Eight days before the Eight Days [of Hanukkah]

I had meant to post during the latest round of violence in Israel/Palestine, but didn't get the chance. (It is a measure of the massive media bias against Israel that I almost wrote "assault on Gaza" in that last sentence). The total death toll, thanks to the Iron Dome defence system, was 5 Israelis and (according to Al Jazeera) 162 Gazans. How Hamas can continue to countenance such a huge death toll on the part of Palestinians (not to mention claiming victory), only they can answer. But since 9pm local time (7pm GMT), there has been a truce between Israel and Hamas. It's important to emphasize that the strikes by the Israeli Defence Force (Tzahal - Tzvi HaHagana LeYisrael) only took place in response to months of rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas - a point conveniently forgotten by the Hamas spokesman who announced the victory, er ceasefire. This conflict saw the following worrying developments:

• The new Egyptian President, Mohamed Morsi, who was recently caught on camera praying to Allah to "deal with the Jews", immediately visited Gaza to lend moral support to Hamas.
• It took UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon *6* days to saunter over to the Middle East to suggest that, you know, the parties might want to stop fighting. It took the Pope one more day.
• Egypt threatened to abrogate the peace treaty with Israel. This would leave Israel at peace with only one of 21 Arab states (usually defined as the members of the Arab League, and not including Palestine, which has representation at the League but is not yet a state), namely Jordan.
• The Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an Islamist in a traditionally moderate Muslim state and ally of Israel, accused Israel of "terrorism".

We don't yet know how the future of Israel will pan out given the new, even more hostile environment Israel now finds itself in. We can only hope that it doesn't get any worse.