Regarding the police investigation into Amram Mitzna's suspected favors for a local contractor, you write "The Labor Party called the complaint
ridiculous and said 'it doesn't merit a response.' " 

Somehow that is supposed to sound more respectable than Naomi Blumenthal's invoking her right to remain silent.

But it sure sounds the same to this citizen.

Hillel Halkin would have us believe that the Mormon interest in "converting" dead Jews is harmless.  As I have told my fellow genealogists, it may be harmless, but it is most insulting, particularly when they "convert" lists of Holocaust victims.

But it is harmful in the sense that it doesn't stop there, as Halkin himself shows us.  His next step is to tell us that all missionary work is harmless, for the Evangelical Christians and Mormons are just fulfilling their religious beliefs.

The inevitable step after that would be to have Justice Barak order the Ministry of Religions to fund their missionary efforts in a non-discriminatory fashion.  Halkin may think that is OK too.  Most of the rest of us don't.

Caroline Glick's fine assessment of the "road map" and its European and State Department supporters, neglects to empahsize the biggest problem.  So long as Ariel Sharon seems to support the "road map," how can we expect anyone overseas - even our best friends - to object to it? 

The POST would have an Israeli version of the US Federal Election Commission.  But as it would be an Israeli version, we know in advance how it would work.

It would be "enlightened" judges and professors appointing themselves and their friends.  It would be the media telling us how inviolable are their standards.  It would be an investigation of the Likud within three days of the presumed violation of the law and continued stalling three and a half years after Barak's amutot.

In other words, it would be more of what we already have, but it would be institutionalized and untouchable.

The system of elections we have now is pretty crummy, but it has the advantage that we can change it from time to time when its worst excesses get out of hand.  When the Commission runs it, the excesses will be
systematic and challenges will be called "undemocratic."

With the simple unanswered missile attack on the Arkia airplane in Kenya, we must seriously consider that this will happen again.  We may not be so fortunate next time.  Our reaction should not be determined by whether such attacks succeed or fail.

Now that the two candidates for Prime Minister favor putting Ben Gurion Airport in striking distance of such an attack from sovereign Palestinian territory, it becomes not a question of if there will be another attack, but when it will come.

I would like to see some responsible journalists confront both PM candidates (as well as prominent members of the Bush administration) with the question "How many airliners will we permit the Palestinian State to shoot down before we take them out entirely?"  Just so we know.

The on-line POST includes an article about the Labour candidates for "the parliament, called the Knesset" which calls Danny Yatom "hawkish," refers to Yitzhak Herzog as his father's grandson, uses the term "Ariel Sharon's hardline Likud" and attributes Yossi Beilin's "ouster" to "his bitter feud with ... Binyamin Ben-Eliezer."

All this nonsense is easily explained by noting that this article came not from the POST's own writers, but from the Associated Press.

One cannot help but wonder why the POST needs the AP to do it's local reporting and why the POST's editors let this kind of amateur reporting appear in its pages at all.

Sir –

David Weinberg asks why we don't need an election campaign.  Well, we may not need a campaign (and we are being blessed with a relatively short one), but I'll be happy to explain why we need an election.

Shas needs to learn that without Aryeh Der'i, they cannot control seventeen votes in the Knesset.

The NRP has to find out if they are relevant at all.

Labour has to learn that their ideas have gone off the edge and they cannot claim a share of the government proportionate to their egos.  Between them and Meretz, perhaps one has become redundant.

Shinui has to see if they can take the responsibility that their larger Knesset faction demands.

The Likud will rise in Knesset membership to reflect 2003, neither the depths of 1999 nor the potential heights of 2001.

Lieberman, Benny Elon and Company (what do they call themselves these days?) will have to act like they can get along with one another long enough to run a campaign.

And if we are all very very lucky, the Common Sense Party of Natan Shcharansky will become the second largest force in the Knesset.

You wrote "Washington considers Hizbullah a terrorist organization.  Lebanese see Hizbullah as a resistance movement. Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and militant Palestinian group Hamas aim for the destruction of the state of Israel."

So while Hezbollah want to destroy us, Hizbullah is just a resistance movement.

That's rich.  Now we can move on to comparing Yasser the freedom fighter and Yassir the terrorist?  That's even better than Ariel the PM and Arik the general.

You wrote "In a meticulously executed attack, Palestinians opened fire and tossed grenades at a crowd of Jewish worshipers and the soldiers guarding
them as they made their way from the Machpela Cave to neighboring Kiryat Arba after Shabbat evening prayers."

How can you write this?  Carmella Menashe says that this was strictly a military attack - soldier against soldier.  Nothing to do with civilians. 

And we know how accurate and objective she is.

Your suggestion is interesting, but it introducses a change more basic than many would accept.

How about this.  If the team that wins the coin toss at the beginning of the game chooses to kick, then they get the ball first in sudden-death overtime.  If they don't exercise that option, the same choice is available to the other time after the half.

On the other hand - you'll know when there is a real problem when the teams that loses the coin toss start making onside kicks.

I think that the editorial writers and the self-styled forces for good government owe Ariel Sharon praise on two items.

Considering all the criticism of Ehud Barak for not appointing a Defense Minister, Sharon deserves credit for understanding the necessity for one and for doing it quickly, regardless of his own personal expertise (and
ignoring our opinions of his choice of Mofaz).

Secondly, although we may disagree on the value of early elections, the fact that it is being done in less than ninety days rather than the usual six or eight months, is a sign of responsibility.

You wrote:
The great thing about America is: You die; you have a quiet, appropriate funeral; life goes on. Except in Minnesota.

That's nothing compared to Rabin.  He's having another one tomorrow nite.

It seems to me that the occasion of the resignation of the Labour ministers is the perfect time for public, the editorial writers and the "good government" organiza- tions to remind the Prime Minister that for a brief period we had a limit of eighteen on the number of ministers
permitted.  It is time to roll back another of Ehud Barak's dubious achievements.

Yehuda Avner quotes Yitzhak Rabin as saying (about 242)  "On secure and recognized boundaries, write: One - Jews have an historic right to the whole of Eretz Yisrael. "

I don't have the resources to see if Rabin ever made "We don't belong in the West Bank" type of statements himself.  But he certainly never stopped
his ministers from doing so.  One of those that stands out in my mind was then-Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer who after one of the Oslo signings cackled something like "That will put an end to the dream of a
whole Eretz Israel. [bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha]"

So it seems more than a small stretch for Avner to conclude that Rabin "held to these guiding principles with absolute consistency for the rest of his life. "

Several times a month, I drive the road to Arad (where my mother lives) that goes through the Ziff Junction, where two five Israelis have been murdered in the past couple of months.  After the shootings of Shammai
Leibovitz and the three Dicksteins, the IDF erected a small checkpoint and maintained a presence for a week or two.  After the murder of Oded Valk, there was a strong IDF presence in the area for a day or two, which was later reduced to that one checkpoint.

Today I made that drive again and passed seven checkpoints between Gush Etzion and Susia – at only one of them, I saw IDF soldiers.  At the Ziff Junction, the unmanned barriers were lined up along the road, waiting no doubt until after the next fatal shooting.

Binyamin Ben-Eliezer tells us that it was proper to use the army to destroy Gilad Farms on Shabbat, because the presence of this community constituted pikuah nefesh (threat to life).  Were that the case, how does
Ben-Eliezer justify not destroying the community earlier?  But of course, the only life that Ben-Eliezer wants to save is his own political life in the coming Labour elections.

However some of know full well where Ben-Eliezer's real sympathies lie.  I for one cannot forget hearing him practically drool with glee after the approval of one of the Oslo agreements, saying something like "this will
forever end any dreams of a complete Land of Israel."

When Bedouin set up camps and build homes wherever they please, the POST and the rest of the medai call them "unauthorized" or "unrecognized"
settlements ("lo mukarim") and call on the government to act promptly to bring them recognition and services.  The editorial implication - even in news articles - is the terrible government against the poor down-trodden
Bedouin, often with an observation thrown in that some serve in the IDF.

Yet when Jewsbuold on their own initiative - evn inside the borders of their own municipalities - you call them "illegal" settlements ("lo huki'im") and print analyses about the respect for law.  The editorial implication is that yet again the settlers have no respect for the "law of the land. " (What a curious expression in this context!)

Would it be too much to ask for some consistency?

I shall not argue with your editorial opinion regarding recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel - and indeed of the Jewish People.  For the record, I disagree with you.

I must take issue with your throw-away line "American citizens born in Jerusalem would list Israel as their country of birth."  Under the current US policy this is not the case.

This is not a matter of where the capital is.  This is a question of identifying the city as part of Israel period.  I am a US citizen (and Pittsburgh native) living in Israel and according to the US government my youngest son and my granddaughter were not born in any country at all. Just "Jerusalem."  For all the special status that Jerusalem has in our hearts, this kind of thing is intolerable.

President Katzav appealed to the Lebanese government to release information about the Israeli citizen Elhanan Tennenbaum, who was kidnapped to Lebanon two years ago.  The President also asks that his family be allowed contact with him.

Last I heard, our government claimed that Tennenbaum is a civilian and not a spy or agent of the government.  So why is the President not simply demanding that the Lebanese government secure his unconditional release?  Who needs this business of information and contact?

The Nobel Prize for evil is a bad idea. The mushy-heads will always find Jews to give it to, even after Ariel Sharon leaves the stage.

Some years ago, during an ongoing fit of cronyism, the Knesset allowed the kibbutzim and moshavim to take land which the government had allowed them
to use for agriculture and to use it for profitable real estate transactions. At first this was done with a bit of embarrassment, but over time, this former public trust became just another way for the former agricultural sector to make money.

