How awful. I’ve had such a long day, and now I’m lying in bed, and all I can think of is Iran. Will we or won’t we? Should we or shouldn’t we? If we do, will the Americans join in? Or will we be in this on our own?

It seems like today, more than most days, was ‘let’s talk about Iran’ day. Ashkenazi talked about it, Yadlin talked about it, Dempsey talked about it. Time Magazine wrote about it. The New York Times had a big story about it. The Institute for Science and International Security released a report about it today.

And it wasn’t just today. Yesterday Bibi talked about it, the day before Barak talked about it. The day before that Foreign Affairs wrote about it.

Barry Rubin says we won’t.

Ronen Bergman says we will.

Iran overload. Did I miss something? Was there a memo? Why was there so much about Iran today?

I’ll try think about something else. Clear my mind. Decompress. It’s late.

But wait, will an attack destroy the program, or just set it back a few years? And if it just sets it back a few years, and gives them a legitimate justification for making nuclear bombs, what good is an attack then? And if we attack, will all our pilots come home? And what will happen to the Strait of Hormuz? Will the Iranians close it? And if they do, will the Americans open it? And what will that do to the price of oil? And if the price of oil spikes so high, what will that do to the European and American economies? And if those economies collapse, will there be a massive backlash against us?

Ok, let’s try this again. Clear your mind. Look for tension in your body and breathe into…

Hold on, will the Japanese and South Koreans join the EU oil embargo on Iran? Will the Saudis give China all the oil they might lose from Iran? And what about us and the Americans? What do they expect from us, and what do we want from them? Are we on the same page? It doesn’t seem like it. Can we do it without them? Can we withstand and sustain the fallout without them?

Don’t fight it Amir. This is big. Really, really big. History hinges on this moment; and you want to count sheep?!. Shame on you.

So go ahead, let go, let your mind ponder, ruminate, obsess.

See, by writing this, you’ve joined the long list of words about Iran today.

Bliss. Now I can sleep.

Tomorrow we can start all over again.

Just over the past week, the Israeli defense establishment has released the following pictures of its set pieces:

The Ministry of Defense has released pictures of an Arrow 3 anti-missile defense system test. [Message to Iran: We can hit your long-range missiles, your threats of massive rocket attack have been noted and we're prepared].

The Israel Air Force released pictures of its “IAF pilots train against realistic enemy simulations.” [Message: We know what you've got around your nuclear sites, see? We've even built little mock versions of your systems].

Then the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit released photos of The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Military, General (****) Martin E. Dempsey, at Yad Vashem [Message to Iran: Israel takes your threats of annihilation seriously and has brought the commander of the US Army to Yad Vashem to make that point to him - just so that he knows we're not kidding when we say 'Never Again']

And by the way, don’t believe those reports of tension between Israel and the US. Clink.

Before that was the release of images of the first IDF Paratrooper Brigade practice jump in 15 years. [Message: The IDF has more tools in its box than just air strikes and is not squeamish about sending a large amount of crack troops deep into enemy territory].

All of these events [bar Dempsey's visit to Yad Vashem] could have been conducted in secret, as many other security operations routinely are. There is no doubt that they were made public as part of a wider campaign to send messages about Israel’s military preparedness regarding a strike on Iran’s nuclear program. The question is: do the Iranians get the picture?

For Israel, this is an entirely new situation. To deal with it, the Jewish state needs to strengthen its other alliances, chief amongst them with America and Europe, but also the African states bordering the strategically important Red Sea. Israel also needs to talk to African countries such as Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria. And, significantly, Israel must try to make progress on the Palestinian track, chiefly because this is perhaps the only issue it really can have a major effect on [besides from attacking Iran]. This is the most important, and most difficult issue. So far the Palestinians have proven again and again that they are not willing to make significant compromises towards a peace deal, and the Israeli government seems unable or unwilling to pull a rabbi out of its kippa, and present a game-changing proposal to lower the heat of this festering issue. Every Israeli government since the late 1990′s has operated on the understanding that Israel cannot continue to control the Palestinians and retain its status as a Jewish and democratic state. It’s vital that Israel find a solution to this conflict and not let it persist for who knows how many more years until things settle down in the Middle East. Because we don’t know if and/or when they’ll settle down. All the Arab countries except for Egypt are artificial countries and could easily break down into separate entities, further complicating a region in major flux. In short, the region is in a state of turmoil and will stay that way for a long time. It took Europe 100 years and two world wars to settle into peaceful democracies. Think about that. There’s no evidence to show that the Palestinian – Israeli conflict gets easier to solve over time, actually, it seems to get harder to solve over time. There may be changes in leadership that may produce a better environment but the notion, currently held by the Israeli government, that we can wait five years, or ten years, and come back to this at a time when maybe the region is more settled down and it will be easier, is a notion not borne out by the facts. So in an absence of a clearly articulated Israeli policy towards a two-state solution, and an equally unclear readiness by the Palestinian Authority to make significant compromises, the Israeli-Palestinian issue could fester deep into the new, Muslim Brotherhood-dominated region.

