A botched assassination exercise by Israel's overseas intelligence service on Monday has thrown a rare spotlight on its secret tactics, as well as raising questions about professionalism.

According to witnesses, a black-clad man in his 20's attached a magnetic replica bomb to the door of a car parked in Tel Aviv's tony port district, and tried to slip away. He was spotted by two diners at a nearby restaurant who, thinking him a terrorist or mob contract-killer, alerted police.

Confronted by the cops, the suspect revealed that he was on a Mossad drill. The story surfaced on Tuesday evening, after government censors dropped a gag order.

Was it a training exercise for a novice spy? Probably not. The Mossad is known to dispatch its cadets onto the streets of Israel, and beyond, to learn basic surveillance and infiltration skills. But assassination missions are reserved for select squads of veteran operatives.

(Besides, if the first rule for espionage trainees is "don't get caught", the second is: "If caught, don't admit you're a spy.")

That suggests that the Mossad chose Tel Aviv port for a "model run" -- Israeli spooks' term for a rehearsed operation in a safe area that closely resembles the real target's environment. In such drills, eluding detection and making a getaway are key. Less important is the weapon of choice. Israelis are familiar with the effectiveness of booby-trapped cars thanks to the assassination in 2008 of Hezbollah mastermind Imad Moughniyeh in Syria, and of two brothers from Islamic Jihad in Lebanon in 2006. Arabs blamed both bombings on the Mossad, which, under long-time director Meir Dagan, is widely understood to be taking the fight to Israel's foes abroad.

So: What foreign ports look most like Tel Aviv's, and which Arab guerrilla leaders frequent them?

Such questions may be moot. If, indeed, an Israeli assassination was meant to have taken place somewhere out there, it's now well on hold. Israeli media reported that three Mossad personnel involved in the Tel Aviv foul-up have been suspended.

"We would agree to a demilitarised Palestinian state," the choicest quote from Netanyahu's half-hour address, served as the banner headline for Israel's biggest-selling newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. Its rival daily Maariv was more coy: "A Palestinians state - BUT".

Writ big, Netanyahu's declaration merely brought him into line with the peacemaking policies of several of his predecessors. But being so heavily girdled in preconditions, and overlayed by Zionist historicity, it drew near-instant rejection from the Palestinians.

The sense of fresh deadlock was noted by Israeli commentators. Akiva Eldar of the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper said the speech was "not how one brings down a wall of enmity between two nations".

Maariv's Ben Caspit accused Netanyahu -- who long refused to countenance a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and who is still balking at international demands to halt Jewish settlement construction despite Washington's displeasure -- of being terminally behind the times.

Few doubted that Netanyahu's remarks were mainly intended for U.S. President Barack Obama, who has made Palestinian statehood a centrepiece of his Middle East policy. 

But there was also praise for the sweep of the speech, which was broadcast live on primetime Israeli media, and whose content had been kept strictly under wraps.

"Netanyahu wrote an address that brought together everything that is considered a consensus in Jewish public opinion in Israel: the blood-soaked narrative of the history of the Jewish people and settlement in the Land of Israel, the feeling of victimisation and the aspiration for peace (the word 'peace' was uttered in the speech more often than any other word), national unity, the emphasis on the state's Jewish character and the primacy of security considerations," wrote Yedioth's Nahum Barnea. 

"Even two contradictory values -- a Palestinian state and the settlers -- were brought into the consensus. All were his children."

The family trope also occurred to Haaretz's Ari Shavit, though what he saw was the prime minister as the newly self-asserting son of Benzion Netanyahu, a noted Zionist scholar with hardline views on Jewish statesmanship and destiny:

"Benjamin Netanyahu crossed the Rubicon yesterday. In order to serve the country, he abandoned his father's ideological home."

Far from the split-second decision-making of battle, or the raw recrimination of politicians and pundits, one Israeli think-tank is offering a more leisurely way to gauge your understanding of what constitutes a war crime.

The Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs (JCPA) quiz, accessed on-line, poses 12 multiple-choice questions about various combat scenarios. Some recall the skirmishes with Hamas in Gaza's slums. Others -- an enemy submarine sunk, an African insurrection assessed -- don't.

You get a grade at the end, on the assumption that lacklustre lay jurists might be persuaded to attend the JCPA's June 18 conference titled: "Hamas, the Gaza War, and Accountability under International Law".

