The events of last week, when Jews stoned and injured an Arab were appalling. No excuses can be made for behavior of this kind. However, the celebratory statements of the media, the prime minister, and others - who took advantage of this unusual, dramatic and repulsive situation to point an accusatory finger at us, the Jewish residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, at our rabbis, and at our teaching methods in the yeshivot and preparatory institutes - was deliberate and callous.



Were the same accusations directed against the educational facilities in Tel Aviv, Netanya, or other parts of Israel when young people went out and murdered, raped or were involved in other acts of violence? Was Limor Livnat, as minister of education, brought to the television studios to explain how the Board of Education had failed? Was she accused of not knowing how to educate our youth? Or is it only rabbis who are put in the hot seat?



The truth of the matter is that we can be proud of our youth, who are actively involved in youth movements, who volunteer in social programs and elite units in the army.



When did we see such a reaction before when Jewish blood was spilled? Did we hear any reaction from the prime minister, minister of defense, or for that matter, from the media, following the brutal double murder of two Jewish boys only a few days ago?



We, the Jewish residents of Katif and the Shomron, have lived in the shadow of thousands of missile and shooting attacks, along with the waves of injustice and apathy of a government directing the Israeli Defense Forces not to initiate any action that could perhaps save Jewish lives. Even when the terrorists were seen by helicopter pilots or ground forces, the soldiers were refused the green light to attack those murderers of innocent people.



There was a feeling amongst the Allied bomber squads in World War II, who were hitting targets in Germany or other occupied countries while fighting the Nazis, that it was all so far away from them. So sterile; just little puffs of cloud-like umbrellas in the distance under them, so that they did not even feel that they were dealing with real people. Ariel Sharon and Sha'ul Mofaz are up there in the clouds on their own mission. Unattached to the painful, bloody reality of our lives, they allow perpetual murders - not a one time atrocity, but daily, planned atrocities.



They are in a hurry to complete the deportation of men, women and children from Katif and Shomron, and this, only as a first step. They are training and trying to brainwash our sons and daughters who are serving in the security forces to numb themselves to illegal, immoral orders. They are preparing the soldiers and security forces of Israel to obey disgusting orders to force innocent people out of their homes, communities and cemeteries, for no understandable or justifiable reason except to cover up the corruption of the prime minister and his illegal activities.



They are ignoring the dangers from the terror organizations that are waiting for the chance to move their mechanisms of terror into the areas ethnically cleansed of Jews, in order to murder more innocent people. They are ignoring the damage to the fiber of our country by forcing a split in the people of Israel, one from which it is doubtful we would ever recover. They are ignoring the warnings of the heads of security and former top officers, who were thrown out for being honest about the dangers of this immoral, unjust and dangerous plan.



This government and the media are too busy with us, those they call extremists, whom they claim are a danger to the country. When Sharon ordered the capture and incarceration of those immoral fanatics who would stone an injured human (even if he was trying to injure or kill innocent people when he got hurt), what Sharon forgot is the honest truth. Sharon may be seated in the sterile heights of power up there in the government, but he is not only culpable for every Jewish life lost, he is just as guilty as the criminals who threw the rocks at a man when he was down. Sharon and Mofaz, along with all of the weak, immoral and corrupt members of this pathetic government, should, and hopefully will eventually, be brought to justice in court. They certainly will be brought to the historic justice that none can escape, especially when they endanger the Jewish homeland and the Jewish people.