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Few things are as in desperate need of repair as the singles scene, whose gatherings I address on a regular basis as I did last week on Valentine's Day. What you see is the typical scenario of the attractive women getting all the attention, the successful men drooling over them, and the "ordinary" people left to pick up the crumbs. Then there is the degrading spectacle of watching grown men and women walking around hoping to be noticed, or speaking to a member of the opposite sex while scanning distractedly to see if there is anyone "better" to connect with....

It is quite possible that terror master Imad Mughniyeh was not killed Tuesday night in Damascus for his past crimes, but to prevent him from carrying out additional attacks in the future. On January 30, French security services raided a Paris apartment and arrested six Arab men. Three of the men - two Lebanese and one Syrian - were travelling on diplomatic passports. According to the Italian Libero newspaper, the six were members of a Hizbullah cell. Documents seized included tourist maps of Paris, London, Madrid, Berlin and Rome marked up with red highlighter to indicate routes, addresses, parking lots...

Arguments are going to happen in marriage. Two people living together are bound to generate friction. Indeed, having no disagreements at all might be a sign that your marriage has entered the dangerous "doppelganger" realm where you have become so alike that you are fused into the same person. Differentiation is a necessary component of passion, and marital friction can turn out to be as much a source of light as it is heat. But in order for the healthy sparks in marriage not to grow into a consuming conflagration, it's essential that you learn to fight fair, never hitting...

"It is exclusively in the hands of Israeli leaders and the public to determine whether, when facing challenges in the future, we will come to them more prepared and ready, and whether we shall cope with them in a more serious and responsible way than the way the decision-makers acted - in the political and the military echelons - in the Second Lebanon War."From the Winograd Committee's Final Report, January 30, 2008In the weeks prior to Wednesday's publication of the Winograd Report into the Second Lebanon War, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert consulted with an array of expert advisers on how...

In March 2006, the Israeli people elected incompetents to lead us. It only took four months for Hizbullah to make us pay a price for our mistake. In the July and August 2006 war, Israelis came to understand that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, then defense minister Amir Peretz and then IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz were together and separately the worst leaders that Israel had ever seen. Almost from the war's outset it was evident that Israel's leaders were in over their heads. They acted as though there was no difference between running...

"Sometimes," Blaise Pascal once noted, "we learn more from the sight of evil than from an example of good." The great philosopher's pithy observation took on new resonance this week, as Israelis were given ample opportunity to catch a glimpse of what sheer, unadulterated wickedness truly looks like. In Beirut, it took the form of Hizbullah thug-in-chief Hassan Nasrallah. Speaking on Saturday to a crowd of tens of thousands of cheering supporters, the bearded and bespectacled terror boss delivered one of the most chilling speeches in recent memory. "O Zionists," he declared, "your army has left the body parts of...

In my nine years in Israeli governments, I served as a minister in several different offices. In each case, the coalition negotiations needed to obtain each position were arduous, at times even exhausting. There was only one position that I received as a freebie, for it was uncontested: the role of chairman of the Interministerial Committee on Diaspora Affairs. Indeed, why should there be a struggle over a position with no budget, no appointments, and no political influence or importance? True, the committee deals with an important subject - dialogue and coordination of efforts with Diaspora Jewry. But whom does...

At the end of the Second Lebanon War, Israel rumbled at the edge of a political volcano. Demobilized reservists marched to Jerusalem demanding that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resign in the wake of his incompetent handling of the war. Just as the reservists' protests were gathering momentum, in walked Avigdor Lieberman, the head of the rightist Israel Beiteinu party, and saved the government. Without so much as haggling over the price Olmert would pay for his surprising support, Lieberman joined the government in the ill-defined and powerless role of strategic affairs minister. Lieberman defended his move on patriotic grounds. The...

As the country contends with a cold wave that has left at least two people dead from hypothermia, Israel Electric reported this week that demand for electricity hit an all-time winter high of 9,900 megawatts late Sunday evening. This prompted fears among consumers that IE may initiate a series of rolling blackouts to prevent the power system from shutting down. "I have a newborn baby at home and the thought of losing power in this cold weather is very unnerving," said one IE customer. Caught off-guard by an early wave of extremely hot weather in June 2006, IE was compelled...

Monday Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni opened negotiations with her Palestinian counterpart Ahmed Qurei regarding the partition of Jerusalem; the destruction of hundreds of Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem; the expulsion of between a hundred thousand and half a million Israelis from their homes; the borders of Israel; and the right of immigration of millions of foreign, hostile Arabs to Israel. The Olmert government's Palestinian policies are overwhelmingly rejected by the Israeli public. In a recent B'nai Brith poll, two thirds of the public said that the government has no mandate to conduct negotiations on these issues. Two thirds...