Lately we have begun hearing radio advertisements (Alex Ansky, I believe is the pitchman) to learn how to make money by converting even more agricultural land to other uses.  This is not aimed at the kibbutzim and
moshavim who already have the land in hand (if not in deed), but to the general public.

Something seems very wrong here, both with the level of shame and with the Lands Authority.

Mr. Richard Cohen (26 September) refers to Al Gore as "the president of most of the people" because he received more votes than did George W. Bush.  I, for one, am getting tired of this recurring juvenile reference.

Gore is no more president of "most" than Ross Perot was president of twelve percent.

Bill Clinton's vote was further from fifty percent than was that of George W. Bush.  But the United States doesn't have a job called "President of the People."  The job is "President of the United States" and the duly chosen electors decided that it should go to Mr Clinton then and to Mr Bush now.

So enough already, Mr Cohen.  At least until 2004.

This whole issue is surreal.  Aren't there hospitals that don't do transplants?  And hospitals that don't do brain surgery?  And hospitals that don't turn men into women and vice versa?

So why can't there simply be hospitals that don't do abortion without the government's asking why?

All this talk about possibly exiling Arafat misses one point.  The man is a criminal and should be in jail.  For the most part he is.

We do need to tighten the conditions, appropriate to a prisoner - cutting off the phones and messing with his computers, for instance.  Move his fellow jailbirds - the ones who refuse to surrender - to a separate floor.
 Limit the visits he is allowed, even from "VIPs."  The conditions imposed on Jonathan Pollard might serve as a good example.

Our intrepid Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Shimon Peres, has told a Kuwaiti newspaper that if Arafat is reelected as chairman of the PA, then Israel will resume negotiations with him.

It seems to me that Peres is putting the cart before two horses.  Arafat is not the only one that has to be reelected.  It just may be that our own elections will see the long overdue retirement of Peres himself.  He will
no doubt continue "negotiating" with anyone he pleases, but at least the Government of Israel will not be threatened with a renegade who does so in its name.

Remember Tom Osborne in the 1984 Orange Bowl.

Dick Vermeil doesn't, obviously.  The call he didn't make Sunday should have been a no-brainer, with all the percentages in his favor.  But he must have been afraid what they would have written about him had the two-point conversion failed.

You wrote:
The rule of law requires that murderers be brought to justice.

Actually the rule of law requires punishment for crime.  Seems to me that Arafat is practically in jail already.  Should be tightened up a bit and we should remove the rest of those in there with him.  The other thing
required is a civil action for damages.  He certainly has the wherewithal.

After reading your fine piece in National Review (online) today, I would like to share a thought with you.

There is a fairly well-accepted Rabbinic tradition that 80% of the Jews in Egypt were killed before the Exodus.  (I shan't trouble you with the textual basis for this tradition.)  That is a Holocaust well beyond the scale of the one in our parents' time.  Yet, we do not acknowledge this Holocaust in the Passover celebration and except for expressing some regret at the
suffering of the Egyptian people, the Seder tradition is by and large one of happiness and victory.

(If the Passover tradition had been determined by the leaders of modern Israel, the ancient Holocaust would have been marked separately, much as are "our" Holocaust and memorial days in a run up to Israel's Independence Day.)

But the notion of simply ignoring the Passover Holocaust is far from simple.  Eighty percent!

Now I don't see many movies and I try to view them as entertainment, not as a learning experience.  But when I saw "Independence Day" a few years ago, I saw that same phenomenon and it didn't seem to bother anyone at all.  If you recall, during the three day run-up to the Fourth of July, several US cities were incinerated and millions were killed including the President's wife.  Yet the final scene is all victory.  No sentiments about all that was lost.  Just victory and moving forward.

That made Passover make more sense.

So while I don't quarrel with your suggestions - and certainly it is too early for a celebration of proper victory over a vanquished enemy - I think that there is room for a celebration of who we are and how we choose to go about our business.

I recognize that the editors of a newspaper have the right and the power to reword letters before they print them.

But I must say that I cannot understand why you changed the letter of mine which you printed today.

I wrote:
 In reference to the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adala), Ms. Glick writes "[a]fter forcing the Barak government to form the Or Commission..."

I quoted word for word what Ms. Glick wrote.

You printed "Glick implies that..."

She didn't imply - she said it right out.  Why did you have a problem acknowledging that?  Unless of course she wrote something different and what I was quoting was the work of an editor.

Larry Derfner writes "And if we leave the Palestinians alone if we get our settlers and soldiers out of the West Bank and Gaza there's no inherent reason why they shouldn't eventually come around and join the rest of our neighbors to hate us and reject us, but leave us in peace. "

Of course there is an inherent reason - "the west Bank and Gaza" is not what they have in mind.  To their minds, and Jewish presence between the river and the sea is causus belli.

We have been reminded frequently that Yitzhak Rabin told the Knesset that and territory given over to the PA could and would be taken back if the PA turned its weapons on Israel.  In the meantime, those who continue to support the Oslo concessions have designed any number of excuses to ignore and invalidate Rabin's assurances.

Another canard had it that creating the PA would moderate the ways of the Palestinian Arabs because "they would have something to lose."  Those who brought us that logic are the first to tell us how unthinkable it would be to actually take anything back.

So what else is new.

As we approach the beginning of Elul this Friday, when some begin saying daily early-morning Selihot paryers, we might consider a convenience based on the creative initiative of our intrepid Justice Minister, Meir
Sheetreet – who will change the clocks for Yom Kippur and change them back afterwards.

So as not to inconvenience the early risers, I suggest that every morning at five o'clock we move our clocks back to four o'clock and then two hours later, move them ahead to seven.  That will help those saying Selihot without disturbing the elites, who will sleep through the whole thing anyway.

Your description of Mt Scopus as "a Jewish enclave surrounded by Palestinian neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city" is not correct.  During the Jordanian occupation (1949-1967) Mt Scopus was always part of Israel.  Then it was an enclave, having been cut off during the war in 1948.  The massacre of doctors and nurses on the way to Hadassah Medical
Center, then on Mt Scopus was just one of the efforts to cut the mountain's Jewish ties.

During the Jordanian occupation, Israelis maintained a continuous presence on Mt Scopus, with convoys that went up every two weeks.

Since 1967, the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood has connected Mt Scopus to the rest of "Jewish Jerusalem" so that it is no longer an enclave.

You wrote
"Soldiers yesterday arrested a Fatah activist in Yata village who is suspected of involvement in the ambush attacks near the Zeif junction lastFriday in which St.-Sgt. Elazar Leibovitch, Ya'acov Dickstein, his wife,
Hannah, and their nine year-old son, Shuv-el, were murdered."

You meant Yosef Dickstein and his son Shuva-El.
And I'd like to think you meant terrorist when you wrote "activist."

For years we have been making a monthly payment - separate from taxes - to something called the National Insurance Instituite (NII) that is supposed to "insure" us for lost wages during periods of reserve duty, maternity leave and unemployment, as well as paying child allowances.  This "Institute" has a management system separate from the Treasury and pays it's top staff a separate set of high salaries.

So now the Treasury is mandating cuts in  unemploy- ment payments and is even imposing a payment on those receiving unemployment - apparently forgeting
that we have paid an insurance premium for years to cover expressly this eventuality.

For anyone who hadn't noticed previously, this unmasks the independent identity of the NII.  Maybe it's time we took the top staff of the NII and absorbed their functions into the Ministry of Labour at reduced salaries.  In addition to saving money, this would let some of the high- priced clerks learn what life is like for their (former) clients.

Everyone is bemoaning the unfortunate deaths of the civilians who were in the vicinity of Saleh Schadeh and many are suggesting that the IDF should have used a much smaller bomb.

Does anyone remember the doctrine enunciated ten years ago, the one about the importance of using overwhelming force in order to get the job done with certainty.  Colin Powell doesn't seem to.

It was called the Powell Doctrine.

I might be more sympathetic to those who want to draft yeshiva students, were the army to decide first to take those Haredim who are not in yeshiva.  But the fact is, the army doesn't really want them.

A lot of fuss has been made about the plan to bring the left-of-center parties together in a Social-Democratic Party.  Yossi Sarid is leading the project and it is assumed that Yossi Beilin is active in it although he
has not yet commited to leaving the Labour Party.

I am still waiting for an interviewer to ask Sarid if he expects Beilin to bring his EU financial backing with him and if so, how will the new party reconcile this funding by a foreign government with the laws forbidding same.

While you are at it, you can allow such contracts between a brother and a sister, a father and a daughter or even among three or four people.  (Nothing obscene or illicit here - no one said that the agreement has to
include sleeping together.)

I mean as long as we aren't defining the rules from the outside, let's do it properly.

When Rev Niebuhr said this, it was a good and correct statement.  Criticizing cliches is valid so long as you keep in mind (and occasionally on your page or keyboard or wherever it is you write) that the original
may be a different thing entirely.

You have been here many years, but remain naïve.

Setting up such a Commission of Inquiry is of no use unless the members of that commision will make a proper inquiry and draw logical and moral conclusions.  However, you-know-who controls the appointment of the Commission, so the conclusions are that Oslo was a good thing.  Better not to have any ruling than that.

I can even see that some other group of MKs would make a Commission of Inquiry on settlements across the green line, that would predictably blame them for everything wrong with the country.

Evelyn Gordon is on target regarding Edna Arbel's loose tongue.  But we wish Ms. Arbel many more years of service in the Prosecitor's office because the only way to get her out would be to appoint her to the Supreme Court where she could do even more damage.

