If you are a settler, one of the 230,000 peace-abiding, conscientious, decent people out of about 250,000 people living across the Green Line, I urge you to act and act now, to stop the extremists in Hebron from tarnishing you all, from turning people away from you who currently have sympathy and a deep understanding of your position and beliefs and those who could take such a view if you play your cards right.
I am not suggesting that you can stop the nuts in Hebron from acting nutty, violent, and so forth. I am suggesting that you can and should take steps to mitigate the damage, the irrevocable damage, they are going to do in the eyes of greater public opinion, the courts, the government. There are steps you can take now to reduce the number of bored, looking-for-an-outlet-for-aggression-youth, from joining the Hebron extremists and making things even worse.
You need to speak out. You need to speak out in voices so loud they cannot be ignored. You need to speak out in numbers that cannot be ignored to say “this is not our way. This is not what we, who live in these communities across the green line, support. We firmly and strongly reject what these people are doing with their violence and their aggression. WE WHO LIVE ACROSS THE GREEN LINE ARE NOT A 5TH COLUMN.”
Because, you see, right now you are in the position that Arab-Israelis are in. You are in the position that Palestinians are in. You are letting the extremists define you in public opinion, you are letting the extremists’ voices be the only voices shouted from the rooftops. We here in Israel always say “so where are the moderates among the Palestinians? We don’t see them holding peace rallies, we don’t see them speaking out against the terrorists or the hate-mongers or the lawless.” And so we feel there are no real moderates among the Palestinians. With the Arab-Israelis, the loudest voices we hear are those who are extremist, those who give the impression that the vast majority of Arab-Israelis are really a 5th column that cannot be trusted and that will work against the laws and our greater society –and that belief is firmly entrenched in Israeli consciousness because we don’t see visible and vocal proof to the contrary. Silence from the majority of members of that group is taken as agreement. Silence is taken as complicity.
If I lived across the Green Line, at this moment I’d be putting together one big huge rally to make the statement that “the extremists in Hebron are not US. WE do not believe in attacking IDF soldiers. WE do not support attacking Palestinian civilians. WE do not support this escalation.”
And you see, I actually think that the people living in that house in Hebron who are going to be, at least temporarily, evicted, have the moral right to stay there. They bought the house legally. They paid for it. The Palestinian owner sold it to them for 1 million dollars –far above its value. They have proof that it was sold to them. Nonetheless, the high court has ruled that they must, temporarily, evacuate it. The high court has not ruled on who it belongs to and who can live in it. But the high court has ruled that for the time being they gotta get out. A moral right does not equal a legal right. Just like people in the U.S. who are against abortion, which the Supreme Court has ruled legal, cannot go around burning down abortion clinics, assaulting the doctors who work there or the people who go there for abortions, or attack the police who protect those clinics, neither can those who are living in that house flaunt the law, no matter that they have the moral right on their side.
And let’s look at how well the resistance in Gaza worked out. Especially let’s look at how well Amona worked out. Not only did those people get pulled, kicking and screaming out of there but because they threw rocks and paint and otherwise assaulted the IDF soldiers sent to remove them, they caused HUGE damage to the settler movement, to the reputation of anyone who lives across the Green Line. They lost the court of public opinion.
And without the court of public opinion on your side, you are going to lose it all. You are going to lose big. And you are going to do irrevocable damage to the fabric of society. You have a chance to get public opinion on your side. There is still time. But you have to act now and you have to act smart. Allowing those who behave in violent, anti-scocial, lawless ways to speak for you will not win you sympathy and will not win you support. It will win you a lot of enemies and enemies that could have been friends.
i agree. so what, exactly, should those strongly opposed to the govt tactics do? civil disobedience only works if people are sympathetic to your cause. gaza was basically, almost entirely, civil disobedience. didnt work.
Heh, well, I have a lot of ideas about that. Since I’m an equal idea-giver though I’ll try to do a post really soon that highlights the most effective single strategy each group can take — for the settlers, the Palestinians, the Arab-Israelis
you know, you really gotta watch your spelling in the title of this post. it give a very different impression of what the post is about…
Hi Yael - The crux of the issue is this. Why is it that everyone realizes that the house legally belongs to the Jews of Hevron, yet, “Nonetheless, the high court has ruled that they must, temporarily, evacuate it.”
