There's nothing that says "Welcome to Gaza" like the Erez border crossing.

On one side is Israel's high-tech border terminal, complete with its maze of gates, metal detectors, body scanners, and bomb rooms — all navigated without ever coming close to Israeli guards who watch the whole process from a second-story bank of offices overlooking the screening section

On the other side of the terminal is a vast Palestinian wasteland.

This is the No Man's Land between Israel and Hamas-controlled Gaza.

And it is an all-too-perfect metaphor for the state of affairs in this isolated Mediterranean strip.

At one time, this vast field was a thriving, Turkish-run industrial zone with large factories producing goods for Israel and jobs for Palestinians.

The site became a target of Palestinian militant attacks and was shuttered by Israel in 2004.

Over the years, the Israeli military gradually razed all the abandoned buildings in this no man's land, leaving behind vast stretches of rubble.

All that remained was a rudimentary covered concrete tunnel that connected the Israeli border terminal to the Palestinian side of Gaza.

This is what it looked like in 2005 as you entered Gaza:

 
After Hamas militants seized control of Gaza in June, 2007, hundreds of Palestinians sought to escape into Israel as scavengers methodically dismantled the tunnel.

This is the same tunnel as it was being dismantled by the Palestinian scavengers.

Within weeks, most of the tunnel was gone.

For more than two years, this has been the state of the border crossing.

But now there is surprising new construction at Erez.

Palestinian workers are building a 700-yard covered concrete walkway leading from the remains of the old tunnel to the Palestinian border control caravan.

The project is being done with the blessing of Israeli officials who approved a rare supply of cement to build the walkway.

Work on the Palestinian side is being coordinated by Palestinian border officials who answer not to Hamas, but to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

Is this a sign of rebirth at Gaza?

Not really.

The construction comes as Israel is preparing to close its main fuel terminal with Gaza, which supplies the 1.4 million Palestinians with everything from cooking gas to fuel for Gaza's only power plant.

Israel plans to use another terminal at Kerem Shalom to transfer fuel. But humanitarian groups say the new terminal can't handle the necessary fuel for Gaza.

According to UN reports, Israel is still only allowing a trickle of goods. The UN reported that the number of truckloads allowed into Gaza by Israel hit a new low in September.

Last month, Israel allowed about 2,100 truckloads of goods into Gaza. Before Hamas took control of Gaza, Israel allowed more than 12,000 truckloads of goods to enter Gaza each month.

Recently, an Israeli government official was boasting that military surveillance showed that Gaza markets were full and teeming with goods. He pointed it out to suggest that Israeli restrictions were not harming Gaza.

Of course, he deftly neglected to mention that most of the goods found in Gaza markets these days don't come from Israel. They come through the dangerous network of illegal smuggling tunnels to Egypt…

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Is it possible that reporters in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Lebanon have more freedom than their colleagues in Israel?

If you ask Reporters Without Borders, the answer is: Yes.

For the first time since the Paris-based group started issuing its Press Freedom Index, Israel has lost its place as the best country in the Middle East for freedom of the press.

Reporters Without Borders said Israel's ranking is in "free fall" because of the country's decisions to arrest and detain both Israeli reporters and foreign journalists.

Because of such moves, Israel's ranking in the survey of 175 countries plummeted from 46th last year to 93rd place in the latest index.

And, because of Israel's widely criticized decision to bar journalists from freely entering Gaza last winter to cover its controversial military offensive, Israel's secondary ranking for press freedom in the West Bank and Gaza Strip plunged to 150th place, right below Sudan and Afghanistan.

For comparison, the US ranking jumped in one year from 36th to 20th for press freedom inside its borders. And the US ranking rose from 118th and 108th (below the UAE, Oman and Qatar) for press freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Israel was buffeted by a lot of criticism for clamping down on press freedom during the last military offensive in Gaza. (Cartoonists had a field day. In one example, Al Jazeera produced this cartoon, at right…)

But, to this day, Israeli government officials are unapologetic about the move, which some Israeli leaders saw as a critical element in the government's war plans.

Danny Seaman, head of the Israeli Government Press Office, defended the media ban during the fighting by saying that reporters who went into Gaza became Hamas apologists.

