Happy Passover!

I had a great time last night at the Seder. My nephew and niece participated very nicely. My nephew read quite a bit of the Haggadah himself. He reads very well, and the Haggadah is more complicated than regular Hebrew because of its mixture of biblical and Talmudic Hebrew and Aramaic. He laughed when he read the part where it says that God himself saved the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, and not through an emissary. The Hebrew word for emissary, Shaliach, is the same as the word for deliveryman. He joked that if they'd use a deliveryman maybe we'd eat pizza for a week instead of Matzah. My niece sang the Four Questions song very nicely. It is the part that the youngest person at the Seder is supposed to either read or sing.

Although it was nice, boy, am I happy that there is only one Seder in Israel. For one thing, I ate too much (though I'm sure I'll keep eating too much as long as there are leftovers). Also, being with my sister's kids until 10 PM is tiring.

Hamas and the Jews

I totally agree with the following op-ed by Shlomo Avineri (Hebrew, English):

What to speak with Hamas about
By Shlomo Avineri

Recently, more and more voices have been heard saying that the only way to reach an Israeli-Palestinian accord is by talking to Hamas. These voices are not only in Europe but also in the United States. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, for example, and Brent Sowcroft, who was national security adviser to the first president Bush, have said that without a dialogue with Hamas there will be no peace between Israel and the Palestinians. And if Israel refuses to do so, the Europeans or the Americans should begin a dialogue with Hamas.

Similar statements can also be heard in the margins of Israeli politics.

I believe they are right, but not for the reasons they cite. The question is what to talk to Hamas about. It is clear we have to talk with them - and Israel indeed does speak with them indirectly - about freeing kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit and achieving calm.

I believe we must talk to Hamas about other things too, like about what is written in their founding covenant. Most Israelis, as well as the Europeans and Americans, know that Hamas espouses the destruction of Israel. What most of them do not know is that Hamas' founding document includes a much more comprehensive attitude, not merely to Israel and Zionism, but to the Jews.

The prologue to the covenant states that Hamas' aim is a war - not against Israel or Zionism but against the Jewish people at large, since the Jews, and not merely Israel and Zionism, are the enemies of Islam.

And in order to remove any doubt, the entire chapter 22 is devoted to detailing the iniquities of the Jews.

According to Hamas, the Jews are responsible for all the ills of modern society - the French Revolution; the Communist revolution; the establishment of secret associations (Freemasons, Rotary and Lions clubs, B'nai B'rith) designed to help them gain control of the world by secret means. They control the economy, press and television; they are responsible for the outbreak of World War I, which they initiated in order to destroy the Muslim caliphates (the Ottoman empire), to get the Balfour Declaration and set up the League of Nations with the aim of establishing their state. They also initiated World War II in order to make a fortune from selling war materials; they use both capitalism and communism as their agents.

Sound familiar? Yes, some of it is taken directly from "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," and some, particularly the parts dealing with the world wars, is original.

Don't tell me that these are merely words and Hamas must not be judged only on the basis of its covenant. Would anyone dare say that if a similar movement were to arise in Europe or America and, in addition to statements like these, was busy killing Jews?

Compared with what is written in the Hamas covenant, Austria's Joerg Haider and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France are moderates.

It is clear that if a movement like this were to come out of Europe, no one would even imagine proposing that negotiations be held with it, or that it be asked to join a government. It would not merely be declared illegal but denounced by humankind. An abomination like that has no place in any political discourse.

But perhaps it is nevertheless worthwhile talking to Hamas - not about its contribution to peace but rather about what is stated in its covenant. Perhaps those who espouse the view that we must talk with Hamas will first talk with it about these subjects? Who knows, perhaps it will change its principles? I do not expect this to happen exactly, but I am certainly curious to know what those who think Hamas is the key to peace in the Middle East will say about these things.

And perhaps they are actually correct, perhaps Hamas is the key. If that's the case, it's difficult to expect that peace can be established in our region.

Mitzi Nostalgia

Does Plinky permit more than one response to each prompt? We'll find out now, as I post a follow-up to a previous answer where I chose "Miss Nelson Is Missing", but also mentioned various other children's books, including "Tell Me a Mitzi".

There was something strangely enjoyable about these physically ugly characters. I don't remember what the hell the story was, but I remember I loved the drawings.

Fond Memories of Viola Swamp

Here's a fun prompt: name a children's book that makes you nostalgic. Just one? I could list a lot: Curious George, the Berenstain Bears, Mitz Petel (about a lion and a giraffe wondering how the mysterious Mitz Petel [Rapberry Juice] looks), Dira Le'haskir (apartment for rent), Clifford the Dog, An American Tail (which I first knew in book form - I'm not sure if I ever saw the movie), the Arthur books, Tell Me a Mitzi (with the ugliest human beings in children's literature) and on and on and on.

But I had to pick just one, and "Miss Nelson is Missing" by Harry Allard and James Marshall is it.

I loved this book, in which a substitute teacher that looks like a witch makes the students appreciate their regular teacher, Miss Nelson. At the end of the book it is revealed that Viola Swamp, the substitute, was actually Miss Nelson in disguise.

Breaking News: Lieberman Pressures Netanyahu Into Peace Deal

JERUSALEM (AFP*) - In his first full day in office, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to a peace deal with the Palestinians. The deal was reached during an overnight marathon negotiation between several ministers headed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on the Israeli side and President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and Hamas leader Khaled Mashal on the Palestinian side. Netanyahu was reluctant at first, but was convinced by the liberal Mr. Lieberman of the necessity of a just peace.

According to the peace agreement, the State of Palestine would be formed on the entirety of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. All refugees will be allowed to return to both Israel and Palestine. Such refugees will not require a loyalty oath to Israel, which only Jews will be required to take. Also, Gaza will be ruled under Islamic Sharia law and retains the right to lob missiles at Sderot, while the West Bank will be ruled under secular law.

"I could not have done this on my own," said Lieberman. "The fact that we have so many different ministers with overlapping responsibilities made us ten times more efficient in this negotiation." He commended the ministers of defense, strategic planning, negotiations, diplomatic maneuvering, minority affairs, regional development, and peace in our times, as well as the deputy minister of covering up settlement activity, for their work on this historic document.

In related news, Shas and United Torah Judaism declared their support for a separation of synagogue and state, while Meretz leaders forced Nitzan Horowitz to resign from the Knesset after they found out he was gay.

* April Fools Press, not Agence France-Presse

Hollywood to Israelis and Arabs: You're All the Same to Us

A few days ago I watched an episode of "Desperate Housewives" featuring the character Yaniv, an Israeli fitness trainer who uses boot camp tactics on women trying to lose weight. He looked like he could be Israeli, but his accent was off. Curious, I went on-line and checked if he was really an Israeli actor. Turns out his name is TJ (Tarek Jafar) Ramini, and he's a British actor of Palestinian descent. I found this amusing.

The running joke in Israel about Israeli actors trying to make it big in Hollywood is that they are only cast as Arabs, usually terrorists. So, in this instance, the situation is the exact opposite: an Arab playing an Israeli.

There are enough Israeli actors in the States to play Israeli characters and I'm sure there are enough Arab actors in Los Angeles to play Arab characters, but still Hollywood groups them together. Is that a covert pro-peace message: you're all the same anyway, so just get your shit together already?

Filling the Gaps of Battlestar Galactica

It isn't often that I need to include a spoiler warning in my posts, but this time I do. If you haven't watched the series finale of Battlestar Galactica and don't want to find out what happens then read no further.

SPOILER AND GEEK ALERT!

Well, weirdly, somehow the final episode was at once very satisfying and very unsatisfying. The battle portion was great. Even most of the Earth part was good. We said goodbye to the characters in an emotionally satisfying way, although the idea of the Colonials being the source of Greek mythology makes no sense, considering the fact that they arrived about 140,000 years before the emergence of Greek myths. Also, the whole "God did it" thing is unsatisfying. There were so many unaswered questions here (like what's the connection between the Lords of Kobol and the Cylon God). Maybe some of this will be addressed in the prequel Caprica, but I doubt it.

