Likud MK Benjamin Netanyahu's blog is apparently the only one in the world where the talkbacks are more important than the posts (and not by chance). With all due respect to the last post ("It is still possible to stop Iran"), Netanyahu doesn't need a blog for this. He says this at every opportunity from every stage. Netanyahu needs a blog for talkbacks like the one sent by the anonymous surfer H: "Netanyahu model 2006 is different from the Bibi of 1998. He strides with confident steps in the abode of the legislators, his face calm and his spirits good. Netanyahu feels today that he is ripe for a return to the Prime Minister's Bureau - He does not make mistakes, he is dignified, his utterances are measured and precise and recently he has even started the Bibi-blog. There he descends to the masses, passing the media on the right and directly reaching the homes of Israel's citizens."

How would we have known that Bibi is striding with confident steps towards the prime minister's position without the talkbacker H? Where, oh where, are there more talkbackers like that H? Perhaps we should ask Netanyahu's spokesman, Ophir Akunis.

Contents of an escape

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Chief Superintendent Gal Gilad, a clinical criminologist, has an impressive title: "head of the division for communications strategy in the bureau of the police commissioner." Behind these burnished words hides a prosaic role that has no connection to "communications strategy" in its popular sense: building a behavioral-psychological profile of criminals, or, in Gilad's own words: "I put myself into the mind of the murderer or the rapist" (in an interview with Yedioth Aharonoth daily).

Her everyday language casts a somewhat different light on the organization's bombastic formal formulation, but it turns out that even Gilad herself undergoes a linguistic metamorphosis when she sits down to write an official report.

Here is what she wrote about Benny Sela, several hours after his escape: "Evidence in the matter of the conduct of the subject of this profile before, during and after his escape indicate that Scenario C (spontaneous escape) is of the highest probability. I.e., Benny Sela, who dealt with contents of escape and also conducted an extensive campaign of petitions to the courts and complaints, among other things in order to increase his chances of effecting an escape, exploited a situation of being partially manacled and without supervision, and escaped."

This text is a classical example of academic/bureaucratic jargon that intentionally befogs the meanings of words for purposes of the external effect. Gilad writes "the conduct of the subject of the investigation" rather than "Benny Sela's behavior"; "of the highest probability" instead of "the most likely"; "contents of escape" instead of "escape" and "effecting an escape" instead of "escaping."

Why does an intelligent woman who knows how to speak plainly and clearly become a convoluted and stuffy writer? Because this is how they write in the police. It starts with the cop who writes you traffic ticket and reaches all the way up to the head of the division for communications strategy in the bureau of the police commissioner.

Out of the closet

Of all the closets in which people hide, the most common is the closet of aging. In a society that glorifies youth and scorns the elderly, women and men of 50 and up are prepared to confess to the most heinous sins before they admit to the ravages of age. I'm not even talking about the legions of doctors and the Viagra and the hormones, but how many people from the 60s generation dare to go around with a hearing aid? And therefore I see fit to congratulate Yonatan Gefen for the charming confession he published in the daily Ma'ariv ("They fitted me with a hearing aid") and quote the most serious sentence in his amusing column: "It took me a while to realize that this is the reality and to forgive it, too."

Who needs TV?

"A communications minister does not need television and Internet at home, just like a health minister does not need an operating room in his house and the defense minister doesn't need a missile in his living room" (Communications Minister Ariel Attias, in an interview with Ma'ariv).

This demagogic statement recalls a similar statement by Chief of Staff Dan Halutz: "To be a shepherd, one doesn't need to be a sheep," he said once about his lack of experience in land warfare, unwittingly revealing his scorn for fighters on the ground.

Like Halutz, Attias is trying to cover for his meager familiarity with a fancy formulation. In a certain sense this is a retreat from a prior statement by the minister: "I've been at the ministry for a month and a half and I know everything that can possibly be known about the world of communications" (in an interview with the newspaper Bakhilla). Now he admits that he does not know everything that can possibly be known, but is claiming that he doesn't need to know.

However, the problem isn't his level of familiarity with television and the Internet, but rather his ideological position against these media: "On television there is violence and permissiveness and problems with modesty; I'm against the computer and the Internet because by means of them children are exposed to difficult contents in a friendly way."

This is like the health minister objecting to the construction of operating rooms because blood is spilled in them and the defense minister objecting to the building of a missile because it encourages violence. Why should Attias approve video on demand (VOD) services for Yes when there is violence in them, and permissiveness and problems of modesty? And why should he approve telephone services based on the Internet when every child could be exposed to difficult contents "in a friendly way?"

Perhaps this is why these decisions are stuck.