disengagement plan: a different settler reaction

[sharonbn]

All Pe'at Sadeh settlers sign moshav relocation deal

The head of the Disengagement Administration confirmed yesterday that all 20 families from the Pe'at Sadeh settlement in the Gaza Strip will relocate to Moshav Mavqi'im, just south of Ashkelon. Administration director Yonatan Bassi revealed that another five families will join the collective move to the moshav.

All of the residents of Pe'at Sadeh, 20 families in all, as well as five additional families from other settlements, will move together to Moshav Mavqi'im," Bassi said.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/519295.html

[defari]

What will happen to those settlers who do not wish to relocate? Will the army still protect them?

[sharonbn]

No settlements are supposed to remain in GS.
Those who refuse to relocate will be evacuated by force, like what happenned in Yamit in 1979.

[Mediocrates]

I hope they are loaded on railroad cars to the east, just to drive that one point home.

[Mediocrates]

The Israeli residents of Gush Katif are suffering under an unprecedented barrage of mortars, rockets, and anti-tank missiles. Last week more than 100 such projectiles -- more than ever before -- feel on their communities. The army did little more than symbolic responses, and senior commanders told Israeli media that there was much they could and would do -- except that their "hands were tied" by the political echelon.

Today, PM Sharon told the prestigious Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that it was all a lie -- the IDF was in no ways restricted in its ability to act, and there were many operational options at its disposal. Uh-huh. So why aren't they being used?

The fact that the new PA government is doing nothing to prevent terrorism or stop the firing on Gaza does not deter the Sharon government from freeing more than 150 Palestinian prisoners, including many who tried, but did not succeed, in attempts to kill Jews.

Meanwhile, Sharon threatened that the Palestinians better not dare shoot at the IDF while they were carrying out the expulsion of Jews from their communities -- heaven forbid that they should slow that process down. And Sharon said that he was moving forward the passage of the final legislation to lick the Gaza and Samaria residents out of their homes -- about five months earlier than previously planned, reportedly to allow time to quash legal appeals against the violation of their human and civil rights.

Last week the settlers launched, and abruptly suspended, their "orange star" campaign: like the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear by the Germans prior to their deportation, the Israelis slated for expulsion sought to shock the nation into realizing the horror of what the present government was authorizing: driving thousands of Jews from their homes and destroying whole communities, unearthing their dead, and arresting and imprisoning for years anyone who dares to resist, however passively and non-violently.

The media immediately went into a frothy frenzy, wondering how the "settlers" would DARE using such a symbol. They should, the powers that be apparently believe, just shut up and accept their fate, letting the police and the army do their dirty work. For what it is worth, I think the campaign was brilliant -- too brilliant, ultimately -- because it obviously struck a nerve. The sad fact is that the Sharon government is acting in a high-handed and dictatorial fashion and is poised to commit an act of "ethnic cleansing" which has implications far beyond what the Prime Minister intends.

The minute that it is deemed OK for the government to expel Jews from their homes for arbitrary reasons, the countdown begins for the same fate to befall "Israeli Arabs" and "Palestinian Arabs" as well. And the minute the government contemplates putting people on trial and imposing draconian prison terms for defending their own homes or identifying with those who do, it is bringing forward the days when the leaders who will constitute this government of "ethnic cleansing" will be brought up on charges and imprisoned when convicted.

What goes around comes around, and what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. And, perhaps, that is what is meant to be.

Shavua tov. Have a great week!

Reuven Koret

Publisher (Israel Insider)

[Mediocrates]

http://web.israelinsider.com/Views/4659.htm (http://web.israelinsider.com/Views/4659.htm)

The Orange Star
By Reuven Koret December 26, 2004


I am a "settler." True, I work in the bosom of Tel Aviv and live in its suburbs. But as a younger man, I had the unforgettably intensive experience of living in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem -- all of which, make no mistake, is considered "occupied territory" by most of the world. (Not just the Old City, but the New City as well. A child born in Jerusalem is not considered by the United States to be born in Israel. The State Department considers Jerusalem to be an International City, not an Israeli one.)

President Bush last week signed another in a long line of six-month waivers to postpone the Congressionally-mandated move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv. The number of countries with embassies in our capital can be counted on less than half the fingers on one hand. (I reserve one finger to express my feelings for those who decline to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.) The City of David is the living symbol of Israel's failure over 56 years to achieve international recognition for its sovereignty. Much of the world considers all of Israel to be "occupied territory," and all of its Jewish citizens occupiers. Settlers. Thus, as an Israeli citizen, I am a "Jewish settler." And proud of it.

