IRIS Blog

The Hamas military, although still relatively unsophisticated as a military force, is growing frighteningly fast:

Hamas is recruiting thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to man its new security forces, according to a source in the organization.

The new security forces will be comprised of Hamas? military recruits and members of affiliated organizations. The source emphasized that the new security forces would operate separately from Hamas? military wing.

Border Guard soldiers rescued passengers in a car that was about to explode, in a commonplace act of Israeli heroism:

Alert Border Guardsmen noticed a car burning as it traveled, pursued it and rescued its passengers - and it blew up two minutes later.

The alertness of a Border Guard unit on its way to a mission in the Negev saved six people, including four little girls, who were returning from a family vacation in Eilat.

The incident occurred Monday afternoon at an intersection near Be'er Sheva. The Border Guardsmen noticed a car driving by with its back wheels on fire, though its passengers - two males in front, the four girls in back - appeared not to notice anything amiss. The policemen quickly jumped out of their jeep, took off after the car and signaled it to stop. The driver, realizing only that four policemen were chasing after him, stopped by the side of the road in alarm. The policemen then scooped out the four girls from the back seat, while yelling for the adults to get out quickly.

Two and a half minutes later, according to the account Border Guard Sgt. Mickey Sela gave Ynet, "and after we called the fire department, blocked the intersection so that no one would pass, and made sure to keep everyone away - the car exploded, just as we had feared."

One suitcase with girls' clothing in it was salvaged from the burnt, rented car. The six shocked but safe Kiryat Gat residents were provided with a replacement car for the rest of their return trip home.

While the latest manifestation of Western dhimmi behavior is exposed, Christopher Hitchens is masterful in response:

Before me is a recent report that a student at Pace University in New York City has been arrested for a hate crime in consequence of an alleged dumping of the Quran. Nothing repels me more than the burning or desecration of books, and if, for example, this was a volume from a public or university library, I would hope that its mistreatment would constitute a misdemeanor at the very least. But if I choose to spit on a copy of the writings of Ayn Rand or Karl Marx or James Joyce, that is entirely my business. When I check into a hotel room and send my free and unsolicited copy of the Gideon Bible or the Book of Mormon spinning out of the window, I infringe no law, except perhaps the one concerning litter. Why do we not make this distinction in the case of the Quran? We do so simply out of fear, and because the fanatical believers in that particular holy book have proved time and again that they mean business when it comes to intimidation. Surely that should be to their discredit rather than their credit. Should not the ?moderate? imams of On Faith have been asked in direct terms whether they are, or are not, negotiating with a gun on the table?

The Pace University incident becomes even more ludicrous and sinister when it is recalled that Islamists are the current leaders in the global book-burning competition. After the rumor of a Quran down the toilet in Guantanamo was irresponsibly spread, a mob in Afghanistan burned down an ancient library that (as President Hamid Karzai pointed out dryly) contained several ancient copies of the same book.

There are much better examples: the tomb of Joseph, and all Jewish holy texts inside, were utterly destroyed by a rampaging Arab mob. Also, synagogues in Gaza were similarly savagely ravaged, despite a security plan by the Supreme Court, Israel's version of the Wise Men of Chelm. The Court decided that adequate protection would be afforded by posting Arabic signs demarcating the buildings as "holy places." Perhaps the signs weren't big enough. Of course, my understanding is that not a single "moderate" Muslim protested either of these atrocities.

Not content with igniting copies of The Satanic Verses, Islamist lynch parties demanded the burning of its author as well. Many distinguished authors, Muslim and non-Muslim, are dead or in hiding because of the words they have put on pages concerning the unbelievable claims of Islam. And it is to appease such a spirit of persecution and intolerance that a student in New York City has been arrested for an expression, however vulgar, of an opinion.

This has to stop, and it has to stop right now. There can be no concession to sharia in the United States. When will we see someone detained, or even cautioned, for advocating the burning of books in the name of God? If the police are honestly interested in this sort of ?hate crime,? I can help them identify those who spent much of last year uttering physical threats against the republication in this country of some Danish cartoons. In default of impartial prosecution, we have to insist that Muslims take their chance of being upset, just as we who do not subscribe to their arrogant certainties are revolted every day by the hideous behavior of the parties of God.

