by
Adar 17, 5767, 3/7/2007
As we reported this week, several left-wing organizations, led by Rabbis for Human Rights, have launched a campaign to rebuild demolished illegal homes for Arabs on state-owned lands in the southern Hevron Hills. 
Might they be unwittingly fulfilling the mitzvah of settling the Land?
It occurred to me that some of those builders are assuredly Jews. And they will definitely be carrying out construction in the Land of Israel. So, might they be unwittingly fulfilling the mitzvah of settling the Land of Israel?
And if they are, is it obligatory upon us religious Zionists to assist them? And what if the police and army attempt to stop them? Is it obligatory to refuse orders to demolish homes constructed by Jews, even if they are to be turned over to Arabs afterwards?
OK, so the foregoing questions are a bit of leftover Purim Torah, but the rest of this entry is not.
One of the groups operating in tandem with the esteemed rabbis mentioned above is Machsom Watch, a collective of (primarily) women who make it their business to interfere with the work of IDF soldiers at security checkpoints throughout Israel. Their interference includes encouraging Arabs to complain about the checkpoints, making sure that the Arabs at the checkpoints don't have to wait too long as others are given thorough security checks, and the like.
During my recent reserve duty, I witnessed some of these ladies in operation. They were very cordial to the soldiers to their faces, asking if they are not too cold and the like. But off to the side, they commented among themselves how certain measures employed at the checkpoint were "just to frighten" the Arabs passing through.
If only. Unfortunately, a certain randomness is necessary to keep the actual terrorists off balance and guessing.
At one point, a minor dispute broke out among the soldiers at a checkpoint I was sent to. A man drove up with his elderly, overweight mother in the passenger seat. A senior officer decided that the car was to be checked, which meant requesting that the older lady get out and submit to a very minimal body search. The soldiers at the checkpoint recognized the two of them, because they came through every day together.
A certain randomness is necessary to keep the actual terrorists off balance.
Some soldiers said that the fact that they come through every day was a reason to be friendly and not force them to get out of the car. Others said that precisely the opposite was true: if they learned that their regular appearances at the checkpoint exempted them from security searches, then the next bomb belt would be hidden under the old lady's seat. Another IDF soldier commented that a 40-year-old Arab women tried to stab the soldiers at a different checkpoint not long ago - and an Arab grandmother had recently blown herself up in a suicide bombing.
Interestingly, the disputants were divided according to how much time they had spent at checkpoints until that point. The tough combat soldiers, who had been assigned for a brief time to the checkpoint, wanted to be "forgiving;" whereas, the soldiers who spent most of their service at the checkpoints were insistent that the security checks be unpredictable - not cruel, but unpredictable. The latter soldiers' view prevailed, of course.
Now, how does a Machsom Watch activist or a Rabbi for Human Rights see this scene? A heavy Arab woman, who finds it difficult to move, is cruelly forced out of her son's car to submit to a search by heartless soldiers as she stands in the cold evening air.
And I see it this way: the IDF soldiers are risking their lives to try and prevent Arab terrorists from using their own people as mules for explosives aimed at Jewish families in Israel.
