The level of settler violence, always high, has reached a fever pitch of late.  Usually the attacks go by the common name “price tag,” which alludes to a form of payback against the government for dismantling illegal settlements.  Though lately, the attacks seem to have taken on a life of their own and need no spark to ignite them: three mosques have been burned, two in the past week; a West Bank IDF outpost was trashed and a senior officer injured with a brick thrown through his car window; settlers occupied an abandoned monastery on the Jordanian border to warn King Abdullah not to interfere in matters concerning the Temple Mount; death threats and vandalism against Peace Now leaders.

In particular, the assault against the IDF unit and wounding of the officer seems to have unnerved many in Israel.  While Israelis argue about many things, there is an avowed reverence for the IDF in many circles.  Whatever you trash, you don’t trash our boys, the ones who protect us.  The most radical of the settlers have violated this national covenant because, while there are few threats against their political agenda, if the nation ever turns against them, they understand it will be the army that will face them.  In the few instances where the State musters the fortitude to dismantle an outpost or settlement, it is the army that does it.  That’s why the most radical settlers espouse outright hatred of the army and engage in regular acts of vandalism and harassment though till now, they’d never risen to this level of intensity.

All of Israel seems to wringing its hands, with the common refrain being–these settlers are not representative of the overwhelming majority of law-abiding settlers.  They’re an extremist minority within a minority.  They’re an aberration, a schandeh, an embarrassment to Israel in the face of the world community.  This Jerusalem Post editorial is typical:

What is needed is some proportion. The burning of mosques by Jewish hooligans is deplorable, but it is no more representative of the country – or the direction it is going – than Florida Pastor Terry Jones’ burning of a Koran in May was a reflection of America.

Terry Jones doesn’t live in occupied territory (unless you want to argue we should return Florida to the Pensacolas).  He doesn’t have the mortgage for the house where he resides and which sits on occupied territory, subsidized by the U.S. government.  The government hasn’t built roads to his home cutting through land belonging to a foreign nation.  Terry Jones doesn’t elect members of Congress who mirror his views precisely.  The president doesn’t meet regularly and consult with Terry Jones’ best friends.  Terry Jones hasn’t yet killed anyone, let alone a neighbor living next door to him on that occupied land.  Terry Jones is a Christian lunatic crackpot.  Settlers are most definitely not.

The Israeli government, which itself shares most, if not all of the values of the settler extremists went into emergency session to determine how to deal with the threat posed by the hooliganism and violence.  The answer Bibi Netanyahu devised is to begin treating settler criminal suspects just as badly as Palestinian security detainees.  In other words, arrest without speedy trial, denial of legal representation, etc.  So techniques and tactics which have failed to quell Palestinian resistance will now be used in a failed effort to suppress settler revolt.  Not to mention that Israel’s vaunted democratic values, what’s left of them anyway, will be further eroded.  But this doesn’t matter to most Israelis, who see security detainees as individuals who don’t deserve any rights.

There was one bridge too far for Bibi, though.  He won’t say the “T” word.  He wouldn’t call the settlers terrorists.  Doing so would allow the State to treat the settlers basically as the U.S. treats Guantanamo detainees, offering them virtually no rights at all.

Former defense minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer’s response to the settler pogroms was to recommend shooting them as the IDF would any Palestinian group which had the chutzpah to invade one of their camps.  Shimon Peres called the settlers a schandeh fahr di goyim (but in Hebrew, of course).  Jeffrey Goldberg said Israel should “declare war” on them and throw them in the desert prison where it houses Fatah and Hamas terror prisoners, Ketziot (where Goldberg himself served in the IDF).

But there is one basic, fundamental problem with everything I’ve described above and which renders Israel’s response the height of hypocrisy.  The settlers are not an aberration.  They are not a schandeh.  They don’t represent an extremist minority.  In fact, about them you could say: “L’etat c’est moi.”  The settlers ARE the State.  They may be slightly ahead of the conventional political mainstream, but as the American politicians say about Israeli prime ministers when they come to DC: “there’s no daylight between Israel and the U.S.”

I can hear liberal Zionists like Goldberg or Gershom Gorenberg protest that I overstate my case.  Even some readers will no doubt try to take me to task.  But I maintain that just as Malcolm X said after the Kennedy assassination that the latter’s killing was the “chickens coming home to roost,” so settler killings and general hooliganism are a manifestation of an overall national consensus that Israel must maintain the Occupation virtually forever.

