been 1900.   A new quota was implemented in 1927, based on each nationality's share of the total U.S. population in the 1920 census, which would govern U.S. immigration policy until 1965.

According to the Department of State, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity. " the quality or state of being all the same or all of the same kind."the cultural homogeneity of our society."  One can look upon this as an act of anti-Semitism.  

The 1924 act would define U.S. immigration policy for nearly three decades, until being substantially revised by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and ultimately replaced by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

 According to Commonweal, the act "relied on false nostalgia for a census that only seemed to depict a homogenous, Northern European–descended nation: in reality, 15 percent of the nation were immigrants in 1890."

 The 1922 and 1925 systems based on dated census records of the foreign-born population were intended as temporary measures; the 1924 Act's National Origins Formula based on the 1920 census of the total U.S. population took effect on July 1, 1929.

Annual National Quota	Act of 1921		Act of 1924				Act of 1952
	1922[a]	%	1925[b]	%	1930[c]	%	1965[d]	%
Albania	288	0.08%	100	0.06%	100	0.07%	100	0.06%

Germany

67,607

18.90%

51,227

31.11%

25,957

16.89%

25,814

16.28%

Because Eastern European immigration did not become substantial until the late 19th century, the law's use of the population of the U.S. in 1890 as the basis for calculating quotas effectively made mass migration from Eastern Europe, where the vast majority of the Jewish diaspora lived at the time, impossible. 

In 1929, the quotas were adjusted to one-sixth of 1% of the 1920 census figures, and the overall immigration limit reduced to 150,000.

2/3 of Europe's Jews were killed in the Holocaust.  

The quotas were adjusted to allow more Jewish refugees after World War II, but without increasing immigration overall.

Resource:  

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, p. 885

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1924-law-slammed-door-immigrants-and-politicians-who-pushed-it-back-open-180974910/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924

https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/polish-russian/a-people-at-risk/#:~:text=In%20the%201880s%2C%20more%20than,processing%20center%20at%20Ellis%20Island.

https://wienerholocaustlibrary.org/exhibition/a-bitter-road-britain-and-the-refugee-crisis-of-the-1930s-and-1940s-2/

Benjamin Netanyahu; Prime Minister Over Period From 1996 to 2023 Orator, Defender of Israel

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                       

                                Benjamin Netanyahu b: 21 Oct 1949, Tel Aviv son of BENZION HaLevi Miliekowsky Netanyahu and Cela Tzila Segal His paternal grandfather was a rabbi.  Benyamin is a middle child of 3 boys.  

Benjamin is serving as Prime Minister of Israel for the 3rd time of 6 terms between 1996 to 2023-today. He's the best speaker Israel has ever had, speaking English better than most Americans, being Israel's best defender.    Lest we forget and the public not know about:

                                      1967 in the IDF at 18

When he was 8 years old, his family had to move to New York for a few years in 1957.  His father had been editing an encyclopedia and would spend time in the libraries for historical research.  He picked up English quickly at that age. Between 1956 and 1958, and again from 1963 to 1967, his family lived in the United States in Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, while father Benzion Netanyahu taught at Dropsie College. Benjamin attended and graduated from Cheltenham High School and was active in the debate club, chess club, and soccer.

After graduating from high school in 1967, Netanyahu returned to Israel to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces. He trained as a combat soldier and served for five years in a special forces unit of the IDF, Sayeret Matkal. He took part in numerous cross-border assault raids during the 1967–70 War of Attrition, rising to become a team-leader in the unit. He was wounded in combat on multiple occasions. He was involved in many other missions, including the 1968 Israeli raid on Lebanon and the rescue of the hijacked Sabena Flight 571 in May 1972, in which he was shot in the shoulder. He was discharged from active service in 1972 but remained in the Sayeret Matkal reserves. He'll manage to get a higher education.  

Following his discharge, he left to study in the United States but returned in October 1973 to serve in the Yom Kippur War. He took part in special forces raids along the Suez Canal against Egyptian forces before leading a commando attack deep inside Syrian territory, the details of which remain classified today. 