The US Administration has gone out of its way to make it clear to the Israeli leadership that it believes sanctions against Iran are working and need more time to evolve. The US does not want Israel to launch a strike against Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and there exists a certain amount of unease at Israel’s opacity when it comes to sharing its Iran plans with America.

Where do Israel and America’s interests dovetail, and where do they part?

In off-the-record conversations with top US and Israeli officials, I can report that there is, unfortunately, disagreement on a wide range of strategic issues affecting both nations. The issue that divides Washington and Jerusalem the most is where to draw the red line regarding Iran. For Israel, Iran’s ability to have all the ingredients and expertise necessary to develop nuclear weapons and fortify these ingredients in areas that are impossible for Israel to destroy is a red line, a line that seems to already have been crossed. For the US, Iran’s ability to actually produce a nuclear weapon is a red line, a line that seemingly has not been crossed yet. How the two allies resolve this issue remains to be seen. One senior Israeli official summed up Jerusalem’s position on the matter thus: ‘Good people can disagree. We reserve the right to decide how best to safeguard our security, and we reserve the right to act.’

The American position has been expounded on, most recently, by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who said an attack against Iran by Israel would have devastating consequences, and that America’s red line has essentially not been reached yet.

On other issues the two allies are also working to resolve differences of opinion.

As one top official told me, at this point in history America’s power is receding around the world, and in the Middle East Islam is on the ascendancy. Israel and America cannot determine the outcome of the changes that have rocked the Arab region, but they can work to create opportunities and attempt to move, as much as possible, things that are in their power to move. Israel and America must prepare for changes in the peace agreements Israel has with both Egypt and Jordan, which are cornerstones of Israel’s security posture as well as American foreign policy in the region. Just because there are agreements, it doesn’t mean that peace will be honored, Israeli officials say. Both allies are closely watching unfolding events in Syria, mindful of that country’s stockpile of chemical and biological weapons.

The US and Israel must plan to mediate the risks and look for opportunities in the new regional alignments. Officials from both countries believe that we are frankly just at the beginning of the changes in the region. Extremists could hijack the changes, as we are already seeing in several instances. In short, we don’t know where this Arab Spring/ Islamic Winter is going. Nobody does. It’s in the US’s interest that Israel remain a strong, vibrant and secure Jewish democratic state because, in the long run, the forces that initially unleashed the revolts in the Arab world, may look to Israel as a model for democracy and partnership. The transitions in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and other places are at a very early stage. And as in history the revolutions are being hijacked by people who didn’t set them off. The outcomes will be determined by those Arab societies themselves, but America can use its leverage to make clear to the new regimes that their relationship with Washington rests on certain principles, such as honoring past peace agreements, women’s rights, minority rights, an independent judiciary and a free press, for instance. Israel cannot afford to blunt this US leverage, and should support it as much as possible. It is difficult enough for the US to wield massive financial leverage what with the American economy as it is. But, according to one view, there are real opportunities, in the long term, for democratic states to arise in the region and Israel can ultimately benefit from that. America can try steer the changes toward this goal, and Israel should help in any way it can, obviously without compromising on its security. Israel has never had the luxury of having democratic neighbors. Democratic states rarely make war on each other. But how much will the Israeli/Palestinian issue be a rallying call for the new Muslim Brotherhood regimes in the region?

