1) Israeli society has become so sick and perverted by authoritarianism and religious fanaticism that I was in danger of committing one of the worst sins a writer can be guilty of: repeating myself (and, subsequently, boring my readers). Worse still, I was boring myself: after all, what can one say about a country that bases its very existence on an ancient book supposedly divinely inspired, and justifies the systematic repression of the indigenous population by reference to the same? How many times can one condemn it?

2) The Palestinian "resistance" movement is infected with the same hateful poison as Israeli society. Last I checked, they had initiated a new "intifada":the Knife Intifada. The idea was to have Palestinians stab as many Israeli civilians as possible. In short, as part of their public relations campaign to make the world more sympathetic to their cause, they launched what amounted to a horror movie – only this was real life. Dozens of Israelis were stabbed.

Although I've been sympathetic to the Palestinian case – after all, property rights are the key plank in the libertarian platform, and stealing Palestinian land has been the Israeli method from the very beginning – they lost me with the "Knife Intifada." I mean, you can't get much creepier than that.