Ministers have serious strategic and moral questions on their minds, but do they have a mandate to act as an interim government?

The latest assault by Gazan terrorists on Israel came at a strange time, politically.

It’s clear that the timing was influenced by the upcoming Independence Day celebrations and, even more so, by next week’s Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv, with Palestinian Islamic Jihad escalating the situation on Saturday by shooting at IDF soldiers, and explicitly threatening the international musical extravaganza.

It’s funny – in a gallows-humor type way – to recall that six months ago, political commentators were predicting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would try to call an election for the end of May, so that he would ride high in the polls on the joy and national pride of the two big events. The way things look now, it’s lucky for him that he moved up the schedule.

In a bizarre way, the Eurovision seems to have turned into a consideration in the Security Cabinet’s deliberations as to how to respond. Continue reading