Isaac Herzog of the Labor Party rushed to deny the WikiLeaks revelation that he opposed Majadle’s appointment to the Labor list because an Arab would weaken the party.

Why deny the obvious facts? Of course, even leftist voters hate Arabs, and  support for Labor decreased with the inclusion of Majadle.

The Syrian autocrat has promised to repeal the old emergency laws within days. That would leave Israel as the only country around with the Mandate-era administrative detention laws.

His move will not satisfy the crowds because their real demands are for his removal and the release of political prisoners, most of whom are members of the Muslim Brotherhood. But short of emergency provisions, Assad will find it significantly harder to fight the rioters.

Despite the ceasefire with Gaza, two Grad rockets hit Ashdod over the weekend. The attacks have been blamed on Salafists, and IDF only nominally retaliated against Gazan targets in recognition of Hamas’ inability to control the Wahhabist groups.

Which is not true. When Salafists challenged Hamas’ rule two years ago, the moderate terrorists stormed their mosque, killing or wounding every Salafist inside. It took the Salafists more than a year to return to their former strength.

Israel has to decide whether we will deal with Gaza as a state—and pound it in response to any attacks from there—or a lawless territory whose nominal government cannot be held responsible for all domestic acts of violence, in which case Israel is legally permitted to take over the place. We tried that in the West Bank: we pretended that Fatah terrorists are good and cooperative, and cannot be held responsible for Hamas attacks. Now we are taking a similar approach to Gaza. Israel’s attitude invites established terrorist groups to tolerate violent offshoots: they score PR points by allowing attacks on Israel to be carried out by other groups under their control, and do not risk Israeli retaliation.

Even if Israel wants to discriminate between good Hamas and bad Salafists, we still have plenty of Salafist targets, including their mosques. And even if we do not want to target their mosques in daytime (though they have no compunction about targeting our civilians) we can destroy the empty buildings at night.