Anyway, I made up my own answers for the unanswered questions. I used some background from the original series and shifted it around to suit me. Here's a time-line:

• 22,000 BCH (Before Cylon Holocaust): A reptilian race in a far away galaxy creates robots which rebel against them and wipe them out completely. The robots then go on to attack Humania, the only other inhabited planet in that galaxy. A one thousand year war begins.
• 21,000 BCH: The Humanians, a humanoid race (though not human), create their own robots to help them in their war. However, their own robots turn against them and join the original robots. The war ends in mutual annihilation, with all robots destroyed completely, and of the Humanians only 50 people aboard the Starship Kobol survive. They see that their race cannot survive through regular reproduction, so they invent resurrection technology.
• 20,000 BCH: Humanians settle upon a planet in the Milky Way Galaxy. They name it after their ship, Kobol.
• 18,000 BCH: Humanians find our Earth and primitive homo sapiens. For some reason, they decide that genetically engineering biological creatures would be safer than building robots, so they take a few thousand bone samples and try to guess how they'd naturally evolve. They call the homo sapiens Humans, after their original planet. They place them on twelve different locations on Kobol, which would later become the basis for the twelve tribes. The Humanians come to be known as the Lords of Kobol and are thought to be gods by the humans.
• 4,400 BCH: El, one of the few offspring of the original 50 Lords of Kobol, is born.
• 4,100 BCH: Humans create Cylons. The LOK are pissed, but El convinces them not to do anything.
• 4,000 BCH: A human scientist discovers that Cylon resurrection technology can be used on humans as well. The Lords of Kobol kill him before he can announce his discovery and prevent him from downloading into a new body. They decide to banish the Cylons. El is furious and leaves Kobol with them. Also joining him are five human priests who worship the Lords of Kobol.
• A few months later: The Temple of Hopes in established, where the Cylons and the five human priests pray to the Gods. They later find Cylon Earth. A few homesick Cylons take the last remaining FTL-capable ships and return to Kobol. They are the source of the information on Kobol about Earth and the Temple of Hopes. However, the LOK distort the story and make it sound as if El made the Cylons create the temple for himself and the five priests. He would use this distortion a few centuries later to reveal the identities of the Final Five (who don't really have anything to do with the five priests).
• 2,000 BCH: The Cylons create robots who attack them. The humanoids and the robots destroy each other. El, though, saw it coming because of the previous encounters with robots, so he warned the Final Five. He builds an FTL-capable ship for them, but the Lords of Kobol destroy it, so the Final Five must use a subluminal ship.
• Meanwhile, El returns to Kobol, and the Lords of Kobol, in their panic, decide to banish the twelve tribes (plus the remnants of the Cylons who returned to Kobol, which is why sometimes it is said that the 13 tribes left at this time). Athena, who disagrees with this decision, disables her own ability to resurrect and commits suicide.
• 1,990 BCH: A solar system with 12 inhabitable planets is discovered by the 12 human tribes. Meanwhile, the Kobolian Cylons go in search of Earth. Unfortunately for them, they never find it and die out.
• Towards the end of the first Cylon war, the final five finally reach Kobol, but find it abandoned. They mysteriously find a ship identical to their own orbiting the planet. They discover it is a jump-capable ship with the coordinates to humanity's current location. The Lords of Kobol, who had come to regret their actions of 2,000 years earlier, are the ones who secretly provided the ship.
• The Lords of Kobol and El partially reconcile. They both manipulate humanity, sometimes with the same goals in mind, sometimes with conflicting goals.
• When Kara Thrace is killed in the maelstrom, the LOK recreate her body and viper on Earth, and then downloads her into a new body. El, on the other hand, is the one who turns on four of the Final Five with the music.
• When the Colonials reach our Earth, the Lords of Kobol make her see her father one last time, and he tells her it is her time to go. She says so to Lee and disappears. She's actually taken to the LOK's ship, because they believe she deserves an explanation for everything that happened. She dies on the ship and is taken to Kobol to be buried.
• Colonial culture was lost, and all we got from them is DNA. However, the LOK manipulate things so that their names come up in Greek mythology.
• Head Six and Head Balter in Times Square don't really exist. It is just a representation of El's internal thoughts, using the images he made Caprica-Six and Baltar see. He himself has a side of him who thinks humanity will succeed and one side that thinks they won't. He's also joking with himself about how people see him as a god.

The Joker Card of Israeli Politics

The Labor Party's convention is debating whether or not to join Benjamin Netanyahu's government. This is a major part of why I didn't vote for Labor in the election, even though I am a member of the party. I knew that a vote for Labor is a wildcard vote, a vote for the Joker, who can become anything. Ehud Barak wants to join a radical right wing government, spearheaded by Likud and the fascist Israel Beitenu. He didn't even demand that Avigdor Lieberman not be appointed foreign minister.

Seven of Labor's thirteen Knesset members oppose joing the coalition, but the decision isn't up to them. If the convention votes with Barak, the seven MKs should split from Labor. As a majority of the Knesset caucus they even have the right to take the name Labor with them and force Barak's faction to call itself by another name. I have a few suggestions: The Coalition Party, CMNMW Party (Cabinet Members No Matter What), Anti-Opposition Party, Fig Leaf Party, etc. I have a million of these. I can go on forever.

If this split does take place, I'd leave the current Labor Party and may join the new one that will stay in the opposition. If the party will join the coalition and won't split, I'll leave the party. If it stays in the opposition it will be on probation - if it doesn't get its act together soon and be a distinctively pro-peace party that's less naive than Meretz but more serious about the two-state solution than Kadima, it won't be able to count me among its members.

Five things to do before I die

Don't worry, I'm not planning on kicking the bucket any time soon.

Visit all six inhabited continents
I'd like to see as much as possible of the different cultures of the world.

Write a critically acclaimed work of fiction
I love writing.

Establish a cult that would worship me as a god
Not a death cult or a sexploitation cult, just one where they thought I was Zoroaster or Jahova or something.

Escape from said cult
Because I'd find out quite quickly that it's just too damn creepy.

Start my own Science Fiction franchise
To make millions of dollars and millions of fanboys and fangirls dress up as weird alien characters I made up.

Egypt May Boycott Lieberman

The Egyptian ambassador to Israel may not attend the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Camp David Accords, as protest for the upcoming appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister. Lieberman in the past suggested that Israel should bomb the Aswan Dam in Egypt and said that if President Husni Mubarak isn't willing to visit Israel he can go to hell. So who can blame the Egyptians for cooling off relations with Israel?

This is just one of the many reasons why it is insane and/or idiotic to appoint Lieberman as foreign minister.

Something Rotten in the IDF

Ha'aretz published very disturbing soldiers' accounts from the operation in Gaza today (in Hebrew and in English), with more details coming out in tomorrow's weekend magazine. Even if you think Cast Lead was justified, like I do, the practices the soldiers speak of are unjustifiable. The article paints a clear picture of disregard for human life, excessive force, and in many cases, racism towards the Palestinians. This has to change.

A few years ago I attended a "mesibat gius", an "enlistment party", for a relative who was joining a combat unit. People gave him various tips about army life. Several people told him to always remember the Palestinians were humans, not just automatic terrorist suspects. I remember one person saying that "once you forget the Palestinian civilians are human, you also forget that you're human". It seems to me that kind of message needs to be an integral part of the training of combat soldiers.

Today's Haaretz editorial (Hebrew version here) calls for an external investigation:

"The IDF's internal investigations, which are moving ahead very slowly, are not enough. The army is absorbing more and more religious extremism from the teachings of the IDF's rabbinate. It would be appropriate to investigate the problems from outside the IDF and root them out before the rot destroys the IDF and Israeli society."

I couldn't agree more. An investigative committee like the one set up after the Second Lebanon War should be set up, but this one should be focused on the moral and ethical aspects of the operation and IDF soldiers' training in general.

Stanley Fish: To Boycott or Not to Boycott

Stanley Fish, a law professor and former dean at the University of Illinois at Chicago, addresses the question of the academic boycott on Israel in his weekly New York Times blog:

"[...]

In the last line of the [previous] column I say that the arguments of the academic critics of neoliberalism lead straight to support for and participation in the boycott of Israeli academics. (Which isn’t to say that all critics of the neoliberal university are necessarily pro- boycott, only that it is easier for them to arrive at that position because they are already halfway down the road.) Several posters wondered how I could get from here to there. Here’s how, in five easy steps:

(1) The academic critics of neoliberalism complain that one effect of the neoliberization of the university has been the retreat by faculty members from public engagement, with the result that intellectual work becomes hermetic and sealed off from political struggle. “We need,” says Henry Giroux, “to link knowing with action, and learning with social engagement, and this requires addressing the responsibilities that come with teaching . . . to fight for an inclusive and radical democracy by recognizing that education in the broadest sense is not just about understanding . . . but also about providing the conditions for assuming the responsibilities we have as citizens to expose human misery and to eliminate the conditions that produce it” (“Against the Terror of Neoliberalism,” 2008)

(2) In the eyes of many academics, a great deal of human misery is being produced by Israel’s policy toward Palestinians. Eliminating it is everybody’s business.

(3) This includes academics who cannot stop at just talking about injustice, but must do something about it, must act.

(4) The political resources of academics are limited, but one way academics can show political solidarity is to put pressure on colleagues who are silent in the face of injustice: “The boycott or the divestment campaign is the mode of political protest that is left after all other forms of struggle have been tried”; it is “the politics of last resort” (Grant Farred, “The Act of Politics Is to Divide,” Works and Days).

(5) Therefore, it is appropriate and even obligatory to boycott Israeli academics and Israeli universities “that have turned a blind eye to the destruction and disruption of Palestinian Schools” (David Lloyd, Daily Trojan). “If, in the midst of oppression, these institutions do not function to analyze and explain the world in a way that promotes justice . . . but rather acquiesce in aggressive neocolonialist practices, then others may legitimately boycott them” (Mona Baker and Lawrence Davidson).

Nor will they be saved by the invocation of academic freedom, for rather than protecting Israeli academics, academic freedom, as the boycotters understand it, demands reprisals against them for having stood by while the freedom of Palestinians was being violated. “There is a whiff of hypocrisy,” says Steven Rose, when after failing to protest against the atrocities of their government “Israeli scientists complain that those of us . . . who refuse to collaborate with them . . . are attacking their academic freedom” (The Guardian, May 27, 2004).

David Lloyd drives the point home: “Israeli institutions are complicit in immense infringement on Palestinian academic freedom, so it’s really hard, it seems to me, for Israeli institutions to claim the rights of academic freedom that they are so systematically denying to their Palestinian counterparts.”

