Update: The Jerusalem Post carries an interview with this young man.
In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man. (Avot 2:6)
I found this cool graphic for my side bar from My Right Word and shamelessly commandeered it. Basically, it’s a show of soldarity/support for Israel’s Naval Commando Unit 13.
This is one of those posts in which I don’t have a great deal of comment (I wish to share at this time). I have been following this story as it developed (dig deep in the archives). This post serves as a benchmark for me but its a story which should be told. Yoel Zilberman’s gave this address to a Jerusalem conference recently and Arutz Sheva was good enough to translate it. There is a video but its in Hebrew and its without subtitles. I think its an incredibly important speech, perhaps even the most important one any Israeli will give this year. I don’t want to shorten it or attempt to summarize it. I will leave the contact details at the bottom.
Three and a half years ago, just after the operation in Lebanon, for those who remember – the Second Lebanon War, one could say even during the course of the Second Lebanon War, when missiles were falling in villages in the Galilee and an Arab girl was killed by a Hizbullah missile that hit her village, her father called his daughter a shaheeda (martyr). In the Galilee. Not in Judea and Samaria or anywhere else in the world. At that time I was a combat soldier in that operation, in the army. And there was a feeling that we’d lost the war. The main feeling was that the nation felt weak; the nation felt that it was not making it. Ehud Olmert summed it up when he said: “we are tired of wars.”
A short time later – my father, who has a herd of cattle on a 5,000 dunam area north of Tzipori in the lower Galilee, sits us down to Friday supper and tells us: I am bankrupt. There is a tribe of Bedouins that has been cutting my fences for many years, invading my territory, threatening to murder me, slaughtering cows on my property and generally doing whatever they want. I have filed 240 complaints with the police. And nobody even looks in my direction. He simply told us, his family: ‘I have decided to abandon 2,500 dunam. I can’t hold on to this territory any more.’
At the time I was at a crossroads, about to start an officers’ course in the army, and I told my father ‘over my dead body, this is not going to happen.’ We organized, me and several friends from my army crew, we bought an old Renault Express, and started visiting the territory. There are some dignitaries here who have already visited me there to see the container-on-wheels we lived in for two years. In the past year we upgraded it to a caravan. Everything is legal, the authorities signed the paperwork, because we understood that in the Galilee, the laws are a little different.
We put up an Israeli flag and we brought some books – only books on Judaism and Zionism. And we started going to the fields every day after operations and training, to guard the land, fight the Bedouins and make them leave. When we would call the police, the policeman on duty would tell us: ‘if you call me one more time I am coming to arrest you.’
There are 15 authorities in the country – police, Border Police, JNF, et cetera – that do not have the guts to do their job on the ground. Now, in the course of this process three and a half years ago, I learned that when one talks to the youth in the Land of Israel – by the way, I am not religious and I come from a nonreligious social background, like most Israelis – when you talk to young people in this society, and ask them ‘what story to you know?’, they can tell all of you the name of the brother of the cousin of the grandmother of Harry Potter; but when you ask them ‘who is Rambam?’ [Maimonides] – they can’t even tell you if it is the name of a hospital; and if you ask them if they know what the names Berl Katznelson or [Yitzchak] Tabenkin or [Ze'ev] Jabotinsky stand for [early Zionist leaders, ed.] – the best case scenario is that they will say ‘a street in Tel Aviv.’
And you come to understand that this generation’s oxygen and strength are mostly ‘Survivor’ and ‘Big Brother’, the ‘reality’ TV shows – that is what gives them their insights and thoughts and connection to the Land of Israel. And that is why in the end, when cracks form, the vacuum [is filled by] the other side. I don’t care about the Arabs per se. They could have been Filipinos or any other nation. There are Israeli Jews do not feel that the Land of Israel belongs to them, and that is our story.
And from my father’s story, as I started guarding the territory and living there, I start hearing dozens of stories about kibbutzim and moshavim that have already abandoned their land, after Bedouins made their lives miserable for dozens of years.
Three years ago, Kibbutz Kfar HaNassi abandoned 4,000 dunams. Simply left the territory. The Bedouin village Tuba-Zangaria has already invaded the territory and is building illegally. Kibbutz Amiad – 13,000 dunams. Moshav Alonei Aba – 2,000 dunams. And the stories continue.