In a perfect world, editorial writers, letter writers and columnists would debate matters of policy and principle, without having to argue back and forth about the facts.  But when repeated often enough, people will
believe anything, so the debate moves from opinion to fact.  Keren Wheeler has her facts wrong.  I shall limit my comments to two of them.

Ms. Wheeler writes "On Nov. 22, 1967, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 242, in which it stated that a just and lasting peace in the Middle East could be achieved only through the withdrawal of Israel's armed forces from the territories it occupied in the 1967 war."  That is false.

Resolution 242 does not claim to be the "only" anything.  It does call for - among other things - a withdrawal from territories.  Not "all territories" nor even "THE territories captured," just "territories." That
was deliberate and was a matter of considerable debate and negotiation at the time.  The Russians and the Arabs wanted a clearer statement that would mean "all territories" and they didn't get it.  The Russians indeed
voted for something less and by doing so accepted that as sufficient. After the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai, one of the US diplomats involved in 242 wrote that that withdrawal was sufficient to fulfill that clause.
(It was either George Ball or McGeorge Bundy - I'm not sure which.)

Ms. Wheeler writes "Israel is the only country in the world -- and that includes the United States -- that considers this territory 'disputed.' " That is incorrect.  Even the Palestine Liberation Organization - Arafat's
gang of thugs who signed the Oslo agreements and now run the Palestinian Authority (and yes, I know they are not a country) agreed in the Oslo agreements themselves that the matter of who lives where and who rules what would be worked out by negotiation.  The Oslo agreements did not proclaim that there would be an independent Palestinian state, it did not define anything about borders and it did not require Jews to stop living anywhere in the historic Land of Israel.  The PLO signed this document and committed itself to a process whereby outstanding issues would be
addressed peacefully.  (They have not been addressed fully because "peacefully" is beyond the capability of the PLO, but that is not my point here.) They agreed that there were disputes involving territory and that
they would be resolved.

When the UN refugee organizations were set up after the War of Independence, the term "refugee" had to be defined down to two years prior residence because so many of the displaces persons had come to Palestine
from other Arab lands only a few years earlier, to benefit from the economic success that the Jews brought to the land.  They left the land during 1948-49 after they tried to dispute all of it and have been kept
homeless by their Arab brethren since.

One might think from the rhetoric that in 1967, Israel took over some sovereign state called Palestine.  In fact no such state ever existed. The territory that the Arabs were supposed to use for their own state (and declined to do, choosing war instead) was annexed by the Jordanians in an action recognized by only the British and the Pakistanis.  So as to distinguish that area from the rest of Jordan, the term "West Bank" was
invented.  The area was not disputed - most of the world had decided the Arabs living there could proclaim a state if they chose to do so.  Nascent
Israel certainly had no way to influence such a decision. The Arabs - they didn't call themselves "Palestinians" then - did not chose to become an
independent state. They chose to make war on the Jewish state.

Indeed, the British Mandate for Palestine set up after World War I had no disputed territories.  They knew where Palestine was and it included what is Jordan now as well as the area between the river and the sea.  That
Palestine is what the nations of the world promised the Jews, before there was a Holocaust and before the large influx of Arabs from neighboring countries.  Ms Wheeler is correct that no one considered it disputed then.  Everyone knew it belonged to the Jewish People. It became disputed later as concessions made to the Arabs after their periods of violence convinced
them that more violence would bring them more concessions.  This logic holds today.

Reasonable people can debate policy and principle.  but please let's keep our facts straight.

Sir, you have written nonsense.

The small problem with speech President's is that there was no "or else."   If Arafat and Company ignores the conditions, what happens?  I mean, what happens that couldn't have happened already - and as it didn't, so it
won't.

But the big problem is the assumption - which you clearly share - that in free elections, someone other than Arafat (or someone unlike him) would win.  The people Arafat rules may not like everything about his rule, but by and large, they support him and the main features of his rule.  Arafat doesn't need to "fix" election results.  This is not a leadership disconnected from its people - this leadership is part and parcel of what has been defined as "Palestinians."

Now I have to write that other fellow about the wall nonsense.

Israel, don't you think the whole point of the speech was to put Arafat in a bind politically? Whether or not he fixes the elections, they will be illegitimate from the standpoint of the US. The "or else" is, no movement forward, I think that is implicit, and hopefully the administration will stick to that. Plus Sharon now has more freedom of action..

As for the wall, you're on your own.

Cheers, Jim

You write " The Supreme Court on Friday accepted an appeal by former Kach activist Noam Federman against his remand in custody until the end of proceedings, ordering the Jerusalem District Court to find some other way to hold him."  The rest of your article does not say anything about finding some other way to hold him.  Indeed it sounds peculiar that even our activist High Court would instruct a lower court to "find some other
way" to do what they have decided is improper.

The government has closed the Um al-Fahm offices of a Muslim humanitarian aid organization for assisting Hamas, a known terrorist organization.

Why haven't those involved been arrested?

"Four people were killed — two of them possibly children — when Palestinian gunmen invaded a home Thursday night in a Jewish settlement on the West Bank."  That's what you wrote on your web site and it sounds right 

However, a few minutes ago (22:00 GMT) your cable news said that four Israelis were killed in a "gun battle."  We are trying to rid ourselves of CNN.  You can surely do better than that false headline.

During the 1999 election campaign, we heard about two break-ins at the Washington offices of the Barak/One Israel advisers.  The conclusions we were directed to draw were clear - "more" misbehavior by the criminal
element inherent in the Likud. 

Isn't it about time that our local media present an update on the investigation by the Washington police? Have they found evidence incriminating anyone from the Likud?  Or anyone else from Israel?  Or anyone else at all?  Are they still investigating?  Did they ever
investigate?  If they stopped investigating, was it before or after our elections?  Etc. 

Was this ever a story to begin with? 

Will our mainstream local press cover this or will it be left to Makor Rishon, Hazofeh and Yoav Yitzhak, as certain other uncomfortable issues have been? 

Mr Daniel Bloch writes (on 3 June) "This week we are commemorating the 35th anniversary of the Six-Day War."  May I respectfully remind him that "we," both the Jewish People and the State of Israel, commemo- rated the liberation of Jerusalem on the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth of Iyyar, nearly four weeks ago.

Now that the Director of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, Mr. Yosef Barel, has issued a directive to revert to the historic term "Judea and Samaria" instead of "West Bank," he might consider another change in
terminology.

The Hebrew press has adopted the term "pedophile" for child molesters. This term means "lover of children" and I cannot think of many more gross violations of language than that. 

Greg Garrison's pleasant article explaining why the US heartland is with us reminds me of my own email in-box these last couple of months.  It's mostly preaching to the choir.

I also expect that a very large portion of the center-left Israeli public considers the qualities to which Mr Garrison subscribes to be quaint at best.  Surely not values that they themselves feel comfortable with and
not the kind of folks they feel comfortable being supported by.

After the recent terrorist attack in Rishon LeZion, it was obvious that something must be done about Gaza.  The question of who leaked what when is trivial - no one needed a leak to discover the obvious.  Equally
obvious was that the Gazans would mine and booby- trap their homes and neighborhoods, waiting for the inevitable IDF incursion.

So we all wait and wonder what happens next.

If I were an innocent civilian in Gaza, I would worry that a work accident would set off all those explosives and destroy my neighborhood, even withot an IDF action.  I would also worry that an IDF commando unit would help that accident happen.  But most of all, I would worry that my own PA leaders - with their unquench- able thirst for new martyrs - would blow up my neighborhood and everyone in it in order to blame the Sharon government.

I have no doubt that the PA public relations people are preparing an offensive based on the Gaza massacre.  Our own hasbara will, no doubt, be prepared after the fact.

Your online headline "Militant Detonates Explosives in Israel" is outrageous.  The headline on the article itself "Suicide Bomber Blows Himself Up" is closer to the truth.  But even so, neither headline tells us that this was a terrorist attack meant to kill Israeli civilians.

Saying "militant" instead of "terrorist" is untruthful reporting.  These "neutral" headlines are not professional.

How about let's all make a point of calling it "Saudi Arabia, the home of Idi Amin."  Or "Saudi Arabia, the folks who pay Idi Amin's pension."

Your editorial taking the Likud Central Committee to task on the question of a second state west of the Jordan River, was based solely on the assumption that the real issue before the Committee was Sharon vs.
Netanyahu.  Were that assumption valid, your criticism would be as well, particularly regarding Netanyahu's problematic history.

But you might do well to consider that the Likud's vote was on the issue itself and the clear need to let President Bush , the Europeans and everyone else know that Sharon is not authorized to advance their beloved "two state solution." 

We would like to have thought that our friends abroad would understand that "two states" will not work.  Instead the Likud was forced to announce that we will no longer be guinea pigs for their well-meaning experiments.

The POST had an AP article which said "Dennis Ross agreed with Israel today that the Palestinian Authority must undergo reforms, including changes to Chairman Yasser Arafat's powers, but he cautioned against
conditioning new talks on the reforms."

Does Dennis Ross have some unconventional definition of "must" or is he being inconsistent again?

Although I have some doubts about the Treasury's new plan, I can accept that the general population will have to bear some additional financial burden in order to solve our military and economic problems.  My overdraft will have to manage with an extra couple of hundred sheqels a month.

But since many of us will have to increase our over- drafts to cope with the new conditions, I take objection to the fact that our burden will become the banks' profits.

Profiteering is no longer a capital offense, but the Treasury plan must address it.  The banks can bear part of this burden, not just the citizens.

The Greeks and the Turks have sent us a team of advisors to show us how enemies can become friends.

