Israel has been experiencing a wave of underworld killings, as rival crime families have been taking each other out, either with car bombs or in the more traditional method, shooting each other I the face.

The most recent case took place yesterday, Shabbat, in broad daylight, in Tel Aviv. It was the third assassination in recent weeks.

But, you know, Israeli criminals have been quite good about avoiding collateral damage. We live in Netanya, which is considered the crime capital of Israel (kind of like Chicago, but with more French people), and we hear about those assassinations, and we’re yet to hear about anyone getting killed who wasn’t supposed to be.

So, while we think the prime minister should do something to better handle these crimes, we also think the current means, such as a hardy bucket and a good, thick mop, are just fine.

An Israeli court this morning released for publication the news that the police Internal Affairs unit, known here as Dept. of Policemen Investigation, is looking into suspicions that Commander Menashe Arviv, appointed only last September chief of the prestigious anti-organized crime Lahav 433 unit – was bribed.

According to Yedioth, one of my favorite foundations of Israel’s democracy, Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich, congratulated Arviv on his appointment, saying: “I ask of you to treat them with force, it is a mitzvah to do so. In this war there is only one winner, and that is the police.”

He probably shouldn’t have mentioned the mitzvah thing, because, next thing you know, Arviv is being accused of being bribed by receiving favors from sources close to Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, a cabalist from a long line of miracle workers, also know as “a rabbi to the rich and famous.”

At this point there’s still a court gag order on the nature of the favors the crime fighter received from the mystic, but we’ve been led to understand the latter has turned state’s evidence in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

I’m not saying that’s what happened, but the idea of a meeting between a wired cabalist and a straying police commander is the stuff Hollywood movies are made of.

Commander Arviv, who is yet to be interrogated, met yesterday with Commissioner Yohanan Danino—one of the original founders of Lahav 433—and informed him he was taking a much needed vacation. He also told anyone who would listen that this is a libel, which the coming investigation would surely prove.

Except that it doesn’t look like anyone is doing a big investigation, seeing as Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, another great democrat, simply got one of the two suspects in the stinky affair to admit he did it together with the other—in exchange for walking away scot-free. The narrative is already in place, then, and the cops are now only searching for corroborating evidence. Unless he gets a really sharp lawyer, it looks like Arviv is done for.

But there’s more to the case than favors from one rabbi to his policeman. Israel’s Forbes richest rabbis list quotes Rabbi Pinto’s wealth at $21-million, give or take. according to press reports, Pinto is connected to the leaders of NY City’s real estate industry, including, most notably, executives in Metropolitan Real Estate Investors and Prudential Douglas Elliman. His devoted followers include Jay Schottenstein, chairman of the American Eagle Outfitters clothing company, real-estate mogul Jacky Ben-Zaken, 5W Public Relations owner Ronn Torossian, Congressman Michael Gerard Grimm (R, Staten Island), and even basketball player LeBron James of the Miami Heat.

And, until his fortunes changed so radically, former Congressman Anthony Weiner.

Rabbi Pinto is a deal maker, an influence-peddler, admired by people with staggering amounts of money as “something between a guru and a Chasidic rebbe,” and useful to all of them in more than just spiritual advice.

All of the above is not what one would normally expect from a rabbi, but Pinto is no ordinary rabbi, and, as long as he continues to do good in the world—he has founded yeshivas and is supporting several others, as part of a global movement called Mosdot Shuva Israel—he shouldn’t have to apologize for knowing wealthy people.

Food preparation at a soup kitchen run by Rabbi Pinto’s charity in Ashdod. Photo by Yaakov Naumi/Flash90.

But there are cracks in that picture, through which we see flashes of the good rabbi’s skirting the line between what’s legal and what’s suspect.

Palestinian Authority security forces were forced to flee from gunmen early Monday during an attempt to arrest them, according to the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency.

PA soldiers, officially called “policemen,” raided a village in northeast Samaria to carry out arrests but were forced to withdraw under a hail of Molotov cocktails. The security forces  returned later with reinforcements and wounded two people while arresting five suspects. The news agency did not detail whether the wanted men were criminals or terrorists.

A new poll conducted by Israel’s Ministry of Public Security in order to determine the effectiveness of urban policing programs in 13 different Israeli cities found that residents in the city of Ariel, in Samaria, feel the safest from criminal activity.

Ariel is home to 20,000 residents, of whom 92 percent responded saying that they feel secure in their community.

Following Ariel were two cities located in central Israel that were tied – Givatayim, outside of Tel Aviv, and Bnei Brak. The northern city of Carmiel ranked fourth in that category.

The cities with the lowest sense of security were the mixed Jewish-Arab cities of Lod and Nazareth, with only 70 percent expressing that they felt protected.