Then cattle herders and agriculturalists start coming to me and saying ‘Yoel, save us.’ Amir Engel of Tel Adashim who survives an attempt to murder him. Motti Peretz of Har Tur’an in Beit Rimon who survives an attempt to murder him. And you suddenly realize that these people are truly alone out in the field. And on that same day we decide to organize and form a group. [Former President] Yitzchak Ben-Tzvi wrote in his book ‘The History of the Haganah’ that when the state abandons its citizens – and by the way, it is not just abandoning them, it is torturing them and making sure that they lose their strength – he says, those citizens have no alternative but to unite and learn to defend each other.
And at that moment we decide – the whole group of guys. And they are all guys who served in the army. Most of them were in special units. And they all love this country. They are all happy to live here. None of them is confused. They all know the [Talmudic] phrase ‘know from whence you came.’ They know their story and know where they are going. And from this we decide that we will form something called the New HaShomer. Because we are not inventing anything. Because 100 years ago there was the same group of Jews here that arrived in the Land of Israel and the same type of government was torturing them too. And we understand that at that moment we are renewing the concept of mutual responsibility. Of people who come together to save a person.
We have more than 600 volunteers now. Guys who give between 7 and 20 days of reserve duty annually. Who come up to the agriculturalist or cattle farmer and say to him – ‘go sleep at home with your wife tonight, we are guarding the territory. Because it is true that you are making money off of it but it is ours. It is our story. And when you meet these cattle men who tell you: ‘my wife says, either we divorce or you leave the land,’ you simply save these people.
We have seven pre-military academies and yeshivas whose students regularly come to these lands and guard them. Young people who join these agriculturalists and work with them day to day.
Last week we made history. Maybe you have heard of pre-military academies like Eli or Atzmona and such, or the pre-military ’service year’ for guys who finish high school. We have over 230 candidates, boys, for whom we held very difficult training, to find the twenty or thirty guys who will live like King David, as we like to say. Every group of 8-10 guys will live on an outpost and be in charge of a flock of sheep.
They will study Torah in the morning. They will study Zionism in the evening. They will learn Arabic so the [Arabs] will understand we do not delude ourselves that we live in France or Holland; they must realize they are in the Middle East. And these guys with the flocks of sheep, and the Full Contact training and running and training, will bring back the courage of the Jew in the Land of Israel. The Jew who observes more commandments and the one who observes less, they are all the same to us. And in the end you see deep, long term processes. People join. By the way, some people come to do guard duty and some contribute – either their money or their assistance with equipment of some kind.
Everybody feels that they want to be a part of this thing. And this thing keeps growing: every week at least 60 people join. We hold three to seven lectures a week. We get 3-6 requests for help every week. A guy called Oz Davidian from the Negev called me a year ago. He told me – ‘Yoel, three weeks ago, three Bedouins came. They found me alone in my ranch and they beat me half to death senseless with metal rods. Why? Because. Because he holds 1,500 dunams and they want him to stop holding them. Three weeks later, he says, the same Bedouins come and steal all of his sheep too. He says to me: ‘If you do not come here tonight, these guys will murder me.’ In this situation, I bring along three volunteers from the North. We do not have a car, we hitch rides at 2:00 AM and arrive at his field. I find a person who is a pile of bones. Anorexic. He hasn’t left his farm for four months. He couldn’t leave his farm. He has a court order forbidding his young daughter from visiting him there because it is dangerous. In the Negev.
I sit with 20 pilots in the Negev. At Nevatim Air Base, between Arad and Be’ersheva. 20 pilots. Arrowheads. They tell us that their base commander forbids them from traveling on the road from Arad to Be’ersheva. Why? Because Bedouins throw washing machines and boulders on the road, the cars stop suddenly. They take the soldiers out of the vehicles and they beat them up. So they are told to drive to their base a roundabout way, through Dimona.
I always say that the fortified walls that protect our land are the open spaces. The fortified walls of Jerusalem are the cattlemen and agriculturalists with the 4 million dunams of state land. That is what protects our country. Whoever thinks that ‘the state of Azrieli [a Tel Aviv shopping mall]‘ will save us is confused.
And from all of this we see that by 2015 we will have more than 2,000 guards, at least 6,000 total volunteers, and at least 30 nucleus groups like I described of 8-10 pre-army guys with the sheep on the land, going back to the roots, and relearning their own story, and not being confused by anyone, and then there will be no cracks and confusion, and the entire world will know who this belongs to. This includes the Arabs by the way. They are simply waiting for us to tell them – ‘this is ours.’ They haven’t understood this yet. They are waiting and with the help of G-d, long term processes will make this happen.
HaShomer HaChadash can be contacted through Philip Bar-Yosef at bigshraga@hotmail.com.
