The fresh face of a panty-bomber

So now it's official. You can blow a hole in a plane with a six inch sachet of PETN powder concealed in your Y-fronts. If you thought airport security was already as inconvenient as it could get, think again.

Then take a second look at that fresh, innocent face. Who would believe it of him? We live in the days of the beautiful murderer.

Beautiful murderers

We live in the days
Of the beautiful murderer
See his face
Looking at you from the front pages
Of newspapers
The bloom of his mother’s tenderness
Not yet left the hair of his head
Or his cheeks, lips and eyes –
God has given him
The allure of his sex
But inside that head
Sits his own wild god
Who teaches him to kill
At even a small provocation –
And so this beautiful murderer
Whips out his blade of steel
And breaks our hearts

From Chosen People and other poems by David Haskell Cohen

To free or not to free?

Cardboard cut-outs of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit stand outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office in Jerusalem December 21, 2009, during a protest calling for Shalit's release.

Our hearts say "pay the terrible price and free an innocent Jew"; our minds - and the Talmud - warn us that capitulating to evil tends to strengthen it.

What - oh what - is the right thing to do?

Impossible not to be impressed...

(Tony Gentile/AFP)

...by this beautiful image of Pope Benedict XVI addressing his cardinals in the Clementine Hall of the Vatican. There's no denying the fact that the Roman Catholic Church does things in style.

The Pope condemned the Holocaust as being inspired by "the hatred of a blind ideology", a mere two days after declaring the controversial wartime Pope Pius XII "venerable", in preparation for his beatification and eventual sainthood.

Evidently His Holiness, not unlike the like the rest of us in other ways and on various levels, is grappling with the subjectivity of the political human condition, where one has to try to please everyone, and the democratic human condition, where almost anything becomes acceptable if only you look at it from the right angle.

The Times has a good summary of the problem here.

Queen boards passenger train incognito

Apparently it's a regular occurrence. She simply made her way down Platform 11 and boarded the 10.45 from King’s Cross, getting off at King’s Lynn, where she changed trains for Norfolk. And the whole time she was accompanied by just a single security officer. Amazingly, this has been her chosen mode of Christmas travel to Norfolk for a few years now, though this was the first year that the press were allowed to record the event.

Isn't it positively thrilling?

Though as for "incognito", who in Britain apart from HRH wears headscarves tied down over their ears any more, except perhaps a couple of dowager duchesses and a woman Knightsbridge?

Titus' Arch Re-enacted?

In this saddening footage from Moldova, Orthodox Christians are seen solemnly chanting as they remove and desecrate a Jewish menorah, in a scene that is eerily reminiscent of the famous scene of the sacking of Jerusalem on Titus' Arch.

British Foreign Office vetos Royal Israel visit

An eminent British historian - Andrew Roberts - has assailed his country's policy towards Israel, questioning why Queen Elizabeth II has visited a host of despotic regimes but has never made an official visit to the Holy Land. Speaking at the Anglo-Israel Association dinner in central London last week, Roberts suggested that the Foreign Office had a de facto ban on royal visits to Israel.

"The true reason of course, is that the FO [Foreign Office] has a ban on official royal visits to Israel, which is even more powerful for its being unwritten and unacknowledged," he said. "As an act of delegitimization of Israel, this effective boycott is quite as serious as other similar acts, such as the academic boycott, and is the direct fault of the FO Arabists."

"It is... no coincidence that although the Queen has made over 250 official overseas visits to 129 different countries during her reign, neither she nor one single member of the British royal family has ever been to Israel on an official visit."

Although it might be true that many other countries have not had an official visit, Roberts said, the FO has somehow managed to find the time over the years to send the queen on state visits to Libya, Iran, Sudan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan and Turkey. So it can't have been that she wasn't in the area.

Catholic-Jewish crisis over

In a letter to the German Episcopate, released Thursday, Pope Benedict admitted his error in the case of Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson, whose excommunication from the Catholic Church was lifted last December. He stated clearly that a "mishap" had taken place due to the insufficient study of information taken from the Internet.

After a meeting with the pope, Haifa Chief Rabbi She'ar-Yashuv Cohen, who headed a delegation there last week stated: "This was not just another meeting. This was a special experience, a turning point, the end of a crisis. We could not have expected a warmer reception."

A positive result, it would seem, of the end of papal infallibility.

Classical music in Israel

My friend Lloyd Masel noticed that despite the wealth of classical music in Israel, accessability of information - especially for English speakers - is severely limited. I myself have often been frustrated to hear about a performance I would have loved to attend only when it was too late to order tickets, or upon reading a review the day after! The essential difference between us is that Lloyd did something about it!

Lloyd started the Living in Harmony website, which lists performances of classical music in Israel months in advance, allowing you to see the date coming and book it in your calendar.

See the full Ha'aretz write-up here.

Listen to a radio interview with Lloyd here.