During his tenure as President George W. Bush's defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld often likened the administration's foreign policy decisions to those of the Truman administration during the first years of the Cold War. As President George W. Bush makes his way to Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states with a stated agenda of advancing the goal of Palestinian statehood, it is worth examining president Truman's achievements and comparing them with those of President Bush. President Harry S Truman was in some ways an accidental president. Elected vice president in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's fourth term in...

The IDF has developed a tiny bulldozer for combat operations inside Palestinian cities, a military publication reported. The little machine is designed for rumbling down narrow roads and paths in the closer quarters of Palestinian cities, where old sections are warrens of crowded alleyways between rundown concrete block buildings. In previous operations, Israeli forces have sent full-size bulldozers ahead of ground troops, causing considerable damage to buildings. The current edition of the soldiers' weekly Bamahaneh carries a picture of the new machine, called "Lioness." It looks like a toy - a vehicle higher than it is wide or long, painted...

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said many interesting things in today's Jerusalem Post interview. Most striking, however, is not a particular remark but the contrast between his (unwittingly?) rather defeatist message and the strength that he ascribes to Israel's current position in the world. Olmert described Israel's position as struggling to implement a two-state solution because the alternative is to be demographically swamped by a one-state solution. He then pointed out that even the "world that is friendly to Israel - not the world comprised of fanatics and extremists - ... speaks of Israel in terms of the '67 borders. It...

Last Wednesday, New York's Jewish Week reported that the editor of Israel's self-described "newspaper of record" asked the US secretary of state to rape his country and told her that his erotic fantasy is to watch America rape Israel. On September 10, at a dinner at the home of US Ambassador Richard Jones, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with a group of Israeli "elites." Among the elitists was Haaretz editor David Landau. According to the Jewish Week, Landau "referred to Israel as a "failed state" politically, one in need of a US-imposed settlement. He was said to have implored...

An IAF air strike in Gaza killed a Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) leader on Wednesday night. IDF troops kill Palestinian operatives in a pre-dawn anti-terror operation The PRC leader was traveling in a car when it was hit by an IAF missile. Moments earlier, al Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed that it had fired a rocket from Jenin toward the northern Samaria settlement of Shaked. However, the defense establishment said it was unaware of such an attack. The air strike came the night after IDF troops reportedly killed seven Palestinian gunmen, including at least three Hamas members, in a pre-dawn anti-terror...

Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann came under a barrage of criticism Wednesday after announcing a set of reforms apparently aimed at increasing the governments' influence on judicial appointments. The Justice Minister suggested far-reaching changes to the way judges and court presidents are appointed, sparking angry responses from both Knesset and the justice establishment. One proposal concerns alterations to the composition of the Judges Election Committee, which is responsible for appointing judges to the Supreme Court. The committee is presently made up of nine members: The justice minister, an additional minister representing the Justice Ministry, the Supreme Court President, two Supreme Court...

'The separation fence won't be a political border," declared prime minister Ariel Sharon in his 2004 Herzliya speech. Ehud Olmert has repeated this more than once. Recently, however, Defense Minister Ehud Barak has proposed not only treating the security barrier as a de-facto border, but also offering money to evacuate the Jews living on the eastern side of the fence. Barak's spiel is obvious: He aims to convince part of the public that he is a hawk, and the other part that he is the bona fide standard-bearer of the peace camp. And it isn't only Barak. Vice Premier Haim...

Palestinians have a hidden history of appreciating Israel that contrasts with their better-known narrative of vilification and irredentism. The former has been particularly evident of late, especially since Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, floated a trial balloon in October about transferring some Arab-dominated areas of eastern Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority. As he rhetorically asked about Israeli actions in 1967, "Was it necessary to annex the Shuafat refugee camp, al-Sawahra, Walajeh, and other villages, and then to state that these are part of Jerusalem? One can ask, I admit, some legitimate questions about this." In one swoop, this statement transformed...

These are tough times for the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. Everywhere one seems to turn, Zionism and its values are in retreat. Aliya is on the decline, settling the land is no longer in vogue, and classical Zionist institutions are under attack for promoting the distinctively Jewish character of the state. Last week, the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption announced that a paltry 19,700 people chose to immigrate to Israel in 2007, representing barely two-tenths of one percent of Diaspora Jewry. That is the lowest number to arrive here in the past 20 years. The government of Israel...

One of the natural and negative consequences of political assassinations is that they personalize the general and simplify the complex. Policies formed in the aftermath of assassinations are rarely wise and tend to focus on secondary - personal - issues while ignoring larger strategic ones. It is fairly clear that this is what is happening in the international reaction to last Thursday's assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zadawi and her teenage son have now taken charge of her political party in the interest of maintaining her "legacy." Backed by the Bush administration, they...