Our (almost) indicted Prime Minister, at the insistence of our convicted sex offender, Deputy Prime Minister, has started discussions of how to expel 300,000 Jews from their homes (including this writer). The obscenity of it all leaves actually made my jaw drop.
Never mind that there is no deal with the PLO in the offing. Never mind that as time goes on it becomes ever clearer that Never mind that this government has no legitimate mandate to negotiate anything. Never mind that Kadima is full of criminals and half-wits. Never mind that the government is supported by the terminally ill Labor Party and an ostensibly religious party that never met a shekel it didn't worship (since it charges by the half hour).
How can they think about expelling 300,000 Jews, when thousands of refugees from Gush Katif are still in tents/caravans and temporary housing! The tale of the abuse of the Gush Katif refugees is unparalleled in Jewish History. Ruined Lives, destroyed families, drug use, juvenile delinquency, destruction of education have all been the lot of the hard-hearted, brutal treatment of the Jews of Gush Katif by the Sharton-Olmert-Livni-Yishai-Peretz/Barak government. Indeed, let's be frank, if Israel had committed the kind of crimes that it perpetrated against Jews to Palestinians, the ground would burn.
It didn't. After all, it's only Jews. No one in the elites gives a damn about them, especially religious Jews. Religious Jews sind unser umgluck. (Sound Familiar).
2 comments:
Some facts to consider:
(1) The leadership of the country, and by this I mean the political, military and economic elites are by and large, alienated from Judaism and Zionism (see for example the blog of Professor Bernard Avishai, an American who made aliyah in the 1970's and who calls for Israel to shed its Jewish identity and to call itself a "Hebrew Republic" which would be a "state of all its citizens").
(2) The large majority of the Jewish majority of the country (about 80%) is proud of being Jewish, wants Israel to be a "Jewish state" (whatever that may mean to them-this may or may not include the religious factor).
(3) The basic hardworking "salt of the earth" component of the population, i.e. those who serve in combat units in the army, go to work everyday and raise larger than average families are completely disenfranchised politically, (this would be the religious and "traditionalist" elements in Israeli society) now that the Likud has gone over to the post-Zionist Left (note Netanyahu's recruiting of Leftists from that camp to the Likud such as Yossi Peled, Assaf Hefetz, Dan Meridor, Uzi Dayan, etc).
(4) The only remaining political party that supposedly stands for Zionism, Judaism and Eretz Israel, the so-called "National Union-MAFDAL", in effect, is not interested in political power or running the country...they quietly cooperated with Sharon's destruction of Gush Katif and Israel's traditional security policy of deterrence in return for getting sectoral benefits, i.e. money for their insitutions. Significant segments of that party also oppose vital reforms of the political and judicial system supposedly because of "mamlachti" considerations.
(5) All this leads to the question: Where will the necessary Jewish/Zionist leadership come from which can unite all the "Jewish/Zionist" elements of the society, which, as I said, represents a majority of the Jewish population, come from? It has to be someone who can unite the religious elements (including the Haredim) and the "traditionalist" elements for whom religious arguments are not yet understood. This does not yet exist. I don't see it coming out of the existing National Religious establishment. Suggestions?
Rav Moshe Lichtenstein who is about to be appointed Rosh Yeshiva of Modern Orthodoxy's flagship Yeshiva states quite openly in his essay supporting the Disenagement that it is just a relocation no different than moving house - and in a footnote he added later right before the publication he says that the problems the evacuees are having is partially their own fault for not having cooperated with the government. The fact that a leading Rosh Mesivta of Modern Orthodoxy can take such a position without any outcry leaves me little hope in believing that future expulsions can be prevented by anything the Modern Orthodox community has to offer and that many modern orthodox people actually believe that the "The tale of the abuse of the Gush Katif refugees is unparalleled in Jewish History". So while I agree with your assessment of what it really was and is, I don't think that modern orthodoxy can offer any salvation in this regard
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