It is often said that resistance to jihadism only increases the recruitment to it. For all I know, this commonplace observation could be true. But, if so, it must cut both ways. How about reminding the Islamists that, by their mad policy in Kashmir and elsewhere, they have made deadly enemies of a billion Indian Hindus? Is there no danger that the massacre of Iraqi and Lebanese Christians, or the threatened murder of all Jews, will cause an equal and opposite response? Most important of all, what will be said and done by those of us who take no side in filthy religious wars? The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant, or neutral, without inviting their own suicide. And the advocates and apologists of bigotry and censorship and suicide-assassination cannot be permitted to take shelter any longer under the umbrella of a pluralism that they openly seek to destroy.

Here's how the traditional Palestinian con game works--talk peace in English and terrorism in Arabic. This way, journalists can write breathless stories of impending peace, which brings pressure on Israel for strategic concessions. At the same time, Arabs are told the real plan--jihad.

For example, when the Oslo peace process was announced, Arafat immediately spoke in Arabic explaining that the whole thing was a fraud.

Today, "moderate" Prime Minister Salam Fayyad announced in Arabic that resisting Israeli occupation, a euphemism for terrorism, is still Fatah policy, depite thousands of news articles hyping the significance of the omission of the phrase in a recent Fatah document:

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has said Palestinians have a legitimate right to resist Israeli occupation, even if the phrase does not appear in his new government program.

?We are certainly an occupied people and resistance is a legitimate right for the Palestinian people as an occupied people,? Fayyad told reporters in Cairo, where he is leading the Palestinian delegation to an Arab League meeting on Monday.

Palestinian officials confirmed on Friday that the platform of the new government omits the phrases ?armed struggle? and ?resistance? against Israeli occupation.

This was a change from the platforms of the previous two Palestinian governments led by the Islamist movement Hamas, which has rebuffed US and European demands that it recognize Israel and renounce violence.

Koran-inspired attacks on infidels are the reason that minorities are fleeing every Muslim-majority area of the world, with only one exception--Israeli Jews. Despite this, Western governments and even Christian groups themselves are largely silent:

Iraq's outnumbered Christians and other religious minority groups are targets of a terror campaign and are facing a dire situation where killings and rapes have become the norm, a panel of witnesses testified yesterday on Capitol Hill.

In a hearing convened by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Canon Andrew White, vicar of St. George's Anglican Church in Baghdad, and four other panelists unfolded tales of horrors overtaking Christians, Yezidis (angel worshippers) and Mandaeans, members of a pacifist faith that follows the teachings of John the Baptist.

"The situation is more than desperate," said Mr. White, who described how Christians in Baghdad have been told to convert to Islam or be killed. Hundreds of those who could not afford to flee the country are living in churches without adequate food or water, he said.

"In the past month, 36 members of my own congregation have been kidnapped," he said. "To date, only one has been returned."

Iraq's eight remaining Jews, now hiding in Baghdad, are "the oldest Jewish community in the world," he said, referring to the 597 B.C. Babylonian conquest of ancient Judah that brought the Jews to the region as captives.

"The international community has done nothing to help these people," Mr. White said, explaining that the group is trying to emigrate to an Iraqi Jewish enclave in the Netherlands, which won't admit them.

Michael Youash, director of the Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project, called the situation "soft ethnic cleansing." The "de-Christianization of Iraq" is not far off, he predicted, saying that Washington has refused to help Iraqi Christians, whose common faith with many Americans has made them loathed by Muslim radicals.

"The State Department just dismisses this as part of an overall conflict," he said. "But Christians are being disproportionately targeted. The attacks are purely vindictive and vicious. They are meant to give a message."

Here is a rare occasion where exactly the right thing is being done. The Lebanon War showed that the overwhelming majority of Muslims worldwide support the war crime of deliberately targeting civilians with missiles. It also showed that the West has no defense whatsoever against short-range rockets, largely due to traditional Democrat opposition to Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" vision of missile defense:

The US House of Representatives appropriations committee nearly doubled American funding for Israel's Arrow and short-range missile defense programs this week, bringing the 2008 total to $150 million.

The amount is not only more than last year's $135 million, but comes earlier in the budget process, holding out the expectation that the allocation will be increased considerably more by the Senate before the final bill is voted on in the fall.

Israeli officials see Wednesday's funding boost as a sign of growing awareness of the risks that Israel faces from the likes of Hizbullah and Iran, as well as appreciation for the success of the Arrow program.