Lloyd’s last phrase — “their Palestinian counterparts” — raises a question that helps us to see what has happened to academic freedom in these statements. Counterparts in what respect? Not, obviously, as co-religionists or citizens of the same polity, but as academics — men and women trained to engage in research and to follow lines of intellectual inquiry wherever they might lead.

Whatever their political or religious or geographical situations, scholars throughout the world are linked by a set of concerns to which they have a responsibility that is distinct from (although not necessarily antithetical to) the responsibilities they may have in other respects. The strength of an academic discipline, Murray Hausknecht observes, “depends on maintaining relationships across national borders.” (Dissent)

Academics, Hausknecht explains, “can be likened to citizens of a nation,” and while they are also citizens in political units (particular nations and finally the world), if we conflate the two citizenships by making academic judgments (whether to accept a paper in a journal or invite a speaker to a conference) on political grounds, we do great damage to the scholarly community, the nature of which “is exemplified by academics who publish papers in foreign journals, attend international conferences, and collaborate with colleagues in research projects.”

But it is just such a conflation that the boycotters insist on, as Grant Farred makes clear when he declares that “academic freedom has to be conceived as a form of political solidarity.” Political solidarity, not academic solidarity. Farred denies to academic work any distinctive identity (he of course would receive this as a compliment, not an accusation), and insists that decisions about how to engage in it — where, in collaboration with whom — should be guided by political considerations, by a determination of whether this or that scholar is on the right side.

For the most part, opponents of the boycott do not engage on this point, but instead put forward arguments that are weak, either because they are counterproductive or merely strategic. In the counterproductive category is the charge that the boycotters are anti-Semitic. Rather than shaming or cowing those it is aimed at, this accusation only produces indignation, both on the part of those who favor a boycott and are Jewish (like its founders Steven and Hilary Rose) and those who declare that they have been fighting all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism, for their entire lives.

The charge of anti-Semitism also provokes two responses of principle: first that one can and should distinguish between opposition to the policy of a state and prejudice against that state’s racial majority (Are you telling me I can’t criticize Israel without being a racist?); and second, that the invocation of anti-Semitism has the effect, if not the intention, of chilling speech (a First Amendment no-no). How can one “vigorously advocate the idea that the Israeli occupation is brutal and wrong . . . if the voicing of these views calls down the charge of ant-Semitism?” (Judith Butler, “No, It’s Not Anti-Semitic” London Review of Books, August 21, 2003).

A second line of anti-boycott reasoning invites counter-responses that merely continue the debate without in any way clarifying it. It asks, why single out Israel when European and North American academics regularly engage with researchers from countries (including, perhaps, the United States) with well-documented records of human-rights abuses? The trouble with this debating point in the guise of a question (you’re supposed to realize that you’d end up boycotting everyone) is that it implies that if Israel were the only state performing bad acts it would be O.K. to embargo its academics.

The real question is, should the policies (whatever they are) of a country an academic happens to live in ever be a reason for denying her the courtesies academics extend to each other in recognition of the collaborative nature of the work they do? (Yes, I would include academics from the Third Reich.) That question has the advantage of facing squarely the issue of what academic work is and isn’t, an issue that is obscured if you’re just toting up and rank-ordering atrocities as a preliminary to determining which scholars you will or won’t deal with.

Boycott opponents do no better when the focus is narrowed to just Israel and Palestine and they argue, as Anthony Julius and Alan Dershowitz do, that it is incorrect and a suspicious distortion to regard Israel “as the pure aggressor,” and the Palestinians “as pure victims” (“The Contemporary Fight Against Anti-Semitism”).

But again, the degree of culpability assigned to the two states (and of course that is a matter that will never be settled) should not yield a formula for treating its academics differently (you guys can come to our conference, but you lot can’t). Even if it were agreed that Julius and Dershowitz are right and there is blame all around, that agreement would say nothing about whether or not to boycott, unless you believe that the question is an empirical one that can be answered by history and analogy.

Because anti-boycotters offer arguments that trade in comparisons and calculations of relative guilt, they are vulnerable to the boycotters’ trump card: If you supported the boycott of South Africa and the disinvestment by universities from companies doing business in or with that country, you are obligated, by your own history, to support the boycott of Israeli academics. Hilary and Steven Rose reported in 2002 that they knew many academics “who thought that cooperating with Israeli institutions was like collaborating with the apartheid regime” (“The Choice Is to Do Nothing or Try to Bring About Change,” www.guardian.co.uk/Archive).

In response, anti-boycotters say that (1) boycotting is a “blunt instrument” that harms individuals and institutions indiscriminately; (2) it wasn’t the boycotts that brought down the South African regime; (3) the boycott against South Africa was economic and was not aimed primarily at scholars, and (4) despite the loose use of the word by boycott promoters, Israel is not an apartheid state, for it accords its Arab citizens political rights that were denied to blacks in apartheid South Africa.

But the effort to detach Israel from South Africa by claiming that the sins of the latter were much greater than the sins of the former has not been successful, in part because those who make it are trying too hard. (You can almost see the sweat on their foreheads.) The American Association of University Professors ties itself up in knots explaining that while its own history includes “support for divestiture during the anti-apartheid campaigns in South Africa,” it nevertheless opposes this boycott. The rationale seems to be that South Africa was a special, one time case — “South Africa is the only instance in which the organization endorsed some form of boycott” — but that is hardly going to satisfy those who are prosecuting the “if-you-protested-injustice-then–you-should-protest-it-now” argument.

The better course would be for the AAUP and other boycott opponents to accept the equivalence of the two situations, and repudiate what they did in the past. Not “what we did then is different from what we decline to do now,” but “we won’t boycott now and we were wrong to boycott then.”

Whether or not divestiture and other actions taken by academics were decisive in, or even strongly contributory to, ending the apartheid regime is in dispute. What should not be in dispute is that those actions, however salutary and productive of good results, were and are antithetical to the academic enterprise, which while it may provide the tools (of argument, fact and historical research) that enable good and righteous deeds, should never presume to perform them."

The Shalit Deal

A deal to release 450 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit would be much more justifiable than the two deals with Hezbollah. Does that mean the current deal is a right move? No, it doesn't.

The deals with Hezbollah were so extremely wrong that it isn't hard to achieve a better agreement. We gave the Lebanese terrorist group hundreds of prisoners in exchange for soldiers' dead bodies and one living criminal. We should have only given dead bodies in exchange for dead soldiers, and the criminal, who was captured while doing something illegal, was not worth a high price.

Gilad Shalit is different. He is alive. It is right to release hundreds of living Palestinian prisoners for him. The question isn't the number. The question is who is being released exactly and how they will affect Israel's security. What these prisoners have done before is unimportant. It is important to assess what they might do if they are released. If they pose a serious threat and will carry out or plan attacks that will kill many Israelis they should not be released.

Also, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship should not be released as part of this deal. We cannot let Hamas become the representative of Palestinians inside Israel. These Israeli citizens who were involved in terrorism are not part of the Hamas's jurisdiction, or even the Palestinian Authority's. You know what? Any Israeli Arab prisoner who wants to be released as part of the Hamas deal should be given two options: either stay in prison till the end of your term, or give up your citizenship and be deported to Gaza. Who needs convicted terrorists walking Israel's streets?

So, should Israel go through with this deal? I don't know. I don't feel that I know enough about the prisoners Hamas is demanding. If the threat to Israeli civilians is low, than I support it. Otherwise, I don't.

Call Me Procrastinatus

If I were named after one of my traits my name would be Procrastinatus. Why? Simply put, because I waste way too much time on unimportant things and leave the important stuff for the last minute.

I'd Write About Venice

Paul Simon was going to Graceland, Toto blessed the rains down in Africa – what place would you write a song about?

Venice is the most unique city I've ever visited. Where else are there boat lines instead of bus lines? Where are there buildings that go right down to the water, with no sidewalk or beach between the houses and the lagoon?

I know I'm not being very original here. Many have written songs about Venice. It has been an inspiration for all sorts of art forms. There is good reason for it.

Angry Arab Children

I just came across a Kishkushim post about something the Angry Arab had to say: "During recent months, children in the southern town of Rahat, near Be'er Sheva, have taken up a new and cruel pastime - burning dogs alive". The title of the post was "Zionist Games".

Apparently, Angry Arab doesn't know that Rahat is the largest Arab city in Southern Israel. I doubt those Bedouin kids are Zionists, but hey, it's happening in Israel, so let's just use it as proof of the horrors of Zionism. Even if they were Jewish kids, would this mean Zionism condones animal cruelty? Does the fact that they are Arabs mean all Arabs abuse dogs? The answer to both questions is a big fat no.

A shark would beat a bear!

Does a shark have the right to (eat) bear arms?

This has to be one of the silliest things I've ever written about, but who cares?

A shark would be able to rip the bear's guts out with a single bite, though the shark would be badly beaten up as well.

One Female Minister

Yesterday was International Women's Day, so it's a good opportunity to take a look at women in our government. The outgoing Knesset saw the first female speaker, and the incoming Knesset has more women than ever before (21 out of 120 - 17.5%). The next head of the opposition will be a woman - Tzippi Livni.

The judicial branch is headed by a woman, Chief Justice Dorit Beinish. The Supreme Court's permanent membership is made up of five women and seven men, plus two male justices on temporary appointments.

The executive branch is the most problematic. Though Tzippi Livni was close to becoming Israel's second female prime minister after Golda Meir, our next government will probably have only one female cabinet minister or two at the most. The Likud will appoint Limor Livnat, while Yisrael Beitenu might appoint Sofa Landver. However, the other coalition partners are likely to be religious parties with no female Knesset members, so they will not appoint female ministers.