As America’s clout in the region wanes, the involvement of Turkey, Russia, China, and Iran is on the rise. The stated zeitgeist within the Israeli leadership is that, amidst all this upheaval in the Middle East, now is not the time to take risks for peace with the Palestinians. Perhaps in the next generation. The problem with this line of thinking is that Arab dictators historically had much success using the Palestinian/ Israeli conflict to divert the anger and frustration of their subjects’ living conditions and lack of rights. They did it for decades, until the conditions of their citizens deteriorated beyond repair, leading to revolution. Will the Muslim Brotherhood regimes now arising across the region also divert anger at Israel? And if these regimes suffer the same fate as their predecessors, we might be faced with a string of failed states from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf. That kind of instability is not in Israel’s long-term interest.

Can Israel afford not to try to make progress on the Palestinian track? Can we wait for 5 or 10 years until the region settles down? History shows that this conflict gets harder to solve with the passage of time, not easier. As a senior Western diplomat told me this week, time is not on Israel’s side, so in an absence of a clearly articulated Israeli policy towards a two-state solution, and an equally unclear readiness by the Palestinian Authority to make significant compromises, the Israeli-Palestinian issue could fester deep into the new regional realities. Unfortunately, the Palestinian leadership believes that time is on its side, and is constantly avoiding direct talks with Israel. PA President Mahmoud Abbas must be made, through pressure, to realize that he has more to lose from staying away from talks than by making a deal. Only then is he likely to make an honest attempt at peace. If he does, the chances are quite good that he’ll find an Israeli partner.

There are signs that it may. Over the past year, it is the silent majority, and specifically, those who consider themselves centrists in their political and economic outlook, which has been most heavily involved in three public campaigns that seem to have shaken it awake from its political slumber.

Firstly, a large proportion of the people who went out into the streets to demand the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit came from the center of the political spectrum. They are the people who send their sons and daughters to the army, and who want the IDF to recommit to the ethos of not leaving any soldier behind. It is this sector, and its children, who placed pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a deal with Hamas for Shalit’s return, turning out for rally after rally, and changing their facebook pictures to Gilad’s face. And while Netanyahu did eventually make the deal, he is unlikely to garner any real electoral reward from this sector of the voting population. While the campaign to free Shalit genuinely did cross party political lines, many on the right stayed away from the campaign, preferring not to pressure the government into making a deal that would see hundreds of Palestinian terrorists with blood on their hands released, for one Israeli soldier. Many on the right opposed the deal. Furthermore, Gilad Shalit’s father Noam’s announcement that he would be seeking a Knesset seat with the Labor party may further alienate those on the right who believe that Shalit Senior is abusing his position as the father of “the son of all of us” to enter politics.

The second campaign that shook the center this past year was last summer’s biggest social protests this country has ever seen. Over the sweltering summer months, thousands of disaffected youths occupied the main boulevards of Tel-Aviv, months before their American counterparts pitched their tents on Wall Street. What started off as a consumer boycott against expensive cottage cheese, expensive housing, and expensive everything, swelled into a massive, organic, centrist, secular, middle class movement which came out to the public spaces, week after week, to demand social justice. The government, initially dismissive of the protests, was suddenly left with no choice but to make concessions and promise change, while at the same time using its various spokespeople to color the protests as a politically motivated and leftist-financed plot to unseat the Likud-led coalition. Noticeable in their absence in this past summer’s protests were the ultra-Orthodox (who go out to vote in general elections at a percentage of almost 100%), the settlers (who likewise have a similar voting discipline) and many people who situate themselves on the right side of the political map.

Thirdly, the anti-religious backlash that has taken hold over the past several months is, almost by definition, a secular, centrist, middle-class reaction to the increasing excesses of the country’s large, and growing, ultra-Orthodox population. While the exclusion of women (spitting on little girls, forcing women to sit at the back of the bus, removing images of women from public spaces, and more) is said to be the work of extreme elements within the wider ultra-Orthodox population, the mainstream secular middle-class public is not making this distinction (and the inability or unwillingness of the mainstream Ultra-Orthodox leadership to quell the extremists is not helping matters). Furthermore, the examples of religious extremism are bringing into sharper focus the wider problem of the ultra-Orthodox: non-involvement in the job sector, non service in the army, the fact that their children do not learn core subjects such as math and science, and the exploding birth rate of this sector. The secular middle class is feeling the burden of carrying this sector on its back more than ever and wants things to change. The fact that the ruling Likud-led coalition includes the ultra-Orthodox political parties marks the secular middle class, if this issue is to be a prominent one in the next elections, as firmly in the camp of any political constellation that excludes the religious parties.