Israel is giving approximately $400 million to Mahmoud Abbas to "fight Hamas." Abbas is now using that money to pay Hamas leaders. That doesn't seem like the behavior of someone who was allegedly defeated by Hamas in Gaza and who is allegedly continuing the battle in the West Bank. Particularly given that Israel just freed 30 Hamas prisoners after pressure from Abbas:

The Palestinian caretaker government has resumed payment of members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), including Hamas members such as deposed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and former Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahhar. The caretaker government, headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is also meeting today in Ramallah to discuss the plight of more than 6,000 Palestinians stranded in Egypt at the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip.

Official sources in the PLC said that all members have received a portion of their salaries, which were not disbursed at all in the last period.

The Palestinian daily Al Hayat quoted caretaker Information Minister Riyad Najib Al-Maliki saying, "The Government transferred part of the employees' salaries in addition to the PLC members' without any exclusions." He also said : "No one can seize the salary of any PLC member because of his political views. The salary payment is part of the job of the Palestinian Authority."

Which leads one to be suspicious of the universally reported news that Abbas had "fired Hamas" after Hamas' Gaza takeover.

In the terror regime that is Hamas' Gaza, journalists are too frightened to report the truth. Here is a rare exception:

Three sisters were found stabbed to death in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, raising suspicion they were killed by relatives because of suspected immoral behavior, a human rights organization said.

The three sisters, 16-year-old Nahed Hija and her sisters, 19-year-old Suha and 22-year-old Lina, were found dead from multiple stab wounds, buried in a shallow grave in the central Gaza Strip early Sunday morning, said Hamdi Shakkour of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

Shakkour said they suspected the women were victims of "honor crimes," in which women are murdered by male relatives because of suspected intimate relations - not necessarily sex - outside of marriage....

Honor killings are practiced throughout the Arab world. At least 12 women were killed for honor crimes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip last year, but this is the first time three sisters were murdered together.

In February, three unrelated woman were killed within a 24-hour period in the Gaza Strip....

The Palestinian judiciary does not take "honor crimes" seriously, Shakkour said. Perpetrators of "honor crimes" are often given light sentences of a few years, while others convicted of murder under other circumstances are sentenced to death.

Many honor killings are never reported by anyone in the victims' families, and many others are never prosecuted at all.

There's allegedly a "war" going on between Hamas and Fatah yet Fatah arranges for the release of 30 Hamas terrorists. I get the feeling Olmert isn't being entirely straight with us that the prisoner release was to strengthen Fatah against Hamas:

Prisoners Released Include Members of Hamas, Jihad

Ziad Abu Ayn, director of prisoner affairs in the Palestinian Authority said Friday that among the 255 prisoners released are 30 members of Hamas and two members of the Islamic Jihad.

The Palestinian Authority, he told Ynet, does not distinguish between prisoners: "they are all our prisoners, all our sons." The PA, he added, is proud of the fact that prisoners affiliated with Hamas and Jihad are among the released.

For those of you who were expecting a thank-you note for today's 255 released Fatah (and Hamas, DFLP and PFLP) terrorists, the half-billion dollars and the amnesty for wanted Fatah mass murderers, here it is:

Fatah's military wing, the Al-Aqsa Brigades, and Islamic Jihad's Al-Quds Brigades claimed responsibility on Wednesday evening for launching two homemade projectiles at the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.

In a separate incident, the Al-Aqsa Brigades claimed responsibility for launching two mortar shells at an Israeli military post near Nahal 'Oz, located east of Gaza City.

John Podhoretz says the obvious well:

PRESIDENT Bush yesterday essentially told the Palestinian people that American money would rain down on their heads - kind of like the manna that fed the Jews in the desert thousands of years ago - if they just renounced terror.

What Bush said is simply a matter of fact. Right now, America is raining half a billion dollars on the Palestinian government solely because it's kinda-sorta acting a little bit like it's maybe possibly giving up on terror.

And, if the Palestinians just straightened up and flew right, there'd be a whole lot more where that came from.

In a major address on the current Palestinian political crisis yesterday afternoon, Bush tried to make clear just how beneficial it would be for the Palestinians if they just did the plain, simple and inarguably right thing: Recognize Israel, cease using terror as a political instrument and embrace democratization.