I do not recall that the Turks ever wanted to throw all the Greeks into the sea.  Nor do I recall that the other twenty-odd Greek nations threatened Turkey with war if they did not accept their terms.

Michael Freund quotes Terje Larsen as saying "Arafat and I talk about everything, not just politics and economics. We discuss life, food and love."

I suppose Larsen would have us understand that as clarifying that Arafat is a decent fellow (after all).

It rather tells us who this Larsen fellow is.  Someone who finds terrorists to be good company.

You write "Israelis and Palestinians seem to be negotiating at a low level to end the revolting face-off at the Church of the Nativity."

The Israeli army is waiting out a band of terrorists. What are the Palestinians inside the church doing, aside from holding the church staff hostage?  From reading publications other than the online P-G, one could learn that the three monks who escaped yesterday spoke of theft, pillage and sacrilege by their captors.

Of course, if you told us that, your editorial writer could not issue his evenhanded, balanced words of wisdom.

Robert Kagan's article poses unanswerable questions for Thomas Friedman and anyone else who would have US troops patrol the lines between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

But his questions are just as relevant for Charles Krauthammer, who keeps telling us that a high wall will solve the problem.  It won't and for the same reasons.

Since the Steelers' QB need is more important than it is urgent, how about considering trading their number one choice for next year's number one to a team that is fairly sure to be high next year.  Carolina, for instance.  Or Jacksonville.  Get next year's Joey Harrington.

Regardless of how the current battle against terrorism turns out, I am  concerned about a particular aspect of what happens next.

Israel will find itself with over a thousand terrorist prisoners - both active participants in acts or murder and their backers.  I have no doubt that some Arab planners are already working on hostage scenarios to free them.  I also have no doubt that the next phoney agreement will be delayed while our erstwhile overseas friends and our own extreme left tells us that they must be released in the interests of peace and reconciliation.

I can only hope that our own leaders are preparing to say "no" in the most uncertain terms.

In the debate about allowing foreign correspondents into the battlefield, we keep hearing that although they generally cause trouble, we must continue allowing them access, lest the news-starved world get only the reports of Arafat's own media.

The siege of the Church of the Nativity would seem to provide a test for this logic - and the foreign press has failed.  The Arab mouthpieces accuse the IDF of various acts of sacrilege, while it is the PA forces who
are using the church and hiding behind it's clergy.  And where is the foreign press to sort out the truth?  Nowhere useful, to be sure.

Let us show them all the door.

I would love to see a survey of MKs, asking what sort of action by the Supreme Court would prompt the Knesset to put limits on it's self-assumed powers.  Some MKs would see no such red lines, either because they believe the Court to be beyond the rule of law or because they assume that the Court will generally rule in their favor.

But some might think that there are some future, but unthinkable, Court actions which would go beyond all reason.

Or perhaps it wouldn't matter, because by the time the Knesset wakes up to the Court coup, it will be too late to challenge it.

Mr William Bennet's criticism of the Bush administra- tion's failure to allow Israel to defend itself in right on the mark, as far as it goes.

Reality dictates that President Bush can hardly be expected to support Mr Sharon, when the Prime Minister himself seems so unsure of himself. Thusfar, the Sharon government has been held hostage by half its ministers – representing maybe a third of the electorate – who still act as if they think that the conflict can be ended once and for all by yet another deal with Mr Arafat and his thugs.

The US government and press is by and large support- ive of the Bush policies against terror.  I suspect that if the Israeli government (and Hebrew-language press) were nearly that supportive, Mr Bush would not be
exerting the pressure that Mr Bennett deplores.

It was interesting to read the helpful advice from Dennis Ross, an experienced hand in the "peace process" that made the Middle east a much more dan- gerous place than it has been for the past half century.

But I wonder about Ross' own sense of reality.  He writes "Should Israel get intelligence about a planned terrorist act in this period, it would inform Palestinian security forces and the United States. If the Pales- tinians did not act immediately to preempt the attack, the Israelis would have the right to do so."  Just picture, Arafat's Tanzim set out on an attack mission and Sharon calls Arafat with a request to stop them. 
 "Give me a few days," Arafat says.  Or Sharon calls Arafat with information about another munitions delivery - perhaps the Karine B - which Arafat then calls a Zionist plot.

Or Ross' novel idea that a US commission would decide who is or isn't fulfilling obligations.  Experience has taught us that even the reasonably fair US government cannot be trusted to assess blame properly.  After all, we wouldn't want to upset any potential anti-Iraq partners.  And we wouldn't want the Arab nations to consider the US too pro-Israel.  And we wouldn't want to risk the ire of the Europeans or see them take
over the US role as a peacemaker.  And we certainly wouldn't want to say anything that would give the impression that the Tenet and Mitchell reports were just pie in the sky.

I'd like to see Dennis Ross go back to researching his memoirs or whatever else it he does at his policy institute.  When he has researched enough to write "we screwed up for eight years and cost many lives by our incompetence," then we can invite him to offer some policy to clean up the mess.

As it says in the fourth verse of the Star-Spangled Banner:
"Then conquer we must
When our cause it is just
And this be our motto
In God is our trust"

So Mr Shimon Peres said "If I would have known the reality would get this bad, I would not have joined this government in the first place."

You could probably sponsor a competition on other ways Peres could have completed that sentence.

My own entry would be "… I would not have so many years condemning and demonizing all the people who told me that it would certainly get this bad."

I am sorry that Mr Michael Souryal sees a similarity between those who send their "holy warriors" to blow themselves up deliberately, with the dual purpose of
killing civilians and sowing terror and those who occasionally kill in error.

I pass through the Israeli roadblocks most every day and can attest to the tension that rules both the soldiers and the drivers.

But let us remember, that were the suicide bombers and other murderers not being smuggled in private cars, produce trucks, ambulances and other vehicles that Mr Souryal would put unilaterally off limits and if the
soldiers themselves were not attacked by shooters hiding among civilians, then the soldiers would have no reason to shoot at anyone.

Your piece "Keystone Spooks" reminded me of an incident here in Israel a few years ago when two Mossad agents were sent to kill Hamas' Haled
Mash'al in Jordan with some kind of poison, but were caught.  They were released only after the Israeli government provided the antidote for the poison and released Hamas' Ahmad Yassin from prison.

General Danny Yatom, a Peres political appointee who headed the Mossad said (I quote from memory) "The most important thing is that our people were not hurt." 

There was a time when the most important thing would have been completing the mission.

The forces behind all the "draft yeshiva students" movements would have us believe that all they want is equality and that they have nothing against Haredim and yeshiva study per se.

I will believe that after they petition the High Court of Justice to force the army to draft those who have left yeshivot or who aren't really studying.  The IDF could do that tomorrow if they wanted to - but it is the IDF that chooses not to.

Solve the easy issue, then I'll consider your position on the harder issue.  For now it looks like gratuitous Haredi-bashing to me.

David Forman announces that "We have lost the war."

If that is the case, then "Hell no, we won't go" is precisely the wrong reaction.

The war is not about the hill country, it's about our presence anywhere between the sea and the river.

So if we have indeed lost the war, "yes go" is the order of the day.  If we have lost, we will all have to go.  Forman's friends won't let us stay.

We tried to believe that Ariel Sharon was making the best effort in a bad situation, but he can no longer blame his inaction on pressure from Peres and friends. 

Disbanding the unity government is no longer a relevant option.  The government must be brought down and the Prime Minister replaced, the sooner the better.

My sister in the US asked me how I feel about the proposed buffer zone.  I told her that that was exactly the point.  It is supposed to play to how we feel and maybe help some people. 

A more relevant question is what do we think(!) of it.  I for one think it will be worse than useless.

In my own simple-minded way, I saw the reserve soldiers who refuse to serve in Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Golan and parts of Jerusalem as making a political statement.  Even if they prefer to call it high-minded idealism or morality, it all boils down to the same thing.  Were refusal to serve a personal issue and not an attempt to influence policy, then they would not have needed to take expensive advertising space and
their sponsors would not have wanted to spend the money.

But the National Thought Police tell us that it is not a political issue and even reprimanded the Chief of Staff for daring to think otherwise.

So if it isn't a political issue, what can it be that causes them to refuse to serve?  Perhaps the word is cowardice.  I'm told that can happen to people as they get older.  After all, it is dangerous.  But then why
would they want to publicize that either?  I will consider that when I do my own reserve duty in a combat unit a couple of months from now.

I don't know what the IBA's foreign language broad- casts tell the world about what is going on here, but I certainly know what they would tell the world if they were to be made subservient to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.  As the POST has pointed out in the past, this office is responsible for our government's speaking in multiple voices at a time when a single voice is critical.  The Ministry for Foreign Affairs has
proven itself incorrigible - we mustn't encourage them by increasing their authority.

Perhaps in one of your articles analyzing the special teams disaster - and surely there will be many - you might address the following paradox.

The Steelers punted in the fourth quarter and the Patriots called a fair catch.  Holding was called against the Patriots and assessed after the reception since it occurred after the kick.

But when the Steelers punted in the first quarter and Troy Edwards was penalized for running out of bounds, the penalty was assessed before the kick even though the infraction was after the kick.

Seems to me that either the first quarter call was wrong and the penalty should have been assessed after the reception or the Steelers should have gotten a first down on the holding call in the fourth quarter.

Uri Dan assures us that Arafat won't be buried in Jerusalem when his time comes, that we "won't let him defile the soil of Jerusalem, [our] sacred capital, with the body of a war criminal."   My I remind Mr Dan that Ariel Sharon, whom he defends so blindly, had no problem with the burial cum pep rally of Faisal Husseini on the Temple Mount itself.