Yes, I know there is supposedly general support for a two state solution, liberal Zionists are fond of pointing out that Bibi even claims to support this approach.  But that’s not how to determine what a nation believes.  Watch what I do, not what I say, is an old motto regarding politicians.  It holds true of nations as well.  The vast majority of Israelis may say they support two states, but they also don’t believe there will ever be peace with the Palestinians.  A nation which has given up on peace will never make the choices necessary to achieve it.

Why else are settlers who are guilty of major crimes like murder, maiming, arson, etc. almost never charged, let alone prosecuted?  Why else when a settler is imprisoned (but only for the most heinous of crimes like mass murder) are they invariably sent to a mental hospital and judged insane, rather than to prison?  Why else do Israeli presidents invariably pardon or grant clemency to almost every single Jewish terrorist?   At some point, you have to recognize that the terrorist, he is us.

So if Israel wants to maintain the Occupation.  If it approves of the ongoing theft of Palestinian land.  If it supports the building of the Separation Wall and the consequent sequestration of another 15% or more of available Palestinian land.  If it shrugs its shoulders at the constant drip-drip-drip of settler and IDF homicidal violence against both Palestinians and Israeli peace activists, then it must take responsibility for the criminals within, who are little more than mirrors of Israel itself.

Frankly, I’m sick and tired of the faces and arms raised to the sky whenever a settler commits an especially outrageous act (such as the assassination of Rabin, for one).  These are not alien acts committed by body snatchers or pod people.  These are your own kin, your own fellow citizens.  They act on your behalf.  They ARE you.  You cannot deny them.  You cannot distance yourself.  You cannot say they work for themselves alone.

From the very first moment of the settlement enterprise shortly after the 1967 War, Israel blessed it and said it was doing God’s and the nation’s work.  Even Shimon Peres, who leads the hand-wringers today in claiming these settlers are bad, bad boys who must be spanked by their mommies; even Peres went to the settlements at a critical juncture in the early stages and threw in his lot with them.  There would be no Hilltop Youth, no Baruch Marzel, no Yigal Amir without the prior approval offered by Israel’s power élite to the Greater Israel-Gush Emunim movement.

Many Israeli commentators are getting carried away talking about a cancer in the body politic.  The most extreme of the settlers are not alien to Israel, they ARE Israel.  Look at the Israeli government, at the Knesset.  The bright, shiny faces representing Israel on the world stage could just as easily be throwing bricks and Molotov cocktails at IDF officers if they took off their suits and ties (when they wear them).  Lieberman?  A former Kach member.  Yaalon?  Committed an act of insubordination against PM Sharon in refusing to evacuate Gaza settlers.  Netanyahu?  Spoke openly of expelling Israeli Palestinian citizens as recently as 1988.  There is almost a seamless web of ideological conviction and action between the current Israeli governing élite and the settlers.

What is to be done?  That’s one of the hardest questions to answer.  This is why I’ve come to despair that an answer can come from within Israel.  Until he died, on good days I believed that Sharon might take on the settlers in the same way Ben Gurion took on Begin by sinking the Altalena in 1948.  Now that Sharon is gone, there’s no one.  Tzipi Livni?  Gimme a break.  She may not even win the next Kadima Party primary, let alone become prime minister.  Barak?  Don’t even go there.  So who?

The key is outside intervention.  Israel is rapidly turning into Serbia or apartheid era South Africa or Putin’s Russia.  It is an outlaw nation.  A nation not of laws but of whims and caprices.  What Bibi wants, Bibi gets.  A TV channel airs documentaries critical of you?  Shut it down.  An NGO exposes injustices committed by the army or intelligence services?  Turn off the tap of foreign support.

Similarly, what settlers want, they get.  They are never satisfied with half a loaf when they could have the whole.  And the whole invariably involves a Palestinian village or family who owns an orchard or spring which would look might fine with some sprightly new tile-roofed settler homes sitting on that land.