I couldn’t resist scheduling one last post before the holiday starts since the item concerns the changing demographics of Jewish Israel. In fact, it touching a subject I have tried to emphasize throughout my blogging years as the implications are wide spread and far-reaching for the whole ‘peace process’. Ynet News:
The Central Bureau of Statistics report published Sunday reveals that 8% of Israel’s Jewish population defines itself as haredi, 12% as religious, 13% as traditional-religious, 25% as traditional and 42% as secular, on a descending scale of religiosity. The data is from the annual general survey carried out for the CBS, which supplies information about living conditions for Israel’s population. As part of the survey, some 7,500 people above the age of 20 were interviewed from throughout the country.
Ynet News chose to emphasized the ‘42%’ of secular nature of Israelis in its head-line for this report but let me put it another way; 58% or the majority of Israeli-Jews consider themselves religious Jews. While I am of the belief that one can never have enough religious Jews there are a number of facts of life which the other 42% of Israelis need to accept. First, of which is that the latte sippers of Tel Aviv aren’t in the majority anymore and need to govern themselves accordingly and its time the pass to brush up on Jewish law. My point being that no resolution to any conflict in the future will be possible without a basis in Jewish law – this includes any agreement made to with the Palestinians.
This scenario is already playing itself in the IDF. Ha’aretz:
The Israel Defense Forces underwent a change.
The army plays a critical role in carrying out an agreement (in withdrawing from territory and evacuating settlers ), but also in ensuring security stability after the agreement is reached. The trouble is that the IDF of 1993 is not the IDF of 2010. Here is what happened in the officers’ course for the infantry corps, the spearhead of the combat units, during that period: In 1990, 2 percent of the cadets enrolled in the course were religious; by 2007, that figure had shot up to 30 percent. And this is how the intermediate generation of combat officers looks today: six out of seven lieutenant colonels in the Golani Brigade are religious and, beginning in the summer, the brigade commander will be as well. In the Kfir Brigade, three out of seven lieutenant colonels wear skullcaps, and in the Givati Brigade and the paratroopers, two out of six. In some of the infantry brigades, the number of religious company commanders has passed the 50 percent mark – more than three times the percentage of the national religious community in the overall population.
The implications (Ha’aretz)
The secular left-wing fell asleep on the job. The empty ranks it left in its wake have been filled by others. Even those who believe there is no choice other than a massive evacuation of the settlements should know that it will be extremely difficult to do this after the disengagement from Gush Katif.
In 2005, the evacuation was carried out because Ariel Sharon did not bat an eyelid and the military acted accordingly. The battalion commanders, for the most part, will obey orders next time as well, but it is hard to see how the company commanders who come from the settlements of Tapuah and Kedumim will answer the call to remove Jews from their homes. It is no surprise that the top IDF brass is so fearful of such a scenario.
Not only did the Israel left fall asleep, they forgot to breed but less any of you forget, even Sharon undertook a purge of the religious officers from the IDF prior to commencing his disengagement from Gaza which among other things saw incompetents parachuted in far above their grade level with disastrous results. Just think how Dan Halutz was vaulted into the upper echelon to become the IDF Chief of Staff over the heads of far more qualified commanders. Sharon was able to do so because the ranks were thinner and there still were alternatives. I suppose Sharon suffered from the hubris that he would always be around to guide them and keep them from making crucial mistakes…
A few months ago a blogging buddy (of the progressive bent) made reference in an email suggesting the so-called Israeli settlements in the disputed territories are strictly populated by Russians and Americans and not real ‘bonafided’ Israelis. I let his remarks pass unchallenged because much like the latte sippers of Tel Aviv, he has fallen to the fallacy that time passing is stagnant thing.
While certainly the early ‘80’s saw an influx of American Jews making Aliyah and residing pass the so-called ‘green-line’ and with the collapse of the former Soviet Union another wave of FSU migrated to the ‘settlements’, he overlooked something crucial. Those Americans and Russian born settlers all had children – and lots of them. Those children have all grown up, married and have had children and rather than migrate away have chosen to stay close to home. Its those grand-children who are now filling out the ranks of the IDF and voting in elections and they are cast in the mold of the religious rather than secular. Unlike in 2004-2005, no Israeli leader can afford to purge the IDF of its religious soldiers and still be able to field an armed force to defeat its enemies.