“Any journalist who enters Gaza becomes a fig leaf and front for the Hamas terror organization, and I see no reason why we should help that,” Danny said at the time.

After the fighting subsided, Danny famously denied there was a media ban and called international reporters covering the aftermath in Gaza "spoiled crybabies" and a "disgrace to their profession."

Earlier this week, another veteran Israeli government spokesman defended the media ban by making the argument that any reporter who went into Gaza, especially those who had never been there before, were likely to do little more than parrot Hamas propaganda.

That defense, coming from an Israeli official who had previously professed some sympathy with reporters barred from getting into Gaza, suggests that Israeli leaders are unlikely to see their latest press freedom rankings as much to worry about…

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For months before Israel's military offensive in Gaza last winter, Israeli papers were filled with ominous stories suggesting that Hamas militants in Gaza were  developing into a formidable force, trained by Iran, armed with advanced weapons, and prepared for battle.

When the showdown finally came, how did Hamas perform?

In a word: Fail.

A new report from the  Washington Report for Near East Policy documents the obvious:

"Hamas and its military wing, the Izz
al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (IDQB), accomplished little militarily," the report notes. "Most of their operations were futile, and
their only real success was their ability to continue firing rockets into Israel, which in any case declined after
three weeks of combat."

According to the report:

"Hamas’s military performance must also be placed
in a broader context: the combat qualities of Islamic
militants and the efficacy of 'armed struggle.' In the
past, much attention was focused on Hezbollah and
Taliban military prowess, but the IDQB’s performance
in Gaza provides a different perspective, demonstrating
that the 'Islamic way of war' is more varied and complex than experience in Lebanon and Afghanistan suggests.

"These combat qualities depend on many factors;
not all Islamic warriors are larger than life, and in fact,
the Qassam Brigades in Cast Lead showed themselves
to be quite the opposite."

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Remember "Valley of the Wolves," the 2006 Turkish movie blockbuster about the American invasion of Iraq that depicted US soldiers as brutish, callous warriors who gun down unarmed Iraqi women and children?

The film was widely denounced in the US as anti-American. A Wall Street Journal editorial condemned the movie as "a cross between 'American Psycho' in uniform and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

Now Turkey is back with a new TV show that is drawing similar ire from Israel.

Israeli leaders are publicly denouncing "Farewell," a Turkish TV series that depicts Israeli soldiers as brutish, callous warriors who gun down unarmed Palestinian women and children.

The clip below begins with Palestinian stone throwers facing off against Israeli soldiers. Soon some Palestinians pick up guns and fire on the Israeli soldiers. Soon thereafter, an Israeli soldier on patrol blithely shoots and kills a smiling young Palestinian girl.

The series is airing at a time of increased tensions between Israel and Turkey. Turkey recently barred Israel from taking part in recent NATO war games, citing public anger towards Israel.

(In February, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan famously walked out of a Davos panel he was sharing with Israeli President Shimon Peres, to protest Israel's winter military offensive in Gaza.)

At the same time, Turkey and neighboring Syria are working to improve their relations.

(Turkey also led a dormant effort to mediate peace talks between Syria and Israel.)

Time Magazine suggests that the political maneuvering won't severely damage relations between Israel and Turkey.

"Pragmatism is still likely to keep the crisis in check," Time concludes. "Israel is involved in two major defense projects in Turkey that are worth more than $1 billion, and the prickly issue of Iran's nuclear program looms larger than anything else in the region. But the latest dispute signals that it is no longer business as usual between the two erstwhile friends."

Tags: Checkpoint Jerusalem

Gaza's zoo has always been fertile ground for news stories about animals trapped in a conflict zone.

The latest installment in the Gaza zoo story comes from the AP, which reports that Gaza zookeepers have painted two donkeys in black and white patterns to look like zebras.

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In the first real sign of progress in talks to free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, Hamas has agreed to release the first video of the 23-year-old soldier captured by Gaza militants more than three years ago.

After approving release of the prisoners, Israel's security cabinet said the deal comes ahead of "decisive stages" in the difficult talks.

