And Mark never seems to display his wit or sense of humor in either his submissions or his replies. What’s up with that?

“John#2, I would not say that the U.S. is backing this horse for religious purposes.”

Israel’s support with the public seems to be all faith-based. I know many people who sincerely say the US must support “God’s chosen people” or else bad things will happen to our counrty.

“Warren seems to find it hard to resist taking shots at Mark. What’s up with that, Warren?”

Because he gets tired of taking shots at me all the time.

I suppose our best hope is that “new leadership” will eventually figure out that “leading” is much more different and more difficult (and in this case dangerous) than sitting on the sidelines pushing an extreme agenda.

As an aside, we seem to have the same issues with our “leadership” here.

I think the highly informed Thomas Friedman’s recent NYT column on the ramifications of Netanyahu’s public support for loser Mitt Romney in the US election was right. Friedman said that no, Israel won’t suffer any penalty, because, as he told his worried Israeli friends, “you should be so lucky”. His point being that Israel has put itself out on a limb more than ever at the very time when U.S. priorities are on domestic issues and other areas of the world, so Israel cannot expect to benefit from America’s attention as much as it might be accustomed.

I would also note that nearly two years later, Mark’s predictions about Egypt, which he timed in months, have yet to occur. The picture is still evolving, as all politics always does, but in the first elections the Muslim Brotherhood only ended up with a portion of the governing coalition. Morsi already is “clarifying” (i.e. backing off) some of the declarations he recently tried to do like suspension of judicial review, and he did play a key role in forging the Israeli/Hamas truce two weeks ago.

There are in fact strong incentives from within for any Egyptian government to want stability in Gaza, to shun jihadists groups, and to try to move Hamas towards some form of working arrangement with the PA and ultimately Israel.

(And BTW, Mark, in light of your having previously characterized it as unfortunate that more opinion columnists can’t make a living at it, you might want to ask prospective agents about the significance of the phrase “regular column”.)