Olmert, by far the best politician around, surprised many by leaking the news of splitting Jerusalem with Arabs. Partitioning the eternal Jewish capital is an extremely unpopular idea among Israeli right and left alike, and Olmert won't expect that his despised government can drug the partitioning through the Knesset. The heavyweight Sharon hardly pushed through with Gaza disengagement, and dividing Jerusalem is way harder. Whatever are the shortcoming of Israel Beitenu and the religious parties, they would likely quit the government before approving the partitioning of Jerusalem. The Knesset also voiced overwhelming opposition to the partition. Not the least, it's hard to imagine Olmert eager to enter Jewish history as the ruler who surrendered Jerusalem. Remember, Olmert stood against Begin and Sharon over the giveaway of the Sinai to Egypt during the Camp David capitulation,

Neither is Olmert stupid to imagine that the Palestinians would stop terrorism after receiving Jerusalem. He probably tested the waters to show the left that neither public opinion, nor the Knesset would approve of dividing the capital. Olmert insists on adherence to the clearly expired Road Map because he knows that the Palestinians would never get past the first stage of maintaining any sort of security. To prove his point, Olmert shows the most extreme goodwill toward the Palestinian Authority: he resumed some of the tax transfers, released a small number of the third-tier terrorist convicts, removed a few non-essential checkpoints, and armed the Fatah gang with the weapons they could get elsewhere. Israel pushes Hamas to the wall in the effort to reinstate Fatah's rule in Gaza – and ensure the subsequent civil war between Hamas and Fatah. The excellent raid on Syria's nuclear facilities proved Olmert a very capable leader. Netanyahu bragged about the attack on Syria; Olmert keeps silence. Olmert is the only high-ranking politician in the world who soberly evaluated the Iranian nuclear program: a matter of a thousand Tomahawk missiles.
Now that Olmert and Livni renounced any timetable of the peace deal with the Palestinians and announced that partitioning of Jerusalem is not on the Annapolis' agenda, the threat to Jerusalem receded. The intermediate idea of giving away Jerusalem's Arab neighborhood, supported by Israeli right down to Lieberman, is dangerous. Once the capital's suburbs are under Palestinian control, Arabs will keep shelling Jerusalem like Sderot. Israeli retaliation will surely be stronger, but hardly sufficient. Another problem is the growing Arab population of Jerusalem which threatens Jewish sovereignty regardless of the peace process. It makes little difference whether the East Jerusalem is under Palestinian control or not under Jewish control.

Israeli government dances the narrow line between the US, EU, Israeli ultra-left, and the Jewish conscience surely present even in the people like Olmert and Livni. The government's actions are not straightforward, but neither do they amount to clear-cut treason.
The best thing about this government is that it is too weak to publicly betray the Jews.

For the Torah to preserve its applicability, the human mentality must not have changed over the three thousands years. Indeed.

After the Church was no longer able to censor the books, the Left took its turn and censored everything from Tom Sawyer to hate speech. The three hundred Spartans who died at Thermopiles would have readily recognized Japanese defense at Iwo Jima or Russian defense of Moscow. The command to slew Canaanites reverberated with European settlers in America. The command to slew Amalek for ancient offenses finds approval among those Muslims who blame the West for the loss of Alhambra. The sight of French atrocities in Vietnam won't be unusual to ancient Hebrews returning from punitive expeditions; both nations, ideologically inspired, refrained from spoils. Children were sacrificed to Moloch; now parents send their children to die for national ideals. Human mentality didn't change but was exacerbated by technology. Fire-bombings of Coventry and Tokyo replaced stakes. Murder became unfashionable now that people can distance themselves from it and kill with a push of button. Affluent societies can afford sentencing criminals for decades instead of executing him; the efforts to prevent suicide in jails show that imprisonment is often worse than execution. Automatic rifles replaced swords, and soldiers don't need to do the grisly killing at close-up; killing is done from a distance. Mechanized, impersonal murder spells the absence of moral restraints; the twentieth century saw the history's largest massacres – many of them. From video game mentality of virtual murder to the screens of net-centric warfare, people are ready to wipe out those blips on the screens.