Israel's Channel 10 reported that German mediators have already seen the one-minute videotape, which is supposed to be turned over to Israeli officials on Friday.

The deal is the first significant breakthrough in talks that have bogged down largely over disagreements over which Palestinian prisoners should be freed in exchange for Shalit's freedom.

It is not clear that Israel and Hamas are any closer to resolving that underlying issue. But the tape is certain to become major news since it will offer Israel and the world the first visual evidence of how Shalit has been treated and what he looks like after three years in captivity.

A few weeks ago, Israel approved release of a letter Shalit wrote soon after his capture in which he described his situation as an "unbearable nightmare."

More than two years ago, Hamas released an audiotape of Shalit in which the young Israeli soldier said he was in poor health and in need of extended medical care.

The new video probably won't lead to a quick agreement, but it is a significant step that could set the stage for a deal.

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New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman suggests in today's column that the political atmosphere in the US today is similar to the atmosphere in Israel when PM Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995.

"I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left," Friedman writes. " But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination."

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On-line media innovator Arianna Huffington is in Israel this week trying to understand and write about the complex situation for The Huffington Post.

On Night One, she dined with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who told Arianna that he was an "ABB: Anybody But Bush," and that the Palestinians "need to accept becoming a Palestinian state even before the borders are finalized."

What?

When PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad unveiled a plan last month for creating a Palestinian state within two years, Israeli leaders reacted with consternation...

The following day, Arianna met with Israeli President Shimon Peres, who seduced her with his optimism.

"It's hard to spend any time with Israeli President Shimon Peres and remain pessimistic about the possibility of peace," she wrote of the Nobel Peace Prize-winner whose centrist Kadima party has been relegated to back bench status while the conservative Benjamin Netanyahu leads a right-leaning coalition government that has taken a hard-line on talks with the PA and forcefully rebuffed US attempts to secure a freeze on Israeli settlement building that the nation was supposed to enact in the first phase of the "Road Map" for Middle East peace...

Once imbued with Peres-fueled optimism, Arianna set out to see the settlements for herself.

"Taking it all in, it's hard not to feel weighed down by a sense of hopelessness over the divisions that seem even more entrenched and permanent than the intruding settlements themselves," she wrote today. "Yet, in this land of miracles, we can still imagine the emergence of the kind of leadership that can transform both old hatreds and the facts on the ground."

Tags: Checkpoint Jerusalem

And so it has been written: Crocs are too comfy for Yom Kippur.

After being asked to weigh in on this important issue, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi has determined that the ugly plastic clog doesn't provide the appropriate level of suffering for the Jewish holy day of atonement.

While Rabbi Elyashiv concluded that it would be technically OK to wear the ugly, but (some say) comfy, shoes, it would be "inadvisable" because they are too comfy.

As the JTA noted a few years ago, Crocs have become the shoe of choice for Jewish worshipers who are barred from wearing leather shoes during Yom Kippur because they are viewed as too comfy.

Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper concluded that this ruling could pose a challenge this year for those looking for a little relief from the discomfort while standing for hours during synagogue prayers...

Tags: Checkpoint Jerusalem

During the recent Ramadan holiday, Palestine TV launched an innovative new comedy, "Country on a String," that won praise from pundits and viewers for daring to poke fun at corruption in the Palestinian Authority and Hamas rulers in the Gaza Strip.

Time Magazine produced this nice video on the series, which shows some snippets from the episodes, including one in which they lampoon Hamas leaders for imposing new rules that required female attorneys in Gaza to wear head scarves.

(The restrictions evolve to the point where everyone is wearing burqas without eye holes, so neither the judges nor the lawyers can see what's going on in the courtroom...)

The sitcom producers are hoping the series will have a life after Ramadan... 

Tags: Checkpoint Jerusalem

In the most comprehensive investigation of Israel's controversial winter offensive in the Gaza Strip, a special United Nations committee has concluded that the Israeli military and Palestinian militants committed war crimes during the three-week confrontation.

While the 575-page report accuses both Hamas and the Israeli military of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, the bulk of the investigation focuses on Israel

"The Mission concludes that what occurred in just over three weeks at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability," the UN concluded.

