The journalist was acquitted because she had reasonable evidence to support her accusations. To support that, the court pointed out that the officer was was under indictment at the time on similar charges. But that’s a chicken-and-egg question! He was indicted specifically because of media hysteria, and later acquitted.

Now leftist journalists have learned that they are safe from prosecution for libel as long as they can push law enforcement to investigate their allegations. And so they will become ever more aggressive in pressing their false accusations against soldiers.

But the conflict raises an important issue: do we really need that much training or weapons? The army has not engaged in meaningful combat since 1973. Anti-guerrilla operations in Lebanon and Gaza and police functions in the West Bank are of a completely different order. They do not require the kind of training now being conducted, or the massive army we now maintain.

Nor do we need new tanks, the purchase of which the Chief of Staff has also vowed to cut down in retaliation against the government’s pet industries for the budget cuts. In the next war, tanks will be a liability, given the great advances in anti-tank weaponry in recent decades.

The details are open to discussion, but counter-intuitively, the budget crunch is a welcome development, one that puts pressure on the army to adapt itself to the new realities of regional battlefields.

The second issue is important as it demonstrates the inability of police to deal with professional crimes with white gloves. Forbidden from planting evidence or applying pressure to suspects, and facing the highest standards of doubt in the courts, the police cannot prove their accusations in cases where robbers have worn masks and gloves. Alternatively, the police can charge them with other offenses, which usually carry lesser sentences.

The low number of indictments also reflects a cozy relationship between police and criminal gangs, one in which control is deemed more important than crackdown.

There is another dimension to the problem. Bank protection is very expensive compared to other police activities. Why should society expend disproportionate resources on protecting banks, which are perfectly capable of arranging their own security?

The aid is theoretically non-military, but everyone understands that it allows the Egyptian government to transfer a similar amount to the army. Indeed, the Egyptian delegation is formed mostly of army officials.

On one hand, the US cannot refuse Egypt the aid it needs without greatly alienating the country. On the other hand, the aid would now clearly be used to bolster the armed forces of a radical Muslim state. Even the Iranian parliament now has more secular members than its Egyptian counterpart.

Israeli police and media, so concerned about trivial acts of sexual harassment by rabbis and officials, ignore this problem.

The Americans’ intentions are transparent. We have seen this before in Israeli relations with Hamas, and previously with Hezbollah. The idea was to nurture a small ultra-radical offshoot, which would counter a major terrorist organization (Fatah and Amal, respectively) without a chance of growing big precisely because it is too radical to attract mainstream supporters. That reasoning has proved wrong repeatedly, and has resulted in the creation of Al Qaeda.

Now the White House is gambling that the Salafists will curtail the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose 49% win came as a surprise to no one but Washington officials. Salafists will agree to cooperate with the Americans precisely because they advocate the most radical form of Islam, which sanctions any deceit in pursuit of its goals.

In any conflict with the MB, the Salafists would win. Though the MB theoretically enjoys broader support, much of this support comes from urbanized liberals who care about their mortgages more than political ends. The Salafists can bring a much more militant crowd into the streets.

The Iranian move is highly sensible: it makes it impossible for the EU to openly adapt by switching to other suppliers. If the Europeans decide to abandon Iranian oil in the future, they will lose it immediately.

With this possibility in mind, the EU is unlikely to institute an embargo on Iranian oil.

The Saudi monarchy is as doomed as any monarchy. Saudi moderates are as doomed in the short term as any moderates in Arab countries. Saudi nuclear scientists will fall under the rule of Muslim radicals.

After a decade of Iran’s military nuclear program, Israeli still finds it politically problematic to bomb Iran, perhaps the most radical country on earth. Much less we would be able to attack the nuclear infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, the backbone of the world’s oil supply. Our chances are specifically minimized by Saudi Arabia’s claim that it needs nuclear weapons to protect its oil sources, and thus the world’s oil supply.

Iran will have to act quickly to realize its nuclear advantage. Suffering years of isolation in pursuit of nuclear weapons, only to see its new-found power balanced by Saudi nuclear capability, would be an unimaginable loss to the ayatollahs. The Saudi nuclear program could well trigger an Iranian nuclear strike. It remains to be seen where the strike will land.

Hamas, remember, is vitally dependent on Iran, which is a Shiite country. Iran is known for fostering Shiite movements even in Africa, and certainly in the Middle East. Iranian political expansion is usually related to the ayatollahs’ goal of spreading their version of Islam.

The fact that Hamas can suppress Shiites and then boast of it shows that Iranian imperial ambitions are not directed toward religious ends. Because the Iranians pursue rational political goals, they would not consider apocalyptic solutions, and can be checked.