And the commandments apply to Ehud Olmert just as they applied to Joshua bin Nun.

There are many gaps in the story of Rabin's assassination. But we can reliably fill them from the context. Israeli ruling establishment has a history of political assassinations, including Arlozoroff, the Season, and most likely the Kahanes and Zeevi. Assassinating Rabin won't be outrageous. The establishment also has a documented history of blatant disregard for the law, such as Beilin-Peres negotiations with the PLO in Cairo before Rabin's elections. Beilin and Peres are heavily invested in the peace process, and one more "victim of the peace process" was not a high price for them to pay. Both hated Rabin and numbered many grievances against him.

The two conspiracies were running concurrently. One was a normal Shin-Bet's provocation against the right wing, in line with the subsequent framing of Goldstein, the purported Kahane Chai's planning of the attack on Arab school, etc. Shin-Bet's agent Champagne worked in Hebron for years, and Yigal Amir was just one of his targets. Shin-Bet aimed at framing the right, not killing Rabin. So Amir, unknown to himself, was shooting blanks at Rabin. Shin-Bet infiltrated Amir into the sterile area of the highest security and warned the guards to stay away from Rabin to give Amir clear shot. That much we see on the video: Rabin's guards step when Amir draws his gun. Subsequently, the shouts are heard, "It's blanks!" The shooting was theatrically staged after the immense peace show. It was planned in the sterile area rather than in the square so that no one stops Amir. Shin Bet, accordingly, placed video operators near the scene to have evidence against Amir, thus the Kempler's video. To retain credibility, the video has to be amateurish. Rabin was likely aware of the plot because on the video he looks at Amir seemingly quietly, without gesticulation. The Shin-Bet's plot was going on for years. Champagne spent much time with Amir and conservatives.

A big change came about shortly before the peace rally. Rabin publicly refused the concessions to Arabs and called for annexing the West Bank. It seems that he entered one of his hysterical mood swings. It became paramount for the Peres-Beilin group to get rid of Rabin. Planning the removal of Rabin - at that stage, not necessarily by murder - they came to know of Shin-Bet's provocation plot, an insignificant operation among many similar ones. At that point, Peres or Beilin instructed Shin-Bet to move fast forward with the fake assassination, but also planned a follow-up: the real assassination of Rabin in his car. Although Shin-Bet was profoundly leftist and both Peres and Beilin had many appointees there, the security service undoubtedly knew nothing of the planned real assassination. Rabin was probably killed by a guard who worked for Peres. Rabin's own guard was killed in the ensuing skirmish, and honorably buried a few days later after "committing suicide."

Now Shin-Bet realized that the Peres-Beilin group framed it. The secret of Champagne could not be kept for long and as soon as it came out, Shin-Bet was implicated in Rabin's murder. That's no small thing: a Shin-Bet agent convinced a right-winger to shoot Rabin. That smacks of a putsch. So Shin-Bet released the Kempler video to prove that Amir didn't kill Rabin. Shin-Bet didn't want to take a crash course with Peres and Beilin, and didn't dispute the official version of Amir assassinating Rabin, but secured its own back by proving that Amir didn't kill Rabin.

We’re tired. Tired of living in a Jewish state that condemns Jews for shooting Arabs in self-defense and sentences Jews to years in jail for drawing cartoons of Mohammad. Tired of listening to endless rationalizations of the suicidal urge, the peace process, the mantras of peaceful coexistence despite all evidence of implacable hostility of Arabs. Tired of panegyrics to ethnic-blind democracy and subsidizing Arabs and Slavs to breed to majority in the Jewish state. Tired fighting the totalitarian Israeli state praised by millions of well-wishers as bulwark of democracy; bulwark, yes, democracy, no. Tired of sitting in jail on political charges and often on no charges at all while other Jews carelessly live their lives. Tired of living in the Jewish state that spends more on Arabs or kibbutzim than on religious Jews but blames them for deficits. Tired of seeing the state we longed for for two millennia going down.

