The soldiers’ actions are indeed abhorrent, but for a different reason: they stood idly while the Arabs attempted to lynch Jews.

The dispute is over religious prohibition for men to listen to women singing . The army forces religious soldiers to listen to it, though there is clearly no need to do so, and such performances have nothing to do with military preparedness.

Now the soldiers have asked merely to be allowed to use earplugs or audio players when women sing. They would be present at official ceremonies (performances, in fact), but merely want to exercise their religious freedoms in a manner totally irrelevant to the proceedings. Yet, they were refused even that little.

That is not entirely correct. That figure includes a large number who are over the age of twenty-eight and have three or more children. Obviously, the state would find it prohibitively expensive to draft them and subsidize their families.

Tellingly, the protesters say nothing about draft-dodging among leftists, who need no Tal Law to claim medical exemptions and avoid being drafted by other means. They are also fine with Arabs being exempt from the draft and avoiding the alternative National Service in massive numbers. As usual, religious Jews are made into scapegoats.

Right-wingers automatically defend Eisner, but he is also the commander who hunted down Jewish youth for ‘price tag’ graffiti and violently confronted conservative activists.

For people like Eisner, orders took the place of the Torah.

It is clear that Iranian ballistic missiles are no threat to us. They are easy to intercept and carry very small loads. But what about 1,400 Syrian Scuds, 40,000 Hezbollah rockets, and the untold numbers of rockets in Gaza? The only way to keep casualties that low, if we look to the example of the Second Lebanon War, is to destroy their arsenals preemptively. Since, presumably, we know more or less all of their locations, why not destroy them now?

Contrary to the glowing reports about them, the use of these devices could best be described as pointless. While they indeed make most protesters uncomfortable, they do not affect all of them. A significant portion of the population has a high tolerance to foul smells and loud sounds. Moreover, we used high-frequency sounds instead of the much more potent (but more dangerous) ultra-low frequency.

Those weapons do not incapacitate rioters. If anything, they are more comfortable running than standing, because actively shaking one’s head somewhat relieves the internal pressure built up by loud sounds.

Our Arab enemies will quickly adapt to non-lethal weapons. Wearing cheap rain jackets helps protect them against skunk-water cannon attacks. Construction-type gas masks, also very cheap, make it easier to tolerate skunk water. Similarly, ear plugs reduce noise pressure significantly, and covering one’s head works even better.

We saw that with rubber bullets and tear gas: once the Arabs realize that they cause no damage, it becomes fashionable to brave the superficial danger.

One possible use for the sub would be launching frogmen in special vehicles from its torpedo bays, but that’s kind of star-warsy compared to normal operations.

The idea of using these subs for second-strike capability is high treason, because it presupposes that the government plans to let Iran go nuclear. And even if we adapt all ten bays for nuclear missiles, that’s still very little capacity for a second strike, given that Iran would have plenty of S-300s before launching such an attack.

Now, what is the point of brandishing that small bomb when we have a thousand GBU-39 bunker-busters from the United States, which are similar to the GBU-28s? The only sensible answer is that we are returning to the old idea of hammering a hole in the bunker. The first bomb makes a ten-foot hole, then dozens of subsequent bombs enlarge the hole until the bunker can be penetrated. This method is actually greatly superior to the mammoth GBU-28 bunker-busters, as it does not require specially equipped aircraft and allows for many misses and failures while still achieving the objective.

All of this is very wrong. The Domes are penetrable by multiple-rocket launchers. It is only a question of how large a salvo our Arab enemies can muster.

As with the Soviet-American missile offense-vs-defense race, one side’s increased defensive capabilities sparked an arms race. So the Arabs will switch from Grads to Fahr-5s, and on Hezbollah’s side of the border, to Scuds. Israel will be stuck with a hugely expensive and ultimately inefficient solution, always in fear of saturation-level attacks.