“There is no internal crime or violence in Ariel,” said Avi Zimmerman, Executive Director of the Ariel Development Fund to Tazpit News Agency. “Graffiti is as criminal as it gets here.

International law today paralyzes civilized nations in their war against terrorism. In fact, Israel’s former Supreme Court Chief Justice Aharon Barak once bragged that “we fight against the terrorists with one arm tied behind our back.” But in my view, phony liberals who warn that we shouldn’t “sink to the level of the enemy” are pretentious, racist, and hypocritical.

Few among us understand that the most ancient foundations of international law are supposed to bolster, not weaken the war against terrorism. The historic parallel to today’s terrorist organizations are the pirates, those gangs of outlaws who instilled fear in the hearts of passengers on land and sea, and were defined as early as the time of the Roman Empire as “enemies of humanity.”

In the Paris Declaration of 1865, the political powers of the time outlawed the pirates. The UN conventions of 1958 and 1982 defined piracy as an international crime. The purpose and the method of today’s terrorists are identical to those of the pirates.

This means that by the very fact that they’re fighting against the law itself, they are not entitled to the protection afforded citizens of countries, nor the protection of international law as soldiers of a sovereign state. Therefore international law permits any person any place to attack and capture or kill pirates. The very membership in a gang of pirates excludes the members from the law and removes all their legal rights.

Jurist Douglas R. Burgess Jr. (The Dread Pirate Bin Laden, Legal Affairs, 2005) has argued that, like piracy, the crime of terrorism should be “defined and proscribed internationally, so that terrorists would be properly understood as enemies of all states.” Consequently it should become the law that anyone who offers terrorists shelter or congregates near them must also be considered a criminal and the enemy of all of humanity.

Whatever step that needs to be taken in pursuit of the war against terrorists will hence be considered legal.

Terrorists must understand that any law that they break ceases to exist for them and will no longer offer them protection. If they intentionally attack a civilian population, they must understand that the attacked party will intentionally attack their civilians. If they kidnap people for ransom, they must understand that their own peaceful civilians will be kidnapped in return.

For this matter, anyone who participates in a demonstration supporting Hezbollah, Hamas, the PLO or any other terror organization must understand that he or she will become a legitimate target for elimination or arrest.

The international establishment must change the rules of engagement regarding terrorists, and start acting against them and their communities using their methods. This is not only the righteous and moral thing to do, it is also a legitimate policy based on the foundations of international law.

Legal experts in the west in general and in Israel in particular must cease protecting the enemies of civilization and the law and devote their skills to the defense of the free society that nourishes them.

On Sunday evening, a hundred residents of south Tel Aviv, as well as former MK Michael Ben-Ari, demonstrated in Neve Sha’anan’s Levinsky Park, following the stabbing spree carried out by the illegal African infiltrators that have taken over this section of Tel Aviv.

The protesters claimed that the police have abandoned their neighborhoods, and have not done anything to stop the downward slide that has turned this Tel Aviv neighborhood into the most dangerous place in Israel.

Violence, stabbings, rape, and shootings have become commonplace.

During the protest, police kept thousands of African infiltrators as well as the members of Leftwing activist groups that enable and help these illegal infiltrators, away from the protesters, though that didn’t stop both the infiltrators and activists from jeering and taunting the Tel Aviv residents.

Still, it was probably the most police protection these citizens have received in months.

An orthodox British Jew serving time in jail for trying to smuggle millions of dollars worth of cocaine is suing prison officials for discrimination by denying him kosher food, the London Sun reported.

Simon Price, 68, complained of “institutionalized anti-Semitism” and charged that although inmates are allowed to cook their own meals, he was given pots and pans that are used by non-Jewish inmates and come in contact with non-kosher food.

He also alleged that there are no Jewish texts in the prison library.

Price was sentenced to 35 years in jail in 2005 for the cocaine smuggling plot, and previously has served a prison term for a multi-million dollar robbery.

Neither robbery, drugs, assault nor weapons can keep a man in jail and stop his appointed rounds of setting fire to mezuzahs containing verses from the Torah.

New York police are on  the prowl for Rubin Ublies, suspected of torching 11 mezuzahs in a Williamsburg apartment building on Monday, Holocaust Remembrance Day. He also is thought to have torched another mezuzah in the same apartment complex the following day.

Despite his Jewish-sounding first name, he is far from Jewish. An Hispanic, Ublies, age 35, also has a long record of crime, ranging from robbery, drugs, assault to weapons – and now arson, if he is caught and convicted.

The arsonist began his hate crime on Monday on the 13th floor and worked his way down to at least the third floor, burning the mezuzahs on the way while the residents were away.

Councilman David Greenfield is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.