The six-pointed Magen David is perhaps the most enduring representation of Jewishness. It adorns the Israeli flag. It appears on every synagogue. It hangs around the neck of many a proud Jew. It is to Judaism what the cross is to Christianity or the crescent is to Muslims. It is the symbol of our nationhood, our peoplehood.

So when the residents of Gush Katif decided to create orange badges in that shape, and wear them, I wondered: what's the big deal? I am not being disingenuous here. The initiators of the campaign were suggesting an association with the yellow Shields of David that the Germans forced the Jews to wear to single them for discrimination, for deportation and, eventually, for destruction. The residents of Gaza and northern Samaria are indeed the objects of discrimination and deportation, their communities slated for destruction -- except those parts which may be handed over, intact, to Israel's enemies.

No one is equating Sharon with Hitler, or the IDF and Israeli police with the German Nazis of their collaborators. No one is saying that the disengagement process will lead to Death Camps -- although the reality is that government is preparing mass detention camps, and the process it is driving with demonic fervor will almost certainly result in needless deaths. The conscientious objectors are making a statement that what the Sharon government has arrogated to do--expelling thousands of citizens and eliminating whole communities is an act unprecedented in a democracy, certainly in recent decades, and not an act that can or should be accepted quietly or with equanimity.

In 2003 Ariel Sharon ran against, and flattened by a 2:1 margin, Amnon Mitzna and the Labor party, which had adopted the platform of "unilateral disengagement." And then, less than a year later, he adopted that platform, in diametrical opposition to the platform of the Likud party which selected him as its leader.

The opponents of disengagement tried everything to stop it. They rejected it in the Central Committee. They rejected in a party-wide vote of all Likud voters. One hundred thousand created a human chain, holding hands from Gaza to Jerusalem. In the government, those who opposed disengagement were fired.

In the government decision, there were a number of conditions for the Disengagement Bill's passage: Israel would retain control of the airport and seaport, and keep control over the Philadelphi route along the border of Israel and Egypt to prevent weapons smuggling. Israel would authorize "evacuation" (another odious euphemism for expulsion) in four distinct steps, re-evaluating each next step in light of the previous one.

All of these restraints seem to be evaporating with each passing day. The government appears willing to let Palestinian mortars and rockets "soften up" the communities with unanswered attacks with no serious response. It's not that the army can't do anything. The government has "tied its hands," as a senior officer of the Southern Command said this weekend. There are rumblings of discontent and extreme frustration in the army, and the police force. Thousands of soldiers are signing petitions of refusal to expel fellow Jews.

[Mediocrates]

We see that the Jews of Gaza and northern Samaria are the canaries in the coal mine for all of Judea and Samaria, at least for those communities east of the security fence, and ultimately for Jerusalem. If the expulsion of these 8000-plus Jews goes smoothly and without fuss, it is just a matter of time before the government of Israel, compelled by foreign forces, turns its attention to the rest of the unfenced-in "West Bank."

The struggle in contemporary Israel is between those who wish to maintain and protect Israel's character as a Jewish State and those who wish to water-down the distinctively Jewish nature of the nation--starting with its flag adorned with the blue Magen David and its anthem, which speaks of "the two thousand year longing of the Jewish soul." While advocates of disengagement speak about the need to maintain the demographic balance of Jews and Arabs, and to preserve Israel as a "Jewish and Democratic state," the argument does not really hold up on close examination. Will Israel also flee from other areas -- the Galilee, the Negev, parts of Jerusalem and the coastal plain -- in which Jews are a minority? Apparently so. That is the precedent being set.

To acknowledge Israel as a Jewish State is not in any way to invalidate the rights or contributions of those non-Jews -- Christians, Arabs, and Druze who are loyal citizens of the state. Many have proudly risked and often given their lives in service to their nation. Israel is, and always has been, a nation which recognizes and welcomes its special roles as a spiritual and historical nexus of the three monotheistic faiths, and as a world center of spiritual longings, truly a Holy Land with the Jewish people -- not the UN or the Pope, heaven forbid -- as its custodian.

Wearing the Orange Star is a mark of strength, not of victimhood. To wear it is to affirm that Jews today will not be quietly deported and their properties destroyed as those once forced to wear the yellow star were. The Israelis who live in Gaza and Samaria are not defenseless chattel, or cattle, to be herded at the will and whim of the powers that be. The powers will need to contend with those of us who, though not living in the areas slated for destruction and expulsion, identify with the struggle of our brothers and sister there and will lend it our unequivocal and energetic support.

No one has any illusion that civilian protesters will be able immediately to prevent the armed forces from carrying out the government's orders. But the very act of protesting, and resisting non-violently, is the right thing to do, to express our outrage and revulsion at this trampling of human rights and violation Jewish values. And to make it clear that Jews will not be evicted from our Land without a sustained non-violent struggle.

