OK, I promised y'all the rest of the news from the suddenly less interesting western end of the Middle East, but as usual life is what happened as we were busy making other plans. Please fasten your seat belts as we embark on the WHU connection flight no. 280609 touching down at the big house, the poor house and the nuthouse.

Two former ministers were put away for some non-piddling time: Recent finance minister Avraham Hirshzon (from Kadima) was sentenced to 5.5 years for an ongoing scam whereby he, um, drew his pension early in stuffed envelopes from a workers union he ran. Former health minister Shlomo Banizri (from Sephardic religious party Shas), who appealed his sentence of 1.5 years for corruption, concurrent with state's appeal of same sentence, was slapped with a stiffened term of four years (what'd he do? Get services for free, if memory serves).

Everybody's talking about how these sentences show that the courts are getting tough with corruption. I say sideshow. It's kinda like the ongoing steroid scandal in Baseball. Yeah, Manny was BANNED! For like FIFTY GAMES! Which leaves... 101 other people who did it and haven't been named yet? Might as well ban the league for a season. Can we jail an entire Knesset and Cabinet?

And from a court behaving reasonably to one in “fuck you” mode. This religious dude tried to leave a supermarket without paying. Cashier tried to stand in his way even as he got in his car. So he ran her over. It was ALL captured on security cam. Open and shut case, right? No. The judge, one Moshe Drori, decided to simply refuse to convict the defendant, because it would “put a blemish on his career”. Defendant is studying to be a religious lawyer – what they call a rabbinical pleader. Which means an officer of the court, since if you want to be recognized as married in Israel, and can't get married abroad, you gotta go through a religious court. Again: The defendant slo-mo ran over a woman trying to do her job. But she was Ethiopian, and he's religious and maybe connected, so it's ok and nothing he did should impede him from a position of authority. In his verdict the judge had the audacity – or is that autism? - to wax on and on about how the plaintiff, “who when the trial began, felt herself to be of no account in the eyes of the court, saw that everyone including the judge listens to her every word”. Hey, lady, running you over may not warrant a conviction, but in this court you ain't nobody, and don't let no-one tell you no nothing notherwise, ok doll?

Oh, and this judge? One of four religious guys on the county judge circuit that the right wing is trying to push for the Supreme Court. Such, such are the joys.

Gay pride marched in Jerusalem on Thursday, to almost zero incident. The religious are getting more worked up over a little territorial muscle move they be tryin' to pull, protesting the opening of a sorely needed parking lot in a decidedly secular part of town on sabbath. Mayor, after a bit of spaghetti-spine, seems determined to brave a little herd violence. The black coats rioted today, desecrating their own holy day to burn trash cans and so on. One cop, 19 dumbasses hurt in the commotions. One seriously. Sorry, but to quote Prosthetnic Vogon Jeltz, I've no sympathy at all.

The Palestinians are playing a double game – rejecting Netanyahu's conditions due to the paternalistic manner in which they were stated, while making clear that none are actually a problem. No, the Palestinians won't “acknowledge Israel as a Jewish State” - if Israel wants to call itself “The Jewish Republic of Israel” as both Syria and Egypt do (“Arab Republic”, of course) – that is her business. But if the dreaded “right of return” is what is holding up the works, Palestinian Authority bigwig Yasser Abd Rabo stated flatly that “he doesn't need Netnayahu” to give exiled Palestinians around the world a place to live – they will be welcomed to the Palestinian state, of course. So that's one thing. As for de-militarized, then insisting on face aside, the Palestinians aren't insisting terribly on that either. Abu Mazen's chief political adviser told Haaretz: We don't want an army, we want western and American troops along out border with Israel. So that doesn't seem to be a problem either. But lets pretend there is a problem, else we'll actually have to do something.

Oh yeah, and the former chief justice, the man who turned our so-called constitutional law on its ear and then barricaded the entire court against any opposing view, rejecting 3-4 world class jurists and entrusting his revolution to a walking mediocrity thinking that's gonna fly? He came out with another “Aharon Barak Speaks!” moment, in which he castigate Israel for not being equitable to its Arab citizens and throwing a nice little (weakly worded) shock bomb about how many Israeli Jews would like to throw Israeli Arabs out of the country. Basically his opinions are much like mine – with immigration being the sole solitary field in which Jews have any official advantage, and a nice dose of affirmative action for Arabs and other minorities in all other fields.

However, I can shoot my mouth off, cause I wasn't mister all-powerful, who for every verdict slowing the war and theft and injustice machine issued two others allowing it to become ever more codified and precedent-ed and repeatable, was I now? I can say nobody tried it my way.

This, for those of you from other shores, is the guy who had the temerity to say – in his previous “Aharon speaks from on high” outburst since his retirement three years ago – that the reason there aren't any other Arabs besides Salim Jibran on the court is “there aren't enough qualified candidates in the sector”, but Edna Arbel, who was State Prosecutor but doesn't even have a Masters in law, much less any evidence of a legal mind beyond that of a machine prosecutor, is fully qualified, and Dorit fucking Beinish, who does not have a “publications” section on her wiki page, because nobody ever gave a flying fuck for her legal opinion except as she had bearing on them by virtue of her job (another former state prosecutor. Yes, you do detect a pattern...) is fit to be Chief Justice, while Ruth Gavison, Nili Cohen, Mordechai Kremnitzer and other world renowned legal thinkers just don't have the right.. agenda. With all due respect, your honor, isn't it time for bocci? As DeNiro tells Stallone in that flick: You had you chance and YOU BLEW IT!

If a guy that smart can be such a douche, what hope is there? Makes ya understand survivalists. Boy? Go git ma gun!

What else... Iran seems to have fizzled out. I guess Rafsanjani and Montazeri couldn't get enough votes on the Ayatollah councils, not enough officers in the Rev. Guard. Khamenei may be a religious lightweight, but he can do in-house politics. It's when he has to front to the nation that he seems awkward. Which is a killer sort of combination. Literally. These guys (Khamenei, Ahmadinejad) seem to be in a hurry, and that more than anything smells like war. Boy! Where's that gun?

To end on a nicer note, though, it's fun to see Netanyahu and his gang squirming under Obama's steady pressure. Although the cynic* in me will be surprised to see anything actually come of it, and it will probably take another election here to elect a government that is congenitally capable of doing what needs to be done.

* Cynic n. An infernal blackguard whose faulty vision causes him to see things as they are, rather than as they should be.  - H.L.Mencken