Increasingly, the secular middle class is being prodded into action (protesting the release of Shalit, protesting the rising cost of living, and protesting the burden placed on it by the religious sector).

The question now is whether the center has been sufficiently shaken from its slumber by the above issues to go out and vote en masse, and if so, which parties it will vote for?

Each protest has its poster child:

Noam Shalit, Gilad’s father, has already announced his joining Labor.

Yair Lapid is forming his own centrist party to work against the ultra-Orthodox.

And both Labor and Lapid are trying to woo the student leader Itzik Shmuli, the main leader of the tent protests, to join their parties. Shmuli, for now, has been non-committal.

My sense is that the next elections, which look likely to take place at the beginning of 2013, will see a much higher voter turnout by all sectors of the Israeli electorate than recent previous elections. And this is a great thing for Israeli democracy.

The next pertinent question is this: will these social issues still be around in their current intensity when elections roll around, sometime at the beginning of 2013? I’m not sure of the answer, and I don’t think anyone can tell. However, increasing tensions with Iran, a neighborhood in turmoil, and stagnation on the Palestinian track could, potentially, coalesce toward the end of the year, or even sooner, to bring security issues back to the fore.

The more I read “Ben-Gurion, a Political Life” by Shimon Peres [Schocken: $25.95], the more I liked to play ‘What would the Old Man do now?’ One thing is for certain: if Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, were Prime Minister now, he would cut a very incongruous, confused figure amongst all the bling and bang of our current politicians. Written “in conversation with” former Ha’aretz Editor-in-Chief David Landau, the book is the nineteenth title in the Jewish Encounter series from Schocken and Nextbook Press. Let us dispense with the platitudes that President Peres is usually, and rightly, showered with, and cut straight to the chase. An insightful, exhaustive, and dispassionate dissection of Israel’s founding father it is not. In fact, Peres did not actually write it, Landau did. Peres’ memories inform much of the book, and he edited its final draft. What is unique about the book is that it is peppered with Peres’ commentary about Ben-Gurion and his milieu at the time of Israel’s creation. With books called “The Unmaking of Israel” currently making the rounds, it is a timely text. In that sense also, you are getting two-for-the-price-of-one: a subjective historical account of Israel’s founder and first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, written by none other than Israel’s current President, Shimon Peres [who happened to be at Ben-Gurion’s side during much of his career], as well as an erudite and personal critique about contemporary Israeli politics from the last remaining figure of the Jewish state’s founding generation.

It is a strange book. A biography written in collaboration between two men with opposite goals: the President looking to frame Ben-Gurion as the very pinnacle of leadership, of moral clarity, defending Ben-Gurion’s political pragmatism as the most necessary and sufficient characteristic of the man whose sole purpose was to establish the Jewish state out of the ashes of the Holocaust. Landau, on the other hand, comes from a purely journalistic perspective, and his task, which he pursues vigorously, is to highlight the complexities of Ben-Gurion’s ‘political life’ – to delve into the grey area, antagonize the memory (Peres) sufficiently to get a fuller account of the ‘Old Man.’ It is in this tension between subjective biographer and critical journalist that the book finds its drama. Perhaps their two missions merge at that point in the text where both Landau and Peres work to show that the current crop of Israeli leaders is not cut from the same cloth as Ben-Gurion was. To Peres’ credit, he does not edit out some of the tougher exchanges with Landau.

In a good example of this, Landau harangues Peres about Ben-Gurion’s single-minded focus on establishing a state instead of lobbying to save the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust. Peres is certainly uncomfortable with this line of questioning, as he should be. It takes Landau’s constant, obsessive, probing to eventually pry the painful truth from Peres: “We didn’t have that kind of clout,” the president finally admits. This exchange, between a journalist and a witness, imbues the book with real drama. Peres wholeheartedly believes that Ben-Gurion took the right decision by focusing on creating the state, but Landau has to get him to explain why – and in this exchange, the reader learns something new. Peres has no real reason to whitewash Ben-Gurion or to defend him against accusations of ignoring the plight of Hitler’s Jewish victims. History itself will judge Ben-Gurion for the decisions he took and the compromises that he made. Peres, for his part, is convinced that it was the right decision, as was the difficult decision to accept the U.N. Partition Plan [“Better a state on part of the land than the whole land and no state”].

