Noteworthy Headlines

Members of an armed Fatah militia which claimed to have kidnapped an Israeli citizen Saturday transferred the individual in question, a U.S. citizen, to the custody of the Palestinian Authority before dawn Sunday.

The PA security forces subsequently handed the American over to the Israel Defense Forces. Defense officials believe once the militants discovered the person was indeed an American citizen, they took steps to end the matter quickly.

"Apparently, the kidnappers did not want to end up like Zarqawi," a defense official said.

The Shin Bet was trying to obtain information Saturday on Bright-Fishbein, and to discover whether he went to Nablus of his own volition or was secretly abducted to the city. The defense establishment has had warnings for some time of kidnappings of Israelis for the purpose of negotiating the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails - a matter of wide consensus in the territories.

A terrible tragedy happened on the Gaza beach. A shell exploded and killed 7 men, women and children and injured others. Israel is investigating. But Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman who said that Israel believes such shelling of civilians to be unacceptable also told the BBC that naval or air shelling have been ruled out. Other possibities are explored. In the meantime Hamas vows to end the unilateral cease-fire with Israel.

But, please, watch this BBC report and tell me what were the cameramen doing on the beach at the moment the shell hit? CNN has the exact same footage.

Are we once again dealing with a Jenin/al Dura style staged recreation?

Defense Minister Amir Peretz has ordered the IDF to halt all artillery fire against rocket launching sites until he receives reports on a probe into the cause of the deaths of Arabs Friday afternoon. The investigation is to be completed by Tuesday.

Israeli gunboats fired artillery shells at targets in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, killing six people and wounding at least eight others, Palestinian medical officials said.

This past April the IDF published its new military doctrine. A new classified field manual, The General Staff's Operational Concept for the IDF, is the result of four years of serious study. It gives expression to the transformative changes the IDF's way of thinking about war fighting and designing military campaigns underwent since the outbreak of the Palestinian terror war in September 2000.

Yet last week the IDF separated itself from those most responsible for leading its intellectual transformation. On May 30, the heads of the IDF's Operational Theory Research Institute (OTRI), Brig. Gen. (res.) Dov Tamari and Brig. Gen. (res.) Dr. Shimon Naveh, were notified that they were suspended from their duties due to irregularities in their billing procedures.

The story of OTRI's disembowelment should alarm anyone who cares about the IDF. It is part and parcel, and indeed an exacerbation of the trend that has been forcing independent thinkers out of decision-making circles in Israel for the past three years. In 2003 this trend was ushered in when, after consulting with his public relations team, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon decided to retreat from Gaza in exchange for absolutely nothing.

... The decision to get rid of Tamari and Naveh is even more disconcerting than Sharon and Olmert's decision to force Yaalon, Halevi and Eiland from their posts. In those cases, the political leaders purged the ranks of decision-makers of those who oppose their political goals. In so doing, they acted within what is generally considered the purview of political leaders.

But in forcing Naveh and Tamari out of the IDF, Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz and his deputy Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky sent the message that independent thinkers are unwelcome in their IDF.