There is no chance in hell that the High Court would have ever ruled than an ARAB family would have to temporarily evacuate a house, that everyone knows LEGALLY belongs to them! When the Supreme Court acts in such a brazenly, political manner against a people who already feel they have their back up against a wall, the respect for the court system is diminished, the connection to the State wanes, and the feeling of being cast out and demonized is felt more and more acutely.
Noam Arnon, the spokesperson for the Hevron Jewish community said the following very clearly: “”We have evacuated a number of rioting youths. We are making great efforts to put an end to recent events and I hope we will succeed” (ynet
Retired Supreme Court Justice, Uri Struzman, writes a long and detailed analysis of how the court is totally wrong and perverting justice. Not only does the court flagrantly ignore existing precedence that one does not evict people from a house when it is in dispute (and everyone knows that there is NOT dispute on the legality of the house’s sale to the Jews), but Justice Struzman goes even further and states that one should not blame the settlers for their criticism of the court’s blatant political anti-settler slant.
While I am completely against violence towards the IDF or Police, when the State is clearly implementing an unfair policy which may possibly NEVER result in the return to their legal property, I can totally understand and support the Jews wanting to stay in their legal home.
With no guarantee that the Jews will be able to return, and that the “temporary” injunction can easily become permanent, one has to say “enough is enough”.
Nothing is worse than abusing the law for political means against your opponents — which is exactly what the Supreme Court and Ehud Barak are trying to do right now.
Sorry, here’s the link to retired Justice Struzman’s analysis.
http://www.omedia.co.il/Show_Article.asp?DynamicContentID=22751&MenuID=735&ThreadID=1014018
Jameel — agreed. But what is more important, the skirmish for control of a single hill, er house, or the entire war? If the bigger battle is lost then the hill, no matter if you managed to hang onto it by your fingernails, is lost. And if, your very tactics of hanging onto the hill causes you lose the wider war…
Fred –heh yeah I noticed that pretty immediately but by the time I went back to go fix it, it had already gotten “saved” in that form for RSS and so forth and so I didn’t bother.
This is the way to do it. Migron’s example:
“The State Prosecutor’s Office informed the High Court of Justice on Monday that it has found an alternative location for the illegal West Bank outpost of Migron, which is currently located near the settlement of Ofra.
The State proposed relocating the outpost’s residents to a new neighborhood under the municipal jurisdiction of Adam (Geva Binyamin), a communal Israeli settlement located about three miles northeast of Jerusalem. ”
They will still be in the West Bank. They will still be holding down the fort. They are showing flexibility which makes them seem reasonable to other people and thus engenders sympathy and support — you don’t see hordes of people screaming that they must be moved back behind the Green Line, do you? No, people are quite willing and happy to see them occupy a new but now legally sanctioned portion of the West Bank.
I think it was Evelyn Gordon in her Civil Fights column who pointed out that the radicalization of the Jews over the Green Line (not “settlers” please—that’s one of those perfectly legitimate words which has been hijacked by the Left as a pejorative) is directly traceable to the failure of successive Israeli governments to abide by the rules: promising the voters one thing, rallying them to your cause, then suddenly changing party policy, ignoring prior commitments, totally undermining the rules of law and polity, throwing people out of homes the government encouraged them to build — when the government has no credibility, why would anyone respect or obey its arms of enforcement? (her words, not mine, but still something to consider).
Gordon’s piece is a thoughtful look at what happens when a government repeatedly whip-saws people and is wholly unresponsive to voters (ALL voters, not just the Right or religious or over-the-Green-Liners).
And exactly why do WE have to prove that, unlike the residents of Savion or Ramat Aviv, that WE don’t approve of throwing acid on soldiers or attacking police officers? Isn’t that a societal given? Or even a Jewish given? Why does the fact that we live over the Green Line make us guilty-by-association?
My husband is a cop. I have NO sympathy for anarchists, cop-killers, stone-throwers, law-breakers or any of this romanticized outlaw-as-rebel-with-a-cause BS, and I don’t care what end of the political spectrum you’re on or what your home address is. Right wing “Settler Youth” on hilltops with rocks or Left wing “Anarchists Against The Fence” with rocks–you’re all law-breaking scum.