I hate to bicker about the pig-headedness of people who basically share my views but you write what you know.

Miki Eitan is one of the few really excellent parliamentarians in the Knesset. He is intelligent, fair-minded and knows the rules. He is also one of the few politicians who really appreciates the extent to which the Supreme Court has become a runaway train. Finally, he is the only politician who is on top of the whole constitution issue. In my opinion, it's important that he get a safe slot on the Likud list and I've promised to help him with that.

He promised me that he would make a big fuss about the unprecedented severity in the treatment of arrested anti-disengagement protesters by police and prosecutors. He has called a special meeting of the Knesset Law Committee, which he chairs, for the purpose of raking the attorney general and the Justice Minister over the coals. He asked me to help him make as strong a case as possible.

My partner set off to get as many of the files of the 700(!) cases that remain open in order to help out with this. The people who have the most information about these cases, and who do terrific work, happen to live in Hevron. You might imagine that they'd jump at this opportunity. It is truly dinei nefashos, since most of these cases involve young people whose potential careers could be seriously jeopardized by a conviction.

But, no. They decided that by helping out, they'd be doing Miki a favor and for this they must exact a price. There is an endless case involving the shuk hasitonai in Hevron in which the attorney general is screwing over the Jewish community. (The details are not important for now, but suffice it to say that the AG is literally asking the court to steal Jewish property and hand it over to Arabs.) So the geniuses with the files aren't handing them over until Miki launches a pre-emptive offensive against the AG for a brief he is allegedly going to present in court next week.

How does one begin to explain the insanity of all this? These 700 kids whom these people have promised to help are being held hostage to an unrelated case. Miki is trying to do the right thing, and is indeed one of the only people in a position to help, and is being treated like he's asking them for a handout. And where is the sense of proportion in trading in dinei nefashos for dinei mamanos?

The answer to this is, unfortunately, all too clear.