WITHDRAWAL
AND THE SETTLERS: A Double Riot.
The Israeli government will dismantle
‘illegal’ settlements, established after March 2001 when
The forcible removal of illegal
settlers in the various settlements represents establishing the ‘Rule
of Law’.
Jewish youths wearing ski masks, one expects of Hamas and Islamic Jihad
have
been allowed to rule in certain settlements. They beat Palestinian
children and
old people and have destroyed Olive trees. Some used to say of Arabs
‘force is
the only language these people understand’; now Israeli Jewish Police
and IDF
officers are saying this about Jews.
However excessive violence does not
represent
the Rule of Law, but illegality.
Amona
dismantlement:
Young protesters hurled cinder blocks,
large stones and buckets of paint at advancing security forces at the
Amona
outpost in the West Bank Wednesday and seriously injured two police
officers,
47 other officers were lightly wounded; over 100 settler supporters
were also
wounded, some seriously. The police reacted violently as if lacking
control.
The leadership of both the settlers (Yesha Council) and the police lost
control.
Reciprocal hatred between settlers and
police made the evacuation of Amona a two sided riot. The police and
IDF were
clearly trained in Gush Katif not to react to the violent acts of the
youths.
In Amona, the violence was greater and more dangerous but the police
were not
trained. As Gen. (ret.) Effie Eitam (former leader of the National
Religious
Party) stated ‘they treated us like Arabs’. Not quite - the police
killed 13 Arabs
in October 2000 who demonstrated.
Vladimir Jabotinsky, the grandfather of
the Revisionists and Herut and the ancestor of the current Likud party
said “Inevitably,
therefore, the question must arise of 'transferring' those Arabs
elsewhere so
as to make at least some room for Jewish newcomers. But it must be
hateful for
any Jew to think that the rebirth of a Jewish state should ever be
linked with
such an odious suggestion as the removal of non-Jewish citizens.”
Apparently he
did not agree with Eitam.
It was obvious watching on Israeli
television that the Youth and the Police
had rioted.
Amos Harel of Haartez pointed out that
the youth were almost exclusively Ashkenazik (western European Jews).
The
Police were Druze, Bedouin, immigrants from
Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin said the
settlers' hostility toward the security forces has increased, and
soldiers and
policemen are no longer allowed into synagogue services nor give lifts
by
settlers. He said the Amona settlers have taken an especially militant
line
toward the soldiers. They were inflamed due to the settler leadership
previously
"lenient attitude" toward the security forces. "They see Amona
as the place where they'll defeat
Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh, IDF Central
Command Head a religious Zionist with a kippah (skullcap) said that the
youth
who came to Amona on Thursday "are disengaging from the state”. An
Haaretz
writer Bradley Burston wrote “The civil war has begun." He writes that
these young new hard-line settlers see themselves as "New Genuine
Jews." And they see the state as their enemy. He quotes a resident of
Rabbi Avi Gisser, of Amona's mother
settlement, Ofra stated that the violent youth were a "new
ultra-Orthodox
society . . . not Zionist . . . [The state of
The Jerusalem Post (Jan. 5, Israel’s
right of center daily newspaper) called these “religious Zionist youth
from
uber-patriots, who even saw the state as embodying messianic processes
in
history, into anti-Zionists who view the state as the enemy of these
same
ideals.” According to Moshe Feiglin who ran and lost for the leadership
of the
Likud “the courageous youth in Amona erased the shame of Gush Katif.”
(Arutz
Sheva, February 7)
Rabbi Michael Melchior stated “The
knitted skullcap has given way to ski masks, and the hoe and the
tablets of the
Ten Commandments − the symbol of the Bnei Akiva youth movement − to
cinder
blocks and stones. . .
The events at Amona have taught us that
uncompromising violence and the flying batons of the police know no
bounds and
do not discriminate between Jew and Arab. All are the same, and
smashing the
head of an Arab leads easily to smashing the head of a Jew.”
A Statement like Death to the State of
A Woman’s
Story:
The incident began when a small group
of people including women and children began a protest at the police
roadblock
against the demolition of homes in Amona. One girl crossed the road,
and an
officer told her to move out of the way. When she talked back to the
officer, a
policewoman teamed up with the officer, and they pushed her with force
to the
ground.
"At this point," said the
mother of nine, "I approached the officers and told them that they were
using excessive force for no reason. A friend of mine tried to take a
picture
of the policewoman's badge, but it was tilted to the side. I extended
my hand
to straighten her badge, and my friend took the picture." Her name was
Naomi Shachor, wife of the chief Rabbi
of nearby Maaleh Levonah, came over when she saw the policemen trying
to arrest
a protestor. Naomi says, "We were trying to pull her back towards us.
They
grabbed her… I saw her on the ground, and they started to pull off her
sweater…
The ones who did it and pushed her were men... I would like to
emphasize
that... It was a very terrible and shocking moment for me. I am still
trying to
get myself together from it." The assaulted mother identified this
policeman as one of the attackers
The assaulted mother continued,
"As they assaulted me, they began ripping my shirt. With no shame,
several
officers deliberately ripped off my shirt, and I was left there
exposed. At
this point, I started resisting so strongly that they backed off of me
a bit, I
grabbed my shirt from an officer who was holding it, and fled away in
shame."
