Welcome to the Weekday Holyland Update flight 061109, where your in-flight refreshments will begin with a heart-warming tale of humanity towards bitter enemies, but quickly deteriorate to include bribery, theft, miscarriage of justice and other tasty morsels, as well as a reflection on one election in the rear-view mirror and one looming straight ahead.

Settler woman driving with her infant kid along a Jews-only road close to their settlement and to a couple of Palestinian villages their folks have a running feud with. Mom loses control of the vehicle, which flips. Palestinian locals see this. Do they thank providence for fighting their fight and go on with their business? Nope. Do they run down to finish what providence started? Nope. They run over and pull the mom and kid from the wreckage, despite them being from a settlement where the leading sport is ruining your Palestinian neighbor's crops and obstructing his access to his fields and groves. As one of the Palestinians involved said: “We hate them, but it's only human”. Nice little story that will have zero impact on anything. As Muhammad Ali's junkie friend said in the Will Smith biopic: “God ain't watching.”

And to the promised downward spiral:

Remember Dudu Topaz? The Jerry Springer clone who hired thugs to beat up on network execs who turned down his shows? Well, seems that the problem with starting your own little thuggery is kinda like the old saw: To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To wit: He is now suspected of planning to use his band of merry ass kickers to hurt his ex-wife and her new hubby. Too bad for him we don't have juries in Israel, cause that could get him some understanding from at least part of the pool, and alls ya needs is one. I can see this in a jury selection: Prosecutor: “Are you divorced, sir?” - Why yes, I am. “Move to strike for cause, your honor.”

Now comes word that more and more people were on the hit list (including Dudu himself, as an alibi, you see), and one can only hope that Don Dudu gets the book thrown at him, as befits a man of such stature in the underworld. Sad thing is, he's quite the representative Israeli male.

Israel's former Minister of Finance (what most of you call Sec. of the Treasury), Avraham Hirshzon was convicted of theft over receiving stuffed envelopes from the “National Workers Association” he ran. He tried to claim that in fact he was due the money as severance, and just expedited matters, but the judge wasn't even trying to hear it. The guy behaved like a crook and was nailed like one. He's looking at 18 months, I'd say, after good behavior.

And from a proper verdict to a very improper one: This settler judo-nazi, Ze'ev Braude, was video-taped by peace activists shooting at Palestinians in their own home for absolutely no apparent reason, badly injuring two, one in the chest. Now, as mentioned, there is full footage of everything, but apparently someone at the prosecutor's office “made a mistake” and included in the evidence file stuff that's secret, the revelation of which would endanger national interests. The judge said that while this secret evidence isn't slam-dunk exculpatory, it “could be used by a skillful defense attorney to good effect on behalf of his client”. State doesn't want the stuff revealed, so the settler scum walks free.

The settlers are on a rampage in general: They went on a couple of mini-pogroms, with police doing jack all (except to arrest peace activists trying to protect the victims). Then, when anger and frustration manifest in retaliation, everyone shudders: Oh, no, can't have TERRORISM. Well, lemme tell ya what would happen if a man came into my house and shot my father, brother, or son for no reason and then got off on a bullshit transparent poison pill “tech”: I would go to where that man lives with an automatic rifle and clips to spare, and start shooting until someone stopped me, in the hopes I would hit him or his in the meantime. Call me a terrorist all you want, but if you don't fuck with me, I'll do the same for you.

Our Münchhausen patient of a PM, Bibi Netanyahu, plans to give a speech of great political and diplomatic import on Sunday at Bar Ilan University – a quality school that also produced PM Itzhak Rabin's assassin. In this speech he will attempt to bow sufficiently to Obama's demands linguistically, while maintaining some wiggle room. I doubt the WH buys it, although there will be polite words about good intentions. As the poet once sang: “Good intentions can be evil, both hands can be full of grease... You know how sometimes Satan, comes as a Man of Peace”.

The right wing of Likud is stressing tho, as they are getting flashbacks from Ariel Sharon's 2003 speech at the Herzliya Convention, when the old settlement-builder turned his skin and announced that a Palestinian state is necessary to a secure Israel. So they tried to get him to promise he won't say the same thing – which was, after all, what caused the leader of Likud to leave the party and found Kadima. Bibi wasn't promising shit. We'll see how well he dances on Sunday.