What I don't understand is why the Likud will only have one female minister. Why isn't Leah Ness, who won a higher position than Limor Livnat in the primaries, getting a seat in the cabinet? Netanyahu can also bring in experienced women who are not parliament members if he doesn't like the women in the Likud's caucus.

Chiney's American-Style Scandal

The commander of Israel's navy, Major General/Vice Admiral Eli "Chiney" Marom, has gotten himself in trouble. He was spotted at a strip club last week by a journalist. He was reprimanded by the military's chief of staff, but many are calling for his resignation, saying that it is inappropriate for a high ranking member of the military to attend a club that demeans women. Also, Chiney, who got his nickname because of his East Asian looks (he is one quarter Chinese), apparently lied about being at the strip club only once. Yediot Ahronot reported this week that many in the military have slightly changed his nickname to Dick Cheney.

I have mixed feelings about this scandal. On the one hand, I think that attending strip clubs, especially when you pay for personal lap dances as the admiral did, is a form of sexual abuse. On the other hand, it isn't illegal, and it is somewhat accepted socially. Also, should this man, who is praised for his work in the military, be punished for what he does on his own free time?

I don't think this kind of scandal would have made headlines in Israel until recently. This sounds more like an American scandal, where the private life of a high ranking official - or at least one aspect of it - is seen as inseparable from his job. In a way, it simultaneously both a move in the right and wrong direction. Demanding that our military and civilian leaders will not attend businesses that objectify and demean women is a step in the right direction. However, mixing the private and the public lives of our officials is not good. Until now, their private lives have been the interest of gossip columnists, not of the serious news pages.

The Shoe Flies Both Ways

President Mahmoud Ahmedinijad of Iran was on the recieving end of a shoe throwing incident this week. The perpetrator has not been caught. It's nice to see that not only the representatives of Big Satan (then-President George W. Bush) and Little Satan (the Israeli ambassador to Sweden) are getting the footwear treatment. The representatives of the Axis of Evil are getting their share as well.

I wonder if there will be a new kind of shoe now. Like there are shoes made especially for running, walking, playing basketball or going to a fancy restaurant, maybe there will be special "throwing shoes". They'll be aerodynamic, with a special hissing sound and hidden camera which automatically uploads a YouTube video of the official getting shoed.

This Plinky Thing

I tried out Plinky yesterday. It is supposed to inspire people suffering from "blogger's block" to write. They post a new "prompt" every day, which is actually a question for bloggers. I answered one of these questions yesterday in my previous post. It was one of their first questions, posted in January. That's how far I had to go to find a question I'd like to answer, or even see what other people had to say about it.


Oh well, maybe they'll have interesting questions once in a while. We'll just have to wait and see.

Check out the ice caves near Salzburg, Austria

This is quite literally the coolest thing I've ever seen.

The ice caves have nothing but ice formations in them. It's much more impressive than any stalagmite cave I've ever visited. The entrance into the cave is very cool - there are gusts of wind you have to go through, but once inside, there will be no wind whatsoever.

The New Face of Israel

I haven't blogged since the Israeli elections. I just didn't have the muse to write about the depressing results. Now Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu has managed to piss me off even more than I ever expected. Reportedly, he is planning on appointing Avigdor Lieberman as the next foreign minister. Really? Bibi wants this fascist to be the face of Israel to the world? You think this guy will be welcomed with open arms in Europe and the United States? Foreign officials will not ignore the fact that Lieberman and his party, Yisrael Beitenu, want to revoke the citizenship of anyone who is unwilling to vow allegiance to the state (mostly Arabs, but also Jews with the "wrong" views).

This guy who looks and acts like a bulldog or nightclub bouncer is unfit for government in general. He's especially unfit to be our top diplomat. Is there anything diplomatic about him?

Holy crap.

Racism According to Herzl

Herzl's vision of racism (original Hebrew version)
By Shlomo Avineri, Ha'aretz

In 1902, Theodor Herzl published his utopian novel "Altneuland" ("The Old New Land"), in which he described the Jewish state to be established in Palestine in 1923. In doing so, Herzl not only provided an idealized description of the Zionist movement's goal; he also provided the State of Israel - the product of Zionism - with a mirror for viewing itself in light of Herzl's vision. Not many national movements have such an efficient tool for self-scrutiny.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is the description of the election campaign that was to have taken place in 1923. The campaign focused on the rights of the country's non-Jewish inhabitants. Contrary to what is sometimes said of Zionism - that it ignored the existence of Arabs in the country - the book reveals not only an awareness of the existence of the Arab population; the Jewish state is predicated on the concept that all its inhabitants, regardless of religion, race or gender, enjoy equal rights and the right to vote. These rights are extended not only to Arabs, but to women, though at the time the book was written no Western democracy had given women the vote.

In the book, not only do the country's Arabs have the right to vote, some of them serve in key posts. Among them is one of the novel's heroes, an Arab engineer from Haifa named Rashid Bey. To use a term from our day, Herzl envisioned a state that would be both Jewish and democratic, both a Jewish nation state and a state of all its citizens.

A new party appeared in the 1923 campaign, headed by a man who had recently come to the country and wanted to annul his old citizenship and rescind the right to vote of all non-Jews. Herzl named the founder of the Jewish racist party Geyer (which in German means a bird that eats carrion), modeling the character and his ideology after the Viennese anti-Semitic leader Karl Lueger.

Geyer's argument was simple: This is a Jewish state, and only Jews should have the right to citizenship. Others can remain as tolerated residents, but they do not deserve equal political rights.

The depiction of the campaign in "Altneuland" is compelling: Geyer's racist party creates quite a stir. In one of the book's most dramatic moments, a confrontation takes place between Geyer's supporters and a number of the new society's liberal leaders. While Geyer claims the exclusivity of citizens' rights for Jews, the liberals justify giving equal rights to the Arab inhabitants based on liberal, universal principles and on Jewish sources ("Ye shall have one ordinance, both for the stranger and for him that was born in the land" - Numbers 9:14).

After a hard fought contest, the liberals win and the defeated Geyer leaves the country in shame. There is something very special in this description. In the classical utopias that were Herzl's guiding light, from Thomas More's "Utopia" to the 19th century utopias, it is always an ideal society that is depicted, without defects. In "Altneuland," in contrast, Herzl combined an ideal society with political realism. As one who had seen for himself the anti-European, anti-Jewish racism, he imagined that Jews could also be racists and inserted into his utopia the errant and disturbing image of a Jewish racist. But in contrast to Europe, where racism was victorious, in Zion and Jerusalem, it was defeated and the principles of equality and liberalism won.

A utopian novel? Contemporary reality? The moral of the story, of course, is crystal clear. It should be remembered that the motto of Altneuland is "If you will it, it is no dream." It is in our hands.

Why I'll Vote For Meretz

I have finally come to a decision who to vote for in Tuesday's Knesset elections. After careful consideration, I've come to the conclusion that for dovish Zionists, even the most moderate of them, there is no real choice. Meretz is our only option.

First of all, I'll explain why all the other parties are not worth a vote. Obviously, Likud and parties to the right of it are not an option for anyone who believes in the land for peace, two-state solution.

Between Benjamin Netanyahu, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak, I'd rather see Tzipi Livni as prime minister. The two others are members of the "four worst Israeli prime ministers club", along with Ehud Olmert and Golda Meir, and both seem to be more hawkish than Livni. However, I will not vote for Kadima. Even if it becomes the largest party, the right wing will still be the largest parliamentary bloc, and Livni will not be able to form a government, unless Avigdor Lieberman decides to join her instead of a Likud government. Lieberman is Israel's Jorg Haider. His presence in the Israeli government will not only bring down chances of peace to zero, it will also endanger our democracy.

I will not vote for Labor, either. I am a member of the party and voted for it in 2006, despite my disdain for Amir Peretz, who was then head of the party. Back then, I knew Peretz would not become prime minister, so I voted for them at least so they'll be as large as possible. I'm not going to do that now. They have some excellent candidates, who I'd normally vote for happily (like I did in the primaries), but Barak is almost as hawkish as Netanyahu, and he has said he would not object to sitting in the same government as Lieberman. So a vote for Labor is a vote for Yisrael Beitenu.

Another option is the small list The Green Movement-Meimad. This is a joint list of two moderate left parties. One of them, Meimad, ran with Labor during the last couple of elections. The head of the joint list, Meimad chairman Michael Malchior, is one of the finest Knesset members we've had in recent years. Unlike the other environmental parties running this year, it isn't a one-issue party. It also tackles social and national security issues from a moderate point of view. The problem is that they may not cross the 2% threshold, so a vote for them may be a vote wasted.

Chadash is a communist and anti-Zionist party. Both are big no-noes for me. The other Arab parties are even further from my views.

That leaves me with Meretz, a party which is too naive regarding the Palestinians but seems to be the only Zionist party not naive at all regarding the danger posed by Avigdor Lieberman. They have pledged not to join a government where Yisrael Beitenu is also at the table. They are to the left of me on both national security/peace and socio-economic issues, but when all the rest are radically to the right of me, it will be good to hear at least a few voices for peace and justice in the Knesset. The issue where Meretz and I are in almost perfect agreement is secularism. Unfortunately, the party has neglected this issue lately, but hopefully will pick it up again in the 18th Knesset.

