Tzafrir Ronen, who co-founded the Nahalal Forum of secular Zionists standing strong for the Land of Israel, passed away suddenly exactly one year ago today at the age of 53. He was known as a fighter for the Land of Israel and the Jewish People from deep within the secular left. Below are excerpts from some of his statements to Arutz Sheva over the years:
“It seems that most of the speakers here are just trying to figure out how to chop our country into pieces and give them to our enemy,” he told Yishai Fleisher at the Herzliya Conference two years ago. “Can you picture an American agreeing to give away Texas, or the Statue of Liberty, for peace? The battle for the Land of Israel belongs to the whole Jewish nation – whether you’re secular, religious or hareidi. All Jews break a glass at their weddings, vowing never to forget Jerusalem…”
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“When people talk about Palestinians, they have to understand that this means there is a Palestine – and where is that? As far as the Arabs are concerned, it is right here instead of Israel! If there is a Palestine, there is no Israel!”
“Zion is our identity; it is Shilo, Hevron, Beit El, and Ofrah. A nation that is willing to give up its identity to its enemy, thereby stops being a nation.”
“The Temple Mount issue is not just an issue of construction here or there, but rather the fact that some other religion prays there to some other god, while we ourselves are [often prevented] from praying there to our G-d! We must turn the Mount into an archaeological site, and dig back and uncover our own history there.”
In early 2005, shortly before the Disengagement/expulsion from Gush Katif and northern Samaria (Shomron), Ronen and others started the Nahalal Forum, explaining, "We cannot remain silent in light of the rampant insanity of uprooting Zionist pioneers." They quoted a letter written during the miraculous Chanukah wars by Simon the Maccabee to Syrian-Greek King Antiochus over 2,000 years ago: “This is not a foreign country that we took for ourselves, nor do we rule what belongs to others. No, it is the land of our forefathers that was conquered unjustly by our enemies some time ago, and we, when the opportunity came, took back our fathers’ land.”
"We Gained a State, and Lost our Identity!"
At the Jerusalem Conference of 2006, Ronen delivered an impassioned speech in which he said, “If, during our long years in exile, a rabbi had gotten up and said he no longer needs the Land of Israel, he would not have remained the rabbi for another minute! But now, we have a government that has been saying for 40 years that they are just 'waiting for a phone call' - from Hussein, or from Arafat, or whomever - to give away parts of our land... Even Bibi [Netanyahu], who is famous for saying, 'If they give, they will get' - what he means is that if they give us a little quiet, they will receive our land! ... We have lost our identity!"