Answers without questions

(1)The brilliant doctor

Once upon a time, a doctor's arrogance and carelessness brought a patient to the brink of death. Just before the patient died, the doctor figured out his mistake, and suddenly went full-speed ahead to try and save the patient: He brought in top experts, pumped the patient full of drugs, and managed to save his life.

Sure, the resuscitation effort wasn't so healthy, and the patient lost partial use of one of his feet and suffered some pain for the rest of his life, but the imperfect life is better than a perfect death.

He and his family, blinded with joy, thanked the doctor and praised him and his expertise.

Then came the media, reporting the "medical miracle" and how it happened that this brilliant doctor managed to rescue his patient from the claws of death.

The doctor, for his part, played humble, saying he did no more than his conscious required of him. "I would do exactly the same thing again."

The relationship between the Israeli public and Ariel Sharon is like that of the patient and the doctor in this story. For decades, Sharon caused us incredible damage, bloodletted our sons, wasted our money and corrupted our political establishment.

But as he was withering away, he had a vision: His eyes suddenly cleared up, and at the last minute he managed to correct a small part of the damage he caused.

Sharon's "repentance" has been a major part of most annual wrap-ups in the major Israeli press. People paint him as a liberator, were shocked by his wisdom and determination, and said only he could have pulled it of.

"In this instance, even his shortcomings are praiseworthy," they said. "It's good he's like that, and we're lucky he, rather than someone else, is leading the country.” Those who refused to join the choir of praise were rejected as shortsighted.

And so, a good year it was. Indeed, we had such a successful doctor.

(2) Fat is fat, skinny is skinny

Jewish holidays are pretty dangerous to our health, and he media warned last week that overeating on Rosh Hashana could lead a person to put on no less than two kilograms (4.4 pounds.)

What they failed to mention was those who worried not about overeating on Rosh Hashana, but about going hungry. Photographs of bare-walled apartments and empty refrigerators were strangely absent from the year's summaries, not because walls suddenly got painted or pantries were suddenly filled up, but because such images don't jive with our self-image that we live in a just society.

Economic commentators, almost all of them faithful to the ideas of "market economy," tell us that most indicators show "our situation" has improved.

Our gross domestic product is up, unemployment is down, the average salary is up but did not drive inflation up. Company profits are soaring and the stock exchange is thriving.

But it is very strange: Despite all these positive signs, the average take home of the bottom two-thirds of society remained flat. It didn't rise, not in absolute terms and not in relative terms. The additional wealth concentrated at the top, and despite promises to the contrary, it did not "trickle down."

No one has asked why.

(3) Easy-money tycoons

Several holiday sections in newspapers were dedicated to the profiles of tycoons who increased their wealth this year. With an utmost of respect and not a trace of skepticism, the papers told us how these people made even more money.

Even the untrained reader understood that some of them manufactured valuable commodities, while others created nothing. Rather, they bought companies, sold them, split them, gave them away, controlled them, and pulled off any number of other maneuvers lost on us simpletons.

They accumulated plenty of wealth on the backs of the weak, who don't really understand the capitalist market, and contributed nothing to the society in which they live. They are leeches.

One of the richest, a man who made his wealth by daring maneuvers, said that Israeli law was too strict, and vowed to invest his money abroad from now on.

So his money is now not befitting the country it was made in.

"Money," we are told, "has no sentiments. It has legs, and it is not patriotic."