These two seemingly unrelated headlines grabbed my attention this morning. Arutz Sheva:
Rabbi Schmidt, 43, is the Rosh Yeshiva (head) of the Hesder Yeshiva in the community, and is also the Rabbi of the town of Shavei Shomron.
According to the rabbi’s wife, Ofra, some 200 policemen arrived at the community Monday with bulldozers to demolish four structures that were being built, allegedly in contravention of the current freeze order on construction by Jews in Judea and Samaria. The bulldozers drove through the yeshiva compound, which adjoins some of the property that was razed. The rabbi instructed some twenty yeshiva students who were present not to confront the police.On their way back from the demolitions, she said, the destruction crews wanted to pass through the yeshiva grounds once again, although there was an alternate route. This time, the rabbi parked his vehicle in a way that blocked the bulldozers’ way and asked them not to pass through the yeshiva compound, which is private property.
Upon hearing this the police beat the rabbi, knocked him down and continued to beat him severely when he was on the ground. He did not require medical attention, she said, but expressed horror at the fact that Jewish police would beat a rabbi, even after being told that he was a rabbi.
So the Yassam strike (literally) without an eye to the optics of attacking a rabbi on Yeshiva property. The days when this kind of incident would pass without anyone outside of the immediate circle are long gone with the internet but the fact that the Yassam continue to operate from an exaggerated sense of entitlement without regard for the laws of Israel speaks volumes to lack of accountability the Minister of Defense holds his department to as long as Jews are his chosen victims.
The second is announcement from Moshe Feiglin. Arutz Sheva:
Moshe Feiglin, head of the Manhigut Yehudit oppositional faction within the Likud party, has decided to leave the Likud along with his movement, Makor Rishon reported Friday.
Feiglin has called a meeting of the central activists in Manhigut Yehudit for Sunday, in which he intends to announce his decision. He will recommend that the movement seek its political home outside Likud. On the record, Feiglin would only tell Makor Rishon that “we are in a period of internal inquiries that will last about two weeks and we are involving the activists in the dilemmas.”(…)Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu has seen Feiglin as his nemesis within Likud, and accused him of trying to effect a hostile takeover of the Likud with the aim of turning it into a religious party. “We are not an extremist messianic party; we are a national and liberal movement,” he said ahead of the latest confrontation with Feiglin.
That confrontation took place late April and centered on an internal Likud vote to change the party’s constitution in a way that would put off to 2011 the elections to its central committee. The move was seen as a bid to prevent Feiglin from gaining strength in the party’s grassroots leadership and to give Netanyahu time to add more moderate grassroots members to Likud, to offset the ones that Feiglin had brought in.
Feiglin said the showdown would ultimately determine the fate of Jerusalem. Netanyahu, he warned emotionally, wants to silence opposition in the Likud because he has made a secret pact with US President Barack Obama that involves partitioning Jerusalem. Several Likud Knesset members, including Danny Danon, Tzipi Hotovely and Yariv Levin, also opposed Netanyahu’s move – but Netanyahu succeeded in passing the resolution anyway. This last failure is what seems to have convinced Feiglin to leave the Likud and essentially abandon his decade-long project.
While on first glance these two stories seemingly have nothing to do with each other; they both speak to the democratic deficit within Israeli politics. Feiglin would have been sitting in the Knesset if Netanyahu hadn’t given into subverting his own political party’s process – not once, but many times in pursuit of keeping Feiglin’s Jewish leadership out of power within the Likud. Feiglin’s fraction makes up at least 25-30% of the Likud membership base and has acted as a straw to draw away support from the national religious camp in general elections.
Netanyahu may think the Likud can make-up a 25-30% loss of membership by poaching from Kadima – and Bibi may be right but what he doesn’t seem to fully comprehend is the potential to harm Likud interests Feiglin’s membership represents; if Feiglin decides to do something fresh, creative and controversial…which just happens to be a Feiglin hallmark.
The natural fit for Feiglin’s fraction is to opt to join the National Union and I expect Bibi is counting on that as the impact on national elections wouldn’t be all that much to write back to the diaspora about but if Feiglin wants to keep to his strategy of joining the mainstream political process and influencing change his way; he would be far further ahead to keep his to his strategy and join forces with…Ysrael Beiteinu.
Not to mention the humongous entertainment value I would get watching such a merger but it could potentially mark Yisrael Beiteinu as a fraction too large to be denied no matter if Kadima or Likud took the most mandates. If Yisrael Beiteinu could successfully integrate its party platform with Feiglin’s Jewish Leadership fraction it could potentially lead Israel in the years to come when the country is set to undergo another demographic first – transitioning from a secular Jewish majority to a religious Jewish majority. If I was Lieberman, I’d be calling Moshe.
