On Friday afternoon, dozens of Israelis protested the ongoing terrorism on road 60 near the Arab village of Beit Omar.

The road is the main highway connecting Hebron, Gush Etzion and Jerusalem. There have been a tremendous number of stone throwings and firebombs against Israeli drivers on this section of the road.

The mayor of Gush Etzion participated in the protest, which involved dancing and singing “Am Yisrael Chai”.

Guards at the Knesset made sure that no one wearing anything with the color orange in it was allowed onto the Knesset grounds for Sharon’s lying in state.

Orange was the color of the protest against Sharon’s Disengagement plan from Gush Katif.

Guards checked visitors carefully for orange bracelets, shirts, banners, and other orange colored clothing or paraphernalia.

One person, inadvertently wearing an orange shirt unrelated to the Gush Katif protest, was turned away from the Knesset grounds and not allowed to pay his respects to the former Prime Minister.

Thirty people who were among those protesting against the upcoming release of terrorists who murdered Israelis, breached the outer security layer that cordons off the street next to the Prime Minister’s home, on Sunday evening.

The protesters managed to enter into the “sterile zone” on the street next to the Prime Minister’s Jerusalem residence.

Police quickly dispersed the protest, and two of the protesters who entered the “sterile zone” were arrested.

Sudanese illegal migrants marching towards Jerusalem (they actually ended up in Beer Sheva) in protest of the new Holot (sands) detention camp, Monday, December 16.

The new anti-infiltration law that was passed in the Knesset a week ago permits residents of the camps—mostly Sudanese and Eritreans—to leave the site until 10 PM each day, provided that they show up for a head count three times a day.

It makes it tough for them to reach any urban center. So now some 250 illegals are refusing to return to the facility.

I don’t envy Israeli politicians and civil servants deposited with the task of managing the population of an estimated 50 to 80 thousand illegals, mostly from war torn East Africa. The connotations are obvious and disturbing. And yet, all these poor, neglected people have been dumped on Israel’s cities’ poorest neighborhoods, turning the lives of local residents into a living hell.

It’s a serious problem, it has to be resolved, and whatever Israel does to alleviate the problem will look and sound terrible. On account of the “camp” part in the term “detention camp.”

Photo credit: Tomer Neuberg/Flash90

The marchers carried signs, no doubt prepared for them by Israeli NGO activists, with Biblical verses about our obligation to treat the foreigners well, because we, too, were foreigners in Egypt.

Of course, one of the conditions the Torah places on the foreigner is to observe the law. Illegal infiltration would probably disqualify them for the accepting treatment advised by the Torah.

Sderot Mayor David Buskila “celebrated” Rosh HaShanah by camping out in a protest tent next to the official residence of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem to protest budget cuts to the Gaze Belt town.

He said he intends to remain in tent until the government restores funds that were cut in the austerity budget.

Buskila claimed that the budget cuts will be the death knell for Sderot but that he faces “a wall of incomprehension.”

Last year, the mayor staged a hunger strike until the government came up with funds for Sderot, battered for years by Hamas mortar shelling and rockets, to pay off its deficit and improve its emergency services.

Just days after his apparent victory, Cynthia Farahat and I expressed our skepticism about the validity of these election returns:

SCAF exploits the Muslim Brotherhood and other proxies as its civilian fronts, a role they are happy to play, by permitting Islamists to garner an outsized percentage of the parliamentary vote, then to win the presidency. During the suspicious week-long delay before the presidential votes were announced, SCAF met with the Muslim Brotherhood’s real leader, Khairat El-Shater, and reached a deal whereby Morsi became president but SCAF still governs.

Earlier, we had doubted two earlier rounds of elections (see “Egypt’s Sham Election” and “Don’t Ignore Electoral Fraud in Egypt.”)

Though few analysts have embraced this version, there have been hints of it:

(1) On July 31, 2013, Josh Goodman and James Parks wrote in “Morsi Was Neither Democratically Nor Duly Elected” that

hailing Morsi as the democratically elected representative of the Egyptian people appears to be based on a rather loose understanding of “democracy.” The Brotherhood has been accused of bribing and intimidating voters and rigging ballots during the 2012 elections. The election suffered from abysmally poor voter turnout (43.4% of registered voters), which is especially troubling given the ostensibly historic nature of the race. Out of 23 million voters in the first round of elections, 12 million did not vote for either of the two candidates ultimately placed in the run-off vote. Capping this all off was a blatant power grab from the military, which changed the constitution mid-election to limit the power of the newly elected President.

(2) On Aug. 3, 2013, Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sisi gave an interview in which he both denied having rigged Morsi’s election and (more interestingly) asserted that he could have done so had he wanted to.

Q: So you were giving the president advice on Ethiopia and the Sinai, for example, and he was ignoring you?

A: We were very keen and predetermined on his success. If we wanted to oppose or not allow them to come to rule Egypt, we would have done things with the elections, as elections used to be rigged in the past.

Now comes a testimonial from an un-named Egyptian official via the Israeli politician Yossi Beilin in “Morsi didn’t win the elections” that

Ahmed Shafiq, the former air force commander and former president Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister, actually won the race by a narrow margin. But the army generals—wanting to ensure that law and order would be upheld following the elections—feared that if Morsi was defeated, the Muslim Brotherhood would refuse to recognize the results and would end up conducting themselves just as they are now.

The official results, 51.73 percent for Morsi and 48.27% for Shafiq, were almost the exact reversal of what actually happened at the polls. After the results were published, we barely heard any calls for protest or opposition among the secular-liberals, while on the religious side—loyal either to the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafi parties—voters were happy with their achievement.

Beilin goes on to explain that military officers expected the inexperienced Morsi to respect the army but he did not. Gen. Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi came under pressure from fellow generals some months ago but Sisi gave Morsi a chance to make amends.

Egyptian authorities have again canceled plans to disperse huge crowds of supporters for deposed president Mohammed Morsi, who have vowed to die rather than end their sit-in demonstration in Nasr city district of the capital and Nahda Square.

Morsi continues to be detained at an undisclosed location, and his detention has been extended by another 15 days.

The rallies by his supports have virtually shut down the city, but security officials insist they will disperse the protesters. One official claimed the scheduled Monday night maneuver to end the sit-in was called off because dispersal plans were leaked to the media.