The settlers have theft in their heart, which means that Israel is a nation built on theft.  And you cannot separate settlerism from Zionism (as practiced by the Israeli political élite) or Israeli national identity.  They are interchangeable.  That is why I despair that any Israeli leader would have the political will to make a virtual political suicide pact to extirpate the settlers as a power base within Israel.  For that is what it will take.  There can be no compromise, no saying that settlers may be criminals but not terrorists as Bibi does.  Someone’s got to look this scourge in the eye and say: we’ve seen the enemy and he is us.  Until then, you’re just talking about window-dressing.

I’ve been watching the bitter unfolding of a vendetta between the Israeli government and Tom Friedman, who’s writing increasingly vitriolic prose about the Netanyahu government.  The spectacle of Israel’s liberal Zionist forward cadre turning its back on the current government in a most public and disconcerting way is almost a joy to behold.  Not that Friedman has grown much wiser from the thrashing.  He’s still touting Fayyadism as the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  But as far as his analysis of the current Israeli government, he’s quite acute on that score.

The problem of course for liberal Zionists like Friedman is that they hold out hope that Israel can save itself, which I no longer believe.  It will be interesting to watch for any evolution in Friedman’s thinking on that score.

Anatot resident and Israeli senior police investigator, Yossi Ben Arush assaulting Assaf Sharon, which led to breaking his nose

In the bloody aftermath of the Anatot pogrom, in which women were violently sexually abused, limbs were broken, and one attacker attempted to stab a protester to death with a knife (captured on video), the settler residents have been given a huge gift (Hebrew) by the state attorney general.  He’s determined that despite the fact that there were numerous off duty police officers among the pogromists, that the police will investigate the incident.  This is like asking Bernie Madoff to investigate his own Ponzi scheme.  It’s worse than laughable.  It’s criminal (metaphorically, of course).

The settlers are of course overjoyed and expect that the police will investigate those nasty peace activists who disturbed the peace in their community.  No mention at all of the bloodshed and brute force they used against their fellow citizens that night.  The state has thrown a sop to the protesters by claiming that any charges against police officers will be referred to the attorney general for investigation.  And who will be investigating?  Shai Nitzan.  The same fellow who’s been railroading Dirar Abusisi on behalf of the state for the past year or so.  This fellow really gets around.  He’s got his plate full what with sending innocent Palestinians to prison and keeping guilty police officers out of jail for beating up their fellow Israelis.

If Israel can’t investigate this massacre properly then perhaps it will require an international body to do so.  The United Nations High Commission for Human Rights plans to speak with eyewitnesses and victims.  The state clearly doesn’t care about the rule of law insofar as settlers are concerned.  Perhaps it may be more accountable when international bodies are involved.  The only thing that got Israel to take seriously the crimes committed during Operation Cast Lead was the United Nations’ Goldstone Report.  Without it, neither Israel nor the world would never have taken these charges seriously.

On a related matter, an Israeli source told me that the Jewish terror suspects in the Tuba Zangariyye mosque arson would be freed without charges and that is indeed what has happened.  The police do now hold another person in custody.  My source tells me he’s a school child barely tall enough to reach his belt buckle.  It was this boy’s misfortune to be in Yisrael Katz’s vehicle when it was stopped by Ariel police on the night of the arson attack.  Astonishing (from an Israeli Jewish point of view) that the police will arrest not only Palestinian children, but Jewish as well.  Do they really think a child burned the mosque?

The fact that the Shabak has no credible suspects (at least none it will arrest) further confirms the hypocritical statements from Bibi Netanyahu and Shimon Peres after the assault in which they swore the state would bring its full power to bear on those responsible and punish them to the full extent…blah, blah, blah.

So for those keeping score at home, that makes Jewish Terror 2=Rule of Law 0.

When Anders Breivik was getting down in the dumps about the Muslim takeover of Eurabia, he could always turn for succor to the pages of Gates of Vienna, where he would find the sort of reassuring anti-Muslim race hatred that soothed his fevered brow.  It was the type of vile anti-jihadi rhetoric that served as the intellectual fuel for his terror attack in Norway, which happened several months ago.  To be clear, the author of Gates of Vienna is not himself a terrorist as Breivik is.  He just helped shape Breivik’s intellectual and political world view.  Perhaps not making the blog an accessory to terror, but rather an accessory after the fact.

