Helped by the good services of Hizbollah and Hamas, the prophets and standard-bearers of orange find their way back to the Israeli mainstream. Opportunists who chose to join the ranks of Sharon and Kadimah about a year ago, or who while participating in the implementation of the disengagement plan chose not to speak their mind, now suddenly start telling us what they 'really' think. What is sickening, though, is this kind of nonsense. If Uri Elitzur can say with heavenly confidence that the bad things that happened to us during the past year - and I will be the last person to claim that it has been a good year, see my article in Dutch of early last week - were a punishment for the disengagement, I could say just as easily and with almost as much authority and confidence say that they were a retribution for:

• our treatment of foreign workers;
• the deaths of Palestinian children and the other injustices commited not only for the sake but also under the pretext of our security;
• the fact that so many of our soldiers are trained to be policemen and occupiers rather than real soldiers;
• the fact that every shekel spent on the continuation and expansion of the occupation cannot be invested in education, health, the economy etc;
• the gap between haves and have-nots in this state;
• our treatment of animals;
• the way we ( refuse to ) deal with the environment;
• the fact that we have an ever-expanding charity industry on which hundreds of thousands of Jews and non-Jews depend for their very survival, an industry that works overtime before and during each and every holiday and is a livelihood for many Israelis ;
• and so on;
• and so on.

Don't get me wrong, I do not really believe that the bad things that befell us in 5767 were a punishment for anything specific. I am too much of a believer ( in G'd, in - divine - justice ) to really believe that He works in such primitive and simplistic tit-for-tat ways. If I thought He did, I might as well believe that the Shoah was a divine punishment, and I do not think that I could have any faith in or respect for such a god. We humans should not assume or pretend to be privy to His ways and plans. Those who say and are entirely convinced that they are in the Know frighten me, no matter if their name is Hassan or Uri.