A Palestinian state would follow in very short order. And that state would be the recipient of warm-hearted largesse like the world has seldom showed to any other new country.

America has opened the national pocketbook to the Palestinians in recent weeks simply because the legitimate government headed by Mahmoud Abbas kicked the terrorist faction Hamas out of his Cabinet - following Hamas's takeover of Gaza.

The Bush administration thinks the Hamas takeover of Gaza has convinced Abbas (at least theoretically) that his only hope for the future lies in an American embrace.

Or at least Bush is paying him enough to think and say that.

The first $190 million came out through the floodgates right after the Hamas-Abbas breakup: The money had been promised to the Palestinians if they would have free elections, but got held up once Abbas invited Hamas into his Cabinet - because Hamas is a terrorist group, and by U.S. law our government can't fund terrorists.

Our president then approved $228 million in loans to help Palestinian-own businesses - a clear effort to bolster Abbas. And yesterday Bush added another $80 million "to help Palestinians reform their security services," whatever that means.

That's $498 million - half a billion solely because Abbas is not Hamas.

Now, imagine just how much there would be if, as a general rule, Palestinian politics managed to get beyond the death-worshipping, martyr-seeking, Jew-hating, genocide-craving lunacy that has both seduced its people and trapped them in a cycle of pointless, self-defeating despair for decades now: Half a billion would be the merest drop in the bucket.

But it's not likely that there's going to be much more than that half-billion.

In the first place, we have no reason to expect that a single cent of that money is going to go anywhere helpful or do anything good.

President Bush may believe Abbas has it in him to be the Gandhi of Ramallah and the Martin Luther King Jr. of Hebron - but Abbas was also Yasser Arafat's trusted aide, and one thing about Arafat and his trusted aides is that they were and are a bunch of shameless, slimy, monstrous thieves.

The history of Western aid to Palestinians is an unending and repugnant tale of graft, theft and pilferage. According to the Arab daily al-Watan, the International Monetary Fund and numerous others, when Yasser Arafat died, he had several billion dollars in various bank accounts around the world.

The thievery didn't stop with Arafat's death. In the three years since, the Palestinian government has remained a corrupt kleptocracy.

One of the main reasons for the terrifying success of Hamas at the polls in early 2006 was Palestinian rage at the inability or unwillingness of the Arafat/Abbas government to do anything - anything - that offered any kind of improvement in the day-to-day lives of the people living under its yoke.

Of course, the Palestinian people also liked Hamas better because Hamas is, if possible, even more bloodthirsty toward Israel and the Jews than Abbas' own Fatah faction.

Bush made it clear yesterday that the choice is in the hands of the Palestinian people. They need to change, not just their leaders.

Which is why - despite Bush's embrace of diplomatic techniques used in the past solely to put pressure on Israel - supporters of Israel shouldn't fear the results of yesterday's speech.

Yes, Bush called for an "international conference." Yes, he spoke warmly of European and Arab participation in a two-state solution. But he made it clear that, in the American perspective - which is really the only perspective that matters - there will only be a Palestinian state if there is a Palestinian revolution in consciousness.

"The Palestinian people must decide that they want a future of decency and hope - not a future of terror and death," he said.

He continued: "They must match their words denouncing terror with action to combat terror. The Palestinian government must arrest terrorists, dismantle their infrastructure, and confiscate illegal weapons . . . They must work to stop attacks on Israel and to free the Israeli soldier held hostage by extremists. And they must enforce the law without corruption, so they can earn the trust of their people, and of the world. Taking these steps will enable the Palestinians to have a state of their own."

Yes, taking these steps will enable the Palestinians to have a state of their own. But every indication we have is that they are marching in the opposite direction, and so are the chances of a Palestinian state for years to come.

Unfortunately, even the cynical Podhoretz is hopelessly naive. Bush has been making these carrot-and-stick speeches calling on Palestinians to give up terror for years. The Palestinians, especially Fatah, have been ratcheting up all forms of terror activity (despite IDF success at stopping it) and have been reaping huge rewards nonetheless. Even their scam that the al Aqsa Brigades are "unauthorized Fatah terrorists" has been uncovered given that that's who Abbas wanted released from prison to "strengthen him."

Beware of rulers, for they befriend someone only for their own benefit; they act friendly when it benefits them, but they do not stand by someone in his time of need.