Totalitarian states cannot be reformed. After the “democratic” 1990s in Russia, the KGB retook power. Totalitarian states have to be destroyed and then possibly rebuilt. Israel has every attribute of totalitarianism: pervasive security apparatus staffed by a single – left - political group, government and oligarchic control over economy, brainwashing in schools and media, and prejudiced courts. It would take a full-blown revolution, soaked with blood of Arabs and Jewish leftists, to end the anti-Semitic state of Israel. What for? To have ultra-Orthodoxes vie with Orthodoxes over irrelevant regulations? To exchange leftism for religious hypocrisy? To have discredited rabbis run the country and ultra-Orthodoxes imagine themselves a privileged class of modern Levites? To allow rabbis the joy of being God's partners and inventing more of the irrelevant rules? Thanks, no. Not worth the blood of good Jews.

We cannot make Israel, permeated by leftists, Jews-by-grandfather, and Arabs – a Jewish state. The majority can accept a strong state, nationalist – but not a Jewish state simply because there are too few committed Jews around. We need a state of Judea. We cannot carve it out of the totalitarian Israel, and so prefer that Israel abandon the settlements to Palestinian state. We will carve Judea from Palestine.

We just want to be left alone. To teach our children as we think right. To observe the religion as we deem fit. To establish our own rules about welfare, gays, Arabs. To ban Peace Now members to the fourth generation. Anything.

Jewish strata differ on basic matters. Orthodox, Conservatives, and Reformists will never come to an agreement; Reformism is Judaism to some, atheism to others. Leftism is anti-Semitism for some, a morally feasible policy for others. Some praise living with Arabs, others despise it. That’s about values. No consensus is possible – and none is necessary. Jews lived historically in isolated communities. Pharisees did not intermingle with Karaites and even various Hasidic sects are contempt of each other. Israel, like other nation-states, wants to impose its will on all subjects in every detail. That’s unjustifiable. Government should only take the tasks which the communities cannot pursue. Education, admittance or exclusion of Arabs, public violation of commandments can be regulated on the level of communities rather than nationwide. Some communities might exclude Arabs and observe Sabbath, others would welcome gays and barbeque pork on Sabbath. There is no legal reason to enforce moral uniformity.

Judea should not be an ultra-Orthodox state. Basic tenets should include severe limitation on the admittance of non-Jews and inviolability of borders. Other than that, the communities of Judea should be free to set their own rules on religious observance, obligatory for a community's members. The communities could range from anarchist to ultra-Orthodox with every type of religious views in between. City boundaries protect every community from the culturally offensive behavior of outsiders.

That’s all we ask for: leave us alone. Continue with your socialist state, if you like, just let us live as we wish. To work our orchards, educate our children, enjoy our communities. We don’t even want to vote: elect olmerts for yourself. We accept any jurisdiction: abandon our townships to Palestinians and we will live as dhimmi under Abu Mazen. Big leftist Israel or Great Islamic Palestine, makes no difference to us.

Leave us alone.

"The sword [dedicated] to the Lord is filled with blood…. for [there is] sacrifice to the Lord in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom." Isaiah 34:6

Most rabbis divested from God. Their God is a subordinate who must be content with whatever attention is paid him. He is not expected to have any influence on current affairs, thus not feared. Had the rabbis feared God, they would follow his precepts, not government instructions. Why the rabbis did not call on the Jews to fight the government over the destruction of Gush Katif? Because the rabbis don’t see the commandment to conquer Canaan or establish a Jewish state as binding. They are skeptical about that ancient fellow, Joshua bin Nun who conquered the land. Maybe he received a commandment; they didn’t. Rabbis demand miracles, such as supernatural Messiah because they don’t believe the words of Torah. The commandments do not persuade them; rabbis know how readily the Talmud twists the commandments. De facto, Torah takes for them distant second place after the sages – whom they also reinterpret at will. Had the rabbis believed that the commandments are divine and the words passed to us intact – why demand a Messiah? But they don’t believe that the commandments are miracles – and demand that miracle happen before their eyes. God, however, tend to perform miracles without violating the laws of nature. Every miracle can be explained away. Pundits explain persuasively how the Red Sea parted naturally. Jewish survival in Holocaust is attributed to chance, and Israel's victories against behemoth Arab armies – to tactical superiority.