One of Breivik’s favorite Jews was Caroline Glick, a senior editor at the Jerusalem Post, and doyenne of the extreme settler right.  Glick is one of those responsible for the garbage peddled by Latma, which produced the We Con the World video which figuratively danced on the grave of the Mavi Marmara dead.  She also produced a video of an Israeli actor (had he been in blackface it would’ve been a perfect touch) mocking Barack Obama while singing songs about how much he, as the U.S. president, hated Jews.

Terrorism-inspiring Gates of Vienna hearts Caroline Glick

Now, comes news that Caroline Glick is beloved not only of Anders Breivik, but of the blogger, Ned May, who writes Gates of Vienna under the pseudonym, Baron Bodissey.  A few days ago May publicly recognized Glick for the helpful tips she’s sent his way.  In addition, the blogger explicitly thanks Glick for permitting him to arrange for translation of one of her Jerusalem Post editorials into Norwegian,  no doubt so all the families of the terror victims could be blamed yet again for not maintaining a proper bulwark between themselves and the onrushing Muslim hordes.

If Gates of Vienna republished her material without her permission who could blame Glick.  But when she explicitly approves of her work appearing in one of the most incendiary, Muslim hating websites in the world, that is unconscionable.

I never found out who wrote the Jerusalem Post editorial just after Breivik’s rampage which blamed, not the racist killer, but Norway’s permissive immigration policy.  This supposedly allowed the dirty masses to reach Norway’s shores and so enrage the killer that he was forced to do what any red-blooded Christian European should do.  Myhunch is that Glick either wrote this jewel herself or had a large hand in it.  Note, the Post’s managing editor was forced to write a half-assed apology when the dreck contained in the editorial single-handedly threatened to unsettle Israel-Norway relations.

The Post fired Larry Derfner for speaking a few unpalatable truths about terrorism, both Israeli and Palestinian, that even Israeli defense ministers have admitted in their more unbuttoned moments, yet the shmateh worships the ground on which Caroline Glick walks.  Disgusting.  Vile and disgusting.

This blog post is a veritable font of research and information about the most hateful of the Jewish anti-jihadi blogosphere.

While NY Times coverage of Israel is generally far lower in quality or comprehensiveness than other issues it covers, Isabel Kershner did manage to write a reasonable story about the mosque burning at Tuba-Zangariyye.  Here is how she begins:

The founders of this Bedouin Arab village in the Israeli countryside tied their fate to that of their Jewish neighbors even before the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948.

The once nomadic Muslim tribesmen here helped defend early Jewish settlements in the area during the Arab revolt of the 1930s, local residents recalled. In the 1940s, they formed a strong alliance with Yigal Allon, then a young commander of the Palmach, the elite Zionist fighting force, receiving land in return for their loyalty and support.

She closes with this telling indictment of the current Israeli state with its collusion or at least tolerance for extremist Jewish terror:

…About a quarter of the youths in Tuba-Zangariya volunteer for the Israeli military, mainly for economic reasons, according to local residents. The Bedouin soldiers serve mostly as trackers, helping defend the country’s hostile frontiers. Afterward, they say that it is easier to find jobs and that they are entitled to preferential mortgage terms and other benefits.

But for some, the wedge opened by the arson attack has exposed a latent sense of injustice and alienation. Walid Heib, 37, said that if some of the elders of the village had not fought with the Palmach, there might not have been an Israel.

“It would have been better if they had not,” he said, “because now we feel like the strangers here.”

Israel’s Jewish leadership should think long and hard about these sentiments.  They come from a Palestinian village long loyal and integrated into the State.  If all it takes to destroy 60 years of allegiance is a few pimply teenaged extremist Jews with a can of kerosene and a match, then how much is Israel’s vaunted democracy worth?  Israel must ask itself what it wants to be: a Jewish state with the majority religion (and ethnicity) privileged and the minority trashed and despised; or a state in which all enjoy equal privileges, rights and responsibilities.

She did neglect to mention that Bibi Netanyahu hasn’t deemed it important enough to show his face at the site of the Jewish arson attack (though Shimon Peres and the chief rabbis have).  She also did not mention that none of the previous arson attacks have resulted in any charges filed against any suspects.  The most severe punishment the Shin Bet metes out to suspects is filing restraining orders against them preventing them from palling around with their fellow terrorists buds in Yitzhar for a few months.  The police seem to believe that this will act as a deterrent to future acts of terror, though they were clearly wrong in this case.