According to demographer Sergio DellaPergola, the systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews during World War Two more than halved the potential global Jewish community in the long-run. Rather than numbering some 13 million now, there might have between 26 million and 32 million Jews, he says in an article to be published in the journal of the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

"The Holocaust struck a deep blow to the demographic, cultural and social fabric of the Jewish people in many ways," DellaPergola said in a statement issued by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he is professor of Israel-Diaspora relations.

DellaPergola speculated not only on the number of offspring that those who perished by the Nazis never had, but also how many Jews might have been "lost", nominally, to low birthrates and intermarriage in Eastern Europe -- the Ground Zero of the Holocaust.

Unmentioned in the Hebrew University statement is the possibility that the State of Israel might not have been set up were it not for the Holocaust, which mobilised world opinion behind the Jews' quest for a sovereign haven. Israel is now home to 6 million Jews and a million Arab Muslims and Christians. Many demographers believe the country will soon have the majority of world Jewry given rates of assimilation in the diaspora.

Israelis mark Holocaust Remembrance Day by standing silently as sirens sound nationwide. Broadcasters air educational programmes and news media report on the conditions of Holocaust survivors in Israel.

This year's events coincide with a United Nations conference on racism in Geneva, which Israel and a slew of Western powers are boycotting out of concern it could serve as an anti-Zionist platform.

Israelis are especially incensed by the attendance at the Geneva parley of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has questioned whether the Holocaust happened and called for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map".

The diplomatic tensions underscore the possibility of real conflict over Iran's nuclear programme, which Israel -- assumed to have to Middle East's only atomic arsenal -- describes as a threat to its existence. Iran denies having hostile designs.

"Sixty-five years after the end of the war, we have still not seen the last of the tyrants nor the last of those who think it is possible to liquidate the State of Israel," Defence Minister Ehud Barak said in a speech to Israeli veterans of anti-Nazi partisan groups.

"Let us look to what has to be done, just as you did," he said. "You went to the front to fight, and this is what we will continue to do."

Arad is a retired official of the Mossad intelligence agency who served under the hawkish Netanyahu during his first term as prime minister in 1996-1999. That period saw Israel pursuing U.S.-sponsored interim peace negotiations with the Palestinians, as well as tentative rapprochement with Syria.

A decade on, Israelis are focused on the threat they see from Iran's nuclear programme and support for armed Islamist factions on their borders. Peace talks are not popular. Many Arabs, for their part, perceive Israel's rightward tack as a sign of poor faith on the core issue of establishing a Palestinian state.

In a wide-ranging interview, Arad made clear that, while the new government's policies have yet to be set, Netanyahu is almost certain to insist on "blunting" Iran as a prerequisite for any progress in Israeli-Arab peacemaking. Pending that, the prime minister will focus on building up the Palestinian economic and security infrastructure in the occupied West Bank. There appears to be no plan to stop shunning Hamas, the Islamist faction locked in a power-struggle with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and in control of the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu opposed Israel's 2005 Gaza withdrawal and has vowed not to evacuate Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Arad further stressed that Israel, under Netanyahu's Likud party, would not part with the Golan Heights. Syria lost the Golan in the 1967 Middle East war and insists on its full return for peace.

In fuller remarks to Reuters, which can be viewed above, Arad rebuffs accounts that Netanyahu signalled flexibility on the Golan issue during the 1990s. Any such overtures were made by Israeli prime ministers from the centre-left Labour party, not Likud, he says. But Arad does discuss possible stop-gap proposals such as a partial ceding, or long-term leasing, of the strategic plateau.

That's the question roiling Israel after the navy chief, Admiral Eliezer Marom, was spotted at a Tel Aviv strip-club.

While abroad salty sailors might be expected to let loose in their free time, say liberal voices. And such entertainments are legal in Israel. But many Israelis take a more conservative view and those mores tend to seep into their conscript military. 

There's also an undercurrent of concern that the navy, whose small submarine fleet is widely assumed to be equipped with nuclear weapons to deter enemies like Iran, should have a visibly sober and responsible leadership.

The Israel Defence Forces said its chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, had reprimanded Marom. At least one Israeli lawmaker called for the admiral's resignation.

Manoeuvering to douse further controversy, Marom voiced regret.

Israel's biggest-selling newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, which broke the story of the club jaunt, quoted him as saying the visit to the Go-Go Strip Show was a "one-time blunder" occasioned by a friend's celebration.