A quick quiz.  Which POST columnist is capable of writing "What had been translated from an abstract hope into a concrete reality during the past decade, has been returned to the realms of the abstract?" "Translated... into a concrete reality??"

If you recognized this fantasy as David Newman, you are correct.  But it's no big achievement.  The man clearly lives on a different planet.

You printed what began as a fine editorial Sunday, which looked like it was going to compare the government's correct decision regarding with the Wakf's illegal building in Nazereth with the same government's inaction regarding theWakf's illegal work on Temple Mount.  But then you fell short.

While it was clear that the problem in Nazereth is the infringement of Moslems on Christian "territory," the best you can do with the Temple Mount is "priceless historical and archeological treasures."  Why is the
POST afraid to see the Wakf's illegal work on the Temple Mount for what it is – an infringement of Moslems on Jewish territory?  Our claim to the
Temple Mount is not a matter of preserving history, it is a matter of preserving our future.

You tell us in your Friday editorial that the disquali- fication of Moshe Feiglin from running in the election is a mere technical ruling.  Mishael Cheshin supposedly had no choice because Feiglin had been convicted of a
crime involving moral turpitude.

There is no law defining what is moral turpitude and the court which convicted Feiglin did not choose to use this term.  He wasn't even sentenced to jail time.

So Cheshin did not make a technical ruling.  He made a moral judgement, which should not be glossed over as you did.  Many of us still consider what Feiglin did to be garden-variety civil disobedience and consider that
Cheshin took a miscarriage of justice and ratcheted up another notch baseed solely on Cheshin's own version of morality.

The most important aspect of the Labour Party's platform is not the division of Jerusalem or the transfer of Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, as the commentators would have us believe.  Nor is it
the legalization of some public transportation on Shabbat or new programs to transfer income from the middle class to the rich and the poor.

The most important fact to emerge about the Labour Party's platform is that it was approved unanimously.  No recorded dissent or even abstentions.  In the party of the recent bitter battle among Mitzna, Ben-Eliezer and Ramon, there is no longer room for independent thinking.  Bolshevism lives.

Old-time Jerusalem residents tell me that before the Six Day War, there was a display of Christmas lights near the King David Hotel, but not much else.  After Bethlehem became accessible in 1967, the municipality began putting Christmas lights along Derech Hevron which leads into Bethlehem.

It seems to me that now that Bethlehem is closed to Israelis, we can skip the lights on Derech Hevron.  It's an unnecessary expense which no longer serves any purpose.

We read that Yigal Amir is being called to testify in the defense of Avishai Raviv.  Presumably his testimony will contradict other evidence as well as Raviv's own admissions.  Considering who Yigal Amir is, it is
surprising that anyone would expect the court to give his testimony any weight whatsoever. 

And considering the conditions of Amir's imprison- ment, I'd think that for any tiny temporary improvement in those conditions, he would agree to say anything that the defense and the reluctant prosecution
demanded of him.

The POST is once again promoting ill thought out changes in the Elections Law, this time proposing removal of limits on pre-election publicity.

The law is certainly far from perfect, but there must be limits placed on our very political broadcast media, for they are the ones who decide which smaller parties ideas are worth promoting in their minds (Meretz, for
example) and which are to be marginalized by giving them no air time.

The deal between the parties two years ago worked because there were only two candidates.  In our multiple-party system, the small parties have to have a way to protect themselves.  No limits, such as the POST proposes, nullifies the small parties' (and the public's) right to complain about unfair coverage.

If Yael Dayan wants to leave Labour and join another party because her party decided against continuing her Knesset career, the party should help her pack.

If Dayan wants to act like a spoiled brat, her parent party should treat her as such.

You write "Marzel, who has been arrested dozens of times for disturbing the peace and for confrontations with Arabs."  But you don't tell us how many times those arrests have produced convictions.  Of course if your anonymous "Internet Staff" read only the headlines over the years, they would probably assume Marzel to be a major criminal, because the acquittals and dismissals never get much press.

Reasonable voices - including your own editorial page - have criticized Arafat for condemning acts of terror because they damage the Palestinian cause and not because they are wrong on their own terms.

Yet some of our own show the same kind of faulty logic.  Daniel Bloch, Labour's representative on your op-ed page (even though you decline to define him as such), writes that Arafat's support for Mitzna "will
increase public support for Ariel Sharon, the Likud and the right-wing parties."  In other words, it's not wrong, just a bad idea.

Bloch, in his role as political advisor to the enemy, should be called out for what he is.

In your editorial critical of Labour's independent foreign policy, you ask a series of questions challenging the boundariesof what the opposition may
do.  But you stop short of one question which is long overdue, so I shall ask it myself.  When does this activity become treason?  Perhaps you will suggest an answer.

You wrote:
Eventually, Hebron with all of its difficulties and sacrifices will survive, while Jenin, Jenin will be be cast in the dustbin of all other false histories.

What about "…where it can be shown next Ramadan on Egyptian television."

I might be more impressed by Associate Prof. Mazin B. Qumsiyeh's "Shame, Sadness and Revulsion" if it were expressed towards Jews from Jerusalem, Netanya and Hevron, not just  his friends at Kibbutz Metzer.

On the other hand, since he states his goal as the imposition of  "international monitors and an international presence throughout the area to ensure peaceful transition," I'm not sure I'd be much impressed anyway.   We can do without the propaganda of the Palestine Right to Return Coalition.

The numbers in the first table in the article by Ernie Paicopolos looked suspicious to me, so I did some simple multiplication.

Strickland got 57% of the 54% that were women and 39% or the 46% who were men.  That's 48.7%.

Allard got 56% of the men and 41% of the women.  That's only 47.8%.

So how did Allard win?  He got the hermaphrodite vote?  Or your numbers are wrong but you figure we wouldn't notice?

Ten years ago, everyone from President Herzog on down was on the "election reform" bandwagon, blissfully ignoring Robert K. Merton's Law of
Unintended Consequences.  Those consequences caught up with all of almost immediately and at great cost to the system and the country.

Now you are at it again.  Let me point out two unintended but completely predictable consequences to elections by districts.  First of all, the political crassness of our parties will take gerrymandering to new levels no one has ever considered anywhere. 

Second, you would be opening the door to the possibility of a Knesset majority elected by a popular majority.  Can you imagine what the pundits would do with a  Likud Prime Minister elected by a Knesset majority, but a popular minority?  Aharon Barak would like nothing better than to overthrow such a Prime Minister.

We hear that unemployment in the US is approaching five percent, so everyone expects interest rates to fall.

Here - well, here we read from right to left, so it must work the other way.

Binyamin Ben-Eliezer says that Shaul Mofaz doesn't have enough political experience to be Defense Minister.  The automatic response of most of the
public is likely "Thank goodness.  We've had enough of the likes of Ben-Eliezer, who subordinated everything to the crassest sort of politics." But the truth is that with the kind of Defense Ministers Mofaz
served under, he probably has a good idea about how to handle politics.

That said, it's high time we got back to civilian Defense Ministers as we once had (Ben-Gurion, Peres, Arens), a model which has served the United States so well.

You put the fillowing online a few minutes ago:
UPDATE: IDF identifies suicide bomber
By THE JERUSALEM POST INTERNET STAFF

IDF named the perpetrator of Sunday morning's suicide attack on an IDF bus near the Jewish community of Ariel that left two Israelis dead and more than 15 wounded, , as 19-year-old Muhammed Cheir, a resident of the West bank town of Hebron, Israel radio reported.

Your anonymous "internet staff" might want to consider saying "...town of Hebron, from which the Minister of Defense recently ordered IDF troops
withdrawn."  Surely that is relevant.

I beg to offer an experience different from Aviva Bar-Am's in her cute and useful piece about reaching telephone recordings.

On several occasions, I have called YES and have succeeded in reaching a human.  Zis human beink is spiking  Inglish, but not so good and ze information zey gif me is not olveis right.

But - like the airline recordings at Lod - it beats waiting for the Hebrew.

During the memorial program for Yitzhak Rabin, Dalia Rabin-Pelosoff took issue with the "Posh'ei Oslo ledin" (Oslo criminals to trial) initiative, as a personal affront to her father's well-intentioned work.  She misses
the point.

Those who initiated the"Oslo criminals to trial" campaign were referring exactly to that - those who broke the law in the course of the Oslo process, in particular those who conducted negotiations with the PLO in violation of the law and without the knowledge of Yitzhak Rabin and his government.  This campaign was not(!) aimed at those who were misled, who made serious errors in judgement or who coaxed agreement from a reluctant Knesset using jobs and perqs.  It isn't even aimed at those charged with enforcing the law but who chose to overlook the illegality of the original
Oslo meetings.  The campaign was aimed at the few who broke the law.  The Oslo criminals.

It is understandable that Ms Rabin-Pelosoff misunder- stands the campaign to be aimed at her father's memory, for he put so much of his own prestige on
the line in backing the fulfillment of what began in sin, because (perhaps against his better judgement) he felt that it might lead to a better world for Israel.

But that is not the only reasons that Rabin-Pelosoff misunderstands.  In the milieu in which she mixes, someone is always ready to call an opposing policy criminal.  This began long before the state was established by the Bolshevism of Mapai, progressed through the Cahan Comission and continues today in Yossi Sarid's rhetoric and in the dedication of legal and police resources to "criminals" such as Itamar Ben-Gevir, Moshe Feiglin and the children of Hevron. 

Occasionally in the past few years - since her entering active politics - Rabin-Pelosoff has appeared to rise above her political-social roots to ask important questions and to open her eyes to new ideas.  But it seems that she has a ways to go.

