A Daily Analysis
By Marc Schulman

Sept 9 , 2009 Netanyahu in Russia, Netanyahu Cuts Back Planned Visit to NY. School You Tube Video

The news in Israel was dominiated by the story of Prime Minister Netnayhu’s semi-secret visit to Russia yesterday. Yesterday the question of the day was: Where was Netanyahu? The Prime Minister's office claimed he was in Israel visiting a Defense Installation. Today, it was announced he was in Russia. The assumed reason for his visit was a discussion on the imminent sale of arms to Iran and Syria. The news story was not so much about the visit itself, but how it was handled. It was seen, by many, as another sign that Netanyahu’s office is dysfunctional.

Another of Netanyahu's decisions was met with a great deal of skeptiscism today, when he announced he would cut back his visit to New York during the UN General Assembly meeting from five day to two. He will not be at the General Assembly for Obama’s speech. The reported reason being, he did not want to be in the room with Ahmedinejad. He told his staff it would be historically wrong to be photographed in the same room with Ahmedinejad. Sounds like one of the stranger decisions.

There was one particularly interesting story on Israeli TV tonight. A student has been suspended from school. Why? because he posted a video of fighting taking place in his classroom on YouTube. He was not part of the fighting, but he posted it. He has removed the post and apologized to his teachers. The TV caught his teacher and the principal of the school demanding that he post an apology in YouTube. The teacher stated he was lucky that this happened in school, since in the real world, he would be arrested. A lawyer then got on to say how ridiculous that was. The student refused to apologize online, since none of the students caught acting out on the video were punished in anyway, and according to the student that behavior was endemic, and if those who were misbehaving are not punished he should not have to apologize.