The Israeli elections

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“This is a government that will not be able to make decisions on anything — on the peace process, on equal sharing of the burden or on budgetary matters,” Emmanuel Rosen, a prominent television analyst, said early Wednesday on Channel 10. “The next elections are already on the horizon.” New York Times

All the cliches about Israel come to mind here: two Israelis mean three opinions, or the land of a hundred ghettos. In fact what you have is one of the west's most unequal societies, a collective of people who range from what is left of the founding Zionist families, on through opportunistic Russian money launderers, to Yemenite and Moroccan sub-proletarians, none of them particularly religious, all seasoned with mostly American Haredim that "sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them"... nor serveth they in the Israeli armed forces, neither payeth they taxes either, by the way.

All of this mishmash directly connected to the masculine attributes of the US Congress.

I lived in Tel Aviv for a year and I loved the place, a sexy Mediterranean climate and beach filled with some of the world's most attractive women, all with the energy of New York. I had to go to Jerusalem almost every other day (I was a budding paparazzo)... horrible place, filled with priests and rabbis and soldiers with guns. And I came to the following conclusion: If the Arabs ever declared peace on the Israelis and left them strictly alone, with no external enemies, the country would tear itself apart in civil strife and probably disappear in a very short time. All that is holding them together are their enemies...

They would be crazy to want peace. DS