While we're discussing this death penalty story (below), let’s take a little look-see at the current state of Palestinian civil society. The Palestinians have chosen this moment - as they sprial into chaor and as their death cult continues to demonstrate that it considers death to be an end in itself - to bring back the death penalty. They think it’s actually going to help the situation:

Now, anthropologists who study primitive cultures have long noted the weird dynamic of witchcraft accusations, where generation-old clan tensions based on land, money, and blood are played out when one person formally accuses an opponent of witchcraft so that the opponent is cast out of society. And most of those primitive cultures don't have traditions of (warning: graphic pictures) publically defacing and mutilating the bodies of the accused by tearing up corpses and hanging them from towers. It takes a certain kind of naivety to believe that local power politics doesn't play a part in who gets accused and who doesn't. So I'm less than hopeful that allowing someone to get his neighbor offed whenever his neighbor pisses him off is really going temper the violence in Palestinian streets (on the other hand, I bet it makes people work really hard to keep their dogs from tearing up their neighbors' flowerbeds - so you've got that).