Re: "NEVER underestimate the Israeli (ie everyone BORN in Israel) capacity for stupidity: "
Do you have any idea why this seems to be the case?
Is it because of the "ramshackle" throw-together way the modern state was founded?
Major war every decade?
Bolshevik influence from E. Europe? Remnants of Turkish rule? The weather and geography?
It appears that imbecility, inefficiency, and corruption are institutionalized on a grand scale.
By all accounts Israelis have abandoned the hope of ever being able to effect change and reform to make things better.
Another question:
Is there anything in Israel which actually works efficiently and with positive results?
From what I am reading lately Israel appears to be as corrupt as the worst banana republic in all of recorded history - complete with police shakedowns of Israelis for cash and each and every bureaucrat with their hand out for bribes in order to get anything done.
Worse still -- The argument could be made that the age old dream of "The Ingathering of the Exiles" has been reduced to a cynical business racket called aliyah , whereby the government of the State encourages immigration only for the purposes of having new assets to tax up to 80%, having little or no regard for whether or not olim remain in the country after three years. And the "Zionist dream" of a State where Jews hold all the positions in a normal society is now reduced to an "exploitation state" importing slave labor from Africa, Asia, and eastern Europe to do all the menial and hard labor, exactly as America does here with importing illegal aliens and having them displace American citizens. There are more than a few tales of contracted laborers entering Israel being dispossessed of their earnings and freedom, sometimes sent home penniless after several years of hard toil. I really have a hard time understanding how such a once valiant and heroic nation admired all over the world has become so thoroughly corrupt in only sixty years. There must be something about "The Middle East" which just turns everything and everyone there into drek.