In a futile race with the IDF, conservative activists have erected eleven new outposts. So far, they build faster than the Jewish army destroys, but in the end their efforts will amount to a mere bugging of the political establishment. Worse, outpost construction provides a safety valve for the right-wingers’ zeal, and as such is useful to the defeatist government.

The court ruled in favor of extraditing the Abergil brothers to the United States, where the FBI wants them for drug trade. The move won’t make the Promised Land any cleaner, as Shimon Peres and his acolytes remain here, and other criminal families will take over the Abergils’ business.

Very few countries extradite their citizens for foreign prosecution. Israel was once famous for catagorically refusing to extradite Jews, insisting on our right to try them.

Where Obama failed, the Israeli court jumped in, issuing a stop-work order for Jewish construction in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

Thousands of Arab houses are built illegally in Israel each year, but why would the court care?

The Welfare Ministry demands 16 million shekels in additional financing for the crisis centers that treat rape victims. While the goal is theoretically laudable, the six centers treat fewer than 600 women a year, which makes the per person cost unreasonable.

Israel’s settler population is now more than 300,000, plus the Jewish residents of East Jerusalem.

The government’s opposition for the past eighteen years to building new settlements has allowed concentration of investments on the existing villages, and considerably improved their living standards. While the kibbutz population dwindles as the new generation leaves the communist farms, the settlers’ children usually stay in the settlements.

Recognizing the need for border adjustments in any future deal with the Palestinians, the Israeli government is mulling evicting from 60 to 250 thousand Jews who have lived in the settlements for up to four generations. There is no discussion of dismantling Arab villages as a way to rectifiy the borders.

Obama sent soothing letters to Arab leaders, asking them to improve relations with Israel.

Immediately, the Arab League rejected the call. The Arab rejection was delivered to Mitchell by the League’s chief, Amr Moussa, a former Egyptian liaison with the PLO.

Unlike the fearful Israeli government, the Arabs are straightforward in rejecting Obama’s nonsense.

Mitchell responded that Obama does not expect the Arabs to sign peace with Israel. So, the Saudi peace initiative is confirmed dead?

A Zoo in El Bureij, Gaza, boasted of several zebras—which proved to be painted donkeys.