8 comments on the situation

1. To the settlers who blocked traffic on the Ayalon highway and are threatening to disrupt life in this country, who say they will smash infrastructure, shut down the country's electricity, hijack radio and television stations and spark riots on the Temple Mount, let me say this: It's not enough. What you should be doing is rampaging through Tel Aviv, burning cars, throwing stones at the fancy houses in upscale neighborhoods, setting nightclubs and sushi restaurants on fire, vandalizing traffic lights, pouring tar on the Defense Ministry, holding up the buses and burning down the houses of people you call "establishment journalists" because they support disengagement. Keep it up until you lose every last drop of public sympathy.

2. The news that American scientists are planning to breed mice with human brain cells has set off a huge public outcry in the United States. Well, what do you know. Israel beat America to it long ago with the same invention, only the other way around. We have people with the brain cells of mice. Some of them even occupy key positions in the country's decision-making apparatus.

3. There is no limit to stupidity. Japan was not invited to the dedication of the new Holocaust museum for fear that its delegate might make a speech mentioning that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to that logic, we shouldn't have invited the Russians, who lost 21 million countrymen before their soldiers reached the gates of Auschwitz. By the same token, we shouldn't have invited the British or the Americans, whose blood also flowed in the battle against the Nazis. The Holocaust, tragically, is all ours. Don't worry. No one is about to steal it from us.

4. I'm willing to hazard a guess that the budget will pass and Sharon will stay put in the prime minister's office. I say so for a number of reasons. First of all, the MKs who got into parliament by a stroke of luck, and that includes the Shinui lawmakers, can forget about being reelected. Secondly, the Likud rebels and their far-right buddies are dying to see Sharon squirm, but they don't want to be blamed for the loss of the Likud label. Thirdly, Netanyahu, faced with the Hamletian dilemma of whether or not to vote against his own budget without being sure that he can beat Sharon at the polls, will vote, if my guess is right, to save the budget. We'll see him back in the ring after Sharon does the dirty work of disengaging from Gaza.

5. Shinui is behaving like a Rubik's Cube. To crack the code you've got to be a brilliant mathematician. Shinui is a gung-ho supporter of the budget and is pro-disengagement. It doesn't want Shas in the government. It doesn't want Shas' abstention to be bought for money. Ninety percent of its voters and most of its MKs don't want the country to go to elections, because the kind of bingo they won last time will never repeat itself. The chances of Sharon bringing Shinui into the government are getting slimmer by the moment. The party is starting to look like a secular Shas, preoccupied with itself and to hell with the country.

6. Everyone knows that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. The government's decision to appoint a ministerial committee to study Talia Sasson's report on the unauthorized settlements is a stalling tactic at best and an attempt to turn the horse into a kosher camel at worst. But anyone who thinks that the pullout will end with disengagement from Gaza should pay attention to what President Bush is saying about a Palestinian state being established on contiguous territory, i.e., land that is basically settlement-free. Friendship is all very nice, but Bush is the redhead type. I wouldn't want to get him mad.

7. I wish the international media would stop waving Israel's name around in connection with threats to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. These reports appear to be part of a political campaign by the United States and Europe designed to put pressure on Iran. Israel, a little braggart in its own right, takes care to drop hints from time to time about how far it can reach. But doomsday weapons are for our doomsday. We shouldn't have to be the Western world's Amstaff.

8. How do we know that Shimon Peres is finally getting old? Because he's not trying to undermine the prime minister anymore.