In the meantime, if there are those who broke the law regarding Oslo, why shouldn't they be brought to trial?

A couple of months ago, you separated sections A and B of the Friday print edition into two separate pieces each.  Much as I find it inconvenient, I am even more perturbed by having to go from section to section to finish an article.  Caroline Glick's piece is a good example.  It began on page A1 and continued on page A10, which is in a separate section.

While I'm at it, may I register my objection to your cutting back on the Friday WSJ section from two pages to one.

Gabriel Danzig is na?ve if he believes that had the bus driver been armed, he would have prevented the suicide bomber from killing Sa'ada Aharon. Danzig's scenario would have an armed civilian shooting a captured terrorist who could at that moment been accused "only" of attempted murder.  Had the driver shot the "prisoner" in the head and prevented him
from detonating his bomb, the driver himself would have been subjected to months or even years of legal tribulations that may have seen him convicted of murder, ala Yoram Shkolnik.

You seem surprised that the Sinn Fein / IRA has held on to their weapons and seems to be preparing to attack their partners to their agreement.  But we all know that the IRA and the PLO went to the same school of terror.  And the world has let the PLO get away with these same treaty violations, so why shouldn't the IRA assume they can too?!

The idea of  having "any voting-age citizen ... eligible to participate in them regardless of party affiliation" may be appropriate in other societies, but not here.

If nothing else (and there are several "else"), you will create the spectacle of members of parties with no significant leadership challenges (Meretz, Shas, Shiniu and some Arab parties come to mind) being the
ability to influence another party's choice of candidates.  That is not just bad, it is wrong.

Your Margot Dudkevitch writes:
A Fatah activist from the nearby village of Yata has been arrested as a suspect in the July ambush.

What's this "activist" business?  Sounds like CNN or BBC.  Can't you just "murderer" and "terrorist?"

Israel ("it could have been me out there") Pickholtz
Elazar, Gush Etzion

Daniel Bloch begins his most recent column with the profound observation "In Israeli politics one can easily predict anything except the future. "

Perhaps he would like our applause for being able to predict the past.  (Although even that sets him apart from some of his Labour Party colleagues.)

The rest of the column doesn't get much better - which it makes it similar to many others by the same writer.

It seems to be that your opinion page would be better served by only printing those columns that actually say something, not those that simply take up space.

David Weinberg asks why shouldn't Netanyahu serve as Sharon's number two
before resuming his quest for the Prime Ministership.

The answer is simple.  If Sharon insists on having Peres and Ben-Eliezer on his team, Netanyahu wants no part of it.  And neither does the electorate.

How about she can say what she wants, but it only becomes newsworthy when you folks and your colleagues make it so.  If you ignored the story, it
would get the attention it deserves.

Samuel Hazo's essay on demagogery concludes with the punchline "After all, as one poet has recently stated, 'Ethics is never on the side of power.' "
(I asked him who this poet is, but he has not yet favored me with a reply.)

Rather than quibble with each point is the essay itself, I'll question the logic of its representative concluding line.  If the anonymous quote is correct, what happens when power moves from one side to the other?  Do the
ethics automatically move in the other direction?  Is power never free to choose to be on the side of ethics?  Can the ethical side never achieve power?

Or perhaps we can question it empirically.  When Allied power defeated the Nazis, which side were ethics on?  (Oh wait.  Given Hazo's full text, maybe that's a bad example.) If ethics and power are always in conflict,
civilization must be in perpetual and eternal ethical decline. (Sorry, another bad example - perhaps Hazo believes this is indeed the case.)  How about: did the slaves freed by the power led by President Lincoln feel
that ethics were on the opposing side?  And the power to impose say affirmative action - surely Hazo cannot consider that unethical.

I am all for " 'Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit' saith the Lord." (Zacharaias 4, v6) In fact zach4v6 is my email address.  But Hazo's anonymous punchline sounds just like demagoguery to me, which is what it
reflects on the rest of his essay.

The actors are ready with their lines.  The scenery is in place.  The plot is obvious.

Act One. (The Southern Wall of the Temple Mount bulges.)  The Jews (on the outside - always the Jews on the outside) say that the Southern wall is in danger of collapse due the irresponsible and unsupervised excavations by the Moslems in Solomon's stables.  The Moslems (on the inside) say that there are no problems and that if they are, they have been caused by
meddling by the Israeli government, who in any case want to tear down the mosques on the "so-called Temple Mount."

Act Two.  The Southern Wall collapses killing or injuring the Moslems inside.  Both sides say "I told you so."  The media, UNESCO and Peace Now condemn Israel.  Shimon Peres and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer express "deep sorrow."

Act Three.  Ariel Sharon issues a series of statements that no one understands.  Israel releases money to the PA and adds some of it's own for humanitarian aid and rebuilding the Moslem Holy site.  The IDF withdraws from (pick a city) as a confidence building measure.  The media, UNESCO and Peace Now condemn Israel again.

The media quote the PA that four Palestinians were killed by a tank shell.  Thusfar, there is the no indication of actual bodies.   The IDF is investigating but has evidence of an attempt at infiltration in the
immediate area.  Nonetheless, our intrepid Defense Minister expresses "deep sorrow" (tzaar amok).

I am having trouble remembering his expressing "deep sorrow" at the attacks on civilians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

The government's Employment Service is complaining about the possibility that certain types of employment problems will be transferred to some other arm of government.  I recall that it wasn't so long ago that they
struck because they were overworked.

Consistency isn't their strong point.

The "neighbor procedure" seems simple enough.  You want to get a terrorist to surrender without bombing the house he is holed up in, so you send a neighbor - presumably one who identifies with the terrorists'
goals, if not his means - with a message, requesting surrender and subsequent good behavior.

The media and courts think this is a bad idea and the IDF has discontinued the practice.

The Prime Minister might consider the morality in sending good neighbor Peres (and his supporters and competitors) on that same type of mission.

Daniel Pipes wrotes:
"This approach turns all Muslims - even moderates fleeing the horrors of militant Islam - into eternal enemies. And it leaves one with zero policy
options. My approach has the benefit of offering a realistic policy to deal with a major global problem."

As I recall, one of the favorite debate points of the pro-Oslo camp was always that nothing else was realistic.

It wasn't an honest approach then and it isn't a "realistic" one now. 

I don't have alot of sentiment for the historic Civic Arena, having been inside only for high school graduations (including my own).

But it seems to me that if at age fifty-four, I can remember when a building was planned and built, it can't be old enough to be "historic."

You want to put a picture into your "Letters to the Editor" space, that's up to you.  It's your paper.  But do we need another photo of Arafat?  Do you think your readers have forgotten what he looks like?

In "The Road to Irredentism," Caroline Glick was on target, as usual, but I must object to one phrase.  In reference to the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adala), Ms. Glick writes "[a]fter forcing the
Barak government to form the Or Commission..."

No one forced Barak to form the Or Commission.  Barak formed the Or Commission because he hoped it would gain him Arab votes.  Barak could have - and indeed should have - rejected the idea of a commission whose
sole purpose was to placate the inciters by indicting the police.

Barak made a free and foolish choice.  In the end he did not get the Arab vote but will nonetheless bear the moral responsibiity for the damage his Commission will continue to cause.

The two nursing students who left the Meron bus before it blew up reminds me that it has been many months since we have heard any comments from our
Arab MKs on the matter of suicide bombings.  Perhaps the media simply don't want to put them in an awkward position – kind of like the two nursing students themselves.

And regarding those two students, I am waiting for the first politician to say we shouldn't jail them, because it will make them into Haters of Israel instead of just foolish teenagers.

You tell us that Jesse Jackson cancelled his visit to Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin after today's bombing.  He didn't say why.  Or at least you folks didn't report it.

I would like to think it was because he finally realized that he shouldn't have been talking with Hamas to begin with, but given Jackson's record, that seems unlikely.

Perhaps Jackson was concerned that the IDF would bomb Yassin's headquarters and he didn't want to be "collateral damage," so he simply decided to avoid the neighborhood.  Too bad.  I mean, too bad that he
didn't have a better reason.  Of course.

> * Mild Muslims: There have been occasions of 
> Muslim moderation and tolerance, such as those in 
> long-ago Sicily and Spain. 

Counting that as mild involves reconciling with their conquests.  I am sure there are examples of moderation and tolerance, but Spain should not be a candidate.

AP's list of suicide bombers is useful, so long as we remember that they have understated the case.

First of all, they seem to be working from headlines, since in several cases (such as 2 March in Bet-Israel and 17 July in Tel-Aviv) there was at least one death later, not included in the stated number.

Second, it is worth at least a mention that at least that many other suicide bombers were stopped before blowing up and countless more stopped or delayed by IDF discoveries of arsenals during Defensive Shield and other operations.

Third, there is almost no mention of the injured.  At least one woman is still in a coma after a year.  Many others are maimed for life or in recovery programs that disrupt their lives for months or more.

Finally, it is worth a mention that there have been hundreds of terror attacks that are not suicide bombings.

Once again we see the Knesset Report Card, telling us which MKs are conscientious about their jobs, measured by attendance, voting, speeches and laws.  We are menat to believe that the more one does of all those things, the more diligent the MK.

Now I am all for high attendance - perhaps even tying it to wages.  And I believe that MK who show up and don't vote are negligent.  Speeches - I'd rather see how long they are and give report card demerits for the long
ones. 

But I object strenuously to the notion that more laws makes a good MK. Seems to me we have too many laws already and diligence might better be measured by keeping more government intrusion from getting into our lives.

