What action can Israel’s voters now take within the system to clean house, considering that their elected leaders have betrayed them and are busily denying all blame? Should the voters maybe ask their majesties in the Supreme Court to help them? Or ask their Knesset representatives who see trouble coming and turn away? The prolonged subversion of democratic processes has made the situation more dangerous.

We should really concentrate when we pray in the Amidah for the ideal management team to replace the current disgrace. This is real life, not a sitcom.

Elul is nearly here, and where are we?

Minister Livni probably believes that if she yells hard enough that the resolution called for releasing the two hostages, the mass media and world public opinion will believe her. The Hizb el Shaytan (Arabic for party of Satan - a more fitting name) believes that if they say that the resolution just calls for a cease fire and Israeli withdrawal everybody will believe them.

(hope you don’t mind my sarcasm, I am feeling somewhat upset at the moment - and glad me and my family live in the US, which recently established the “you destroy one building, we take over one country” standard of response)

RYM: During the war, we were told that Israel shouldn’t be attacking Lebanon, since Lebanon isn’t responsible for Hizbollah.

Ori: This is actually true, in much the same way that if I speed and my four year old son cheers me on, he is still not responsible for my ticket. The Lebanese army probably lacks the ability to restrain Hizballah, which means that Hizballah is the true sovereign power in much of Lebanon.

As long as Lebanon has a weak central government, it will not be able to restrain Hizballah. Lebanon will have a strong central government as soon as Osama Bin Laden commands a squadron of US Air Force flying pigs, on a humanitarian mission to deliver blankets to hell, which had just frozen over.

As long as Assad believes that Hizballah is acting in his best interests, Hizballah will continue to get troops, training, and equipment from Syria and Iran (shipped through Syria). This means that attacking the non Hizbollah parts of Lebanon wouldn’t do Israel any good.

Attacking Syria probably would, since Assad can persuaded that supporting Hizballah is dangerous to Syrian dictators who need an effective military to stay in power. However, was with Syria would not mean small and inaccurate Katyusha missiles in Haifa. If would mean fairly accurate Scud missiles, which carry a much bigger payload, in Tel Aviv.

It seems to me that a war between Israel and Syria is unavoidable. Either Olmert knows something we don’t (Israel will be able to shoot down Scud missiles in 2009, Syria is on the brink of revolution, the US is about to invade Syria, etc.), or he decided he’d rather have the Israel-Syria war later, when the Syrian military will have better equipment and possibly nuclear weapons from Iran. I’d like to believe it’s the first.