November 25, 2012 -Morsi Seizes More Power, Israel Missile Test Successful

Events in Egypt in the last 24 hours may be much more significant than all of the events in our recent war with Hamas. Egyptian President Morsi seems to have used his sudden international popularity to take near dictorial powers in Egypt. He removed all judicial review of his decisions. His actions have finally united all of the secular opposition in Egypt, who suddenly realized that their revolution has been totally hijacked. Furthermore, if they let this situation stand, instead of a secular dictator in the name of Hosni Mubarak, they will now have a religious dictator representing the Muslim Brotherhood, in the name of Muhammed Morsi. There have been large scale demonstration both in Cairo and Alexandria, with the offices of the Muslim brotherhood being attacked in Alexandria. In Cairo, liberal opponents have occupied Tahir Square and are calling for a general strike. Morsi now claims that his new decrees are temporary. Initially, so were Hitler's.

The timing of Morsi's actions are very interesting- especially in light of his earlier actions. Two months ago Morsi used the excuse of the attack on the Egyptian troops on the border, coupled with the attack on Israel, as a reason for him to sack all the of the leading members of the Egyptian military. This was his first power grab. Now he used the end of the Israeli Hamas campaign as an excuse for his next power grab. If I was a conspiracy theorist I would have to wonder whether both of these recent acts were staged for his benefit.

Likud primary elections for Knesset members were held today. It was chaos, with computers not working, and a very low turnout. As a result, the elections were extended a few hours. There is talk of adding an additional election day. However, initially, Prime Minister Netanyahu is said to oppose that option. The election results are known to the PM in real time, thus he can decide based on the results (in other words, whether he has gotten the members he wants) whether to add another day or not. Isn' democracy grand!

The most important event today was the successful firing of the "David's Sling" intercept missile. The missile is designed to be effective against medium range missiles, such as the larger missiles available to Hezbollah. It would also provide a third line of defense against an Iranian Missiles (two levels of Arrow, and one of David's Sling). Today’s test firing was a success, and it made a direct hit against an incoming missile