[snipped opening to Ariga Update and To Laugh or Cry...]

I think the model is Machiavelli, suitable to the new political structure of direct elections of Prime Minister -- whose ramifications I think we haven't as yet plumbed the depths of... or obviously had time to see whatever virtues the new system was intended by its creators to provide.

Here, where the demand in the street is for strong men -- like Bibi, indeed like Arik -- there's a real danger when nobody really knows what the premier means. Of late, Netanyahu's major rhetorical trick is to lean on the podium and say "yes, yes, there's always been talk of privatization. But when I say it, I mean it."

That's not why the USA survived its political catastrophes. It's always been an oligarchy like Israel, with Electoral Colleges to prevent the people from electing much, and checks and balances to keep the careless incompetent electorate from doing to much damage to the well intentioned sharks elected... and vice versa.

Why are YOU are worrying about 'meaning' and trust between electors and elected puzzles me... there's rarely been any anywhere. The issues it seems to me are much more serious for us because we have no hinterland at all (pace a missle-theory) and no economic resources (natural) except the fragile human beings populating the country. i.e. very little room for buffering the results of even minor errors.

Which is why the small majority majoritied Meretz and the others out of power. They felt what little we had had was vanishing in political waffle. Along with religious tradition, custom, status quo ante, etc.

Revolutions dont usually succeed if they try to work on more than one front at a time... and whatever Mr Peres intended, his partners had additional agendas... just like Mr Netanyahu's do. What's new?

But he doesn't say what he means. He can't. Not because he doesn't know what it entails, but because if he says that thousands will be laid off, he'll undermine his anyway shaky electoral base. Benjamin Netanyahu is no fool. He knows why he left Ariel Sharon for last when it came to making his government. The Americans, the Japanese, the Europeans, indeed the Arabs don't wantAriel Sharon i n the government, because Sharon represents all that went wrong the last time the Likud was elected to power in Israel.

Please. Someone (i.e. we) gotta pay for the give-aways of the previous government (aint that always the case, the salaried get overtaxed, the black money grows blacker, and then is whitewashed, and the rich got good tax lawyers....). Even tho I wouldnt want Mr Sharon to be Minister, he is NOT all that went wrong with the previous Likud govt. The new reform was supposed to solve the structural problems of Israeli politics, minority govts, etc. Well, it may. But as a friend says, you dont solve traffic jams, with new roads, you just push them down to the next traffic light.

Among xenophobic Israelis that's the best reason of all for Sharon to be in the government. But if there's one thing that can be said about Netanyahu, it's that he's no xenophobe. More at home in a W ashington D.C. suburb than any apartment block in a Negev development town, Netanyahu knows full well that the Americans won't "pressure" Israel.

They don't need to apply pressure any more. Nowadays, it's Wall Street and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange that apply pressure. Japanese investment, European investment, Arab flexibility -- it all depends on the progress of the peace process. Netanyahu can' t say asmuch, of course, because it undermines totally one of the foundations of Israeli right-wing politics -- the idea that national independence exists in a vacum, dependent only on what the government decides.

Youre trying to have your cake and eat it too. If there's no worry, that regardless of Americans, and Mr Netanyahu's Americanization of style, suburban desire, empty speech, etc. the international forces of economics will constrain us all anyway, what's the big fuss. Little room to move regardless of having no agenda (moron), little agenda (retard), wrong agenda (idiot). And if economics wont do it, then Arabs will. By the way, you talk as if the arabs have no constraints whatever.

For all his talk about the 21st century, he surely must know that the essence of the global economy, that very economy in which Israel's high-tech industries excel, is that our world is not a collection of discrete national entities, but rather an ever shifting mass of interdependencies between countries and corporations, states and multi-national organizations.

Netanyahu, who regards himself a political philosopher, surely must be aware of this, even if he has partners in the coalition who don't care about Volkswagon's investment in a magnesium plant at the Dead Sea, and w on't blink an eye at cutting science education in order to add Torah education to the curriculm. They've done it before, they can do it again.

That investment at the Dead Sea, and dozens, perhaps hundreds more like it, is threatened by the idea of instability in Israel. And if there is one thing that the Netanyahu government now promises, i t is instability. Out of eighteen minister, only four ever served in the government, and barely half ever served in the Knesset. That would be okay if his goverment were made from technocrats. Instea d it is made from party appointees, some of whom -- like a former district manager of the Interior Ministry now suddenly made minister by appointment of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef -- are technocrats.

Sorry. Israel IS instable, unstable, not stable. It never has been stable. (The world isnt either, in any of its manifestations, but Israel a little moreso). Youre right, they havent served in government; the presumption of democracy is that they dont have to have served, especially since the voters didnt like those who had served (for the first time -- Meretz (I seem to remember their gaffes which all the forward thinkers love and the traditional ones felt insulted by... turn about seems fair play). No party out of power (recently tossed out, I mean) feels democracy can be trusted. But you know my views on that.