The book’s value lies in the fact that it is informed not just by a close witness to the events that Ben-Gurion dealt with on a daily basis, but that this close witness was Shimon Peres, who, although he downplays it, played a significant part of the story of Israel’s establishment. It probably would also have been a poorer, less memorable book had it not been the fruit of collaboration between Peres and Landau. As I have mentioned, Landau wrote the book, whose content came from deep conversations with President Peres, while the latter had the final edit. Landau is acerbic, a brutally honest journalist, and, like a heat-seeking missile, attacks the issues his interlocutor would simply prefer to brush aside. If there is an elephant in the room, Landau is incapable of ignoring it, and incapable of allowing others to ignore it either. He seems to not be able to stop himself, and the reader of the book benefits from this journalistic psychosis. It is to Peres’ credit that he leaves these difficult exchanges in the book.

Peres was, and obviously still is, in awe of the Old Man. Here is a good example

“Landau: despite your enormous admiration of him, did you ever find yourself, in private, critical of Ben-Gurion’s policies?”

“Shimon Peres: No!”

“David Landau: That’s almost impossible.”

In his book, Peres tells us a few personal facts about David Ben-Gurion, like, for instance, that his first and greatest love fell in love with another man, and that Ben-Gurion kept up a correspondence with this woman for years after her marriage [and his marriage to Paula], even extolling her to leave her husband and children and to come live with him. Detailing Ben-Gurion’s single-mindedness and obsession with establishing the state, Peres tells us that Ben-Gurion left his pregnant wife [pregnant with their first child] and went off to war to fight in the British Jewish legion against the Ottomans. Ben-Gurion was such a stickler for clean governance that as an official of the Yishuv, he refused to expedite or help in any way with his family’s immigration to Israel from Poland – even though his wife and child were waiting, and his father had supported David financially during his legal studies in Turkey, and in the first lean years in Palestine, where the young Ben-Gurion had gone to start a new life. That is how much he hated ‘proteksia’ and refused to have anything to do with it.

Which brings me to what I think is the book’s primary value, and Peres’ primary message, to the contemporary reader, that ‘they just don’t make them like David Ben-Gurion anymore.’

Peres recalls an exchange between JFK and Ben-Gurion.

“JFK: I know that I owe my election to your people. How can I repay you for your support?

Ben-Gurion: “You can repay us by being a great president of the United States.” [Something Peres told President Barack Obama 47 years later].

And in the following lines, Peres more than hints at his motivation for writing this book, and writing it now: “Israel, by virtue of her abiding strategic, political, and democratic quintessence, needs the president of the U.S. to be strong and successful. It’s poor politics and the most shortsighted strategy to suggest that Israel can somehow benefit from a confrontational or adversarial relationship with the president of the U.S.” A very, very thinly veiled reference to the relationship between Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama.

And it is not like our current leaders do not have the same level of difficult decisions to make.

Like our contemporary leaders, Ben-Gurion too faced the specter of civil war against the extreme Right. In his case, he stared the nightmare straight in the eyes and did not back down. And he did it twice. The first time when he ordered the Haganah to fire on the Altalena, and the second time during Begin’s revolt against Ben-Gurion’s reparations deal with Germany. What would Ben-Gurion do now? I keep on asking myself. What would the ‘Old Man’ do about the “price-tag” attacks by radical settler youths against mosques, Palestinian property, and IDF soldiers? What would he do about the outposts? In short, what would Ben-Gurion do about the rising lawlessness in the territory across the Green Line? Territory, which, according to the book, he did not believe Israel should keep.