Similarly, Israel almost never imprisons Jews guilty of terror (except in the egregious case of Yigal Amir).  Rather it prefers to declare them insane and then consign them to mental hospitals (a practice common to authoritarian regimes like the Soviet Union and China).  Those who are sentenced to prison almost universally receive pardons or clemency.  Palestinian terrorists never receive such gestures.

What will it take?  Perhaps some Palestinians burning down Heychal Shlomo, the seat of the chief rabbi?  I don’t advocate this by any means, but why are Israelis tone-deaf to the suffering their fellow Jews inflict on their fellow Palestinian citizens?  Must they suffer a comparable act of depravity before they understand what’s been done to Muslims?

Gilad Meltzer's original Hebrew statement comparing price tag to Kristallnacht

Gilad Meltzer offers a comparison between the latter-day tactics of Muslim-hating settler fanatics and an earlier historical tragedy:

“In 1930s Germany when they burned synagogues they called it ‘Kristallnacht.’ Here [in Israel] we’ve moved to the language of capitalism: ‘price tag.’”

A bit of historical context: when Kristallnacht happened in 1938, no one except Adolph Hitler and perhaps his intimates knew what he had in store for European Jews.  The Shoah hadn’t yet been devised or implemented except possibly in Hitler’s mind.

Similarly, the jury is out on which direction modern Israel will go.  Will it turn to extremist violence, forced expulsion of Palestinian citizens, annexation of the West Bank, and a form of Jewish totalitarianism (or what these Judean madmen call the “Jewish kingdom”)?  Or will it turn away from its appointment with “national suicide,” as Nicholas Kristof called it in yesterday’s NY Times, and embrace real democracy for ALL Israeli citizens, including its non-Jewish citizens?

Contrary to many Jews who love and support Israel (perhaps to a fault), I have no crystal ball nor certainty that things will come out right in the end.  There is entirely too much complacency around these issues both in Israel and in the Jewish Diaspora.  There is evil within our midst and we’re not doing enough to denounce it and uproot it.  Those who truly love Israel and wish it well in the long term would do well to act accordingly.

Village mosque of Tuba Zangariyye after being torched by suspected Jewish extremists (Oded Balilty/AP)

An Israeli source has told me there is a gag order concerning any reporting on the Shin Bet’s investigation into the mosque burning in the Israeli Palestinian village, Tuba-Zangariyye, just outside Safed.  This is the fifth or sixth mosque arson attack in recent past and no charges have been brought in any cases.  Despite a recent Israeli police claim, there are no legitimate suspects for the recent attack either.

Just after the arson attack, at about 5AM police in Ariel arrested a settler named Yisrael Katz, age 18 or 19 and a resident of Yitzhar, one of the most radical of the West Bank settlements.  Though he’d started his trip from a town not far from Tuba Zangariyye, given that it would’ve taken him two or perhaps three hours to make the drive, it means he likely could not have been present when the arson began.

But he was wanted for investigation on a different matter and the police arrested him.  He and twelve other Yitzhar residents had been under a police restraining order forbidding them from entering Yitzhar for four months, due to suspicion that he’d been involved with several mosque fires allegedly set by residents of the settlement.  Once the police discovered the mosque attack, they attempted to link him to it.

In attempting to make their case, the police and Shin Bet requested that his remand be extended by ten days, but the judge only agreed to a three-day extension.  My source tells me that it’s clear to anyone who knows the facts about this case that the alleged suspect isn’t connected to the case.  But since the police need to say they have a suspect in custody, he’s the patsy they picked.  In a few days, as soon as the furor surrounding the incident dies down, he’ll be released.

The police have also impounded a vehicle from Yitzhar that may (or may not) be connected to the latest mosque arson.

This village is near Safed, whose chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, is known as one of the most strident of the Muslim-hating rabbis in Israel.  When asked about this attack, he pointedly said he could not criticize such an act.

Israeli police and Shin Bet are notoriously bad at solving cases involving Jewish terror.  Partly this is due to the fact that the Jewish underground is locked up tight and hard to penetrate.  Partly it is due to a lack of will or even sympathy the security services may have with the general goals (though perhaps not the tactics) of the radical settler right.  Note that no one has been arrested for the terror spree at the Tel Aviv gay community center a few years ago, though I’ve heard they suspect Jack Teitel‘s involvement in that.  You’ll recall that Jack conveniently and rather suddenly developed a serious “mental condition” that freed Israel from actually trying or convicting him for any crime.