In incident after incident, the UN investigators concluded that the Israeli military took questionable steps by using Palestinians as human shields, killing civilians waving white flags, deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians, unnecessarily demolishing Palestinian homes, recklessly using white phosphorus in densely populated areas, and more.

The report will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council on Sept. 29, which will decide whether to refer it to the Security Council.

If Israel does not conduct a serious and independent investigation within the next six months, the UN report stated, the UN should consider pursuing the war crimes in the International Criminal Court.

The findings have touched off a firestorm of controversy in Israel.

“The report is nothing less than a declaration of war upon Israel,” high-ranking Foreign Ministry officials reportedly told Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. “It requires the most complicated diplomatic and legal battles in the country’s history. We never expected such a harsh report. It has caused a stir and begun to create a very negative effect.”

In Israel Today, Dan Margalit called the report, prepared by a team led by the Jewish, South African jurist Richard Goldstone, "classic anti-Semitism."

"The liberal anti-Semitism strides delicately, appoints a hostile commission and finds an obsequious Jew, to dance to the tune of the Gentile landowner," Margalit wrote. "The role was assigned to Richard Goldstone, and he met the expectations fully."

In Yedioth, commentaor Eitan Haber said it would be a mistake for Israel to dismiss the UN report.

"We did not need Goldstone and his friends to know that in Operation Cast Lead there were severe cases unbefitting the Israeli army," Haber wrote. "In [the world's] eyes, we are war criminals, contemptible people, killers of small children. This, at the moment, is the image that is being created for us throughout the world—villains, evil, cruel, murderers."

"We can propose that the UN, its institutions and the commission 'kiss our behind' and move on as if nothing had happened," Haber wrote. "What do we care, actually? We should care very much. Slowly but surely, this terrible image will close in on us in the international arena, and then it will not only be Doron Almog who will not be able to travel to London. We will no longer be able to fly to Antalya and the casino at Varna as well. And this will already be a decree that the Israeli public will not be able to withstand. It would be very unwise to mock, downplay or disregard the report. It would be very wise to come out of this trouble safe and sound. The State of Israel would do well to launch a worldwide campaign already this morning, a diplomatic and PR campaign. We should mobilize all of the State of Israel’s best forces, because, as people once used to write in the Israeli press: It is a matter of the utmost importance."

The Israeli government is already taking up the cause.

Today, Israeli President Shimon Peres said the UN report made a "mockery of history."

Many Israeli commentators are assessing the impact of the report on Israel's image.

"The Goldstone report reinforces the most serious strategic threat Israel brought upon itself with the Gaza offensive, in that it saps international legitimacy for a similar operation in the future," Aluf Benn wrote in Haaretz. "A country considering attacking the nuclear reactor in Iran, and then endangering itself to rocket fire from Lebanon and Gaza in response, will have to take into account whether the world will give Israel another opportunity for a severe, crushing response.

Tags: Checkpoint Jerusalem

For years, former Pentagon intelligence analyst Marc Garlasco has been a go-to source for reporters around the world on military issues from Iraq and Israel to Georgia and Afghanistan.

His role as chief of high-value targeting for the Pentagon (which meant that he decided which sites in Iraq the US military should hit) gave him solid credibility when he transformed into a dogged senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch.

(Garlasco appeared on Fresh Air with Terry Gross to discuss his transformation.)

Now Garlasco is at the center of a damaging controversy over revelations that he is a collector of Nazi memorabilia.

The news, unearthed and released by staunch supporters of Israel who have been doing extensive research on Human Rights Watch, has now prompted the group to suspend Garlasco while it examines the allegations.

While HRW says the suspension is not a disciplinary step, the group has been buffeted by a prolonged attack that has included a scathing critique of Joe Stork, the deputy director of HRW's Middle East and North Africa division.

Garlasco sought to defuse the controversy with a piece for The Huffington Post in which he described himself as a "military geek" whose interest in Nazi medals grew out of his family history: His German grandfather was a conscript who served in the Nazi anti-aircraft battery during World War II.