And what would Ben-Gurion do with the increasing tensions between the secular and ultra-Orthodox sectors? What Peres does not say is that Ben-Gurion failed to truly assess the trajectory of the ultra-Orthodox issue. Nowhere in the book does Peres ask the question: did Ben-Gurion not see where this was headed? Instead, he infers that at the establishment of the state, Ben-Gurion took pity on the haredim and allowed them to establish Yeshivas in Israel and not serve in the army. Back then their numbers were negligible. But by the end of the 60s, certainly toward the end of his second stint as Prime Minister, did Ben-Gurion not notice that their numbers had swelled? This issue may be covered in other historical texts, but not in Peres’ book, which is unfortunate, as the issue has again risen to the surface of public discourse in Israel. Peres writes: “The war [of independence] was raging throughout the country, and all able-bodied men had been mobilized. The yeshiva deans threatened to move their institutions abroad if the concession [of not serving in the military] was not granted. I was instrumental in negotiating on Ben-Gurion’s behalf with the ultra-Orthodox Council of Yeshivot and in formalizing the exemption.” In that passage, Peres takes some responsibility for distributing the burden of citizenship unequally, but he does not carry the issue forward and take responsibility for not changing the situation later in his career, even as prime minister himself. Peres even disingenuously says “Israel is not under religious control … it’s not a halachic country, it’s not a theocracy” without qualifying, to a reader who might not know it, that in Israel, one cannot marry, divorce, or be buried without the authorization of a representative of a religious council, which may or may not answer to the Chief Rabbinate, which may or may not be answerable to the Minister of Religious Affairs. So while technically Peres is correct [the country’s main organs are not under religious control] but many facets of public life are, as the country has not separated religion from state.

In another reference to contemporary Israeli issues, Peres chooses to relate a conversation he had with Ben-Gurion, where the latter told him why he preferred Lenin over Trotsky. “You know, Trotsky was no statesman … because of his concept of no war – no peace. That’s not statesmanship. That’s some sort of Jewish invention. A statesman must decide, one way or the other: to go for peace and pay the price, or to make war, knowing what the risks and dangers are.” It is almost as if, with the choices of anecdotes about Ben-Gurion’s political history he chooses to highlight in his book, Israel’s current ‘Old Man’ inserts his thoughts on the country’s biggest contemporary problem: the dangerous lack of decisive, untainted, selfless leadership at the political, religious, economic, and social levels. In short, a lack of leadership. If you read the book carefully, you will feel the criticism, and the urgency, permeating almost its every page. As president, Peres has to navigate a careful path between his duties as a non-partisan figurehead trying to keep a fracturing nation together, and Peres the writer of a book about a man he misses – and who longs to see him again in the faces of the young men and women who currently pour water on each other in the Knesset.

This is what he said:

“During the Six-Day War each and every Jew who went to battle raised his eyes to the Creator. But in the Second Lebanon War we said, ‘By my strength and the might of my hand, and then God said to us, ‘Let’s see the results of, ‘By my strength and the might of my hand.’”

In other words: The Israel Defense Forces lost the Second Lebanon War in 2006 because its soldiers didn’t pray enough, and the army wasn’t religious enough.

Not only did he offend the families of the soldiers who died in that war, he outraged many secular and religious Israelis who can’t understand why this man can say something so idiotic and still keep his job.

What Yishai doesn’t say is that in 2006 was a member of Ehud Olmert’s government; and as a price for joining the coalition, Yishai demanded a halt to cuts in child allowances which amounted to one billion shekels, and which benefitted his electorate that doesn’t work and lives off state subsidies. And partly because Olmert had to pay off Shas, the IDF was short-changed on the defense budget. So one of the reasons we ‘lost’ that war was because reserve training was drastically cut during those times so that the army could save money. The army needed to save money because Yishai demanded a huge dowry for his flock. Many units didn’t have the proper equipment because of the budget cuts. That was one of the factors that lead to the army’s bad performance.

And another thing: During the Six Day War in 1967, many of the elite soldiers and commanders of most of the units were secular men from kibbutzim. By 2006, many battalion commanders were religious Zionists. These are very good soldiers, and they’re in some of the best units in the IDF. If there ever was a war in which the IDF was led on the ground by religious men, the Second Lebanon War was it. The soldiers’ performance in battle against Hezbollah was exemplary. In fact, in almost every encounter with Hezbollah fighters, Israeli soldiers excelled and came out on top. It was the contradictory orders of the political leadership [move out! no, wait, come back! Move out now! Stop] that made many IDF formations sitting ducks to Hezbollah mobile teams. It was a novice Prime Minister who ran a bad war, and appointed a union boss with no military experience at all as defense minister, that led to such terrible indecision.

And it was Eli Yishai’s plunder of the state’s budget that forced the army to cut corners.

“When all Arab countries are confronting the Jewish people, what will save them is Torah scholars, those who lead people to do mitzvot [good deeds], and those who bring non-observant people back into the religious fold,” Yishai added Tuesday.