Meir Kahane conformed to the profile of messiah as close as one can imagine: a genius, charismatic leader, a man of religion and war, suffering, humiliated, condemned to death by Jewish leaders, and murdered by Edomite Arab. Talmudic rabbis called the Romans Edomites, too. If Messiah comes and is recognized, would the Jews follow him? The case is far from theoretical. Scores of Chabadniks consider the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Messiah. In clear violation of the commandment that prohibits images, they put the Rebbe’s photo in homes and offices, and revere him. They gather at his grave to ask for blessings and intercession. But Chabadniks ignore the Rebbe’s major injunction against ceding any part of the Land of Israel. Perhaps they consider the Rebbe a spiritual leader, not worthy consulting in earthly matters? That’s not so. Jews cheered Sharon’s, Netanyahu’s and other politicians’ visits to the Rebbe. Sharon specifically sought the Rebbe's help against Shamir’s plan of elections in Palestine. Chabadniks - presumably ready to die on stakes rather than forfeit their religion – were afraid to fight the renegade government over the Gush Katif destruction.

Chabad leaders vociferously condemned the flock in Kfar Chabad who voted for Baruch Marzel and his program of holding the Jewish land and expelling the Arab enemies. The leaders knew they act contrary to the Rebbe’s teaching and invented a flimsy pretext: Chabadniks shouldn’t vote for Marzel because he won’t pass electoral barrier and their votes will be lost. As if the votes are not lost on Shas and similar quasi-religious outfits committed to cooperation with the government – in return for money and promotion. Chabad leaders could have helped Marzel to pass the electoral barrier instead of campaigning against him.

Judaism is a religion of deeds. There is no gap between earthly and spiritual things. A religion of practical purity is hard, indeed. Religious Jews invented a parallel life. Judaism remains for them a religion of deeds – but of insignificant deeds, rites unrelated to real life. They tear toilet paper in advance of Sabbath and observe absurd rites without slightest basis in the Torah – but expunged God from practical matters. They disregarded the reformer’s warning, “Hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matter of the law: justice and mercy, and faith.” They followed his wrong advice, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
In Judaism, even the land we live in is God’s; nothing belongs to petty caesars from Israeli government.

Extensive prayers lead Orthodox Jews to place their hopes in God rather than act. They appeal to God hundreds of times a day, thus accepting his direct influence in routine events from defecation to politics. That’s primitive determinism. Sages taught that God made the laws of nature and let the world develop according to those laws. He even tends to work miracles without violating the laws of nature. God endowed humans with hands, legs, brains, and free will so that they could act rather than bug him on every occasion. Rabbi Akiva didn’t wait for messiah but proclaimed one. Maimonides was clear that Messiah would be a human leader who embarks on rebuilding the Temple. Modern Jews sheepishly pray for Messiah while ostracizing every potential messiah from Zhabotinsky to Kahane.

No wonder that their prayers are answered in negative. Rabbi Eliezer had a good reason to remark, "If someone lets prayer become routine, it loses its quality of supplication" (Berachot 28b). Speed-mumbling the same prayers day after day leaves no hope for a personal relation with God. The Torah wisely limited prayers to festivals and specific occasions and doesn't even demand prayers from laity. Judaism is about living through, not praying for.

Ultra-Orthodox leaders consciously withdraw their flock from the world where the leaders cannot compete. Haredim popularize the stories of Jewish observance in the face of death during the Holocaust – not the accounts of Orthodox resistance in the Warsaw ghetto.