Meretz will probably remain in the opposition. That's fine with me. With Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister, or with any government that includes Lieberman, a strong, sane opposition is important.

The Arabs and Election 2009

One fifth of the citizens of Israel are Arabs. One fifth of the Knesset would be 24 MKs. However, the Arab parties have only 10 MKs in the outgoing Knesset, plus 4 more Arabs who represent Zionist parties. The Arab parties are expected to do even worse in the upcoming elections. About half the Arabs don't plan on voting.

"Why should I vote? By doing that I legitimize those who attack my people," one person was quoted in Ha'aretz as saying. This is backwards thinking. How would a vote for one of the Arab parties legitimize attacking Palestinians? As long as there are very few Arabs in the Knesset, they can be ignored. Arabs are the one group who needs the elections most. If they voted in higher percentages than Jewish citizens they could get more than 24 MKs, maybe even 30. Nobody can ignore a bloc that makes up one quarter of the Knesset.

The only ones who benefit from the Arab boycott of the elections are us Jewish Zionists. The truth is that I don't really mind that Arabs don't vote. It's their own problem. Having 20-something Arab MKs pushing for the right of return would be a nightmare.

Baruch Marzel's Election Day Provocation

The method of appointing poll station supervisors has never been a problem. The different parties are allocated positions in different polling sites around the country, and the parties themselves appoint their representatives. The board of elections has no say in the matter of personnel.

The method of appointing poll station supervisors has never been a problem. The different parties are allocated positions in different polling sites around the country, and the parties themselves appoint their representatives. The board of elections has no say in the matter of personnel.

Now, the National Union Party has decided to abuse the system. It has appointed Baruch Marzel, one of the most famous and infamous members of transferist far right, as head of a polling station in the Arab city of Umm al-Fahm. This is pure provocation and should be prevented. The board of elections should intervene. Even if it technically has nothing to do with the appointment of supervisors, it has the responsibility to make sure elections go as smoothly as possible. Everybody knows that if Marzel shows up, the election there will be disrupted by violent protest.

I think it is a good idea that right wingers, even radical right wingers, will act as observers in Arab towns, where election fraud is commonplace. I also think Arabs and far left wingers should be observers in ultra-Orthodox and right wing communities, where election fraud is just as rampant. Opposites should monitor each other. However, the observers should not be well-known figures. They should be people who can do their jobs quietly, without causing a stir.

The Israeli Electoral Compass

Whether or not you're an Israeli citizen, you can check out which parties are closest to your political position using the Electoral Compass. Take the results with a grain of salt, since the results are quite simplistic. It would take a hundred questions to accurately place a person on the political spectrum.

My own results are mixed. Some things make sense, while others don't. According to the Electoral Compass, my views are closest to Meretz, with an overall score of 81%. I really am considering a vote this party (and not because of the test results). On religious issues we're 95% compatible, which makes perfect sense. On security issues the score was 95% as well, but I think that's an exaggeration. All the questions are about what I'd agree to at the end of the negotiation process, but there is nothing about the way to get there, which is where Meretz is more dovish than I am. On economic issues we're 67% compatible, which doesn't surprise me, since Meretz is a socialist party and I'm more of a US-style liberal.

Now here's the weird stuff. The next three parties are the Arab ones: the Islamist religious Ra'am-Ta'al (79% agreement), the communist Hadash (76%) and the nationalist Balad (69%). I supposedly agree with more than 90% of their security positions, again because the questions are about the end result and not the process itself. Also, there is no question about the right of return, where I'd be in direct opposition to all three parties. In addition, I'm supposedly in 85% agreement with Ra'am-Ta'al on religious issues, which is completely not the case. Apparently the Compass thinks the party shares my support for the separation of church/synagogue and state, when the truth is they support the creation of an Islamic caliphate.

My next results: In 4th place, Labor (68%), Kadima is fifth (66%), then the Green Movement-Meimad (57%), Torah Judaism (56%), Greens (53%), Likud (49%), Yisraeli Beitenu (48%), Pensioners (48%), Shas (39%), National Union (38%), and in last place Ha'Bait Ha'Yehudi (36%).

Not surprisingly, Shas and United Torah Judaism, the ultra-Orthodox parties, get a score of zero compatibility with me on religious issues. The other two religious parties don't fair too well, either. The National Union gets 15% and Ha'Bait Ha'Yehudi 5% on religion.

Fascists and Theocrats

All polls now show that the right wing will have a majority in the next Knesset. How large the majority will be varies wildly from poll to poll, with estimates ranging from 62 seats to 70-plus, out of a total of 120 Knesset seats. It seems certain Benjamin Netanyahu will be the next prime minister.

Unless Netanyahu decides to form a unity government with Kadima and Labor, his natural coalition partners would be Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home) and the four religious parties. There is a problem here, though. Lieberman and the ultra-Orthodox parties don't like each other. Both sides share a disdain for democracy, but each takes it in a different direction. Yisrael Beitenu wants all citizens to declare their loyalty to the State of Israel or lose their citizenship. This, of course, is aimed at Arab citizens, but soon enough it will reach whoever has the wrong political views, in Lieberman's eyes. Shas and United Torah Judaism, the two ultra-Orthodox parties, don't necessarily object to this. They do object to the only part of Lieberman's platform that I agree with: making the country more secular, including non-religious marriages.

Shas and UTJ, on the other hand, would like to make Israel a Medinat Halacha, Halacha being the Jewish equivalent of Sharia law. A theocracy is their favored form of government, though they try not to say it directly. Lieberman, of course, totally opposes this idea.

I have a slim hope that the Likud-led right wing bloc will receive such a small majority that the coalition will have to include all the bloc's parties to pass the 61-member threshold. Then, maybe the disagreements between the fascists and theocrats will lead to Netanyahu's failure to form a government.

What About the Israeli Elections?

I've been asked why I haven't written about the upcoming Israeli elections, scheduled for Feb. 10. That's a good question. In a way, you can generally ask where the hell the elections have gone.

Though it has been in the back of my mind, it hasn't been one of the main things to occupy my thoughts recently. Despite the fact that Election Day is just three weeks away, it doesn't feel like a campaign season yet. The parties put their campaigns on hold during the operation in Gaza, and just now they're restarting all the political propaganda again. Usually the streets are littered with campaign literature and banners by this time. So far this time around, I've only seen one such sign (Avigdor Lieberman and his fascist slogan: "No loyalty, no citizenship").

The elections haven't become the main focus of the media, either. First there was Cast Lead in Gaza, and then there was the Obama inauguration. Now that those are behind us, I expect Bibi vs. Livni to become the leading item. I haven't watched this evening's TV news, but I wouldn't be surprised if election coverage moved to the forefront already today.

You can expect my next few posts to be mostly about the campaign.

It's All Israel's Fault

Ann El-Khoury of People's Geography (I'm not linking to it, find it yourself) wrote a post a few days ago about her father's sunflowers wilting exactly in time for Israel's operation in Gaza. She quickly removed it. Maybe she realized how ridiculous the post was. It was like a parody of Arabs, and anti-Zionists in general, who blame Israel for everything. Is the weather bad? It's the Israelis. Was there a traffic accident between two Arabs? The Israelis must have done something to the cars!

Yes, Ann, Israel killed your father's sunflowers. He should sue us in the Hague for crimes against vegetation.

A Letter to Gideon Levy

A. B Yehoshua, a prominent Israeli author and one of the "spiritual/intellectual leaders" of the the Israeli left, wrote a letter to bleeding-heart Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy (original Hebrew version here):

Dear Gideon,

You remember that in recent years I called you occasionally to praise you for your articles and your writing about the wrongs done to the Palestinians in the administered territories, whether by the army or by the settlers. Physical wrongs, land expropriations, acts of abuse, perversions of justice and so on. I told you that it is very difficult to read what you write, because it weighs on our conscience, but that the work you are doing and the voice you are sounding are extremely important. I was also concerned about your physical safety, knowing that you risked your life by visiting such hostile places.

I did not ask you why you did not visit Israeli hospitals in order to tell the painful stories of Israeli citizens who were hurt in terrorist attacks. I accepted your position that there are plenty of other journalists doing this and that you had taken on the crucial mission of telling the story of the afflictions of the other side, our enemies today and our neighbors tomorrow.

Accordingly, it is from this position of respect that I find it necessary to respond to your recent articles on the war in which we are engaged today, so that you will be able to preserve the moral validity of your distinctive voice for the future. A few years ago, when the Hatuel family - a mother and her four children, of blessed memory - were killed on the way to one of the settlements in Gush Katif, I believed that this terrible death pained you as it did all of us but that like many of us you said in your heart: Why should these Israelis endanger their children by living provocatively, hopelessly, dangerously and immorally in Gush Katif? By what right do 8,000 Jews expropriate a sizable area in the densely overcrowded Gaza Strip in order to build blossoming villages before the eyes of hundreds of thousands of refugees living in such abysmal conditions? You were angry, as I was, at the parents and at those who sent them. And even though I believe that like all of us you felt the pain of the children who were killed, you did not brand the leaders of Hamas "war criminals" as you did the Israeli leaders, and you did not demand the establishment of an international tribunal to try them.