-Mishnah Pirkei Avot (Sayings of the Fathers) 2:3, written 1900 years before the Lebanon War

Of course Olmert and company were slammed in an official assessment of Home Front management during the Lebanon War. That's because the protexia class are parasites. They love Israel in the way that I love sushi. The best example is that on the day the war broke out, IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz's initial response was to call his broker and sell off a $28,000 stock portfolio.

An assessment of the activities of the protexia class to manage their personal political power would give them a grade of A+.

Competence in playing the protexia game is not a credential for leadership; it is a warning sign.

....But Lindenstrauss did not mince words in the report itself. In his introduction to the 582-page report, he wrote: "The facts show that the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, the former defense minister, Amir Peretz, the former chief of General Staff, Dan Halutz, and the head of the Home Front Command, Maj.-Gen. Yitzhak Gershon, each one according to his own role, gravely failed in the decision-making process and in their appraisals and actions in dealing with the home front during the war in Lebanon."

"The facts detailed in the report [also] show us that the governments of Israel, the political and executive echelons, did not do what they should have done over a period of years in preparing the home front and did not hold general and operational appraisals about its role during a state of emergency," Lindenstrauss added.

The report includes 17 chapters addressing the performance of all government institutions on the national and local level, and of vital commercial institutions that played a role in the war. These include the Prime Minister's Office, the Defense Ministry, the Home Front Command, the Public Security Ministry, the Fire and Rescue Services, the health and welfare services, the postal, banking and transportations systems, and local authorities. The state comptroller also devoted a special chapter to the voluntary organizations that helped the residents of the North during the fighting.

Lindenstrauss found that there was confusion regarding the responsibilities of each of the many government bodies involved in protecting the home front. This stemmed in part from the large number of laws and regulations that deal with the subject. He called for the establishment of an office to coordinate between and oversee the actions of the different bodies.

The "official" blue-ribbon commission's response to a bureaucracy paralyzed by red tape? More bureaucrats to coordinate the other bureaucrats. And guess who will receive these new government jobs? More cronies of the protexia class. Does anyone see a pattern here?

There were also problems at the top level of decision-makers regarding the home front, he wrote. For example, on July 12, the day the government decided to reply in force to the kidnapping and killing of IDF soldiers early that morning, no "crucial and detailed facts" were presented regarding the preparedness of the home front for what the ministers knew for certain would be Hizbullah retaliation for IDF air strikes.

It was more than two weeks later, on July 30, that the government held its first detailed assessment of the situation on the home front.

Lindenstrauss found that in the years before the outbreak of the war, previous governments had not taken steps to prepare the home front for an emergency. This failure was particularly severe because since 1994, state comptrollers had issued reports pointing out the weaknesses in home front protection and recommending solutions.

That would indicate that the problem is systemic--parasites do not read official reports and thoughtfully decide that they are the cause of Israel's problems. Only the divided and misled citizenry has the theoretical power to dislodge them.

But the failures were not only of previous governments, wrote Lindenstrauss. On July 12, Olmert warned that Israel was entering a "new situation" because the civilian sector was in immediate danger from warfare. Nevertheless, "the expected attacks on the home front were not translated by the ministers and the defense establishment into activities to create a systemic and comprehensive response. At any rate, the issue of the home front was not properly investigated, and the weight given to it in the decision-making process was unsatisfactory."

The state comptroller also found that the cabinet was passive in its handling of the home front. It reacted to problems but did not initiate anything and often responded with too little too late.

The Maharal presented an idea that sometimes God mails us a blessing, but we have to go to the post office to pick it up. For decades, secular free-market economist Daniel Doron has been doing the Lord's work, but most of his columns have been sitting in the dead-letter office, unread. If his recommendations in this article--land reform, banking reform, the dropping of tariffs on Palestinian products--were implemented, Israelis and Palestinians would experience a quality-of-life boom, while the protexia class would lose its stranglehold. I wonder why Shimon Peres, protexia king, wouldn't see the virtue in this?

President Shimon Peres, we all know, is a man of visions. Some have been better than others.

The better ones were those grounded in grim reality - like the project that provided Israel with its ultimate defensive weapon. It could serve as a model for translating seemingly impossible visions into reality.

