Yossi Sarid

If the surveys reflect reality and if people here really do want Netanyahu − they?ll get him. No delaying tactics will prevent the calamity. The public will get an edict that it is willing to tolerate.

It is not yet clear whether Barack Obama's candidacy will come to full fruition, even though it has already produced early fruits. But the alarm bells are already ringing in Jerusalem.

Even Ehud Olmert once complained that failures have no fathers and those who are responsible are not called to account for their deeds.

It is difficult to point out even one law in Israel that is properly enforced, but the law on smoking in public places - that one is enforced energetically and with strange fervor.

It?s hard to understand why born-again Christians like Bush and Cheney do little on global warming. Everyone now knows that climate change is a man-made catastrophe.

My man of the year is a woman: German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Yes, Merkel, the leader of a center-right party, was revealed in 2007 in all her stature as the high priestess of human rights everywhere.

The government has already taught us a bad lesson in civics − did the Sharon-Netanyahu-Livnat government not commit to build 5,000 classrooms a year, while it barely built 500?

The police are experiencing great difficulty in their battle against organized crime. It is no simple task to hunt whales and sharks. But the Israel Police comes up empty-handed even when it fishes for sardines.

Ehud Barak is going to Annapolis not to save the conference, but to bury it.

Erdogan is responsible for transforming his country into a modern state. Without him, belligerent Iran, medieval Saudi Arabia or shaky Pakistan (caught in the calipers of sinister madrasas and a state of emergency) would be setting the tone.

Let's admit it: There is something infantile about being a fan of a soccer team when there is no soccer, and at an advanced age, there is something pathetic about it, a forced effort to prolong our childhood.

For 60 years, in nearly every conflict between rampant development and measured preservation, economic interests have had the upper hand.

In the 12th year of the assassination, the assassin is arousing more interest than his victim.

Everyone touts education as a top priority, while suffocating it with deficits; everyone complains about the state of education, as if discussing dreary weather, without lifting a finger to fix it.

Had public opinion and the media been more alert before the choice was made, it is quite possible that the problem named Olmert would not have been created in the first place.

We will derive no pleasure from seeing our president standing at attention to the sounds of the Chinese anthem at the Olympics.

Many horses died here this past year, yet in the new year, they are continuing to gallop along the trail of etrog rinds.

The country's 60th year, it has been decided, will be the Year of the Child. Children are a source of joy, even sad children.

One can only envy the heavenly mills of justice on high, which grind quickly. In the higher judicial instances, unlike those below, there are no drawn-out legal proceedings.

Even Bush was not saved by his gang, who kicked the captain of their ship when he was down. Now he has no choice but to make them walk the plank to keep himself from drowning with them.

More than ever, we are building a privatization fence here that protects the few and leaves the many, including the middle class, vulnerable.

Ehud Barak should have maintained his self-imposed silence, for we already have reason to regret his breaking it.

Please, do not put that legislation in the law book, do not turn the Jewish National Fund into the Jewish Nationality Fund, do not do to Arab citizens what is abhorred by our donors.

In the past year, between Tisha B'Av and Tisha B'Av, the prophets of wrath and the prophecies of destruction have multiplied.