When I asked you after the disengagement from Gaza, Gideon, explain to me why they are firing missiles at us, you replied that they want us to open the crossings. I asked you whether you truly believe that if they fire missiles the crossings will be opened, or the opposite. And whether you truly believe that it is right and just to open crossings into Israel for those who declare openly and sincerely that they want to destroy our country. I did not get an answer from you. And even though the crossings were in fact opened many times, and were closed in the wake of the missile attacks, regrettably I still did not see you standing firmly behind a moral position which says: Now, people of Gaza, after you expelled the Israeli occupation from your land, and justly so, you must hold your fire.

The doleful thought sometimes crosses my mind that it is not the children of Gaza or of Israel that you are pining for, but only for your own private conscience. Because if you are truly concerned about the death of our children and theirs, you would understand the present war - not in order to uproot Hamas from Gaza but to induce its followers to understand, and regrettably in the only way they understand in the meantime, that they must stop the firing unilaterally, stop hoarding missiles for a bitter and hopeless war to destroy Israel, and above all for the sake of their children in the future, so they will not die in another pointless adventure.

After all, now, for the first time in Palestinian history, after the Ottoman, British, Egyptian, Jordanian and Israeli conquests, part of the Palestinians has gained a first and I hope not a last piece of land on which they are to maintain a full and independent government. And if they start building, developing and pursuing social endeavors, even according to Islamic religious law, they will prove to the whole world, and especially to us, that the moment we terminate the occupation they will be ready to live in peace with their surroundings, free to do as they wish, but also responsible for their deeds.

There is something absurd in the comparison you draw about the number of those killed. When you ask how it can be that they killed three of our children and we cause the killing of a hundred and fifty, the inference one can draw is that if they were to kill a hundred of our children (for example, by the Qassam rockets that struck schools and kindergartens in Israel that happened to be empty), we would be justified in also killing a hundred of their children.

In other words, it is not the killing itself that troubles you but the number. On the face of it, one could answer you cynically by saying that when there will be two hundred million Jews in the Middle East it will be permissible to think in moral terms about comparing the number of victims on each side. But that is, of course, a debased argument. After all, you, Gideon, who live among the people, know very well that we are not bent on killing Palestinian children to avenge the killing of our children. All we are trying to do is get their leaders to stop this senseless and wicked aggression, and it is only because of the tragic and deliberate mingling between Hamas fighters and the civilian population that children, too, are unfortunately being killed. The fact is that since the disengagement, Hamas has fired only at civilians. Even in this war, to my astonishment, I see that they are not aiming at the army concentrations along the border but time and again at civilian communities.

Please, preserve the moral authority and concern that you possessed, and your distinctive voice. We will need them again in the future, which promises further ordeals on the road to peace. In the meantime, it would be best for us all - we and the Palestinians and the rest of the world - to follow the simple moral imperative of Kantian philosophy: "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

In friendship always,

A. B. Yehoshua

The writer is an Israeli author. His latest novel, "Friendly Fire," was published in recent months

Response to Rashid Khalidi

Originally, I wrote this as a comment on Gert's blog post which reprinted Rashid Khalidi's New York Times op-ed piece, What You Don’t Know About Gaza. It came out so long, I decided it merits its own post.

I must say, today's NY Times op-ed page was very unfriendly to Israel, with critical articles by Nicholas Kristof, Roger Cohen, Khalidi and Gideon Lichfield. But that's okay. Conservatives David Brooks and William Kristol, as well as my favorite columnist Thomas Friedman, had previously written articles in favor of Israel's Gaza operation. I particularly liked Thomas Friedman's piece.

Anyway, here is my response to Rashid Khalidi's opionion article:

I read this article this morning and found it very troubling, though not at all surprising. I truly do hope Barack Obama's connection with Khalidi was exaggerated by Republicans.

THE GAZANS How is it relevant that the Gazans are not there by choice? Is it alright for them to fire at Ashkelon and Be'er-Sheva because their grandparents came from those cities?

The Gazans have been kept in the refugee camps by their Arab brethren. Had Egypt, who controlled the strip between 1948-1967, or any other Arab country, rehabilitated the refugees and invested in them, things would look differently. Instead, the refugees and their suffering were used as a tool against Israel to keep calling for the right of return. After all, if they'd rebuild Palestinians' lives in their new locations it would have seemed like they were giving up on the right of return.

THE OCCUPATION First of all, the Gazans have never NOT lived under occupation. Before 1967 they were occupied by Egypt; before 1948 by the UK; and before 1917 by the Ottomans. Right now, their self-rule is greater than at any time in the past.

Israel has made many mistakes over the years in Gaza. It should have done what Egypt before it should have done - it should have made Gazans' lives better. However, once Israel withdrew from the territory, it was up to the Palestinians to make their lives better, even if Israel controlled the border. Even before the blockade that started when Hamas rose to power, Palestinians did nothing with their territory.

THE BLOCKADE Fuel, electricity and humanitarian aid kept coming in to Gaza all this time. The aim of the blockade was not to choke the Palestinians, but to harm the Hamas government. If a nation elected a government bent on your destruction, would you cooperate with it economically and otherwise?

THE CEASE-FIRE In November Israel attacked a tunnel where arms were being smuggled in. The IDF said there was an imminent threat to Israel from whatever was coming through that tunnel. Was it a smart move? Maybe not, but it didn't come out of thin air.

WAR CRIMES The numbers do not speak for themselves. They don't demonstrate each side's intentions, but rather each side's technological advancement. The civilian death toll is too high - the result of both Israeli recklessness and Hamas activity within population centers. However, this is not a war crime on Israel's part, since the civilians are not the targets. Also, it is not true that civilians are the majority of the dead.

"Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip."

Israel wanted to continue the cease-fire, but Hamas refused. It demanded that the border crossings be opened, but as long as Hamas is unwilling to allow inspections they cannot be fully opened. The smuggling of arms must stop.

"This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets."

Khalidi would like to think that it isn't. This way, the Palestinians have absolutely no responsibility for what is happening. The truth is that it is about rockets. After eight years of Qassams and Grad missiles, Israelis have had enough.

"Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

This is a horrible statement. Moshe Yaalon is an idiot, though not an isolated idiot. Maybe this kind of thinking has something to do with some of the tactics of the current operation but it is not the goal. The end of rocket fire and rocket smuggling is.

Ariel Sharon's Conspiracy

I was adamantly opposed to the disengagement plan in 2005. I thought the unilateral move would lead to a Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip. Did nobody else realize this? Our country's leadership and intelligence officials should have been able to predict this.

Maybe they did. I have a feeling Ariel Sharon wanted to ensure Israeli control of the West Bank. The best way to do this would be by eliminating Israeli public support for any further withdrawals. The evacuation of Jewish settlers had to be as traumatic as possible and terrorists had to take over the strip.

Achieving a traumatic effect during the evacuation worked in two ways. One was more obvious: people who fortified themselves in houses and on rooftops, women and children being dragged out of houses, and instances of little kids wearing orange Stars of David, reminiscent of the yellow Stars of David during the Holocaust. The second method was more subtle. The government office set up to take care of settlers, most of whom left Gaza by the required deadline, was utterly inefficient. Today, three and a half years later, many evacuees still do not have permanent housing, and currently live in "caravillas" (caravan villas) within missile range from Gaza.

Letting Hamas take over Gaza was not very complicated. All that had to be done was leave in such a way that it would seem like we were escaping Hamasnik wrath. Gazans already sympathized with Hamas, so such a move would empower an already popular terrorist organization. Had we reached a deal with the Palestinian Authority under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, the evacuation would have been seen as the fruits of negotiations, not of terror.

Just because Ariel Sharon was hoping for Hamas to rise to power doesn't mean that our current operation in Gaza is not justified. It certainly is. Even if our own government's actions have contributed to the situation, rocket fire into Israel still must be stopped. Keep in mind that the Qassams started coming in 2001, before the disengagement. Hamas would not have stopped the rocket fire even if Gaza would have been given peacefully to the PA, and there is no guarantee that it wouldn't have taken over the territory anyway.

No 48-Hour Truce

Several prominent figures such as French President Nikolas Sarkozy and authors/gurus of the Israeli left Amos Oz and David Grossman have called for a 48-hour truce. They hope this truce will become perminent, but if it doesn't, they think it will at least allow the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to be eased.

If there is a truce for only 2 days and violence resumes, it will have been the worst kind of truce possible. Hamas will be able to regroup during this short period.

So, no, there should only be a truce that will truly end the fighting and the missile attacks for a very long time.

Nizar Rayyan: A Limerick

There once was a Sheikh who had four wives,
He was a terrorist so they all lost their lives.
Israel warned the women to leave the house,
But the four decided to stick by their spouce,
And wait 'till the Israeli missile arrives.

Why Israelis Feel Threatened

Historian Benny Morris (of "Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem" fame) has an excellent op-ed piece in today's New York Times about why Israel feels threatened. He outlines two general sources and four specific causes of Jewish Israelis' anxieties.

The first general source is the fact that the Arab and Muslim world have never accepted Israel and still oppose its existence. Generally, he's right about this, but the Saudi Initiative is a glimmer of hope in this regard. On the other hand, the Arabs don't seem to be willing to give up the right of return, so I'm not very optimistic.

The second general source is the deminishing Western public support for Israel. I think this can be countered at least in part by taking steps toward a peace deal that would end the occupation, but there are many bleeding hearts in Europe, and to a lesser extent in the United States, that will always blame Israel for everything, and as long as the right of return isn't implemented, they'll still see Israel as owing the Palestinians something.