Can you imagine Lieberman and Moshe both sitting across the table from the Palestinian Authority in ‘direct’ negotiations? I almost (not quite)feel sorry for the Palestinian Authority but the one thing no Jew anywhere in the world would be worrying about is whether Lieberman or Feiglin dividing up Jerusalem.
Last month a West Bank Mosque was vandalism and torched and the news story was carried around the world. I have chosen Ynet New account owing to Ynet News well-known and defined anti-settler bias.
Fire was set to a large mosque in the West Bank Palestinian village of Yasuf, east of Salfit, Thursday night. Hebrew slurs were sprayed on the walls that said: “We will burn all of you.” The words “price tag” were also scrawled on the walls.
“Price tag” is the slogan adopted some months ago by extremist settlers who carry out reprisals against Palestinians in response to the evacuation of settlement structures by Israeli defense forces.
The Palestinians are pointing fingers at settlers in the area as the main culprits. Following a complaint, a joint investigation was launched that includes security forces in the area. The defense establishment said to Ynet that they view this as a serious offense and intend to bring the perpetrators to justice.
It outraged not only the Palestinians but the Israelis. It was automatically assumed to be the work of rogue settlers and the denunciations of the culprits came from a united Israeli front. The criminal act became a political issue so it was only logical for those who walk the corridors to power to arrest a political symbol and who better able to appease the political echelon of both the Israelis and Palestinians than the teenage grandson of the notorious Rabbi Meir Kahane? A teenager, who as a child, lost his own parents in a terrorist attack.
I am going to confess that I know very little about Rabbi Meir Kahane and ins and outs of his political philosophy. I do know he was elemental in the fight to free Soviet Jewry but most of what I know comes from second or third hand sources and much of which is very biased against him. I am not overtly familiar with the social culture of the Israelis at that time so its not easy for me to put him into context. Sure, I watched and listened to a few of his speeches and I have to admit to feeling a weird disconnect when doing so. He doesn’t quite seem to be the demon everyone makes him out to be. I can’t shake the feeling I am missing some piece of the big picture which everyone gets but me. I don’t fret over it and I am not particularly motivated to study the man and his philosophy – although, perhaps I should given how some of my critics liken me to a Kahanists. Anyhow, there is very few Israeli political figures which polarize the Israeli body politic like Kahane and the Israeli papers were ecstatic when the Shin Bet released the news of the arrest of the grandson of Rabbi Meir Kahane for the mosque attack, and again, the newspapers of the world carried the story.
A relative of former Kach Chairman, Rabbi Meir Kahane, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of torching a mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf about three weeks ago. He was detained at around 12 pm by the Judea and Samaria Police at the Tapuach Junction. The suspect was taken in for questioning. Sources close to him told Ynet, “We hope the Shin Bet and police won’t treat him like settlers have been treated recently.”
(…)Attorney Yehuda Shushan, representing the suspect told Ynet that his client – a minor – adamantly denies all the allegations against him, adding that he was “traumatized by the arrest.” According to the Shushan, the youth was arrested while driving near the Tapuach Junction. He did not resist arrest and during the initial investigation, was told that he was suspected of arson.
“The investigators kept telling him that they know what they know based on intelligence, saying ‘we know you didn’t do it, but we know you know who did, so just tell us who did it,’” said Shushan. The youth denied any connection to the arson and according to his attorney provided an alibi, after which he invoked his right to remain silent. Shushan claimed his client was denied his rights as a minor in police custody, i.e. – having an adult family member present during questioning. “The police would be better spending their time tracking down the real suspects, instead of arresting a minor who has nothing to do with this. I hope they right this wrong and release him before he is arraigned.”
But very few foreign news agencies carried the story of his release. In fact, I can’t think of one which did. Ynet News
The youth suspected of torching the mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf was released on bail Thursday evening, after the police verified his alibi. Nevertheless, the minor’s involvement in the case is still investigated. The youth, who is a relative of Kach founder Rabbi Meir Kahane, was arrested in the morning hours and interrogated for several hours.
Attorney Yehuda Shushan, representing the suspect told Ynet that his client has no criminal record and that he adamantly denies all the allegations against him, adding that he was “traumatized by the arrest.” The investigators kept telling him that they know what they know based on intelligence, saying ‘we know you didn’t do it, but we know you know who did, so just tell us who did it’,” said Shushan.