"I don't hang out at such places," added Marom, 53, according to Yedioth. "I'm a family man. I have grown children. Soon I'll be a grandfather. But things should be taken in proportion. I'm not a criminal. I didn't commit sexual harassment or rape."

[PICTURE: Adm. Eliezer Marom, chief of Israel's navy, speaks to Defence Minister Ehud Barak at a January 16, 2008 graduation ceremony for new officers. REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen]

When it comes to Israel's regular hints that it could attack Iranian nuclear facilities to prevent them producing a bomb, there's another liability: boredom and incredulity at all the repetition.

In what seems to have been an attempt to vary the message, outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made two sets of public remarks this month which held seeds of self-contradiction.

Addressing a visiting French delegation ahead of Israel's Feb. 10 election, he said no Israeli government would "tolerate" a nuclear-armed Iran. The implication was that, no matter what the political stripe of the next ruling coalition, it would be willing to undertake all action, including go-it-alone air strikes, against the Iranians.

While the no-tolerance theme reappeared in a speech Olmert gave a North American Jewish group on Sunday, this time he sounded far more solicitous of Western efforts to talk Iran -- which denies seeking nuclear weapons -- into curbing its uranium enrichment.

"I have no doubt that new American President Barack Obama will stick to the position, that had been confirmed to me many times by the (former U.S.) president and vice president, that America will not tolerate a nuclear Iran. I am sure America will do everything it can to prevent this, together with Israel," Olmert said.

"Israel will not act alone as the leader in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power."

The Obama administration favours a  "carrot and stick" strategy of diplomatic overtures toward Tehran combined with the threat of tougher trade sanctions, and Washington has also said the military option remains available.  Israel is keen to appear in sync with its U.S. ally.

Expert opinion is divided on whether Israel, which bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981 and mounted a similar sortie against Syria in 2007, could take on Iran, whose facilities are numerous, distant and fortified.

The inconsistency of the signals from Israeli officialdom has prompted some independent analysts to suggest that the idea of preemptive strikes is a chimera cultivated to pressure the war-wary West into tackling Iran more forcibly.

Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev, said the prime minister's public comments were consistent with Israeli policies on Iran.

Israel is assumed to have Middle East's only atomic arsenal.

Tipped off about Bat El Levy's beliefs, an anti-missionary group has called on religious Jews to boycott the May 8 contest, at which she will compete against 15 other teenagers from Israel and abroad for a prize awarded by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The group, Yad L'Ahim, has invoked Israeli law forbidding Christians from proselytizing in the Jewish state. But there is more at stake in the quiz, which is held on Israel's 60th
Independence Day -- the question of who has a better command of holy writ.

In a protest letter quoted by Israel's Maariv newspaper, Yad L'Ahim chairman Rabbi Shlomo Dov Lipschitz said Levy "has a chance of becoming the world Bible champion" and that this could "greatly encourage" the spread of Christianity among Jews. He further argued that Levy should be disqualified from the quiz because she is, in his view, non-Jewish.

This was rejected by Israel's Education Ministry, which runs the Bible quiz. "The girl is designated as Jewish, and her personal beliefs are not a matter of concern to us," a ministry spokeswoman said.

Levy could not be reached for comment. A relative of the girl, who has already proved her scriptural mettle in regional Israeli contests, said she was busy studying for the quiz.

The relative, who declined to be named, confirmed that Levy and her family "believe in Yeshua Ben-David, the saviour from Nazareth" -- Jesus's Hebrew name. But Yad L'Ahim was wrong in branding Levy a missionary, the family member said.

"The family keeps its faith to itself. To these people, anyone who disagrees with their version of Jewish belief is the enemy. I hope God pays them back in kind," the relative said.

Representatives of Israeli Jews who believe in Jesus say the community numbers between 8,000 and 10,000, out of a total population of more than 7 million. These so-called Jewish Christians keep a low profile to avoid causing offence in a state where many blame centuries of anti-Semitic persecution in Europe on Christian dogma.

There is also an issue of personal safety. Jewish Christians have on occasion been targeted for attack. In March, a homemade bomb was left in a building in the Jewish
settlement of Ariel, in the occupied West Bank, where members of the community resides. A boy was maimed. Last October, a Jerusalem church that holds services in Hebrew was damaged in a firebomb attack.

Should Levy's beliefs disqualify her from this contest? Would it be offensive to Israel or to Jews if she won the Bible quiz?