The four specific causes of Israel's sense of threat are Iran's nuclear program coupled with their leaders' desire to see a world without a Zionist state, Hezbullah's large arsenal of long-range weaponry and control of South Lebanon, Hamas's control of Gaza and the radicalisation of the Arab citizens of Israel.

As Morris points out, these are all unconventional threats. The first one is a potentially nuclear armed country, two are radical Islamist terrorist groups who reject the existence of Israel, and the fourth is one fifth of our own citizens.

The Office Pool, 2009

In my previous post I checked out how well I predicted the events of 2008. Now, I'll predict the events of 2009, again using William Safire's annual column in the New York Times. My reasons for making these choices are in italics.

1. In Demo-dominated D.C., post-postpartisan tension will pit:
(c) Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel against United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, a Zbigniew Brzezinski acolyte, over Mideast policy (Emanuel, the son of an Israeli, is likely to clash with the not-so-Israel-friendly Brzezinski school of thought).

2. Springtime for G.M. will lead to: none of the above. (I'm no expert, but I dare say that excessive industrial bailouts and mergers with Toyota or any other foreign car company won't happen. The third option won't happen either).

3. Toughest foreign affairs challenge will come if:
(a) Afghanistan becomes “Obama’s War” or “Obama’s Retreat” (I doubt the US will retreat from Iraq during 2009. It can still be quite a quagmire, but the trouble won't come from a withdrawal. Ukraine is no Georgia, so Russia won't mess with it, even if Putin needs something to distract Russians from the economic depression. An India-Pakistan war is a serious danger, too, but there is a good chance it can be avoided. Which leaves Afghanistan as the toughest challenge. I'd also add the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the list).

4. Oil selling below $50 a barrel will:
(a) threaten President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s June election in Iran (he ain't that popular as it is, but with the economy in the toilet he's even worse off, and hopefully, he'll lose in June. Oil prices have nothing to do with popular support for Hamas, though it may reduce the money Hamas gets from oil producing countries. Anyway, if Tzippi Livni defeats Netanyahu in Feb., it won't be the indirect result of oil prices, but the direct result of the current operation in Gaza).

5. Best-picture Oscar goes to:
(d) “Gran Torino” (I haven't seen any of these films, but I know the Academy loves Clint Eastwood. I'd put my money on two other films not on Safire's list: WALL-E, which I haven't seen yet, or "The Dark Knight", which I've seen and liked, but don't think deserves the honor).

6. The non-fiction sleeper will be:
(e) “Ponzi Shmonzi: The Bernie Madoff Story,” crash-published by a dozen houses (Just a guess, but I think some of those who lost all their savings because of the son of a bitch can regain some of their money by writing books about him).

7. The don’t-ask deficit at year’s end will be:
(c) $1,393,665,042,198 and no cents. (Or more generally, I think the deficit will grow and be more than a trillion, but less than 2 trillion. I say this, of course, despite my complete ignorance of economic affairs, so I'm probably very wrong).

8. In Congress:
(c) among Senate Democrats, Judiciary chairman Pat Leahy’s influence will rise because Supreme Court nominations will take center stage, while Harry Reid’s clout dissipates because of home-state weakness (I suppose Supreme Court nominations are coming up, so Leahy's clout will grow. I'm not sure it will come at the expense of Harry Reid, though).

9. Post-honeymoon journalists and bloody-minded bloggers will dig into:
(a) the jailhouse singing by Chicago’s felonious fixer, Tony (“Who You Callin’ ‘Boneheaded’?”) Rezko, to Dewey-eyed prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to reduce his six-year sentence (Naturally, the guy who has some kind of connection to the new president, as weak as the connection is, is bound to interest the media. Besides, Chicago's corruption has always been fascinating).

10. The Supreme Court will decide:
(a) in nipple exposure or “fleeting expletives” on live TV, that the F.C.C. exceeded its authority in fining Fox for indecency
(b) that the Federal Election Commission was wrong to censure a moviemaker whose “biopic” was hostile to Hillary Clinton during her campaign
(c) that the appearance of impropriety in financial dealings of a West Virginia judge disqualified him from sitting in a coal-company dispute
(d) that Attorney General John Ashcroft and F.B.I. director Robert Mueller had a “qualified immunity” from being sued for racial profiling in imprisoning suspected terrorists
(e) that in al-Marri v. Pucciarelli, a legal U.S. resident cannot be held indefinitely at Guantánamo (sounds safe enough to guess that all of these will come true).

11. Obama philosophy will be regarded as:
(b) determinedly centrist on health care, immigration and protectionism (I think Obama will tread carefully on all issues).

12. Year-end presidential approval rating will be:
(c) sinking but 30 points higher than that of Congress and the news media (and much higher than Bush's approval rating. The euphoria will end so Obama's approval will drop somewhat, but there is a good chance it will still be high).

I wonder, has anyone stuck around to read all my predictions?

2008: I Didn't See That Coming

In my first post of the year, I made predictions about 2008, based on William Safire's annual Office Pool column in the New York Times. Today, the Times published the 2009 edition, which starts out with Safire pointing out that he predicted the Dow Jones would break 15,000 points this year. I made the same foolish wild guess.

So I decided to go back to my predictions and see how I did. I discovered that on many issues I have no idea what actually happened. I'd be happy if Safire also published an "And the winner of the office pool is" column, where he'd give the correct answers, according to what ended up happening. I do know how some things turned out, and I didn't do too well with those, though I wasn't entirely wrong either.

I said that "There Will Be Blood" will win the Oscar. Even though "No Country For Old Men" was the actual winner, I was kind of right. "Blood" was the only film Safire gave as an option that even got nominated in the best film category.

I was right about the Supreme Court: it did indeed rule that gun rights belong to the individual, states can require photo ID to vote, and lethal injection is not cruel and unusual punishment. I'm not a legal expert, so I'm not sure whether or not they ruled habeas corpus applies to Guantanamo detainees, or whether military commissions for detainees were declared illegal on different grounds.

I was pretty much wrong about all the political and diplomatic issues, except that I think I was right about Fidel Castro leaving the world stage, and America is indeed going leftward with a Democratic Congress, though it's with Obama as president, not Hillary Clinton.

Hamas Kills and Injures Fellow Arabs

After Qassam rockets killed two Palestinian girls in Gaza last week, and injured a Palestinian man, the indiscriminate nature of Hamas's weapons has been demonstrated once again today. Missiles launched by the terrorist group hit a construction site in Ashkelon, killing Hani al-Mahdi, 27, and injuring 10 other workers, all of them Palestinian citizens of Israel. Will Hamas now declare this innocent victim a Shaheed?

In related news, Israel destroyed about 40 tunnels in the Rafah area. This will substantially reduce Hamas's capability to re-arm itself. So far, the operation has been going very well.

Good Job, IAF!

One of the most frustrating things about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that the solution is very clear to most people, but that's still not enough to end the violence. The only way out of this quagmire is the two state solution, with Israel and Palestine side by side, and no return of Palestinians into Israel. This very sensible solution is rejected by Hamas, who would rather keep fighting Israel until all of this "holly Muslim land" is "liberated". It even seems to be rejected by Fatah, who still calls for the return of Palestinian refugees into Israel.

Radicalism must be crippled on both sides. Right now we're working on crippling Hamas. When we're done with that, we should reign in the rogue settlers. But that will be later. Now Hamas is the enemy and I wish all their members nothing but the worst.

I'm one angry Israeli, and the longer the range of Hamas's rockets, the angrier I get. Don't screw with Israel!

Airstrikes Against Hamas in Gaza

I'm on the peaceful side of the Israeli political spectrum, but even I think that there is a time for peace and a time for fighting. Israel was right to attack Hamas in Gaza. It isn't attacking civilian targets and civilian casualties are very low among the 200-odd dead and 200 or so wounded.

The ball is in Hamas's hands now. If it stops attacking Israel, Israel will stop attacking Hamas. Eventually, even the border crossings may open.

When even dovish people like Amos Oz and Meretz leader Haim Oron support action against Hamas in Gaza, it means Hamas has really crossed a line. The terrorist organization has been raining scores of rockets a day on Israeli towns over the last week. Even during the so-called ceasefire, Palestinian rockets hit Israel.

Just yesterday, two Palestinian girls were killed by a Qassam rocket which misfired. Also yesterday, a Palestinian man who was injured by a Qassam, which he may or may not have been trying to launch at Israel, was transferred to an Israeli hospital for medical treatment.

The Qassams only hurt the Palestinians. Without them, the lives of Gazans would be much better and the prospect of an independent Palestinian state would be much closer to reality.

Sharia Law in Gaza

According to Al-Hayat, the Hamas government in Gaza has passed a new law detailing the punishments for various crimes, based on Islamic Sharia law. Not surprisingly, whoever cooperates with Israel is sentenced to death. I don't support this, but at least this part is somehow understandable. Now here are some of the scarier Iranian/Saudi Arabian/Taliban-style punishments:

• For drinking, owning or producing wine - 40 whips.
• For gambling, hurting religious sensibilities, cursing, humiliating people and hurting the public's feelings - you'll get whipped.
• For stealing - amputation of the right hand.

Time's People of the Year

Is there any doubt whatsoever that President-elect Barack Obama is the man of the year? Whether you like him or not, the first African-American President beat off more experienced candidates and made history. Do Time Magazine editors even have to think this through? They seemed to support him during the election, so if they won't select him, it would just be a lame attempt to prove they aren't big fans of his.