Now remember, the Israeli police have vertified his ‘alibi’ but they refuse to drop the charges against the minor. So the score is now one west bank mosque damaged and one false arrest. This brings us to events in the Mosque saga. Ynet News
The police and Shin Bet on Sunday night detained 10 people in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar, on suspicion of being involved in the torching of a mosque in the Palestinian village of Yasuf last month and in other offenses.
The police reported that Zvi Sukkot of Yitzhar, Eliran Elgali of Yitzhar and Shlomo Gilbert of Elon Moreh, all 20 years old, are suspected of badly damaging Palestinian property. Two yeshiva students were also detained.
During the arrest, the police searched a yeshiva in the settlement and found violent measures, including spikes. Five other suspects, four of them minors, were arrested on suspicion of rioting in the Samaria area. The fifth is also suspected of demonstrating outside the home of a Civil Administration inspector.
According to local residents, more than 100 members of the security forces arrived at the community in order to carry out the arrests. One of the detainees was said to have lost his consciousness during the arrest. All the suspects were taken in for questioning.
An Yitzhar resident told Ynet, “Where have the human rights organizations gone? What happened tonight in Yitzhar was a pogrom. The police would not let themselves behave this way with any other population in the State of Israel. They beat us, damaged property and even confiscated cameras ocumenting their actions. Good morning, Iran.”
I suppose a detainee losing consciousness during an arrest is now an doublespeak for the police using excessive physical force. Got to love when the state grants legitimacy to thugs to carry out their politicking. The Yitzhar resident does bring up an interesting question; just why have the civil rights associations in Israel gone silent? And the answer; is why I routinely refer to the Associations for Human Rights in Israel – for everyone but Jews. But the mosque sage doesn’t end here but goes a few steps further down the road. Ynet News
The Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court extended by seven days the remand of the four Yeshiva students from Yitzhar suspected of involvement in the arson of a mosque in the Palestinian village of Yasuf last month. The suspects are not cooperating with detectives, and deny all allegations against them.
Reading the article until the end leaves me with the nagging suspicion that the remanding of four out of the initial 10 Yeshiva students has more to do with their exercising of their legal rights, lack of airtight alibis for the time period for vandalism at the mosque, and the police using this opportunity to settle a few scores rather than the search for the culprits in the attack. And how convenient for the police to confiscate the cameras documenting their no doubt ‘righteous’ arrests.
Ha’aretz’s Gideon Levy penned this screed to the ’settler’. I really don’t know what to make of Gideon Levy. There is this kind of alternative reality to his writing which always leaves me going – ‘What? What, no…he didn’t just write that did he?!!?’ Usually I have to rub my eyes and then check back to see if anything changed between the time it took to rub my eyes and refocusing on the page…
What constitutes the life of a settler? A house on the cheap; a standard of living above the national average; a job usually subsidized by the government; a fierce religious, nationalist, uncompromising conviction on the justness of his cause; a supportive, heavy-handed social environment; a highway system; transportation arrangements; socially enriching activities; and, at times, a life that comes with the risk of danger.
The settler goes to and from his home without seeing anything. He does not see his neighbors, he does not see the danger he exposes his children to, he does not see the moral baggage he carries on his back. He does not want to see all this, and an entire system surrounds him that makes life easy for him despite his blindness.
Some of the highways on which he drives are cleansed of Palestinians; he has never visited the neighboring villages, not one of whose names he would know were it not for traffic signs pointing in their direction. His teachers, functionaries and rabbis sketch out the scenery that is his world, leaving him no shred of doubt: the Arabs are terrorists, all of them are suspicious packages, and the Jews are allowed to do as they wish, for they are the lords of the land, and there is no other but they.
You can read the rest or not (as you choose) but he goes on and on like this. The rather strange thing is how little this ‘prototype settler’ resembles the ’settlers’ I have known or met. While my experience is merely anecdotal; its strikes me as bizarre, with my wide circle of acquaintances, that I haven’t run across Levy’s Settler except in the writings of various of the hard left-types…
In fact, this characterization is so atypical that I have been mulling over how best to respond to this article before responding via the blog. Then I read this post at The Muqata, and I knew, that nothing I could write would greater illustrate the ‘alternative reality’ quality of Levy’s Settler than Jamal writing at The Muqata about attending a funeral where a 16 year old son, a ’settler’, gave the eulogy for his murdered father.
“AAAAABBBBBBA!!!” [father]
The word was yelled out by Eliyahu — the 16 year old teenage son of Rabbi Meir Chai, murdered in a Palestinian terrorist attack on the roads of the Shomron this past Thursday afternoon.
