Let me see if I understood the following things correctly:
  1. The Israeli government believes in sending "messages" to various terrorists and their despotic patrons by dropping bombs on unoccupied fields and office buildings.



  2. There is no death penalty on the books in Israel; therefore, terrorists convicted of heinous crimes can be used as bargaining chips if they promise to "never do it again."



  3. It's alright for the Gaza Strip to be Judenrien (without Jews), but racist (to the point of a criminal investigation) to advocate removing Arabs (be they Israeli Arabs, "Palestinians" or some other subset) from anywhere in the world, let alone from land dedicated as a Jewish State.



  4. Israel won the most recent Hizbullah-Lebanon War on points - sort of like a boxing match.



  5. Ministers of the Kadima-Labor-led government are fighting amongst themselves to avoid a war inquiry commission with the appropriate subpoena and investigative powers, because they see the outcome as a liability in the next election.



  6. A million and half residents of the northern portion of Israel were displaced, thousands of businesses disrupted and the Bank of Israel refuses to change the recently enacted "educationally austere" banking regulations, thus causing hundreds of people to lose their credit facilities - all while the government is willing to grant loans for rebuilding only to those people and companies whose credit is solid.



  7. Iran "almost" has The Bomb, its elected leader calls for Israel's destruction, Lebanon wants Israel to pay for rebuilding Beirut - and Israel's leadership believes the solution is to evacuate the strategic (not to mention beautiful) communities in the Golan Heights. Syria can once again move back in and shell the Galilee.
I just need to make sure that I understood all of this. With my Bachelors degree in psychology, I always feel it is very important to understand and internalize the issues before presenting possible solutions.



So, here goes:
  1. The cost of a phone, fax or email is about five cents (US dollars), even if you make fifty phone calls and send out 100 faxes, plus about a million pieces of spam each and every day to various terrorists, it has got to cost a heck of a lot less than bombing empty fields and abandoned buildings. I would assume the cost savings would be enough to finance a small army. Or perhaps an expanded education or social services budget. All without raising taxes one iota. Try SMSing the terrorists; they will probably take you a lot more seriously.



    About the only injury a terrorist mastermind sustains when Israel "sends a message" is from falling on the floor laughing. If that happens, then you can be sure he or she will send the medical bill to Israel, which will have the National Insurance Institute pay it out under a workman's compensation clause as a "work related accident."



  2. I recently overheard a parent of a victim of Arab terrorism say that he believes that we should begin releasing terrorists with "blood on their hands." Recovering from my initial shock at such a suggestion, I thought to myself, "Thank God, I am not standing in his shoes, so it is not for me to judge."



    Seeing the look of obvious chagrin on my face, it was further explained to me that he did indeed feel that Israel should be releasing such prisoners, but from the door of an airplane 10,000 meters above Lebanon; one terrorist per fifteen minutes until all of our soldiers are returned safely to us. Not a bad idea. Barbaric? Perhaps. As the saying goes: "When in Rome...." And a definite savings to the Israeli taxpayer.



  3. As far as areas in the Land of Israel being Judenrein: if it is illegal in any other democratic country to remove people of one faith from their homes due to people of another faith being offended at their presence, then we here in Israel should not be doing so, either. That means either transfer is good, for everyone, or bad, for everyone. So, let's everyone think about the ramifications of their actions and live by them.



    Ariel Sharon and his ilk forced Jews from their homes, but that is not the end of the story; it is the beginning of a new one. As the old saying goes, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander."



  4. This is just plain foolish. War is not a George Forman/Cassius Clay boxing match. We certainly are not going to be issuing "Most Valuable Player" awards. We buried dozens of our precious young men and women, citizens and soldiers, students, children, husbands, wives, grandmothers and grandfathers. Do we really care how many people were killed on the other side? Does it really matter if we reduced Hizbullah's capacity of killing a million people down to a potential threat of killing a mere ten thousand? Typical liberal-think. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to call it, "defining deviancy downward."



    We have become so inured to the devastation that our politicians and professional soldiers are telling us that we must live with the current situation. Bottom line: Israel and its Jewish citizenry fight an existential battle each and every hour of the day. So, let's not delude ourselves that the situation is better. We need to be prepared to win. Losing is not an alternative and there is absolutely no such thing as a draw in war - except when it's a card game.



  5. Memo to Kadima and Labor party leaders: Go home to your comfortable multimillion-shekel homes and become consultants for all the special interests you have represented. In short: get a job. No one is interested in what you have to say, no one is interested in hearing your excuses and the fact that you collectively refuse to act responsibly proves that the country was duped at the polls by the pols.



    "But if I go home, there will be a leadership vacuum," you might be inclined to say. I think I speak for at least a marginal majority of this country when I postulate: "Vacuum, shmacuum - we'll take our chances."



  6. As the great Torah scholar Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan (also known as the Chofetz Chayim) used to say, "The terms of credit in the world are backwards. It should be the poor and needy who are permitted to have lines of credit, while the wealthy should be paying cash." One need not be a Torah scholar to appreciate his dynamic wisdom.



  7. The land-for-peace giveaway is a great idea. Unfortunately, we Jews once again read the formula from right to left instead of the correct way. I believe that were we to be the ones promising to give the peace and the Arabs giving us the land in exchange, then we would have solved this issue decades ago.



    The Jewish people are a people of peace. We praise God several times daily in our prayers as the Maker, Creator or Bringer of Peace. Indeed, peace is one of the manifestations of God's "persona" in Jewish liturgy, lore and philosophy. So, peace is, in essence, a commodity of which we Jews have plenty. Arabs (and the rest of the world) seem to be land rich, but peace poor. Why are we trying to use a precious commodity like land (of which, for us Jews, there is small supply) to buy something with which we are already stocked up well? Let the Arabs give us land; we will give them peace.
Okay. Got all that? That wasn't too difficult, now was it? And Shanah Tovah to one and all.