Yishai is sounding more and more like his Supreme Leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who is famous for saying some pretty outlandish things himself. Yishai must be thinking that elections are close, and thus it is necessary to start spreading demagoguery.

I wonder if he also thinks that 44 Prisons Service members died in the Carmel Fire because they weren’t religious enough. Oh wait, as the Interior Minister responsible for the Fire Service Eli Yishai couldn’t find the necessary funds to equip the firefighters with trucks and planes, and enough men. For all the years under his watch, the Fire Service was ignored. Maybe that’s the real reason the 44 people died?

a). The army is very loathe to demolish the illegal settlement outpost of Migron by the court-appointed deadline of March because it “will cause a serious backlash from the right wing and possibly change the security balance in the West Bank.”
In other words: we can carry out the orders of the High Court but it’s going to cause a major upheaval and so may not even be worth the trouble.

b). The IDF knows that there are several plots by Palestinians to kidnap and kill IDF soldiers as well as civilians.
If this happens again, sources tell me, Israel will go to war against whoever abducts its soldiers. This message has been delivered to the usual suspects. So, it seems, the usual suspects are trying to start a war.

2. Russia says it will block any UN oil embargo on Iran; is criticizing the latest sanctions against Iran; and refuses to remove a ‘no-use-of-force clause from a resolution on Syria.
The Russians and Chinese will not let the Iranian regime fall because they feel that removing Iran as a threat will enable the US to control the Middle East’s oil reserves: the world economy’s oxygen supply line. They won’t let Iran fall because that will make it easier for the US to be the world’s only superpower. The Russians probably feel that if Syria’s Bashar Assad falls, Iran’s position will be further weakened, and they don’t want. Ditto the Chinese, who said today that the Arab monitoring team in Syria was “effective.” The Russians and Chinese don’t care about Syrian blood. They don’t even care about Arab oil. They care only about the ‘great game’ against the US. The Arabs should remember that.

3. Stop saying “we support Israel’s right to exist,” it’s irritating. Why do people still feel the need to say that? Isn’t it a given?

4. Kadima has just announced party primaries. Kadima needs to come up with a message, sharpen it, find a few new stars, and decide on who is going to be its leader. It can’t carry on like this, with constant, vicious, and daily attacks on Livni’s leadership. Either she wins a second mandate and everyone shuts up, or she loses, moves down the list [or out the door] and someone new takes over. And it needs to do it soon because Lapid’s new party is going to take a big chunk out of its electorate.

So what did happen?

It turns out that six Haredim were arrested for allegedly running a massive charity scam for the past decade. While the charges against the men have yet to be formed into an indictment, the police say that the six men employed dozens of employees and operated charities under various names, including “the widow and orphan foundation,” “the national council for troubled families” or “good deed foundation” and other such noble causes. This gang of alleged thieves swindled tens of millions of dollars from Israeli and American Jews, who gave from the bottom of their hearts to what they thought were worthy charities. The thieves, instead of actually helping orphans, widows and the needy, pocketed the money, and spread it amongst their families and acquaintances.

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is why the Haredim came out to riot on Sunday against the “brutal assault on the holy sages of Jerusalem.” They came out to protest the arrest of the thieves with the same fervor they have been protesting what they call religious desecration and immodest dress. Why? Because their source of money was abruptly stopped. Because the men who brought them regular non-taxable ‘donations’ were suddenly behind bars. Their ATM was shut, the money stopped. And when you don’t work for a living, and you rely solely on state handouts, the little extra cash you get every month from other sources is vital.

So spare us the slogans of gewaald, war, anti-Semitism, persecution, fire and brimstone. One of the ringleaders arrested was a chief aide to a top eda haredit rabbi. So did the rabbi know what his aide was up to? Was the rabbi in on it too? These kinds of questions are heresy in the eyes of the eda haredit. Another gang member was a leading ’eda haredit’ rabbi himself. The Haredim said they would not accept the arrest of some of their members, calling it a drastic escalation of police monitoring of the haredi community. Excuse me? Did I hear correctly? Are you really saying what I hear you saying? Are you saying: “Don’t arrest our crooks, stop monitoring us and stop applying the law to us?” Are you saying: “give us state benefits but don’t give us state police?”