Our former (indicted as rapist) President, Moshe Katzav, is pulling out all the stops in desperate attempts to delay his trial. The judge cleared four months for it and mandated sessions four days a week. His lawyers plead that such a strenuous schedule would bankrupt them and tried to quit. Motion DENIED. Too late in the @#$% game, counselors. Still, now there are appeals so works at least temporarily gummed. Oh well. Bastid'll get his. In fact – he's already getting it.

Oh, oh. Avigdor Lieberman? The ex-bouncer, apparently corrupt, undoubtedly corpulent race-baiting Israeli Foreign Secretary? He and his party of midgets took another dump on a major campaign promise when they voted against a bill that would give couples where at least one spouse is not recognized as a Jew the right to a quasi-marital status, what y'all call civil unions. We don't even have that now (two nominally Jewish people who wish to be recognized as married sans a fucking rabbi also have no option currently. Like myself and my wife.) Basically, think prop. 8, only replace “gay” with “refusing to marry religiously/wants to marry across religious lines without anyone converting”.

And one final "oh, oh": Brig. Gen. Moshe "Chico" Tamir, who was convicted of letting his son drive a military ATV (forcing his driver to hand the keys over to junior), then trying to both pin the accident  on the hapless driver AND cover up the incident by foregoing a report and settlingout of pocket with the driver? Shock: Military court sentenced him to a suspended sentence, demotion to Colonel and a permanent block on further advancement. The "Green Beast" establishment is shocked, bemoaning how a state can stab its elite warriors in the back like that... Shut the FUCK up and bow your heads to the rule of law, is all I have to say. 

Please fasten your seatbelt as Captain Rick is headed over the border

The brewing Palestinian civil war turned up a notch, with Hamas publishing names and photos of Palestinian Authority Preventive Security officers, basically declaring open season on them, in retaliation for the men commanding a raid on a Hamas safe-house in Kalkilya. I predict serious clashes with double digit casualties within a month.

Lebanese people came through, rejecting Hizballah, meaning Iran and Syria, in favor of our own western brand of shyte, which while still shyte, still stinks less imnsho. However, demographics are still on Hizballah's side, and with Christians leaving in droves and Lebanese Shi'ites breeding the way poor religious people do the world over, I can't see them not forming the government in ten years tops.

What gave the pro-Western bloc the victory, in my opinion (other than massive cash infusions from Riyadh, on top of some other big money from Washington and Paris), was Nasrallah's elections-eve promises that if his side wins, the next day an air train of munitions will start arriving from Tehran. The Lebanese have been through more war than most places on earth in the last few decades, and they know that the gun introduced in act 1 will indeed shoot in act 3, and be shot back at even harder, which they are too motherfucking tired of, and rightly so. Lebanon is the coolest country in the Middle East and should have some extended peace and quiet to really flourish.

Iran has elections tomorrow. Paradoxically, it could be easier for both the US and Israel if I'madinnerjacket remains in power. A Moussavi victory gives Iran a lot of wiggle room in terms of “we're the moderates, you guys are supposed to make life easy for us”, when in reality any president chosen in Iran will advance the basic policies of the religious leaders – which means acquiring nuclear independence, projecting power regionally and exporting the Shia revolution. Any solution will have to convince Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his friends on the Supreme Council to change  THEIR policies, regardless of whom they style “President” at the time.

And to top off the international section of this dispatch, this week marks the 40th anniversary of the “Football [soccer] War”, in which Honduras and El-Salvador went to war following clashes at a tense world cup qualifier. Well, guess what? It's world cup qualifying time, and just in time for the anniversary, the schedule brings these two together again. Tensions are high and security at the game is expected to be unusually tight, but as of now the respective militaries remain on a peace-time footing. Long may they do so.

That's it, we're back from There Be Dragons land and just in time for Game 4 (or 7, as your sporting persuasion may be). Please rate and comment as you disembark, and y'all come back now, y'heah?