The conscientious objectors may lose some battles, but we will ultimately win the war to make Israel what it was created and destined to be: a Jewish nation with Jewish values. Let us look upon the Orange Star and wear it proudly, not only as a sign of protest and helplessness, but as a symbol of undiminished hope, a prospect for a brighter future with a different government worthy to defend its people, and its country, with the power of the Shield of David.

[Mediocrates]

http://web.israelinsider.com/Views/4664.htm

Holocaust Hypocrisy
By Alan Perlman December 27, 2004





In protest against their scheduled expulsion, the Jewish residents of Gaza took to wearing orange Stars of David on their clothing, clearly appropriating the image of the yellow stars worn by Jews during the Holocaust into their protest.

Then, following a highly negative response from the public, the protesters dropped the orange star almost as quickly as they adopted it.

The objection to the orange star is clear -- the Holocaust was and remains a unique Jewish experience of such enormous magnitude that use of its symbols for anything else can only serve to trivialize the Holocaust. This argument is powerful, and perhaps ultimately correct.

But one must ask -- were people upset that the yellow star symbol of the Holocaust was usurped for a non-Holocaust issue, or did they merely disagree with the particular issue? Settlers are certainly not the first Jews to use Holocaust imagery for non-Holocaust issues.

Nobel-laureate Elie Wiesel, who speaks against injustice everywhere, frequently relates other peoples' sufferings to Jewish suffering in the Holocaust. Now this is not a criticism of Elie Wiesel; his universal concern for humanity can only be commended. Nevertheless, we must ask whether such a linkage is acceptable or if it diminishes the uniqueness of the Holocaust.

Another such linkage was established by the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C., which is not only a museum to the Holocaust but to issues of tolerance everywhere. (There were, to be sure, objections when the museum issued an invitation to a famous, and now dead, mass-murdering terrorist to come on a VIP visit. But I guess even tolerance is not such a clear-cut issue.)

Closer to home, a member of Knesset, himself a Holocaust survivor and an anti-Religious Semite who hates all things associated with Judaism, objects to all use of Holocaust symbols unless he is the one using them for his own agenda. And so, for example, when it suits his fancy, he accuses one of the greatest Rabbis of our day of killing his (the member of Knesset's) father again (the father had perished in the Holocaust), because the member of Knesset did not like, and clearly did not understand, a particular Torah lesson of this Rabbi. This same member of Knesset also compared the plight of an Arab woman, whose home was destroyed because it was a base for terrorism, to the plight of his grandmother during the Holocaust.

Shabak, the famed Israeli Protective Services organization, utilized the Holocaust for non-Holocaust purposes. It will be recalled that Shabak agent provocateur, Avishai Raviv, whose job was to delegitimize the Israeli right wing in the eyes of the country, had leaflets printed up of Yitzhak Rabin in a Nazi uniform. The Israeli Left still hasn't forgiven the right-wing victims of that Shabak prank.

The Israeli Left, of course, loves to compare Israeli soldiers to Nazis (the late Professor-Rabbi Yeshayahu Leibowitz used the term "Judeo-Nazis"), and the so-called occupation of the Arabs to the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust. Much more recently, the Israeli Left and Israeli media had a field day when media across the world flashed a picture of an Arab at a checkpoint playing his violin in front of Israeli soldiers. It was the perfect opportunity to compare the plight of this poor Arab to Jews during the Holocaust who were forced to play music in order to pretend to the world that the death camps were not so bad.

Never mind that the suicide bomber who blew up Sbarro's Pizza Shop in Jerusalem carried his explosive device in a guitar case. Never mind that the soldier was merely trying to ascertain if the violin was only a violin and not a bomb. Never mind that you cannot compare the checking of a violin at a checkpoint to the forced music in the death camps.

The Israeli Left and media were able to demean Israeli soldiers and dangerous but life saving work that they do on behalf of all Israelis -- at the expense of the Holocaust.

And if want a measure of how successful they were, consider that several days ago Kibbutz Eilon is allowing that very same, hapless Arab (whose violin was not a bomb) to participate in a master violin course, despite the fact that this required the kibbutz to bend its own rules since the Arab has only been playing a month. I appreciate that Kibbutz Eilon felt bad for the man. But do they feel bad for, and invite, all Arabs who get checked at checkpoints, or only those who are portrayed as the Arab counterparts to Jewish victims of the Nazis?

The Jewish world must decide. Are the symbols of the Holocaust sacred and not to be used for any other purpose? If so, well and good, and let's all abide by that.

But as it currently stands, not only are Jews using the symbols of the Holocaust for causes of their choosing, the latest usage of the Holocaust was to bash those "horrid" settlers in Gaza that the "good" Jews hate and cannot wait to deport.