The details of Olmert’s probe became clear. Morris Talansky, a renegade American Jew, allegedly contributed to Olmert’s mayoral campaign. Morris (Moshe) Talansky, a 75-year-old rabbi, turned the state’s witness against Olmert. The affair is a credibility contest between the prime minister of Israel and a shadowy businessman.
And Talansky is a truly shadowy figure. He runs investment business from his house near New York, a company named Global Resources. Talansky once invested in Israeli satellite company ImageSat of Israel Aerospace Industries - and then sued it for over $6 billion for refusing to rent spy satellites to Hugo Chavez with whom Talansky’s partners are apparently close.
Talansky is an oddly active political campaign contributor. He has a habit of making micro-donations of less than a thousand dollars each to scores of American politicians and causes, including Bush, Giuliani, Clintons, etc. Helene Talansky handles some of his meager charities, such as semi-dead New Jerusalem Foundation. Other shareholders of Talansky’s Global Technologies company are similarly active micro-donors.
The case seems clear: a dirty businessman with maniacal desire for political involvement helps the leftists to besmear Olmert.

The policy reversal was announced by the EU ambassador in Israel. The alternative is, obviously, to open the crossings and make the life in Gaza back to normal. But won’t that strengthen Hamas even more, now victorious in its voters’ eyes?

so that Israelis can celebrate the Independence Day secure from our good Arab neighbors. Unfortunately, another 1.5 million Arabs temporarily reside in Israel, a tenfold increase since 1948.

The 600 Fatah cutthroats cannot enforce the law where only a handful of Israeli soldiers maintained a semblance of security with daily raids.

Israeli police arrested 8 courageous Jewish teens in Jerusalem who countered Arab residents. Jews even managed to stub an Arab lightly. The Arabs constantly stalk young Jewish girls in the neighborhood. The problem is that so long as Arabs don’t yet rape Jewish girls, police cannot do anything about them, and after the crimes they promptly escape.

The situation was tense since yesterday after Israeli government announced reaching a substantial agreement with Palestinians on the borders and cited Gush Katif as the precedent for its willingness to do away with Jewish villages. Today the Palestinians complained that Olmert offered them a cantonized statelet. Lieberman ventured that idea before, and it is indeed a common sense: let Palestinians make a state in the parts of Judea and Samaria they de facto occupy now, and that’s it. No peace agreement with Palestinians is in sight.