Israel Pursues Self-Humiliation

Israel today called on the Hamas-Fatah Unity government yet again to renounce terror, recognize Israel, and release captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

To what can this be compared? I can only think of three possibilities:

1. It's some kind of drinking game.

2. History's greatest symbol of impotence was the New York Subway token clerk whose pre-Giuliani policy manual decreed that the only response to turnstile hopping was to say the words "pay your fare." Never have words been spoken, therefore, with such levels of apathy.

3. One exercise of the Musar movement of Jewish character improvement was to increase one's level of humility through deliberate infliction of self-humiliation. The practitioner would do things like walk into Kentucky Fried Chicken and order a Big Mac (from which the Run-D.M.C. song You Be Illin' was apparently inspired).