The leader of the eda haredit went on radio this morning, saying that his movement does not recognize the law of the state of Israel, its policemen, or its judges. He said there are no judges in Jerusalem, only rabbis. You can often hear eda haredit spokespeople say “we answer only to a higher law, not the law of the land,” to which I would like to answer “great, then go get your monthly stipend from your higher power and leave my taxes alone.”

But it is they who wish to be left alone. Left alone to descend deeper into the dark ages of the shtetl. Left alone to make “their” women and “our” women disappear. Left alone to live off the hard labor of the secular middle class. Left alone to make money through all sorts of schemes and not pay any taxes on their ‘earnings’. To have the secular pay for the municipal garbage collectors and street cleaners while they go around the world defrauding good Jews in the name of “zedaka”.

Are we to believe that these are also “just a small group of extremists” as the spokespeople of the ultra-Orthodox community say every time members of their community do something outrageous and illegal?

There is a double challenge here: the mainstream ultra-Orthodox leadership, if they can be found, must start putting their house in order. The minority is running roughshod not only over the country as a whole, but primarily over the haredi community itself. The chief rabbinate must go down to Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh and knock some sense into these people. Secondly, it is time that Israeli citizens make it an absolute priority in the coming general elections to change the system of government and institute a constitution for Israel. The Haredim must join the labor force, and start carrying their own weight. That way their crooks can be just like their secular counterparts and we can stop with all this “persecution” rubbish.

Related:
It’s official, in fifty years time, Israel won’t work

Here’s the original blog post:

So what will Yair Lapid do? Is he for himself, or is he for the greater public?

It seems as if the man from Channel 22 has landed himself in a Catch 22.

If, as he says, he wants to change the electoral system in Israel and thus create a more equitable relationship between the ultra-Orthodox and the secular middle class, he will have to swallow his pride, put his ego aside, and join the struggling Kadima party. Polls show that only by joining with Kadima, and bringing his purported 8 to 15 Knesset mandates as a dowry, will Lapid’s entrance into the political arena significantly alter the left-right balance in the Knesset’s political alignment.

On the other hand, all indications are, so far, that Lapid intends to create his own party, possibly making use of the now-defunct architecture of his late father’s Shinui party. If he does set up his own party, polls indicate he could garner anywhere between 8 and 15 mandates, which he would mostly take from Kadima. If he does this, he inserts yet another political party into the already crowded center-left parliamentary bloc, further diluting its power, and lessening its political impact. The Likud will most likely form the next government, taking its pic of coalition partners; and not much is likely to change. Lapid will be left in the opposition camp and likely not fulfill his great potential.

So what will he do? What should he do?

On the first question, only he and his close advisors know. What has been reported is that Kadima’s officials have asked, no, begged, Lapid to join their party. They realize that if he goes on his own, Kadima’s in serious trouble. Kadima, the largest party in the Knesset, is increasingly showing signs of serious stress and implosion.

What should he do? Well, that depends on what your political outlook is. If, like me, you are part of the secular middle-class that is finding it increasingly difficult to make a living, save money, buy an apartment, or plan for the future in this country, you will probably want Lapid to join Kadima, and together with them, work to change the electoral and system of government in this country, with or without a coalition with the Likud. And another thing: I think it would be wise for Lapid to enter Kadima in the number 2 or 3 slot and get some legislative experience in the Knesset, and possibly even as a deputy minister. He has a lot of ideas, but no legislative experience, and this is not the kind of thing I want to see in the Knesset I pay for. Mavericks who get things done yes, but also level-headed legislators who can make long-term policies. Unfortunately, too many of our current legislators are interested more in short-term gains and media exposure than the long-term good of the country.

So, in essence, Lapid is faced with a Catch 22 situation: On the one hand he can do what might seem best for his own immediate political career and capitalize on the goodwill of the people [as predicted in the polls], or he can do what is undoubtedly in the best interests of the country and join Kadima [thus making good on his promise to change the electoral system]. If he goes it alone, he might enjoy temporary glory, but end up as just another flash in the political pan [like his late father]. If he joins Kadima, he forgoes a lot of glory and power, in favor of long-term stability and real legislative experience.

The longer he takes to decide, the more the public is exposed to his indecision, and the more they will doubt his abilities. His decision will tell us exactly what stuff he’s made of.