The first word of the eulogy was yelled out in pain, in sorrow, in mourning.
That first word of the eulogy, the hesped, “Abba”
The painful yell continued, lasting a lifetime, as it reverberated throughout the neighborhoods of Jerusalem, echoing in the hills around us.
I brought my oldest son to the funeral — as he went to school with Eliyahu Chai, is friends with him, and used to frequent our home as well. Before the funeral was about to start, my son asked me what to do. “Go over to your friend…give him a hug.”
And Eliyahu hugged my son, sobbing on his shoulder.
I was shocked by the power of the hesped which Eliyahu delivered.
“Hakol LeTova, HaKol MiShamayim”, Eliyahu sobbed into the microphone, repeating this over and over again. “It’s all for the best, it’s all from Heaven.”
Hearing a son eulogize his tragically murdered father — with such faith that he could repeat “HaKol LeTova” was shocking.“To all the youth here – you are the best youth there is; I salute you, and I say the same to all our soldiers and to the entire army, to each and every one of you.”
“Continue Abba’s path: Abba wanted faith! Abba wanted Torah study! Abba wanted prayers! Abba couldn’t bear to see youth without tefillin… If we want to immortalize Abba, then we have to do things like that – not external things.
Eliyahu looks like the classic settler “hilltop” youth, lambasted by the media. Long paeyot, a large white knitted kippa. I don’t think the media was prepared for what he said next.Do not look for revenge, not to beat up Arabs. This is not our solution. The difference between us and them is, that we are human beings! We won’t go to them and kill them just like that; if they come to us [to attack us], we will kill them and put a bullet in their heads, but we won’t go to them!
We are Jews.
May HaShem comfort the mourners of Zion and give them beauty for ashes.
The foreign funded wingnut group Peace Now established a hotline in Israel where you can anonymonously rat out your neighbours for building or construction during the so-called settlement freeze within the disputed territories and promoted it heavily. Well, it appears they got a lot more calls than they bargained for as Israeli nationalists have been burning up the lines. Arutz Sheva:
But instead, many of the calls are from Israeli nationalists – reporting on illegal Arab construction. The calls reporting the Arab violations – as well as “nonsense calls” – are taking up much of the tape on Peace Now’s answering machines, leaving little room for the messages the hotline was intended for. Responding to the onslaught of “incorrect” messages, Peace Now Director Yariv Oppenheimer said that the varied responses, consisting of reports on Arabs, curses, and even jokes, were “entertaining.”
So glad to provide the ‘entertainment’ and let us hope the patriots don’t let up.
A 60 year old farmer goes out to work his land, much like he has done most days for the last 25 years. When he arrives at his plot of land he sees a group tearing up his plants and tractors getting ready to plow under his plants. He confronts the group which is a mix of ‘locals’ and activists lead by a Rabbi. In the ensuing confrontation he is attacked and injured badly enough he has to be airlifted to a hospital. Just another day of Settlers and their Rabbis running a muck in the disputed territories….except it isn’t the ‘Settlers’ or their ‘Rabbis”. Ynet News:
One person was arrested on suspicion of assault, and activists of the B’Tselem human rights organization say soldiers confiscated one of their cameras. The clash erupted as Palestinians arrived to work their lands, which the settlers say belong to them, near Tel Shilo. The settlers claimed the Palestinians uprooted their plants, while the Palestinians said that the settlers stopped them from plowing the land with a tractor.
During the clash, one of the Palestinians attacked a 60-year-old settler, who fell down and hit his head. He was evacuated to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.
One of the reasons I routinely refer to Rabbis for Human Rights ‘except for Jews’ or used the word ‘alleged’ human rights groups like B’Tselem is that so often they are in the thick of the conflict and appear utterly indifferent to the human cost their so-called confrontations incite and instigate. B’Tselem appears much more concerned that one of their member’s camera was confiscated rather than the fact a sixty year old man was attacked and injured seriously by an individual associated with their group. Back to the Ynet News report.
Army and police forces dispatched to the area declared it a “closed military zone.” They arrested the man suspected of assault and he was taken in for questioning by the police. A camera was confiscated from a B’Tselem activist documenting the incident. Residents of the Binyamin Regional Council say the land has been subject to a dispute for many years, but that the sides have so far managed to maintain a “status quo.”
