The WaPo editorials are making sense these days.

Ms. Rice is trying to solidify an alliance of “the mainstream” against Iran and in support of U.S. policy in Iraq. To do that, she is making a high-profile effort to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process — in spite of an unfavorable situation in the region — because “the mainstream states . . . would actually really like to see a resolution of this conflict now.”

The new strategy explains a series of reversals of U.S. policy that otherwise would be baffling. In addition to embracing the Middle East peacemaker role that it has shunned for six years, the administration has decided to seek $98 million in funding for Palestinian security forces — the same forces it rightly condemned in the past as hopelessly corrupt and compromised by involvement in terrorism. Those forces haven’t changed, but since they are nominally loyal to “mainstream” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and serve as a check on the power of the “extremist” Hamas, they are on the right side of Ms. Rice’s new divide.

So is Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a thuggish autocrat who was on the wrong side of Ms. Rice’s previous Mideast divide between pro-democracy forces and defenders of the illiberal status quo. In past visits to Cairo, Ms. Rice sparred with Mr. Mubarak’s foreign minister over the imprisonment of democratic opposition leaders such as Ayman Nour and the failure to fulfill promises of political reform. On Monday, she opened her Cairo news conference by declaring that “the relationship with Egypt is an important strategic relationship, one that we value greatly.” There was no mention of Mr. Nour or democracy.

Wow. Who’s writing these things? What’s with the WaPo?

(Post fixed. It’s the Washington Post, not LA Times.)

The first rabbi to be ordained since the Holocaust covers his kippa with a baseball cap for fear of anti-Semitic attacks.

The first rabbi to be ordained in Germany since the Holocaust is so worried about being identified as a Jew that he often wears a baseball hat over his skull cap.

“It’s a fact - it isn’t smart to display I’m Jewish. This is a problem and we have to face it,” German-born Daniel Alter, 47, told Reuters in an interview.

He is worried about neo-Nazi attacks and says anti-Semitism in Germany - still tortured by memories of the Holocaust in which Nazis wiped out six million Jews - puts the growth of Jewish communities here at risk.

As a Jew he feels unsafe in several German cities, not all in former communist east Germany where the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) has made electoral gains recently.

Gee, I keep getting told by commenter after commenter that worldwide anti-Semitism is going down. So I guess this is just an example of how anti-Semitism is being eradicated:

The number of far-right offences in Germany, many of which were anti-Semitic, jumped 20 percent in the first eight months of 2006, according to the latest available police data.

Last year activists burned Holocaust victim Anne Frank’s diaries and made a teenager wear a sign saying he was a Jew. Many Jewish establishments have police guards and a German all-Jewish football team suffers weekly abuse.

The one thing I will say to Germany’s credit is that her politicians and many of her people are working against these creeps. But as to why anti-Semitism in Germany is rising, perhaps this could be one reason:

A report prepared at the request of the German Interior Ministry revealed that 5,000 Germans converted to Islam between July 2004 and June 2005, a figure that is four times higher than that of the previous year.

Looks like Germany’s 3 million Muslims are gaining a foothold.

By now you all know that IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, the Air Force General most people blame for the Lebanon war turning into a debacle resigned. But let us not let Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz off the hook for their miserable conduct of the war, either. Because the Israeli public isn’t.

85% of Israelis want Peretz to resign. And Olmert isn’t looking too good, what with being investigated in yet another financial scandal involving high-level Israeli politicians. (By the way, Israeli politicians make New Jersey politicians look honest and clean, which is not saying a whole lot for Israeli politicians.) Is there a single major Israeli politician who is not corrupt? Just wondering.

The idiots in Hezbullah are celebrating this as a “victory.” So is Hamas. The fools don’t realize that this is anything but a victory for them, presuming Olmert chooses a better Chief of Staff. It’s difficult to see how he could choose any worse. The problem is that the IDF under Halutz was refusing to take responsibility for the major mistakes made, or implement changes so that they don’t happen again. When you send reserves to the front with incomplete equipment and not enough food, there is something terribly, terribly wrong with the IDF. These problems need to be addressed, responsibility assigned, and changes executed.

Overall, I think it’s a very good thing that Halutz is gone. Peretz needs to go next, and he needs to be replaced by someone who actually knows something about defense. As for Olmert: The clock is ticking, Ehud.