The less successful ones, that translated into costly, failing and even dangerous policies, were those that denied reality - as when, after repeated failures, Peres kept insisting on "developing" the Negev and the Galilee through massive government "interventions"; or when he tried to enforce his dream of a peaceful Middle East by choosing Yasser Arafat's master terrorists as partners and executors.

As president, a job not known to restrain the natural hubris of politicians, Peres is beginning to launch a last-ditch effort to achieve formal peace through massive unreciprocated concessions, as he did in Oslo.

This would threaten our security again. Peres may end a remarkable, if controversial, career not with the praise his dedication merits but with the ignominy that inevitably overtakes those who stubbornly refuse to learn from their mistakes.

PERES'S PROCLIVITY for denying reality was already evident in 1988. In May of that year I wrote a piece in The New Republic called "The profits of peace," based on a February 1988 Post op-ed "An economic answer to the Arab uprising." They dealt with the economic motives for the first intifada and proposed some economic remedies that could help mitigate the conflict.

When I subsequently met then foreign minister Peres, he was already well into peace processing. I argued that economic development and prosperity can sometimes be more effective in resolving conflicts than political negotiations. For example: After centuries of bloody conflict, peace was established in Europe not through a political "peace process" but as a result of a Coal and Steel Union that made old animosities irrelevant.

Since in the foreseeable future Israel would not be able to accommodate irredentist Palestinian national aspirations, and since the Palestinian political class had a stake in perpetuating the conflict (what else could make their corrupt regime justifiable?) the only way Israel could ease the conflict was by providing Palestinians with better livelihoods, and by treating them with dignity. Through economic prosperity Israel could encourage the emergence of a civil society and of a leadership that would have a real stake in peace.

DIGNITY DEPENDED on security of self and of property, and on respect for the individual by the authorities. As the (then) occupying power, Israel had the responsibility to maintain law and order and to treat the inhabitants humanely with minimal bureaucratic harassment (two tasks, alas, that Israeli governments find impossible to accomplish at home).

Israel should not have tolerated, as it has, the abuse of human rights by PLO agents and proxies who were terrorizing the Arab population and directing their frustration and anger against Israel.

For the masses of Arabs then working in Israel, dignity meant not having to wait many hours in daily security checks. I mentioned the recently invented magnetic cards and suggested that instead of having gruff, exhausted reservists staff the checkpoints, they should be handled by professional security guards. This would probably reduce the waiting time.

As for a livelihood, instead of only bussing Arabs in to do menial work in Israel, why not open Israeli markets to their products, enabling them to utilize their relative advantage in labor intensive production, in agriculture, building materials, footwear and textiles to generate economic prosperity and high employment in their own areas?

Where competition could harm Israelis, as in agricultural staples and textiles, the government could help secure transition loans for the Israeli producers so they could move to the capital-intensive high end of the market, like the production of exotic and out-of-season fruits, vegetables and flowers, boutique wines, goat cheeses and condiments, high-fashion apparel etc. (the market eventually induced such changes anyhow).

PERES WORRIED that this would make the Arabs "hewers of wood and carriers of water." He could not fathom that in a thriving economy people rapidly climb the occupational ladder and that at least some of the skilled and hard-working Arab laborers would soon become independent entrepreneurs, as indeed has happened despite much harsher circumstances.

Such humble steps having to do with the daily life and welfare of Arab laborers did not seem to catch Peres's imagination. He wanted to discuss his vision of making the desert bloom through the harnessing of atomic power for huge desalination projects costing billions.

Peres's penchant to go for grandiose schemes, while neglecting simpler realities, has become evident recently in his ambitious plans for Galilee and Negev development. Immediately upon his being named the government development czar, Peres resurrected the huge - and questionable - project of connecting the Gulf of Akaba to the Dead Sea and announced a massive government effort to make the Jordan rift area blossom. As if one Negev experiment wasn't enough.

Negev and Galilee development needs less vision and more reality. These areas could have been immediately helped by assuring, for example, that a banking monopoly did not choke them by denying small businesses credit. Peres could have also helped by instituting a market-oriented land policy, by cutting impossible red tape and by lowering confiscatory taxes.

But for this to happen he must understand dismal economics and not simply indulge in baseless rosy visions.

What Daniel Doron misses is that each one of these grandiose 'visions' supports billions in payoffs for the protexia class. And there is no bigger or more reliable business than Peres' Peace Process.