The anonymous "Jerusalem Post Internet Staff" tell us that there has been another session in the never- ending, but never-progressing trial of "former Shin-Bet … agent Avishai Raviv."  From everything we hear, Raviv is still drawing a salary from the General Securities Services (Shin Bet), so many people no doubt wonder why exactly you refer to him as a "former" agent.

"Seven Dead in West Bank Violence" was the headline on the AP article on the P-G website.  Let's see, what can that mean.  Perhaps a gun battle between armed fighters on both sides?  Perhaps a few suicide bombers
intercepted on a mission?  Or maybe a terrorist lair was blown up, killing a few bystanders?  No none of these.

So why can't you simply tell it like it is - Palestinians Murder Seven Israeli Bus Passengers!"

Or must you continue protecting you readers from the uncomfortable notion that that's what the Palestinian Authority is all about?

The Knesset has voted to restrict its own right to legislate, despite that legislation is one of the main elements of the Knesset's job description. They tell us that this is good for democracy.

Legislation is clearly not part of the job description of the Supreme Court, yet any suggestion that the Knesset rein in the Court's legislative tendencies are met with howls of protest, lest democracy be threatened.

Sounds backwards to me.

Everyone from Daniel Pipes to Avi Davis seems to know how to connect the dots in the LAX shooting.  And I must admit, it does seem obvious, especially if you ignore the earlier reports about the blond shooter with the pony tail and the "man in custody" report.  The only person I've seen addressing that (aside from, perhaps, the FBI) is Barry Chamish.  You might ask him for the picture he gets when he connects the dots.

Shame on Ms. Josie Arbel for her reaction to Tommy Lapid's rejection of religious aliyah.  Instead of simply condemning Lapid's bigotry, she says "It saddened me that the old stereotype that North American immigrants are all religious and not the kind of people you want is still around."   That is, she agrees with the sentiment but challenges the facts.

Ms. Arbel certainly doesn't represent this AACI Life Member.

Around the time of Operation Defensive Shield, the Treasury brought us their revised budget.  It includes hash decrees for much of the population, but they told us it was necessary because of the increased defense needs.  Now they tell us that they must take a huge cut out of the defense budget.  Do they think we are all stupid?  (Don't answer that!)

First time I've heard most of the things you described.  But there is one other loose end here.

Real terror requires that potential victims become afraid and most specifically of the people behind the attack.  In the Oklahoma City case, there is no ongoing terror, so long as it's attributed to White Supremacist kooks.  What is missing here is the  claim of responsibility or at least a fairly clear path. 

It seems to me uncharacteristic of Al-Qaeda and friends to leave the dots unconnected for so long.

That certainly doesn't mean you are wrong, but it does require consideration.

Gabriel Danzig's novel suggestion that Ehud Barak join the Likud has a flaw even bigger than the obvious ego problem.

If Barak were to join the Likud, does anyone seriously believe the police investigation into his 1999 election campaign will be closed?

Rodney Balko puts a lot of faith in a report called "Economic Freedom of the World."  That report contains the following quote.  "The 2002 report,
which is based on data from 2000, lists Hong Kong as the freest economy in the world, followed closely by Singapore and the United States. The United
Kingdom, Switzerland and New Zealand round out the top five."

I find it hard to place any faith whatever in an economic report that cannot count to six.

The Council for Road Safety has been promoting a campaign to educate drivers that if a child raises his thumb, the driver must stop to let the child cross the road.  They call it "Siman leHayyim" (sign for life).

It seems to me that telling children that raising their thumbs will magically stop traffic is a prescription for increased accidents. Children have no idea how they are seen by drivers nor how long it takes a car to stop.  This will encourage them to make demands on drivers that will simply not work.

This campaign is just looking for trouble.

During the closing speeches at the Labour Party Conference, Mr Shimon Peres said (and I heard him on the radio in his own voice) "our poverty line is twenty dollars per person per day."

Twenty dollars - that's ninety-five sheqels.  Per day - that's NIS 2850. At a conservative four persons per family, that's NIS 11,400 per month.  Some poverty line.  Whom does Peres mean by "our poverty line?"  Ah, but yes - he was speaking to the elite of the Labour party.

One of the yardsticks used to show that the media tends to the left is its tendency to label rightists or conservatives, while leaving the leftists and liberals unlabelled – as though to say "this person is normal, or 'one of us.' "

In today's POST, you printed columns by Yossi Olmert and Daniel Bloch. About the former you say "The writer is a Middle East specialist and Likud party activist."  About the latter,"The writer is a veteran journalist."

Daniel Bloch, once editor of the Labour Party's defunct Davar daily wrote about his invitation to the Labour Convention and didn't sound like he was going as a reporter.  So why isn't he "a Labour Party activist?"  Just because he was never a candidate for the Knesset?

David Newman writes "an increasing number of this audience agreed that the state (sic) of Israel could not be both a Jewish and a democratic state at the same time." 

Let us remember a few facts.  The State of Israel was established as a Jewish state.  That was the way it was defined by the mostly secular founders.  "Democratic" is not the heart and soul of the state, but rather a description of how the Jewish state would be run.

This was fine with most of the religious Zionists until some of our institutions - backed by the media and the Supreme Court - broadened the ramifications of "democratic" and insisted on its primacy.  Mr Newman's audience were no doubt reacting to these changes.

President Bush indeed made a bold speech, saying many good and necessary things.  But he made two errors.

There is no "or else."  If Arafat and friends decide to ignore the  President's conditions, what happens?  Nothing. More of what we have been living with these last months.  Much as I hope otherwise, Bush will blink
first.  That is reality and your criticism of Chemi Shalev's analysis reflects just that.

The other error is in the assumption that the Palestinian voters will choose change.  Here again, we are guilty of thinking that everyone has the same values as our own.  This is no Eastern European nation waiting for the opportunity for change.

It was useful of you to profile several possible candidates to succeed Yasser Arafat.

It would have been more useful had you told us which particularly infamous terror incidents were on the resumes of any of these gentlemen.

Stan Savran was on the mark when he wrote of the Steelers' need to address the quarterback question in the next draft.  They will be handicapped in that regard because they will most likely get a very low choice - we hope number thirty-two!

That is why I suggested that absent a pressing need for 2002, it would be worth trading their first round choice in 2002 to Carolina, Jacksonville or one of the other prospective bottom-feeders for a first round 2003
choice.

When I watch Kendall Simmons' play this year (and I use the word "watch" figuratively, since I live in Israel), I will be thinking about whether or not it's worth the value of Kordell Stewart's successor.

"The paper reports that the trend first appeared last November. A shopkeeper in Nablus, Assam Kanaza, was producing plaques of civilians and militants killed in the fighting when a family asked him to produce a
plastic medallion of their son." This was signed by your anonymous staff. How can you criticize the NY Times etc for saying "militants" instead of "terrorists" when you do so yourselves?

In an unsigned article, the online Jerusalem POST wrote the following. " 'What have they brought here, the mufletot [morons]? A culture of graves?' Hefer was quoted as saying in a newspaper interview. " 

At 4:15 AM Sunday, I saw this and sent an email message to the Internet department at the POST and advised them that mufleta is a food and they are just making a bad situation worse by mistranslating it as morons. Just before 10:00, I saw that they had not changed the article, so I phoned the POST and spoke with a man from the Internet department.  He suggested that perhaps mufleta is also a pejorative.  I insisted that you cannot ascribe that to Hefer. He said he would bring it up at their next editorial meeting, since this same article appears in the print edition. 

As of this moment 17:20 Sunday, there is still no correction.

You wrote: I can quantify that statement. My colleague Charles Murray (Losing Ground, The Bell Curve) has a book coming out soon in which all the great names of all intellectual disciplines are ranked by the number
of references to them in other people's work.

Of course, you are not responsible for Murray's logic, but since you quote it, we may assume that you at least sympathize.

May I point out, however, that there is a problem of chronology.  Steven Hawking, for instance, cannot have been mentioned by dozens of people who
wrote before his time, but that should in no way diminish his status in the pantheon.

May I also point out that in other fields, Murray's logic gives undue credit to the journalists and academics (particularly those who lean left) who keep interviewing and quoting each other.

When the Versailles Hall collapsed, our media and politicians went after the hapless clerks at City Hall who "let it happen," even though their culpability was probably incidental to the tragedy.  Many called for the
resignation of Mayor Olmert as well, even though building inspection is only one of many city functions.

So where are all the calls for resignations at the Bank of Israel in the wake of the Trade Bank debacle?  The Governor doesn't have half as many areas of responsi- bility as does the Mayor and one would think that
verifying the stability of our maybe-two-dozen banks would be at the top of that list.  The Governors - and Frankel is just as culpable here as is Klein - have highly paid people who are supposed to be doing that job.

The folks at the Bank of Israel don't seem to care about accountability any more than they do about account- ing.  Nor do the politicians and much of the press.

Your Etgar Lefkovitz writes "Last July, in an unsolved case, grenades and explosives found in a van belonging to Federman and his wife exploded
prematurely as the car was parked in Kiryat Arba." 

Unless Mr Lefkovitz has personal knowledge of the motives of the person who put the bomb in Mrs. Federman's car, how does he know that it exploded
"prematurely?"

Arieh O'Sullivan tells us that the per-capita income of the residents of Gaza "has returned to the level it was in 1968."  It seems that the improved economic conditions of the occupation have finally been vanquished and the Gazans have been allowed to return to their pristine
pre-occupation condition.

Well, that's what they want, no?

I suppose I will get used to the changes in the Jerusalem POST's online edition, though I have my doubts about the small type (with no blank lines
between paragraphs).

I hope that the html bugs will be far fewer than in the past.

(I am assuming that putting all of yesterday's bulletins under the heading "Latest News" is a temporary problem rather than policy.  I also hope that the change from opening the edition at midnight is also temporary.)