Politicians are necessarily corrupt. Their road to the top is laid with promises and compromises. The era of illustrious lone players had gone with Yitzhak Shamir. Politicians conform to the lowest common denominator of their voters, and must be acceptable to political bureaucracy. By the time politicians arrive at the country’s helm, they are apotheosis of evil. Two types of people could change Israel: a mid-level IDF commander who stages a putsch or an authoritative, non-establishment rabbi who calls on religious Jews to fight the leftist collaborationists.

Propaganda, both in Israel and Nazi ghettos, brainwashed Jews into the alternative reality where the reality was too painful to accept.
Aircraft is useless against terrorists, but the IDF sends fighter jets against Palestinian villages to show the Israelis that even the strongest measures fail. Jews, accordingly, lose hope. Israeli government purposely humiliates Jews promising to divide Jerusalem and reduce Israel to ludicrous borders. The humiliation is decidedly senseless, as when the Jews are banned from praying at the Temple Mount; in concentration camps, Jews were similarly made to run with heavy sacks there and back. East Jerusalem is given to Arabs because Arabs settle it, anyway; by that token, give away the Galilee, also populated by Arabs. Instead of self-evident measure of driving Arabs from Jerusalem, Israeli government takes Jerusalem from Jews.
The government repeatedly provokes Palestinians with peace promises to maintain the ongoing violence. Shelling of Sderot makes Jews accept the proximity of death; in ghettos, Jews likewise stepped over corpses and moved on. Rocket attacks on the north Israel engaged Israelis in betrayal: they partied in Tel Aviv while their kin was murdered in Haifa. Peace process offers them a hope on par with Germans' selling train tickets to Jewish crowds shipped actually to death camps. And the EU sponsors the Judenrat establishment which stirs Jewish state toward its end.

"Just as they are killing us, we have to kill them so there will be a balance of terror…. We will do as they do. If they kill our women and innocent people, we will kill their women and innocent people until they stop." Osama bin Laden, October 2001. That's a good advice for Israel in Gaza.

What is the alternative to balance of power in international relations? Idealists scream against violence, but it was violence that overturned French monarchy or Nazi regime. Short of violence, European settlers won’t succeed against aborigines and establish America or Canada. Police violently arrest criminals. Violence not only defends liberties, but pursues other useful objectives. Germany and Italy were unified in modern nation-states through violence. Ataturk resorted to violence to crash Turkey’s Islamic backbone. Commodore Perry threatened violence to open Japan to American commerce. Violence is an indispensable instrument to both good and evil ends.

Societies change, but many parties refuse to accept the changes – which must, accordingly, be pushed through. There are two theoretical alternatives to violence: good faith negotiations and arbitration. The good faith assumption never worked in history because societal issues are too important. People readily consider others’ interests and forfeit their own in trivial matters because they expect that in other, equally trivial matters, others will give way. Good faith is a way of exchanging favors: consider others’ interests now and expect them to consider your interests in other issues. That scheme can only be implemented in a system of myriad small transactions. In international relations, conflicts of interests are relatively few and of overwhelming importance; such systems do not submit to statistical approach. A country which gives way on the issue of its borders cannot expect similar treatment from its neighbors. France and Germany, for example, had a single territorial dispute – Alsace-Lorraine; one country’s compassionate consideration of the other’s interest won’t be reciprocated.

Good faith negotiation could lead to mutually acceptable settlement which doesn’t depend on expectation of future reciprocity. Sort of, divide Alsace-Lorraine between the two states. But how to divide, especially when strength of the contestants is very unequal? To divide in half is unjust to the stronger state. And why would a stronger state agree to the division instead of taking it all by force?
Justice is elusive. Israelis point out that the Palestinians settled coastal planes for hardly a century before fleeing in the wake of Jewish state’ creation; a century is too little to claim tribal sovereignty over the land. Palestinians sensibly counter that the Jews settled the place for much less time in the modern history, and surely have fewer rights to the land. Justice depends on a common set of values and generally doesn’t work between nations whose values are opposite. Cooperation is modus operandi inside groups; groups compete.

