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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sometimes seems almost too arrogant and self assured for his own good. However, unlike in most instances, this weekend he actually has justification for his haughtiness.

Netanyahu’s personal investment in his relationship over the past year-and-a-half with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou in which he increased diplomatic ties with the floundering European nation seems to have put the final nail in the Gaza flotilla’s coffin.

In his speech Thursday night for the Israeli Air Force Flight School graduation ceremony, Netanyahu discussed diplomatic efforts being made to prevent the Gaza flotilla from setting sail. The only leader that Netanyahu mentioned by name in his address was Greece’s George Papandreou.

Just a day earlier, the prime minister spoke with his Greek counterpart, imploring him to issue an order preventing ships from disembarking from Greece toward the Gaza Strip. Unlike in the past, Papandreou responded positively, and a top Israeli official involved in the talks between the Greek prime minister and Netanyahu said that Israel knew as early as Thursday afternoon that Greece was planning to block ships from leaving its ports toward the strip.

The romance between Netanyahu and Papandreou began in February of 2010, when the two met coincidentally at the “Pushkin” restaurant in Moscow. Netanyahu took advantage of their chance encounter to speak with the Greek prime minister about Turkish extremism against Israel and the two quickly became friends.

The Israeli and Greek leaders have spoken to each other at least once a week ever since they met in Moscow.

The Turkish flotilla to Gaza in May of 2010 led to serious concern among the intelligence and military ranks in Greece, who began pressuring the government to strengthen diplomatic ties with Israel. Papandreou did not need much convincing.

In July of 2010 he arrived in Jerusalem, the first official visit of a Greek prime minister to Israel in 30 years. A few weeks later Netanyahu travelled to Athens, spending a whole day with Papandreou and other officials on a nearby island.

Israeli diplomats can attest that the budding friendship between the two countries over the course of the past year-and-a-half has been nothing short of dramatic. Intelligence communication has increased, the IAF has conducted a number of joint exercises with Greece’s air force and Netanyahu has requested Papandreou’s assistance in passing on several messages to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Many of Netanyahu and Papandreou’s talks in the past few months have revolved around the severe financial crisis Greece is currently suffering. Netanyahu recently decided to come to the aid of his newfound friend in a meeting of foreign ministers and European leaders, imploring them to provide Greece with financial aid.

“Netanyahu has become Greece’s lobbyist to the European Union,” an Israeli diplomat said.

In recent weeks, as efforts to stop the impending pro-Palestinian flotilla to Gaza came to a head, Netanyahu reaped the benefits of his investment in Israel-Greece ties and his gamble on the European country paid off.

He was able to create a viable alternative to relations with Turkey in several regards, showing Erdogan that Israel will not hesitate to become close to its greatest enemy in the West.

And when the moment of truth came, Greece followed through and ordered all Gaza-bound departures be blocked from leaving its ports. Greece’s decision, along with the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation’s (IHH) announcement that it would not be sending the Mavi Marmara and the president of Cypress’s statement forbidding ships from sailing to Gaza sealed the fate of the flotilla almost entirely.

“The flotilla organizers did not take into account that Greece of July 2011 is not the Greece of May 2010,” said a top Israeli official that worked intensively in the past few months to prevent the Gaza flotilla mission from taking place.

“Today there is a different Greece when it comes to Israel,” he added. “The organizers of the flotilla did not understand this, and now they are paying the price.”

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Once Israeli intelligence realized Michael was not going to take up their offer, they turned to his brother-in-law, Eli Cohen, and persuaded him to spy on Syria.

The author Sami Michael, who is president of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, says that during the 1950s, the Mossad tried to recruit him in order to send him on espionage missions in Arab countries.

Michael says that he considered the offer seriously, but ultimately turned it down. Once they realized in Israeli intelligence that Michael was not going to take up their offer, they turned to his brother-in-law, Eli Cohen, and persuaded him to spy on Syria, using a false identity. Cohen was captured by Syrian security and was executed on May 18, 1965.

Michael tells this story in an interview with Amir Ben-David for the television program Shabbat Culture, which will be aired tomorrow on Channel 2 in a discussion of his new book, “The Flight of the Swans.”

In the interview Michael says the fact that Eli Cohen, the husband of his sister Nadia, spied for Israel was something he knew before Cohen was caught in Syria.

“In those days, I worked a great deal on the Syrian border,” Michael says during the interview. “Eli always told the family that he was a spy, but said that it was economic espionage. I did not buy the story. One day, we had a long talk, and he told me that he worked in an Arab country. That was right before his last trip. He would travel and return to Syria, never directly, but via an European country. He even told me the terms of his remuneration, and how he was envied by those sitting in offices,” Michael says.

