Yell at the Jewish person who wrote the graffiti, I just copied it :-)

When I know what I'm talking about, I'll yell at them...

That lapse in media judgment is worth recalling in the coming days

I don't think it's a lapse in judgement. The media is simply on Hamas's side.

We've already seen the headlines, "Hamas implicitly recognizes Israel", but the media conveniently omits the rest of the details.

Have you seen Camera's article on this: Prisoners' Document: Peace Plan or “Phased Plan”?


Boker Tov, Boulder had a furious piece about this yesterday, too.

“The real question is whether the Palestine national movement has the power to create a structure of command, control and viable governance,” Halevy states. “Are they capable of setting up a system of governance?” While Halevy won’t predict the outcome, his analysis is that Hamas is now on the horns of a dilemma about the direction they will take. “All timetables have changed,” Halevy asserts, noting that the ruling party would now be pushed to go one way or the other because a faction had chosen to instigate the well-planned tunnel incursion into Israeli territory. “We’ll see all this unfold in the next 24-48 hours,” he predicts.

Halevy paints a scenario where Khalad Mashal, the Damascus based head of Hamas’ military wing could triumph over the so-called civil wing. There’s a “real possibility Mashal will succeed in leading Hamas into a spiral of destruction over this issue,” he asserts. If that should occur, the future will be an even greater question mark than ever, Halevy says.

But the former intelligence head posits that should the Gaza and Ramallah Hamasniks “get it together and overcome the threat from Damascus, Hamas could become a viable partner for negotiations with Israel.” If they resolve the kidnapping, “we’ll be in a new ball game,” Halevy asserts. At that point, Hamas will have some degree of credibility and if they show that they will adhere to some basic norms of how a responsible government acts, it will be possible to deal with them, Halevy maintains.

Our obsession with hostages is a tactical weakness but a strategic strength. It allows terrorists a stunning psychological advantage: With a single random kidnapping, they hold an entire society emotionally hostage. Strategically, though, hostage-taking only strengthens Israeli resolve.

And resolve is precisely what the public now expects of its government. So far, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has responded well. He began by issuing two policy guidelines in dealing with the hostage crisis. The first is that Israel won't negotiate over Gilad's release and won't exchange prisoners. The second is that Hamas leaders--"political" as well as "military"--will be held personally accountable for the fate of Gilad.

If Olmert's government hopes to retain its credibility among Israelis, it needs to maintain those two principles.

snip

After the withdrawal, Israelis expected the government to enforce a policy of zero-tolerance for Palestinian attacks emanating from Gaza, even for attacks that didn't cause fatalities. Instead, the government responded unevenly, often ignoring rocket attacks that caused no damage.

Many Israelis see Hamas's raid on an Israeli military post within the 1967 borders as a result of the weakness Israel has projected. In yesterday's letters column in the daily Maariv, for example, the hardline consensus was almost unanimous. "We told you so," wrote one reader who identified himself as "right wing." "Why doesn't Israel shut off electricity and water to Gaza?" demanded another reader. "Enough words, it's time to act," insisted a third.

snip

Driving on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, I saw this graffiti: "Olmert, gadol alecha"--which roughly translates as, "Olmert, the job is bigger than you are." For Olmert to disprove that growing suspicion among Israelis, he must commit himself to the destruction of the Hamas regime. Sooner or later, Israel will have no choice but to adopt that policy. The only question is whether Olmert will still be prime minister when that happens.

Turn out that although I'd intended to write "Sarah called and wants you to call her back [le-hitkasher eleyha]" but I'd written it with an ayin [le-hitkasher aleyha], whch could be understood to mean "to make contact on top of her."

LOL!

I once went to sheva brachot where the chatan's brother dressed up as a camel - that was hilarious in itself - and sang a song "ki gamal alai".*

annie, that's too funny!

One of the funniest things I saw on TV in Israel occurred on a very lame game show (I don't remember what it was called, and I think it didn't last very long). The panel consisted of various well-known people (I only remember Ofra Haza, z"l) and they were given the start of a sentence to complete.

This was around Chanukah the year Israel captured Mordechai Va'anunu, and one of the sentences began, "The USA knows we have nuclear weapons, but they don't know that we don't have... [<HebrewHebrew> sheh ayn lanu...]"

Most of the responses were very lame (the main reason the show ended), but one guy said, "sheh ayn lanu rishut lehishtamesh bahem, eylah lirot'am bilvad" which is part of one of the prayers over the Chanukah candles and means, "we are not allowed to use them, but only to look at them."

It brought the house down.