Since settlers and religious parties support all socialist and militaristic decisions of the government, the only conceivable reason for such restructuring is to sign a peace treaty with the Palestinians, which means making problematic concessions such as destroying the settlements and abandoning the Temple Mount.

And it seems that foreign forces are grooming Dagan to become just such a leader.

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.

As usual, the government will eventually give in. Which raises the question, what are the limits of the trade union’s influence? Being a monopoly, they can naturally extort virtually anything from the government, so there is no theoretical limit to their demands.

But our socialist government refuses to take the only step needed to solve the crisis: subject trade unions to the same anti-monopoly laws that govern the rest of the country.

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?

Very few Palestinians in Israeli jails are from Israel proper; most are from the West Bank and Gaza. Their deportation would be of no concern to anyone. Thus the euphemism ‘Palestinian terrorists’ implied that local Arabs are a group.

Which is a good news for Israeli communists—and for the rest of us a dangerous sign of the country sliding into socialism.

This is the bane of the US medical system, where doctors test for everything out of fear of negligence claims. In reality, medical work always involves risk, and running to avoid marginal hazards greatly increase the costs and inconvenience for the vast majority of the population.

The Clalit case will push hospitals to conduct unreasonably extensive testing and drive up medical costs for all Israelis.

When the system was launched yesterday, a full 40  percent of doctors refused to use it. They chose to forgo overtime payments in order to hide the time they spend away from their hospitals.