“When he was caught, I became glued to the radio. Syria broadcast the entire thing and then the trial, and I heard his courageous stance before the judges. I was amazed that even though, at the time, I was ostracized for being Communist, they constantly made me enticing offers. They even pressured me. All of them. Intelligence, Military Intelligence, Shin Bet. At one point, I told them, ‘If you convince me that this is good for the Jewish people, I will do it.’ They offered me to travel to some places. The dumbest idea was that I would return to Iraq, and they would make sure I was imprisoned, and there I would link up with the Kurdish leadership in prison.”

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‘New Nazi’s ruling the Zionist state’ Shoah

Rabbi of Kiryat Arba municipality, Dov Lior, returned from questioning on charges of incitement after publishing his approval of a book discussing when it is acceptable to kill non-Jews under Halacha, to his well-paid position and teaching at Nir hesder yeshiva. Without dramatic change in these matters, Israel will make all of its laws illegal.

By Sefi Rachlevsky

When King Lior parted from the evildoers, who had detained him for an hour of questioning, he turned to Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, where he was borne on the shoulders of those celebrating his messianic kingdom. Once again, he began to use the many official positions that entitle him to tens of thousands of shekels each month, and gave a class at the Nir hesder yeshiva (combining Torah studies with military service ) in Kiryat Arba, which he heads.

During chauvinistic and innocent times there was a saying used by the army: Every Jewish mother should know that she has handed her son over to worthy commanders. During the present time of repression, when the fawning “rule of law” takes prides in delaying kings for a very brief preliminary inquiry, every parent should know the repressed facts about Rabbi Dov Lior, the acting commander of numerous soldiers.

Menachem Livni, who was convicted of murders, headed a terror organization dubbed the “Jewish underground.” He testified that the spirit behind the underground was Lior – and not just for his preaching and religious rulings regarding the need to murder Arabs or killing “innocent people.” Lior, according to the testimony of the murderer, was involved in the details and decided how and when they would act. Lior pressured the hesitant perpetrators to blow up six buses with all their passengers. The buses were loaded with explosives with the object of killing hundreds. Only the delay enabled the Shin Bet security service to arrest them at the last minute.

The order came down: Lior was not to be arrested, tried or even seriously interrogated. The very belated and slight delay for an hour of questions relating to the book Torat Hamelech (The King’s Torah ) is therefore ridiculous. It’s even convenient for Lior. He’s responsible for more important and extreme books. Lior does not stop at incitement.

Nor does Lior stop at non-Jews. Leading rabbis have testified that Lior was the source of rulings labeling the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a “rodef” and a “moser” (a traitor who endangers Jewish lives ). Here, too, he didn’t stop at incitement. Rabin’s assassin used to travel to Hebron to see the rabbi. Baruch Goldstein (who massacred Arabs at the Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994 ) also visited King Lior for instruction. After he massacred dozens of people, the rabbi ruled that Goldstein was “holier than all the martyrs of the Holocaust.”

The government is taking action. Twenty-five senior members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, including its chairman and the chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, ruled that a shocking deed had been done. How did they dare to investigate Rabbi Lior? Shocked, they demanded the full force of the law be used against Deputy State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan, who is bringing down the State Prosecutor’s Office and the police.

And the ruler of the coalition? Upon returning as a victor from President Barack Obama, he went to Mercaz Harav. The featured speakers endorsed each other. And then the prime minister warmly thanked the rabbi who refuses to be investigated or to explain himself, as Lior and his disciples had given Netanyahu the strength to confront the American president. They are the elite commando unit leading the nation and paving the way, Netanyahu said.

Summer vacation begins today. Yesterday, most of the first graders who are defined in Israel as Jews were attending religious and ultra-Orthodox classes. Many of their educators receive a state salary to preach in the spirit of inflammatory and racist “Torat Hamelech.” There’s a reason why the “moderate” chief rabbis supported Lior.

It’s not a one-hour delay that Israel needs. Without dramatic change here, the government is making all of its laws illegal. As long as hesder yeshivas like Nir are not dismantled; as long as rabbis who identify with Rabbi Lior are not ousted from their jobs; as long as funding for the present religious education is not stopped; as long as Lior’s involvement in acts of murder, according to the testimony of the perpetrators, is not prosecuted, the country has no right to demand its citizens serve in the army or pay taxes. Until the change takes place, Israel is not a state.