 Previously he was PM  2 times; now serving a 3rd time from:

                                 first meeting of Arafat 1996 

1996 to 1999;  3 years  1st term: A spate of suicide bombings reinforced the Likud position for security. Hamas claimed responsibility for most of the bombings. As prime minister, Netanyahu raised many questions about many central premises of the Oslo Accords. One of his main points was disagreement with the Oslo premise that the negotiations should proceed in stages, meaning that concessions should be made to Palestinians before any resolution was reached on major issues, such as the status of Jerusalem, and the amending of the Palestinian National Charter. Oslo supporters had claimed that the multi-stage approach would build goodwill among Palestinians and would propel them to seek reconciliation when these major issues were raised in later stages. Netanyahu said that these concessions only gave encouragement to extremist elements, without receiving any tangible gestures in return. He called for tangible gestures of Palestinian goodwill in return for Israeli concessions. Despite his stated differences with the Oslo Accords, Prime Minister Netanyahu continued their implementation, but his Premiership saw a marked slow-down in the peace process.

          Netanyahu, Hillary Clinton, George J.Mitchell and Mahmoud Abbas at the start of the direct talks, 2 September 2010

2009 to 2021, 20 years; 2nd term:  In 2009, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced support for the establishment of a Palestinian state – a solution not endorsed by prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom she had earlier pledged the United States' cooperation. Upon the arrival of President Obama administration's special envoy, George Mitchell, Netanyahu said that any furtherance of negotiations with the Palestinians would be conditioned on the Palestinians recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.   A July 2009 survey by Ha'aretz found that most Israelis supported the Netanyahu government, giving him a personal approval rating of about 49 percent. Netanyahu has lifted checkpoints in the West Bank in order to allow freedom of movement and a flow of imports; a step that resulted in an economic boost in the West Bank. In 2009, Netanyahu welcomed the Arab Peace initiative (also known as the "Saudi Peace Initiative") and lauded a call by Bahrain's Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa to normalize relations with Israel.

The 2013 election returned Netanyahu's Likud Beiteinu coalition with 11 fewer seats than the combined Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu parties had going into the vote. Nevertheless, as leader of what remained the largest faction in the Knesset, Israeli president Shimon Peres charged Netanyahu with the task of forming the Thirty-third government of Israel. The new coalition included the Yesh Atid, The Jewish Home and Hatnuah parties and excludes the ultra-Orthodox parties at the insistence of Yesh Atid and the Jewish Home.

                  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Netanyahu, Jerusalem, 23 July 2014     

During Netanyahu's 3rd term, he continued his policy of economic liberalization. In December 2013, the Knesset approved the Business Concentration Law, which intended to open Israel's highly concentrated economy to competition to lower consumer prices, reduce income inequality, and increase economic growth. Netanyahu had formed the Concentration Committee in 2010, and the bill, which was pushed forward by his government, implemented its recommendations.

In the 2015 election, and his 4th term Netanyahu returned with his party Likud leading the elections with 30 mandates, making it the single highest number of seats for the Knesset. President Rivlin granted Netanyahu an extension until 6 May 2015 to build a coalition when one had not been finalized in the first four weeks of negotiations. He formed a coalition government within two hours of the midnight 6 May deadline. His Likud party formed the coalition with Jewish Home, United Torah Judaism, Kulanu, and Shas.  On 28 May 2015, Netanyahu announced that he would be running for an unprecedented fifth term as prime minister in the next general election and that he supports Likud's current process of picking MK candidates.

In August 2015, Netanyahu's government approved a two-year budget that would see agricultural reforms and lowering of import duties to reduce food prices, deregulation of the approval process in construction to lower housing costs and speed up infrastructure building, and reforms in the financial sector to boost competition and lower fees for financial services. In the end, the government was forced to compromise by removing some key agricultural reforms.

In March 2016, Netanyahu's coalition faced a potential crisis as ultra-Orthodox members threatened to withdraw over the government's proposed steps to create non-Orthodox prayer space at the Western Wall. They have stated they will leave the coalition if the government offers any further official state recognition of Conservative and Reform Judaism.