Naomi added, "I felt a lot of
shame for her. I felt they crossed a border line that we thought we
had, and
apparently we don't have anymore. This is part of our modesty... We
tried to
talk to them afterwards, and they didn't want to understand. [I tried
to
explain to them] that this is something that shouldn't have been done.
We were
women; we were standing there democratically speaking out what we think
should
be said, conveying our feelings without anything else, and it was wrong
to do
it. [To see policemen violate the dignity of] a woman, a young
mother... I am a
history teacher. I saw photographs of that from a different era, and I
cannot
erase [those images]... I will not say what era – everyone knows. My
feelings
are very hurt about it. The policemen expressed no regret. We kept on
trying to
put some sense in them. [She was there exposed] in the upper half."
(Shoshanna
Walker- rosewalk@concentric.net)
In
Jewish religious extremists in
It at first appeared the Police and the
IDF would have to forcibly remove these illegal settlers. On Monday
January 30 a
compromise was reached between the
The problem with Jewish ownership is
that is exactly the Palestinian refugee claim; it was there property
until
1948. Will
On February 5 a demonstration was held
in
A
conversation among neighbors in Ra’anana:
Dr. Chaim Shein, a lecturer in the
philosophy
of law, and a rightist in his political opinions, compared the events
at Amona
to the incident of the Altalena underground arms-smuggling ship in
1948:
"One of the formative experiences of my childhood was hearing the
stories
told by my relatives who came to Israel on the Altalena, and were fired
upon at
the Tel Aviv beach. For the children of Amona, this is the modern
version of
the Altalena story, and it doesn't matter who started it."
Shein was convinced that the Amona
events are an expression of the hatred of Israeli society for religious
Zionism
and what it represents. "Today, the state is composed of a large
majority
of people who do not care about values. A large percentage of the
residents of
Ra'anana care only about the road to the airport being open and the
stock
market being strong. We thought that if we went with them to the
commando units
and to the pubs, they would love us. Now it is clear that there is a
disconnect
- that we constitute a nuisance, one that bursts the illusion of
quiet,"
he said.
His neighbor Dr. Motti Keidar, a Middle
East scholar at
Keidar spoke of the rupture that is
forming between the young people who hold extremist views, and their
parents:
"A crisis has formed between the parents, who see things in a more
multifaceted view, and their children, who see black-and-white. I have
one son
at the Atzmona pre-army program, one son in the Egoz reconnaissance
unit and a
daughter who went to Amona and came home early because of an asthma
attack. I
have been irrelevant to their education for years. Partly because of
the age,
partly because ever since they were young they have been in their own
frameworks and we, their parents, are less engrossed in them and more
in ourselves."
(Haaretz, February 13)
Conclusion:
Colonel Benzi Gruber, a reserve officer
and a religious Zionist believes there were serious errors on all
levels at
Amona. Going into blood soaked battle over nine empty houses that had
been
given demolition orders - in the wrong way at the wrong place and the
wrong
time - against a sector that considers itself beaten, spurned, and
feeling the
pain of those evicted. Pouring salt in that open wound is, in Gruber's
opinion,
not wise and unnecessary, to put it mildly. "We are at a crossroads. On
the one hand, Amona could lead down a slippery slope. On the other
hand, this
sector could - with the help of all involved - regain some of its lost
trust." (Haaretz, Feb. 6)
Religious
Zionism "is in a huge storm,"
said Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, the 48-year-old head of a yeshivah in Petah
Tikvah
that combines study and army service. Cherlow, considered a moderate
among
right-wing rabbis, said in an interview that what concerns him most at
the
moment is not ideology but the danger that "we are raising an
anarchistic
generation. They hate everyone — the institutions of the state of
The fact that many people believing in
the Greater Land of Israel thesis accept that the youth did nothing
wrong and
many people believing in disengagement and separation accept that the
police
were simply upholding the law suggest that the two sides are on a
collision
course. After the rioting
On February 15, 2006 the National
Religious Party founded in 1902, the first religious Zionist movement
subsumed
itself to the National Union, a recent political party who only reason
for
existence in the Greater Land of Israel thesis. The NRP was based on
Torah in
all of its aspects especially religious education. The NU is based
solely on
the holiness of the Land. In 1969 after the 1967 War a proposal was
submitted
to the NRP convention that stated ‘there is no right to forfeit the
entirety of
the Land’. With the help of the then
Rabbis it was defeated. In the new NU Nationalism and the Land is more
important that Religious.
Motti Zisser, born in Bnei Btak and an
Ultra-Orthodox Religious Zionist stated that “We placed our children in
the
hand of Rabbi whom we believed were doing their job and teaching them
Torah,
but our children came back from Yeshiva schooled in politics”.
(Haaretz, Book
Review, February 17)
The internal dissent amongst Jewish
Israelis may be as dangerous or more so than Palestinian terrorism. The
Talmud
tells us the second
A well written analyze was printed in
Haaretz on February 21 including the following last paragraph.
“The "deal" has to be amended
retroactively, in both parts. Religious Zionism has to compromise on
the issue
of the
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/684721.html