"The Second World War turned my grandfather, who was conscripted and served on an anti-aircraft battery, into a staunch pacifist," Garlasco wrote. "He couldn't understand why I went to work at the Pentagon, where I was on 9/11, of learning from his experiences - the horrific stories he told me late in life of seeing the bodies he shot down fall out of the sky. It wasn't until he died that I really took his lessons to heart, and decided to use my military expertise to try to lessen the horrors of war. So I left my government career and joined Human Rights Watch to use my expertise in weapons systems and targeting to push soldiers to protect civilians, to uphold the laws born in the ashes of the Second World War."

Garlasco, backed by HRW, has stated plainly that he has never expressed pro-Nazi or anti-Semitic views.

But HRW's critics have scoured thousands of Garlasco's postings on memorabilia Web sites and unearthed selected comments, including one in which he said a "leather SS jacket makes my blood run cold it is so COOL!"

Other bloggers posted a photo of Garlasco wearing a sweatshirt with an Iron Cross on it and questioned Garlasco's defense.

"It is extraordinarily bad taste and truly offensive that the same person who habitually castigates the Jewish state to a worldwide audience has a creepy obsession with the symbols of those who tried to destroy all Jews," wrote the Elder of Ziyon blog.

The criticism hasn't only come from conservatives and staunch supporters of Israel. Helena Cobban, a member of an HRW Middle East advisory committee, called Garlasco's hobby "bizarre and disturbing."

Cobban said the controversy was overshadowing the work HRW has done in documenting possible war crimes by the Israeli military in Gaza.

Richard Silverstein at Tikkun Olam criticized Cobban for lashing out at Garlasco, who also wrote a 400-page book, long publicly available on Amazon, about Nazi medals.

"I don’t really understand why you would suspend someone from his professional assignment when his only fault is having a hobby that few outsiders can comprehend as meaningful or interesting," Silverstein wrote. "Garlasco has made no statement either supporting Nazism or condemning Israel or Jews. In fact, he has harshly criticized the Nazis in the introduction to a book he wrote on collecting such historical artifacts."

The issue has even garnered the attention of Gawker, the gossip Web site that questioned Garlasco's defense.

"There's more going on there than just fanboy enthusiasm for historical artifacts," Gawker opined. "It's a fascination with the remnants of an evil regime, and it seems to us that the fascination bears some relationship to the magnitude of the evil."

As Garlasco noted, he has never hidden his hobby. HRW officials apparently knew long ago about Garlasco's book and never raised any concerns until the Israeli government and its staunch supporters made the issue public.

"My hope is that HRW is suspending Garlasco with the intent on resolving this matter quickly and reinstating him," Silverstein wrote. "The ostensible reason for suspending him is to investigate the matter more fully. I presume someone will want to go over his 8,000 posts contributed to a few collectors discussion forums, to ensure he never said anything that might be further damaging to HRW. Thus far, nothing I have read is in the least incriminating."

Tags: Checkpoint Jerusalem

Ever since it launched more than a decade ago, Al Jazeera has been viewed by many in the West as an inflammatory propaganda tool for anti-American interests in the Middle East.

The evolution of Al Jazeera was captured in the 2004 documentary "Control Room," which followed Al Jazeera reporters as they covered the Iraq war. (A US Marine Corps spokesman featured in the film, Josh Rushing, has gone on to become a reporter for Al Jazeera English.)

Three years ago, Al Jazeera launched its 24-hour English language channel, Al Jazeera English, which has quickly evolved into a sophisticated, interesting and evocative cable news outlet.

While few in the US can get AJE, those of us in the Middle East are able to regularly watch the station and assess its merits. 

(One of the few places in the US where you can see AJE is Washington, DC, where MHz Networks began offering AJE to customers earlier this year.)

Now, Robert Kaplan, the veteran foreign correspondent and author, is lauding AJE in The Atlantic with a piece titled: "Why I Love Al Jazeera."

"The Qatar-based Arab TV channel’s eclectic internationalism—a feast of vivid, pathbreaking coverage from all continents—is a rebuke to the dire predictions about the end of foreign news as we know it,"  Kaplan writes. "Indeed, if Al Jazeera were more widely available in the United States—on nationwide cable, for example, instead of only on the Web and several satellite stations and local cable channels—it would eat steadily into the viewership of The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer. Al Jazeera—not Lehrer—is what the internationally minded elite class really yearns for: a visually stunning, deeply reported description of developments in dozens upon dozens of countries simultaneously."