At any rate, this most recent mosque torching is unlikely to be solved, and such hooliganism will continue unabated until one of the perpetrators does something really stupid that brings him to the attention of the police.  In Teitel’s case, he was found putting up incendiary fliers on a public street calling for a bounty on the heads of Peace Now activists.  If the terrorists are smart they may never be caught, and who knows to what level of proficiency and mayhem their acts will rise in the interim.

Bibi Netanyahu, Shimon Peres and Abe Foxman have all decried the mosque arson since it happened within the Green Line.  When such arsons happen in settler land outside the Green Line, there is less enthusiasm for defending Muslim holy places.  If these three Jewish eminences really want to make a statement, let them join Ahmed Tibi in a pilgrimage to this village where they should pay their respects at the mosque that was attacked.  This would speak volumes to Jewish terrorists and Israeli Palestinians.  I’ve e-mailed Tibi to suggest this.

Jewish terrorists like this not only want to annex the West Bank and drive its Palestinians residents out, they want to do the same for Israel’s Palestinian citizens.  That’s what a pogrom like this means.  Israel has to decide whether it wants its Arab citizens or not.  If it does, then it will have to give them full, equal rights with Jewish citizens and protect them as well as it does Jews.  If it does any less, then incidents like this will continue ad infinitum.

Anti-Muslim crusaders Frank Gaffney, Nonie Darwish and David Yerushalmi were shut out of Rep. Peter King’s recent Congressional hearings on alleged Islamic extremism.  But like a Jack in the Box, no sooner are they squashed than they rear their ugly heads once again.

N.Y. state senator Gregory Ball, a Republican representing that den of Muslim terror, rural Putnam County, took a page out of King’s book by alerting the unsuspecting citizens of the Empire State of the fifth column within.

Gaffney and the gang have once again insinuated themselves into the political mainstream by offering Sen. Ball their “expertise” on the subject.  And he’s swallowed it hook, line and sinker.  If he’s not careful it could bite him, as King’s initial embrace of Gaffney did.  The former ended up renouncing Gaffney in a spat that heard around the world…or at least the anti-jihadi blogosphere.

In the ultimate irony, before the hearing Ball counterattacked claiming that criticism of his witnesses was:

“Just an attempt by some to drum up national publicity.”

At today’s hearing he pandered on a similar issue:

…“There are some who are more concerned about the front-page press than today,” Mr. Ball said. “I understand politics. But we cannot allow our homeland security to become a political football.”

Obscure rural politicians never attempt to drum up state-wide or national publicity by holding hearings on non-existent problems, do they?  And they’re certainly not concerned about front page press.  And kicking Muslims in the gut is certainly not political, not at all.

One of the stars of the proceedings was the notorious Mr. King himself who made this typically two-faced statement both exonerating and blaming Muslims for terror in practically the same breath:

Mr. King prefaced his comments by noting that “99 percent” of Muslims in the United States are “outstanding Americans” and not terrorists.

“But the fact is: The enemy, or those being recruited by Al Qaeda, live within the Muslim community, and that’s the reality we have to face,” Mr. King said. “This is not to put a broad brush over a community, but you go where the threat is coming from, and that’s the reality today.”

I’ve already reported here that Gaffney’s ‘Roy Cohn,’ David Yerushalmi, who is general counsel of the former’s Center for National Security, received a failing report card from the ADL, which labelled him an extremist and compared his views to that of the white supremacist New World Order.

But I just learned the even more startling news that during the Stop the Madrassa campaign led in part by Yerushalmi, he sued Debbie Almontaser for defamation.  She told me that she had accused Yerushalmi and his shrill collaborators of stalking her.  The crack lawyer not only lost his suit, but he lost the appeal and Almontaser emerged vindicated and victorious.

Again, this an example of the concept of lawfare, a term used by  pro-Israel advocates to smear legitimate attempts to hold Israeli leaders accountable for violations of international law.  Except here Yerushalmi turns the concept on its head to harass his opponents.  I recently received a dose of this with a threat of a lawsuit from him, which he subsequently withdrew.

NOTE: I’ve been a bit distracted from the blog this week because I was defending a libel lawsuit in Los Angeles.   More news after the judge renders her decision.