If nations generally don’t cooperate, how about setting up an arbiter? That could work if contenders see the arbitration as just. Legal system consists of laws and procedures; laws amount to values. In order to accept an arbiter, contenders have to accept his system of values – the basis for judgment – as just. Since, however, they have conflicting values, no third-party value system can justify both. Jews and Arabs each equally accuse the UN of bending to the other party.

If mutually acceptable international arbiters do not exist, how about creating an internationally acceptable court of law and imposing its verdicts? The UN shows that such approach is unworkable. How to define “internationally acceptable”? “Acceptable to most nations” means equating the vote of France and Madagascar, evidently unreasonable arrangement. “Acceptable to most people” would allow the two most populous states, China and India, to rule the world. Civil courts developed many safeguards against self-interested judges and jurors; in the UN, every party is self-interested and cannot act as faithful judge. Almost every country is interested in Arab oil supply; no country is interested in the fate of Israel. Guess the results of UN votes on Israeli-Arab matters.
The ability to enforce one’s opinion is the only viable benchmark in international relations. Nor is it bad. Technologically inferior Indians and numerically inferior Irish achieved independence through violence. Violence is an indicator of the depth of people’s interests beyond binary yes or no votes. Violence is often the only way for an insignificant group to be listened to; Palestinian state happened only due to the PLO’s terrorism. Balance of power rarely erupts in violence; most of the time, parties act according to the perceived threat.

Violence is indispensable now as it was in the Stone Age.

Lena Bosinova's self-immolation in protest against the Israeli government evicting Jews from Gaza is a case of sanctification of God's name. The destruction of Jewish settlements by Israeli government qualifies as idolatry: worship of democracy and submission to foreign sponsors. People die of physical wounds but also of moral wounds, in heart stroke. Some dishonor cannot be lived with: victims of rape sometimes commit suicide and soldiers who failed their missions perform hara-kiri. Suicide missions not only aim at killing enemies, but also at boosting one’s troops morality; Spartans famously died in the hopeless fight with Persians.
In the Book of Maccabees, Hannah urges her seven sons to die horrendous death in the hands of Graeco-Syrians rather than transgressing the commandments. Stand-alone transgression of kosher laws is generally recognized as less important than life; narrowly speaking, Hannah should have transgressed the law. But something more important than individual incident of observance was at stake: the example to the nation. Had Hannah and scores of other Jews like her transgressed under the threats, they would continue transgressing under the same threats day after and years after. Like Marranos, they would soon cease being Jews. Hannah's alternative was not her life vs a particular instance of observance, but her life vs the survival of Jewish people. She gave her life and the lives of her seven sons as an example for the nation. Her goal was preserving national dignity rather than merely observing kashrut in the particular case. Millions of Jews just like Hannah gave up their lives in crusades and pogroms instead of accepting Christianity. Lena Bosinova is a martyr of a similar stance.

Jews never had a significant triumph throughout our entire history. Military victories amounted to survival, such as when Egyptian chariots drown in Red Sea, Maccabees defied Antiochus’ attempt to eliminate Judaism, or in the 1967. Jews survived miraculously while other nations perished. Jewish nation lacks riches; in our time, Muslims, not us got oil. Jews subsisted in poverty on the barren hills of Judea, in Rome where Martial and Juvenal made fun of our beggars, and in the Eastern European ghettos. God doesn’t need another arrogant victorious tribe like Romans or vainly rich bastards like the oil Arabs. Jews were promised neither power nor riches, but the status of priestly nation. Jewish wars, therefore, fall into three types: physical survival (with Egypt in 1446 B.C.E. and 1973 C.E.), spiritual survival at the risk to physical existence (Maccabees, bar Kochba – both in response to restrictions imposed on Judaism), and the final messianic war. When Jews turn from the path of Judaism, they are exterminated: corrupt and sectarianized Jews in 70, assimilated Alexandrian Jews in 117, Jews who forgot human dignity and the will to fight – in the twentieth century. Reform “Judaism” spiritually annihilates scores of assimilated Jews. Time and again, the nation is purified and turned back on the track. That’s about all the Jews were promised.