With some variations, all the bloggers and newspapers present the same reasoning. Since nothing that came out about Israel talks about the "real dirt" - then there must be some kind of deal, a conspiracy...(????) It sounds like circular logic to me...

What is the "real dirt" they want to find? Some documents from Israeli military and diplomatic sources have been published, but none of them confirming what they want to hear...such as Israel planning to exterminate the Palestinians, or deceiving the US in order to do some land grabbing, and things like that. Again, the reasoning is very peculiar, along the lines of "I know Israel is an Apartheid country, so the documents must reflect that, and if they don't is because Israel controls Wikileaks". The idea of reconsidering their opinion because the facts don't seem to confirm it, is something that for some people is beyond their comprehension.

Israel is an open society and Israelis are very direct - they say what they think, as anybody who has been to Israel can confirm. And if there is something they don't want people to know, they take their security seriously because their very lives depend on it, and not just metaphorically.

One document in particular, a cable sent from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to the State Department, reveals (suprise, surprise!) that Netanyahu doesn't trust Abbas but he deals with him because he trusts Hamas even less. The cable also points out (again suprise, suprise) that he is fed up with Palestinian negotiating tactics and doesn't believe that Israel has a true Peace partner...in other words, something anybody reading HaAretz or the Jerusalem Post on a regular basis could have told you.

Here is my message to all those bloggers in the blogosphere who keep yelling Israeli conspiracy. Once Sigmund Freud was smoking a cigar and one of his students asked him "Herr Professor, after all you said about cigars and other similarly shaped objects being phallic symbols, you smoke?" to which Freud responded "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"

My message is that whether these conspiracy theorists like it or not, Israel is an open society with freedom of the Press, and any dirt that can be digged on public figures is done in the open, and differences of opinion are played openly in the papers and the Parliament (sometimes in a rather emotionally intense manner, by the way) Israel doesn't have the time to play international power games because it is rather busy playing the survival game. Yes, Israel has spies like any other country and yes, it has State secrets. But in the same way that the real State secrets of the American government or any other government didn't make the wikileaks, Israel's real secrets don't make it either.

Don't take me wrong. I said it before - Wikileaks is dangerous because it imperils the game of diplomacy, and when the countries of the world cannot play Diplomacy, the alternative is violence. Pretending you don't know certain things or that you don't know somebody else knows you know are ways of keeping tensions from escalating. We do it everyday with our partners, our friends and our spouses - why shouldn't countries do it?

So to all those who keep trying to explain away the what they see on wikileaks doesn't confirm their prejudices and preconceptions about Israel by concluding that it is because the REAL dirt is hidden thanks to a secret deal instead of accepting that maybe their preconceived ideas about Israel are wrong, I answer like Freud did: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"