A US State Department spokesman refused to discuss sanctions against Israel. That is hardly a sign of deference to an ally. It took America three decades of intense lobbying to introduce mild sanctions even against South Africa, and sanctions against Iran remain nominal.

The US-Israeli rift is greatly over-touted, as the row is limited to State Department officials.

Education Minister Saar offered a politically correct response to critics of his plan to remove reference to the Naqba from Israeli curricula. Saar noted that teaching the Palestinian “catastrophe” strengthens Islamic radicals and precludes coexistence.

Which is nonsense. Jews don’t want Naqba lessons in our schools because we’re happy about the Palestinian “catastrophe.” Their catastrophe is our independence, their loss of the country is our statehood, and their defeat is our victory.

MK Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli citizen who had been close to Arafat, lashed out against Saar. Tibi is right on this: refusing to teach Naqba in schools would not remove it from Israeli reality. Rather, the expulsion of Israeli Arabs would change the situation.

It is a testimony to the warped state of Israeli affairs that the establishment cannot remove Naqba from the curriculum for more than a year.

The Knesset discussed a plan to expel all illegal immigrants by 2013. A laudable objective, if true.

In truth, the immigration police aim at expelling just 20,000 illegals this year, out of allegedly 280,000. So far this year, less than a thousand have been deported.

The number of 280,000 is telling. The Knesset is only considering expulsion for those who entered Israel on tourist and five-year work visas. About 200,000 Palestinians who work in Israel illegally are not even being considered for deportation. Unlike the harmless Thais and Filipinos, they are protected by the peacenik lobby.

Media are touting a report by an ultra-left outfit called the Israel European Policy Network, which makes a horrendous allegation: the Israeli government subsidizes settlements 22 percent more than the Smaller Israel towns. Subsidies make up 57 percent of the settlements’ budgets, as opposed to 35 percent for towns inside the Green Line.

The report’s authors lumped small and heavily subsidized towns in Negev and Galilee together with tax-positive industrial cities. Among the small towns, subsidies of 50-60 percent are normal, and the norm is close to 100 percent in Israeli Arab towns.

The municipal budgets of the settlements also reflect their security needs. When Israel decided to cut short the security expenses at Gush Katif, we spent hundreds of times more on reinforcing Sderot, developing an anti-missile shield, and the Cast Lead operation.

Settlements receive just about $300 per head from the government.

US Secretary of State Clinton announced that the United States will offer a nuclear umbrella to its allies if Iran develops nuclear weapons. Forced de-nuclearization is off the agenda.

After the US failed to stop North Korean, Pakistani, and Iranian nuclear programs, who would believe it would attack a nuclear Iran in response to the mullahs’ nuking Israel?