A small demonstration assembled at Tel Aviv train station to protest the Tal law, which offers some benefits to yeshiva students to induce them to serve in the IDF.

Citizen equality is all very fine, but why not start with the Arabs, who do not serve in the army or National Service at all? One might also point out that close to half of Tel Aviv’s atheist youngsters dodge the draft.

The Pentagon has asked for $82 million to upgrade its bunker-buster bombs because they cannot penetrate Iran’s mountainous hideouts. It’s a surprise that the Pentagon is unprepared to deal with these subterranean strongholds: many experts, notably from Russia, have been telling them that all along, based on their own Afghan war experiences.

But why wait until the bunker-busters can be upgraded when we can use tactical nuclear weapons?

The government approved a phased 31% increase of the electricity tariff over the next three years, allegedly because the Egyptians have ceased supplying us with gas.

Which is odd, as we were buying the gas at close to the market price, even though Egypt sold it to the supplier at well below the market. Also, since the cost of gas makes up less than 40% in the consumer tariff, it is quite impossible that any sensible rise in the price of gas would affect the consumer tariff by a third. This reasoning makes sense if we recall that the price of electricity will be increased over three years. It is completely implausible that the power monopoly would absorb the losses in the meantime; thus we can deduce that the utility breaks even but wants to increase its profit.