After routine clashes with neighboring Palestinians, Bat Ayin settlers began marching on the Arab village of Khirbet Tzapa. IDF immediately declared the area a closed military zone, despite multiple court decisions that this action can only be taken in order to protect Jews from Arabs.

Stopped by the Jewish army, the settlers fired a few warning shots toward the Arab village. At that point, the villagers rioted and the army arrested two shooters.

Nice Jews, on other hand, don’t riot even when Arabs commit terrorist acts in their villages. The government, accordingly, feels no pressure to crack down on Arabs.

In Ramat Gan, just near Tel Aviv, a Palestinian stabbed a Jewish soldier in the neck.

While Palestinian terrorists murder Jewish civilians, an increasingly large number of stand-alone Arab patriots are targeting Jewish soldiers. Though legally still terrorism (because it is perpetrated by non-uniformed attackers), morally the action is drastically different and shows the new face of the Palestinian resistance. Instead of immoral terrorists, Israel deals now with determined enemies of a relatively high moral standing.

Attacking an armed soldier, even by surprise, is definitely more dangerous for the terrorist than stabbing a random passerby.

During the elections, Israel’s former US ambassador Danny Ayalon shocked the media with his statement to the effect that Israel must annex Judea and Samaria. The refreshingly honest right-winger joined Lieberman’s list and became his deputy in the Foreign Ministry.

Today, Danny Ayalon announced his full support for the two-state solution. Which is, of course, neither a solution (Arabs will fight Israel no matter what) nor two-state (Palestinians would have two states, in Jordan and the West Bank).

The government has approved a $60 billion budget with an $11 billion deficit. The budget comes in at 33 percent of the projected $180 billion GDP, one of the highest ratios in the Western world.

Due to the economic crisis, the budgetary income is likely to be smaller than expected, and the expenditures will greater than expected. Despite the crisis, the government has increased its expenditures and refused to cut the bloated ministries and other pork-barrel spending.

The usual culprits—Shas, UTJ, and Histadrut—are decrying the budget as not sufficiently sensitive to their predatory needs.

IAF is conducting exercises over Gibraltar, a distance comparable to the flight to Iran. Israeli ABM troops have also intensified their training.

Both actions are useful tactically but not strategically. By now, Iran has removed most of its weapons-grade uranium from Natanz into caves, which can only be attacked with nuclear weapons—especially now that Washington has refused to sell Israel the bunker-buster bombs. As for the ABM, the cowardly mullahs won’t counterattack Israel: their missiles are not advanced enough to pass through Israeli defenses, and an Israeli retaliatory strike, unlikely as it is, would be debilitating for Iranian economy.

Closing down the Guantanamo prison and military tribunals was Obama’s rallying cry during the elections. But now, as the administration’s lawyers have confirmed the impossibility of prosecuting terrorists in American courts on flimsy evidence, Obama has agreed to continue the military tribunals.

To offset the outcry, the administration has asked Germany to grant political asylum to former Guantanamo detainees. No country, America included, wants to admit the terrorists, but Obama lacks the common sense to dump those stateless persons back into Afghanistan or just execute them quietly.

In a routine “incident,” Arabs firebombed a Jewish civilian bus near the village of Karmei Tzur. The Arabs missed their target. The UN, so sensitive to civilian casualties in Gaza, did not react.