I left something out of yesterday's cynical list:

I have been documenting how Olmert's release of 250 Fatah terrorists without blood on their hands wasn't actually 250, wasn't actually Fatah, and wasn't actually without blood on their hands.

I omitted the part about how "they won't necessarily be anti-Hamas," which was Olmert's entire pretext.

Fortunately the Olmert administration is insisting on having them sign a document promising not to work in Hamas any more. I just hope he remembered to have them sign something against Muhammad's dictum that "war is deceit":

Israel on Tuesday released former Palestinian Education Minister Nasser Shaer and Hamas member Ramadan Shadat from prison, the IDF said in a statement.

The statement said Shaer was in administrative detention - imprisonment without trial - and was released under an agreement that he would sign a statement renouncing his membership in Hamas and declaring he would not hold positions in the Palestinian Authority for Hamas or any other illegal organization.

Shaer was the most senior among 33 Hamas leaders, including lawmakers, rounded up by Israeli security forces in the West Bank last May....

Prominent on the list is Abdel Rahim Malouh, second in command of PFLP, the group behind the 2001 assassination of tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi at a Jerusalem hotel....

Families of terror victims were outraged at the pending release of Palestinians they said had been involved in the murder of their loved ones.

Michael Theler, whose 16-year-old daughter, Rachel, was killed in the 2002 bombing of the Yuvalim Mall in Karnei Shomron, expressed anger that one of the leaders of the PFLP, the group that took responsibility for the attack, was included in the list.

"How can the government release the person who killed my daughter?" Theler asked in a Channel 1 interview. "What can I do? Will anybody listen to me?"

Here is an unbelievable case which typifies the protexia (cronyism) class who oppresses Israel. Cases of feral Egged bus drivers returning to their jobs are rather commonplace, although the phenomenon is obviously unheard of in other developed countries:

A Jerusalem Egged bus driver has been charged with negligence for driving into Israel Prize laureate and Hebrew University Prof. Aviezer Ravitzky in October, court documents released on Tuesday showed.

Michael Mizrachi, 29, was indicted in a Jerusalem court late Monday for the accident on the city's Jaffa Road. Ravitzky was seriously injured when the bus's windshield slammed into his head. He was unconscious for nearly a month and a half, and is currently undergoing a long-term rehabilitation process.

An accomplished scholar undergoes irreparable brain damage and the bus company whose practices fostered this common negligent driving will pay no price because Egged's management are practitioners of protexia.

According to the charge sheet, at the time of the accident, Mizrachi was speeding (at 47 km/hour) and talking to a fellow driver who had boarded the bus at the previous stop, and failed to pay attention to the traffic on the road or to slow down at the cross-walk where Ravitzky was crossing.

Mizrachi also allegedly did not heed the last-minute warnings of a bus driver coming in the opposite direction who flashed his lights and honked his horn.

The driver also attempted to obstruct justice by tampering with the bus before the police arrived, even though he was warned not to do so by his co-worker, the indictment reads.

The driver's license was suspended for 90 days, police said.

Egged spokesman Ron Ratner said on Tuesday that based on the initial investigation, a "complex" picture emerged about the accident which was "more than black and white."

Whenever a spokesman does not list a single specific mitigating detail, it generally means that there aren't any.

The bus driver has since returned to work, pending the outcome of the trial, an Egged spokeswoman said.

Ravitzky is still undergoing rehabilitation, but is reported to be in good condition.

Ravitzky, 61, who was the head of the Jewish Philosophy department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is one of Israel's most respected philosophers. In 2001, he was awarded the Israel Prize for his research in Jewish Thought.

Israelis generally do not appreciate when Western immigrants complain about this sort of thing. What they do not understand is the overwhelming majority of Israelis are victims of the protexia class. The interlocking group who is responsible for Israelis being fleeced every time they go to a store or a government office is the same group who throws Israel's national security to the wind.

They are also the ones who make platitude-filled speeches to American Jewish groups and then feed off the donations.

The tragedy is that through their tight control of the media, they have convinced many Israelis that security 'hawks' don't care about their day-to-day quality of life. Many overburdened Israelis responded to the argument that the Gaza and West Bank security responsibility was yet another albatross around their necks. It is time for the Right to stop calling for more self-sacrifice. Keeping terrorists in prison needs to be pitched as a quality-of-life issue.