But most, like Tzahi Hanegbi, are party hacks who bet on Bibi, or Zevulun Hammer, whose time as education Minister under Menachem Begin and then Yitzhak Shamir reduced daily schooling to four hours a day f or most of the ocuntry's youth (unless they were in yeshivot, where its a little less than dawn to dusk). Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a name for himself as a charmer at cocktail parties in Hollywood, and a winner in TV appearances.

Party hacks. Please. That describes anyone who's been loyal to a party in a nonvisible TV role. And somehow Israel's education system improved under Hammer about as much as it ever did... especially since all these Israeli educated voters voted Rabin in... (not counting the Labor party people who flew in from New York then to insure the revolution before flying out again.... like Likudniks this time).

New York Jews and non-Jews love him. Here, few love Bibi. They fear him, respect him, watch him closely., But he is far from beloved. For no matter how good a TV photo-op he gives, as prime minister he won't be working in front of TV cameras, but ultimately alo ne in the Prime Minister's Office dealing daily, with life and death issues.

Youre sneering again. Israel always depends on its Diasporas, as AB Yehoshuah pointed out, from Abraham onwards. Non Jews do NOT love Mr Netanyahu any more than they loved Mr Peres; they knew and trusted the latter after years of watching his behavior. Theyre holding a watching breif, I suspect, for the new govt. And what happened to your 'populist' upbeat attitude when the people almost elected Peres by one vote?

The Americans, the Japanese, the Europeans -- and the Arabs -- will be watching. They already see a prime minister elected on the basis of an extremely narrow margin and by sectarian forces; whose f irst efforts as prime minister elect were to undermine the leadership of his own political party, whose promises to political allies are thrown out an hour after they are made, whose speeches are "mo derate" but contradictory.

You're at this narrow margin again. Israel is a narrow margin. The human species exists by a narrow margin (and too overpopulated at that so only war, disease, and starvation and what's the other horseman?) keeps us sustainable. What are 'sectarian forces'? My religion's a religion, my majority of one is absolute, and your religion's a sect, and your 30000 majority is one, relative, tentative, and if you were honest you'd abdicate all pretensions to having gotten a mandate to rule?

No wonder Isrel's security establishment is worried -- and why the Arabs are pissed off. Netanyahu complains the Palestinians aren't keeping their agreements? Look how many agreements he broke in two weeks. W Everyone knew that the Hizbollah, Hamasand Islamic Jihad, had no intention of giving any 100 days of grace to whatever government was elected in Israel. They certainly don't understand that democrac ies traditionally need about three months to change governments peacefully. neither, apparently do most of the Arabs, jumping the gun by complaining the night he was elected. But now it's also not certain that his own party -- the Likud faction in the Knesset -- has much confidence in him, either.

Again excuse me. Which Israeli security establishment? Labor's or Likud's. And when aren't the Arabs pissed off. At each other. At us. Even during Mr Peres' reign, I remember them complaining bitterly Israel wasnt keeping any of its signed Oslo obligaitons. And yes, Likud too (Like Labor) will have to adjust itself to independent prime ministerial elections and power, and yes too Mr Netanyahu will have to pay his bills later if not sooner. So what's new?

He already needs to reopen the very law that elected him, in order to squeeze in Sharon (and Benny Begin into the "inner cabinet," which looks like it will be as castrated a forum as the Likud centra l committee). By doing so, and with the automatic parliamentary majority he now commands, the odds go up for an even worse law.

Please. Youve just about damned the direct election of prime minister law so hotly advocated as the best thing for Israel's democracy since Macdonald's kosher Cheeseburgers. Obviously it'll need tinkering then. And obviously it'll get worse.

The danger is simple and frightening in its implications. To succeed at bringing peace to Israel, Netanyahu will have to walk hand in hand with Arafat, betraying his followers. But given his negotia ting style, why should Arafat -- indeed the Americans, too -- trust him.

Yes and no. Dont tell me you've just woken up to the basic principle of politicians: betrayal of their electorates. It's part of their job. The electorates keep demanding contradictory to survival positions from their politicians... contradictory to the survival of the electorates, let alone of the politicians. So obviously waffling, lies, deceit, and betrayal are the perpetual prices politicians pay (hows that for alliteration?) back their voters with. Otherwise we'd all kill each other. As I said last time... it's the unpromised promises Im worrying about, the ones they do intend to keep.

And to succeed at governing, he not only must create an entirely new executive branch, force-fitting the contradiction between coalition partners who want budgets for welfare handouts to yeshiva stud ents, while cutting the government payroll by tens of thousands, and between those who want stricter blue laws regarding conversion and the personal rituals of life (wedding, divorce, death) and thos e who want no part of any of those laws. It is a formidable task.

RIGHT ON. Have fun. Sounds much like the problems of the past 40 years. And the successes.