The bigger question is who the runners up will be. Clinton? Palin? Tina Fey? I'd choose Hillary Clinton as 1st runner up, since she was very close to becoming the first female presidential nominee of a major party and ended the year getting nominated for Secretary of State. Second runner up will probably be the president of China, and a European leader (Brown of the UK, Merkel of Germany or Sarkozy of France) will be 3rd.

Senate Seat For Sale

Wow, this is absolutely incredible. Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, who has the power to appoint Barack Obama's successor in the Senate, has been arrested for allegedly trying to sell the Senate seat to whoever had the most lucrative offer for him (either cash or a high paying job for himself or his wife). He was recorded on a wiretap saying that if nobody offers him something good enough he'll just appoint himself. This sounds like one of the worst, and most blatant, cases of corruption in US history since the end of New York's Tammany Hall days.

Ehud Olmert must feel sorry for the governor.

Channel 1's Weird Likud Primary Coverage

Because of long lines and problems with voting machines, polls closed only at 1 a.m. in the Likud primaries. Polls are still open in the West Bank. Because of this, results are expected at 2:30, instead of midnight. Nobody is still covering this election, except for Channel 1, the public (government-owned) channel.

Newscasters Geula Even and Oded Shahar, along with political commentator Yaron Dekel, are joking around with the guests in the studio and Ayala Hason-Nesher,the reporter at Likud HQ. Hason-Nesher even asked Even and Shahar how long they have to stay on the air and killing time. They keep joking about not falling asleep. They are acting so silly that when they interviewed Limor Livnat, Even fake-complimented her on her looks and brains, "in case you become the minister in charge of public broadcasting."

Hason-Nesher to Even after Even successfully guessed Moshe Yaalon is in 7th place, according to the unofficial list Hason-Nesher got: "You're not just beautiful, you've got brains".

It doesn't seem like they think anyone is actually watching them.

Likud Moderates vs. Feiglins: Who Should I Root For?

Tomorrow the Likud holds its primaries to elect its list for the Knesset. Benjamin Netanyahu is hoping that right-wing extremist Moshe Feiglin and his supporters, known as "the Feiglins", will not do very well. He fears that if they make it into high places on the list it will cost the party a significant amount of votes. I'm sure he's right. A radical Likud Knesset list would definitely hurt Netanyahu in his race against Tzipi Livni.

I have mixed feelings about the results I'd like to see coming out of tomorrow's vote. A part of me would like to see the extremists win, so that Likud will lose to Kadima in the general election. However, as an Israeli, I don't really want these dangerous nuts in my parliament. I'd rather see moderates like Dan Meridor, Asaf Hefetz and Uzi Dayan get into the Knesset than Moshe Feiglin.

I've come to the conclusion that I'd like to see the moderates in the top 20, spots considered safe, and I don't want the Feiglins to be in completely unrealistic spots, like 40 and up, but rather places that are on the brink - mid-20's to mid-30's, places where people will say to themselves, "if my vote is the one giving Likud a 26th (or 30th) seat and putting that guy in the Knesset, I'd rather vote for a different party."

Labor's Knesset List

I have mixed feelings about the primary election's results. On the one hand, most of the candidates I support are at the top of the list (Braverman, Yechimovich and Pines), while another, Daniel Ben-Simon, is in 11th place, which just might get him into the next Knesset. On the other hand, the entire second fivesome ("hamishya", places 6-10, not including 7, which was reserved) is made up of people I hoped would be pushed out of the Knesset - Matan Vilnai, Yuli Tamir, Amir Peretz and Fuad Ben-Eliezer, while one of the people who were pushed out was Colette Avital, one of the finest Knesset Members Israel has.

I'm also not happy about Yoram Martziano winning the seat reserved for struggling neighborhoods. Martziano is a thug whose main contribution to Israeli legislation was to overturn a desicion to remove huge billboards from buildings along a busy highway. Transportation experts said the billboards, which usualy have scantily clad models on them, distract drivers and cause accidents, but Martziano came out in defense of the advertising companies. He also got into a fistfight at a nightclub and was accused of sexual harassment. The good news is that Martziano is only in 17th place, and the way it looks now, Labor will get only about ten seats.

Anyway, here's how the Labor Party's Knesset list will look (top 19):

1. Ehud Barak, party chairman
2. Yitzhak Herzog (1st place in primaries)
3. Ofir Pines (2nd)
4. Avishai Braverman (3rd)
5. Shelly Yechimovich (4th)
6. Matan Vilnai (5th)
7. Eitan Cabel, reserved as secretary-general
8. Fuad Ben Eliezer (6th)
9. Yuli Tamir (8th, bumped up one seat due to reservation for women)
10. Amir Peretz (7th)
11. Daniel Ben-Simon (9th)
12. Shalom Simhon (seat reserved for Moshavim)
13. Orit Noked (seat reserved for Kibbutzim)
14. Einat Wilf (10th place in national primary)
15. Ghaleb Majadla (seat reserved for Arabs)
16. Shekeev Shanan (seat reserved for Druze candidate)
17. Yoram Martziano (seat reserved for struggling neighborhoods)
18. Leon Litinsky (seat reserved for Olim, new immigrants)
19. Colette Avital (12th place in national primary, bumped up due to reservation for women)

All Is Quiet On the Hebron Front (For Now)

Israeli forces evacuated 250 settlers illegally occupying a house in Hebron yesterday. It was over within an hour and went just about perfectly, as the evacuees were caught by surprise. They thought negotiations with the government may still produce an agreement that would allow them to stay there.

The trouble came later, when Jewish settlers attacked Palestinians all over Hebron. Settlers shot at Palestinians, burned their laundrey and tried to burn their houses. The police and army did nothing to stop them. This is a disgrace. The security forces should have treated rioting Jews as if they were rioting Palestinians. All those who participated in criminal acts against innocent Palestinian civilians must be brought to justice.

It is now quiet in Hebron. It is hard to know how long this will last.

Labor Primaries Postponed Mid-Voting

I waited two hours today at my polling place to vote in the Labor Party's primary election. The voting system crashed and so we had to wait for it to come back up again. Once in a while it came back up, two or three people managed to vote and then the system crashed again. The poll workers said there were problems all over Israel and that the company running the system had only two tech support guys for the whole country. It was ridiculous. In the end I didn't vote at all.

Turns out that the party has decided to stop today's elections and postpone them to December 10. This was the Labor Party's first attempt at electronic voting, and during the re-vote they'll go back to the old system of paper ballots. I think they should have had paper ballots available today as backup in case the system fails.

Labor List Prediction

Other than Ehud Barack and Eitan Cabel, who have the 1st and 7th places on the Labor list reserved, as well as a few people running unopposed for seats reserved for specific geographic and demographic districts, all other people who want to get into the party's list have to succeed in tomorrow's primaries. Here's how I predict the top 10 will look:

1. Ehud Barack (Reserved, as party chairman)
2. Ofir Pines (1st place in primaries)
3. Shelly Yechimovich (2nd)
4. Avishay Braverman (3rd)
5. Yitzhak Herzog (4th)
6. Daniel Ben-Simon (5th)
7. Eitan Cabel (Reserved, as party secretary-general)
8. Colette Avital (6th)
9. Amir Peretz (7th)
10. Einat Wilf (8th)

Coming in at 9th place and getting the 11th spot on the list will be Fouad Ben Eliezer. 10th place, who will get to be no. 14, after the two spots reserved for Moshavim (Shalom Simhon, running unopposed) and Kibbutzim (where Orit Noked will probably win), will be Yuli Tamir.

I'm predicting that 4 women will be among the ten people with the most votes, and three of them will also make it to the Knesset list's top 10. They don't even need the places reserved for women (5th, if no woman is elected to places 1-4; 9th, if no woman is elected to places 6-8; and 14, if no woman is elected to places 11-13). I may be too optimistic here.

Polls close at 22:00 (3 PM Eastern), and voting is electronic, so results should not take too long to be tallied and announced.

My Labor Votes

The Israeli Labor Party selects its Knesset list tomorrow. Each party member chooses five to eight of the 19 general candidates plus votes for district candidates. As a (not so proud) member, I'll have the right to vote as well. I'll be voting for Avishay Braverman (a brilliant economist), Ofir Pines (a sane moderate on social and national security issues), Shelly Yechimovich (an excellent legislator who used to be extremely leftist in her previous journalism career, but who has become a moderate), Colette Avital (excellent legislator and former diplomat) and Daniel Ben-Simon (a former Ha'aretz journalist who has entered politics recently). I might also vote for Shimon Sheetrit, a law and political science prefessor and former cabinet member, and Dr. Einat Wilf, a young academic with interesting ideas about education.

You may notice I'm not voting for any generals. I have no idea what good Fouad Ben-Eliezer, a retired Brigadier General, has ever done for this country in all his years in government. He's been good to members of strong labor unions, but not to the general population. Matan Vilnai, a retired Major General who I used to like, has had some very odd security proposals recently.

Neither will I be voting for Yuli Tamir, the Minister of Education. She has let the Ministry of the Treasury run negotiations with teachers' and university professors' unions and , and she has led the awful Ofek Hadash (New Horizon) reform plan, which gives teachers slightly more pay for a lot more work (meaning that per hour, their pay was cut), among other problems.

I will not vote for the inept Amir Peretz or the bleeding-heart Peace Now chairman Yariv Oppenheimer. I will also vote against the Ars (thug) Yoram Martziano, who is running in the "neighborhoods" district (where only residents of poor neighborhoods can run but all party members can vote).