The council’s security officer, Avigdor Shatz, told Ynet that “farmers from Shilo have been working this piece of land for 25 years. There has been a legal dispute over this land for a long time, but the status quo has been maintained. Those violating it are left-wing activists who come here with tractors in order to work the land.” Shatz says that the past two years have seen an escalation in the situation, as left-wing activists and Palestinians claim they are the sole owners of the land. “Last year, a Palestinian came here, presented documents and claimed that the land belonged to him, but a Civil Administration inquiry and legal advices revealed that this was not true,” he said.
Human rights organizations and residents claim, on the other hand, that the settlers have been forging their ownership of the land. Rabbi Arik Ascherman of the Rabbis for Human Rights organization told Ynet, “In the past year there has been a wave of interference with false claims. The settler claims the land belongs to him, but he has no documents while the Palestinians have documents.”
Do false documents trump no documents, and who to believe? Well, I cannot think much of the word of a so-called ‘rabbi’ who provoked a violent confrontation and let an elderly man be beaten by one of ‘followers’ and then fails to display the slightest concern for safety or well-being of injured party. And to add insult to injury – uses his 15 minutes of media hype to plea his ’cause of the day’ rather than express remorse for the part he played in the violence.
Batya adds her two cents at Shiloh Musings but I think she has been a little too kind.
Binyamin Netanyahu is a hard political figure for North Americans to view and understand in an Israeli context. He is eloquent and a masterful speaker in English and he knows all the right things to say which pulls at the Diaspora heart strings in North America. As such, its always a surprise to North Americans to learn just how little well regarded he is in Israel. I try to tell people but I get poop-poohed on a regular basis. My words mean little when measured against their perceptions from viewing Netanyahu on the regular Anglo television talk circuits.
Watching Bibi Netanyahu after the Israeli elections last winter I came away with the distinct impression that Bibi was stuck trying to correct his mistakes made during his last attempt at running the country rather than building on the new realities. While I still believe he is giving far too much weight to the issues which brought down his former government but I may seriously have to reconsider that I have misjudged Bibi’s learning curve.
Reading the daily news reports of the anti-settlement freeze I was kept asking myself; how could Netanyahu not know this would be the response to his self-imposed freeze on construction and what does he gain by it?
One of the major fall-outs from the Sharon Disengagements from the Gaza Strip, excluding the obvious escalation of rocket attacks, showed the Israeli public the very real and painful consequences to Israeli citizens when the government expels them. If anything this ensures that any future withdrawals will be met with great resistance. The continued plight of the Gush Katif refugees illustrates a daily painful lesson. No one would willingly chose to take on that mantle without a fight for their lives.
Reading the reports in the last few days I was suddenly struck the nagging idea that perhaps Netanyahu deliberately made the building freeze far more restrictive and far-ranging than any Israeli administration had before in order to provoke the current Israeli response. Of course, if the response was a little slow from the Israeli street Bibi knew he could count on the character of Ehud Barak who wouldn’t fail him. Barak and his far left politics are unable to resist an opportunity to lash out against Israeli settlers and thereby would guarantee a response from the Israeli street.
There is no doubt in my mind that the whole building freeze notion was born through the misguided and naive efforts of Obama Administration and pressure was brought to bear against Netanyahu. No doubt he protested that a building freeze would endanger his coalition and create civil strife on the Israeli street. The bubble the Obama Administration operates in probably discounted Netanyahu’s warnings as the ravings of a far-right policy hawk and not a realistic evaluation of the Israeli sentiment.
This morning I came across this update at Ynet News update in which Likud MK Danny Danon makes a rather remarkable statement about an encounter with Bibi which gives weight to my suspicious. Ynet News
Netanyahu said to the members of Knesset, “We are a in a continual struggle over the map of Israel.” He also said that he is impressed by the determination of some faction members to continue advocating for settlement in the West Bank. “You have to go out and protest against me. Then we’ll finish it early,” said Netanyahu to the MKs. (Attila Somfalvi)
Keep in mind this rather interesting statement Netanyahu made last Sunday. Ynet News
“Even if Abu Mazen (PA President Mahmoud Abbas) will come in another eight months with the message ‘Peace Now,’ we will start building as before. The cabinet’s decision has a deadline,” said Netanyahu in the weekly cabinet meeting.
This still leaves the question of what Bibi gains and I sincerely doubt he is gunning for the ‘good-will’ of the Obama administration. He is far too pragmatic a man and too seasoned an Israeli politician to have made a bargain without getting something solid in return. If my suspicious are correct than whatever Bibi bargained for should come to come to light within the next ten months.
