But if the ox had a reputation for goring, yet its owner failed to keep it under control, he must pay full compensation — a live ox for the dead one — but he may keep the dead ox. (Exodus 21:36)

Shimon Shiffer, the commentator of Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, did us a big favor on Jan. 14 by publishing the “off the record” slanderous words leveled at US Secretary of State John Kerry by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. From now on, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will no longer be able to shake off the doings of his defense minister by claiming that “he didn’t know with whom he was dealing.”

The faltering apology Ya’alon sent Kerry does not change the worrisome fact that the Israeli government’s defense minister treats the negotiations underway between Israel and the Palestinians like a strategic nuisance. Had it been Minister for Strategic Affairs Yuval Steinitz, one might have treated it as a “quirk.” If Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman had called his American colleague “messianic” and “obsessive,” his words could have been interpreted as yet another domestic political spin. This is not the case when Ya’alon, the man directly in charge of the Israel Defense Forces, believes that the diplomatic process leads to the murder of Israelis. The minister of defense has the power and the authority to sabotage this process and even to destroy it. An overzealous reaction to attacks by terrorist groups, such as Operations “Defensive Shield” and “Cast Lead,” or the 2002 assassination of Raed Karmi, put the diplomatic process with the Palestinian Authority (PA) into a deep freeze.

No. Ya’alon’s statement that he believes the political process results in the killing of Israelis was not a slip of the tongue or a far-fetched interpretation of his words, whispered into the ears of a journalist. In a public speech he delivered on Nov. 17, 2013, at a conference at Tel Aviv University’s Dayan Center, Ya’alon pointed to a direct link between the negotiations and growing signs of an increase in the number of terror attacks. He claimed that the source of the unrest was the frustration felt by the Palestinian public over revelations of corruption in the PA and the meager results of the diplomatic process. “What’s happening here is the result of the diplomatic process,” Ya’alon declared, speaking of Israeli terror casualties. “At one time, we called them 'victims of peace.' So today they are victims of the diplomatic process.” He explained that the negotiations “are presented in the Palestinian media along with the delegitimization of Israel. And then tensions increase and the fuel fumes feed the motivation to murder Jews.”