As Kaplan notes in the piece, reporting on AJE can be uneven, and some reports exude more bias than others. He criticizes AJE for its "moral rectitude," especially in its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war in Iraq.

"Yet Al Jazeera is forgivable for its biases in a way that the BBC or CNN is not," Kaplan writes. "In the case of Al Jazeera, news isn’t so much biased as honestly representative of a middle-of-the-road developing-world viewpoint. Where you stand depends upon where you sit. And if you sit in Doha or Mumbai or Nairobi, the world is going to look starkly different than if you sat in Washington or London, or St. Louis for that matter."

AJE is compelling viewing because it consistently produces and airs interesting pieces you won't see on the BBC, CNN, Fox or other international news channels that strive to cover the world.

"George Orwell intimated in 1984 that purity can be a form of coercion, and in that respect, I find Al Jazeera’s moral rectitude disturbing," Kaplan concludes. "Because its cause is that of the weak and the oppressed, it sees itself as always in the right, regardless of the complexity of the issues, and therein lies its power of oppression. But I will continue watching Al Jazeera wherever I can, because I find it so riveting compared with other news channels. And if my politics crawl to the left as a result, that will be yet more evidence of just how insidious Al Jazeera’s influence is."

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One of the most spectacular strikes during Israel's winter military offensive in Gaza came in the waning days of the fighting when Israeli white phosphorus shells hit the central United Nations compound, set the warehouse ablaze and sent a towering column of black smoke rising above Gaza City.

The UN eventually accused Israel of "negligence or recklessness" in hitting the UN warehouse, UN schools and other UN buildings during the offensive.

Israeli President Shimon Peres dismissed the UN report as biased and relations between Israel and the UN have soured considerably in the aftermath of the Gaza offensive.

Now, with the support of his superiors, one of the UN's most prominent spokesman in Jerusalem has embarked on an unusual and controversial attempt to engage Israelis by performing a one-man show in which he becomes the embodiment of the Gaza warehouse and metaphorically burns down before Israeli audiences.

As might be expected, this unique dramatic performance by Chris Gunness, spokesman for the UN Palestinian refugee agency, has sparked renewed debate about the UN, Israel and Gaza.

During the play's debut last May, one audience member rose up to try and shout down Gunness as he told the story of the warehouse.

Earlier this month, hours before Gunness was set to perform the show in Acre, the theater manager abruptly pulled the plug. Some said the theater manager came under direct political pressure from city officials who wanted to prevent the play from being seen.

Gunness says the show isn't meant to be accusatory. It's meant, he says, to show Israelis what happened in Gaza as UN workers repeatedly tried to get the Israeli military to re-direct its strikes and then battled a volatile inferno after Israeli white phosphorus rained down on the compound where hundreds of Palestinians had sought refuge.

But some Israelis see it as provocative finger-pointing.

Gunness says the show touches a nerve, but that it is a unique way to engage Israelis and start a new conversation.

Gunness is scheduled to perform "Building Understanding: Epitaph for a Warehouse" on Oct. 22 at the Hasimta Theater in Jaffa... 

(Top photo: AP/A Palestinian watches the UN warehouse in Gaza City burn. Bottom photo: Chris Gunness)

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The religious council in Lod, Israel has come up with a unique way to deter drunk revelers from peeing on their walls: Dare them to pee under the watchful eye of prominent rabbis.

Faced with an unpleasant stink left by drunks who would pee on the walls of their building, the Lod religious council decided to spruce things up by putting up pictures of rabbis and holy items on the wall.

Apparently even drunks aren't willing to risk the wrath of god by peeing under the watchful eye of rabbis.

"I even kiss the wall," one youth at a café near the wall told Yedioth Ahronoth. "It's like a holy wall. And it is also very beautiful."

When asked if, in dire circumstances, he would pee on the wall, the person told Yedioth: "Heaven forbid. Near the rabbis watching you? Even criminals respect the rabbis, that's how it is here, there is respect for religious clerics."

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