                     Netanyahu meets with President Donald Trump in Jerusalem, May 2017

On 23 December 2016, the United States, under the Obama Administration, abstained from United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, effectively allowing it to pass. On 28 December, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry strongly criticized Israel and its settlement policies in a speech.  Netanyahu strongly criticized both the UN Resolution and Kerry's speech in response. On 6 January 2017, the Israeli government withdrew its annual dues from the organization, which totaled $6 million in United States dollars.

President Trump, joined by Netanyahu behind, signs the proclamation recognizing Israel's 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights, March 2019

On 17 May 2020, 5th term;  Netanyahu was sworn in for a fifth term as prime minister in a coalition with Benny Gantz. Against a background of the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel and Netanyahu's criminal trial, extensive demonstrations broke out against him in front of the prime minister's residence. Following this, Netanyahu ordered to disperse the demonstrations using COVID-19 special regulations, limiting them to 20 people and at a distance of 1,000 meters from their homes. However, the exact opposite was achieved; the demonstrations were enlarged and dispersed to over 1,000 centers. By March 2021, Israel became the country with the highest vaccinated population per capita in the world against COVID-19.

After tensions escalated in Jerusalem in May 2021, Hamas fired rockets on Israel from Gaza, which prompted Netanyahu to initiate Operation Guardian of the Walls, lasting eleven days. After the operation, Israeli politician and leader of the Yamina alliance Naftali Bennett announced that he had agreed to a deal with Leader of the Opposition Yair Lapid to form a rotation government that would oust Netanyahu from his position as prime minister. 

Netanyahu's motorcade departs the prime minister's residence on the early morning of 11 July 2021, a month after his ouster as prime minister.

On 13 June 2021, Bennett and Lapid formed a coalition government, and Netanyahu was ousted as prime minister, ending his 12-year tenure.

                          2023 official portrait at 74

2022 to Present 1 year  and 6th term;  After the 2022 election, Netanyahu was sworn in as Prime Minister again as the leader of a hardline coalition. He officially started his sixth term on 29 December 2022.The first months of Netanyahu's sixth term were centered around reforms in the judicial branch, which drew widespread criticism. Critics highlighted the negative effects it would have on the separation of powers, the office of the Attorney General, the economy, public health, women and minorities, workers' rights, scientific research, the overall strength of Israel's democracy and its foreign relations. After weeks of public protests on Israel's streets, joined by a growing number of military reservists, Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant spoke against the reform on 25 March, calling for a halt of the legislative process "for the sake of Israel's security". He was removed from his post by Netanyahu the following day, sparking further mass protests across Israel and ultimately leading to Netanyahu agreeing to delay the legislation for a month, until the next Knesset session after Passover.       

Israel refused to send lethal weapons to Ukraine. In June 2023, Netanyahu said that Israel is concerned "with the possibility that systems that we would give to Ukraine would fall into Iranian hands and could be reverse engineered, and we would find ourselves facing Israeli systems used against Israel."             

As a leader of a small country, his life has been completely different from that of Biden or Obama or any president or king of a country.  The creation of Israel has been on different terms than that of other countries, and so are the people.  We're from an ancient people with an ancient religion that we're trying hard to maintain after almost 4,000 years by the precepts given to us by Moses.  Even our own people seem to forget that many times.  Israel is supposed to be our reservation, our place of preservation, and instead it's become  the shooting gallery of our neighbor's  target.  Everyone's telling Netanyahu what to do and they don't live in Israel. They don't know what it's like to have your population that you're guarding shot at ever since 1947, while still in the womb to be born in 48.  

My criticism is that Netanyahu should have explained to the public why his government has been created by the religious community and how it would benefit them or affect them.  He needs to explain why he wanted to improve the Supreme Court and its problems as it is today.  By all the demonstrations of marching, etc, it shows they have been completely in the dark and still are.  Benjamin, think of all the newcomers in Israel.  They haven't had your  experiences, background, history, service.  You have to teach, also to being them up to date.  You've been there for Israel all these years.  You've been brought in when Israel was facing possible destruction, and you brought success.  Don't stop now.  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Netanyahu#Leader_of_the_Opposition_(2021%E2%80%932022)

book: BIBI  My Story by Benjamin Netanyahu