I must say that I do not approve of your no longer listing the authors of your signed opinion columns.  It may not be nice of me, but I have been known to skip those pieces by people whose opinions I do not respect

Oh, and one other thing.  Many sites which have a poll show the results in the same space, without having to back up to get back to the page itself. (Look at the NFL site, for instance.)  It's a good idea.

Finally, I would like to see the readers' letters from the print edition as a department on the online edition.

Thank you for your attention.

Caroline Glick's piece on the Peres Center's funding scandal was certainly worthy of the front page.  Now I am waiting for the police announcement that they will investigate after they finish the Barak election irregularities.  Or perhaps there is no public interest.

Uri Dan writes: "I therefore want to allay their anxiety. Dan Margalit and Yossi Beilin, who, in their blindness desire Barghouti's release, can relax: Barghouti will be brought to justice, in a historic trial of Palestinian terror, charged with the "slaughter and injury of hundreds of
innocent Israelis."

How does Dan propose to allay the anxiety of the rest of us who know full well that Barghouti will be released as part of the next paper agreement.  Perhaps they will call it "confidence building."  A con indeed.

Your online front page as I write at this moment says "Israel Puts Off UN Inquiry," "Effect of the Offensive in Doubt" and "Where Rage Resides."

I don't need to read any of them to determine that they are unfriendly to Israel and its elected government.

So where is the piece about the three monks who escaped from the Church of the Nativity and testified to the theft, pillage and sacrilege by their terrorist captors?  Or does the Post fear it would make readers forget that last week Israel was the villain for daring to surround the church in passive pursuit of those same terrorists?

You write "Innocent Palestinians are now easily subject to blackmail by the terror organizations, as the mere accusation of collaborating with Israel is tantamount to a death sentence."

Therein lies some sort of minor strategy.  It is common knowledge that some think Jibril Rajoub has been more of a help to Israel of late than to the PA.  Spreading that idea - regarding him and certain others - may help rid us of some of our problems.

So the Steelers have Kendall and Kendrell and Kendrick and Keydrick.  Not to mention Chris Hoke and Chris Hope.  How will Myron cope?

Balance is not the most important thing.  Accuracy, for one, is preferable.

You write:
When a beautiful, intelligent Palestinian teenager blows herself up and becomes the murderer of a Jewish girl, it is a heartbreaking symbol of the depths of this crisis

She did not "blow herself up and become the murderer…"  She chose to become a murderer when she set out to blow up a supermarket full of people.  And how do you count the security guard who stopped her and paid with his life? We call him a hero.  You ignore him because he disturbs your balance.

John Paul II feels that the violence in the Holy Land has now become intolerable.  Now!  Last month when Jews were being murdered by the dozens, it was not intolerable.

Now I understand how John Paul and the church he leads can show such insensitivity in pushing for sainthood for Pius XII.

Ariel Sharon must do the following three things imme- diately.  First, fire two or three opposition ministers, in order to guarantee a majority in his own government.  Not decision makers, but the big-mouths for whom Peres and Ben-Eliezer won't fall on their swords - Raanan Cohen and Ephraim Sneh come to mind immediately.

Submit the government's resignation (not just his own, as Barak did), to prevent votes of no confidence and threats of resignation.  Then make sure that his own decision making authority enables him to be swift and
decisive.

Third, kill the heads of the military apparatus of the Palestinian Authority.

And do it all immediately.  There may still be time.

Tallie Lipkin Shahak concludes her weekly column with the observation that "a Palestinian state will rise despite either Arafat or Sharon."  That is probably true.  It is equally true that despite Ms. Lipkin-Shahak's best hopes, that state will rise up in war against the
remains of the Jewish state.

I have taken a stand against such a development that may or may not satisfy the accusations of my grandchildren.  Those such as Lipkin-Shahak who have worked to bring about those developments will 
have a bigger problem vis-a-vis their grandchildren.

Aside from the obvious waste of money, a senate alongside the Knesset would be another elitist body designed to dilute the power of the "unenlightened" citizens.

I can see it now – the senate will be "enlightened and  non-political," chosen by a committee of judges and professors, based on what they like to call "merit," fawned over by the broadcast media and making decisions based on some absolute "good" that is "untainted by politics or populism."

It seems to me that we have way too much of that already.

The only good to come of it would be the fun of seeing Shimon Peres run for the chairmanship and lose, again.

David Forman's piece on the cancellation of the Israeli portion of the March of the Living was well thought out and eloquently expressed.

It's hard to believe that this same person produces the warped thought of Rabbis for Human Rights.

George Will concludes his piece on the Newark mayoral race saying that "Booker is an African American linked to neither the Klan nor the Elders of Zion." 

As Mr Will surely knows, the Elders of Zion is a fictitious notion dreamed up by anti-Semitic governments in Europe while the Ku Klux Klan is an
all-too-real stain on American history..

Unfortunately, the "Elders of Zion" canard has ready ears today, both in the US and abroad, as the current Saudi Arabian "blood in matzah" campaign demonstrates.

Mr Will owes us an apology for the insult and even more for misleading those who don't know any better.

The Chief Rabbinate declared the day before Rosh Hodesh Nisan to be a day of fasting and prayer due to the precarious security situation.

I was of two minds.  Of course we should fast and pray and request Divine intervention to protect us, our children, our neighbors and every other individual.  On the other hand, it seems to me a major hutzpah to ask
Divine intervention to save the state whose leaders are doing so pitifully little themselves.

So I compromised and fasted half the day.  Which felt kind of like the way the government is handling the situation itself.

Mr Mark Heller's suggestion "Money for Peace" should better be called "Money for Land."  Land it may buy.  Certainly not peace.

What it does tell us is that were the offer made to buy us out of the country - not just Yesha, Jerusalem and the Golan,as Mr Heller suggests - Mr Heller himself would be a willing seller.

Mr Shimon Peres says "If I would have known the reality would get this bad, I would not have joined this government in the first place."  How about  "... I would not have led our people into the Oslo trap."

Would someone please show Mr Peres where the door is?

The conference honoring David Bar-Illan reminds me that were he writing today, he would object to the journalism in which Jews mysteriously "die" while in the case of Arabs, it is an Israeli soldier who kills them.  We tend to consider this an affliction of CNN, BBC and others of that ilk.

I wonder what Bar-Illan thinks of the Jerusalem POST Internet edition which tells us "An Israeli woman motorist died and her husband sustained serious wounds in a shooting attack a short time ago on the Bethlehem bypass road near the village of Husan."  One might even think that they had done the shooting and were just being defended against.

Forty-fifty years ago, the Zionist establishment – it's teachers, politicians and historians – spoke with disdain of the European Jews who went like sheep to the slaughter less than a generation earlier.  They
would ask how it was that these unarmed civilians rarely rebelled or resisted on their way to certain death and they insisted that had there been a Jewish state ten years earlier, this never would have happened.

Today the Jewish state is under attack as never before and I cannot help but wonder how history in our great-grandchildren's day will view us and our leaders, with their generals and tanks and airplanes. I expect it
will view Yossi Beilin as a paid foreign agent who did his best to dismantle the Jewish state, a description he will eventually accept with open arms.  I expect that it will view Shimon Peres as having done everything possible to keep his name on a ministry door and the front page of the newspapers for as long as he could.  I expect it will view Ariel Sharon not as the warrior he believes himself to be, but as the shepherd on whose watch the sheep lived in greater fear than did the wolves.  And we, the sheep, will be fortunate to be considered no worse than leaderless fools.

My son brought a note from the ganenet - "Devir will be Abba shel Shabbat.  Please send a bottle of grape juice."

So why are we so surprised when the political parties do that?

I suppose it's interesting to note that Danny Pearl was exactly the kind of Jew that his murderers supposedly want us all to be - the kind whose family has left Israel.

But that wasn't enough for them.  They needed him dead as well.

The shooting of the pregnant woman by soldiers at a checkpoint is indeed regrettable.  The driver said he thought the soldiers had signalled him to proceed, while the soldiers themselves said they had signalled to stop.  I have no doubt that this was a legitimate misunderstanding.

I drive past checkpoints such as these several times each day, usually in dark or near-dark conditions.  I often worry that I am misunderstanding the soldiers' casual hand signals as I proceed and sometimes after I come to a full stop, I am waved on impatiently.

The IDF needs to find a better way.  Lighted, hand-held signs would be an excellent start.

Reasonable people can debate whether murderers of Rehav'am Zeevi and other Jews and Israelis should be given Israeli justice or whether perhaps Arafat's justice would suffice.  But this question is theoretical, not only due to the nature of the justice, but also - perhaps chiefly - due to the nature of the charges.

The PA has put murderers on trial before - on charges of acting against the interests of the Palestinian people. Murdering Jews is not a crime.  Damaging the PA's image - now that's a serious offense.

So as usual, we are wasting time debating with ourselves. 

The broadcast media told us last week that a group of citizens have placed ads in the newspapers, urging Yossi Beilin to run for Prime Minister.  It is not clear whether these citizens represent anyone other them- selves, nor who financed their activities, but thusfar it has bought them quite a lot of free broadcast time in interviews.

On Wednesday, the Reshet Bet program "Hakol Dibburim" spent maybe fifteen minutes on the subject, before turning to their in-house analyst Yaron Dekel.  Dekel began his remarks by giving credit to Beilin
for the remarkable quality of always being newsworthy. "Relevant" was Dekel's buzzword.  Of course, no one pointed out that Beilin remains "relevant" because Dekel's IBA colleagues keep him that way, magnifying
his importance way beyond the po