Israeli writer Amos Oz, during a left-wing demonstration this past Saturday night in Tel Aviv, called on the residents of Yesha to \"abandon your homes and go home and settle the Negev.\" Avi Pekar, a member of the Torah-Zionist settlement core group in the Negev town of Yerucham, responded to Oz with this letter in the name of some of his fellow Negev-settlers:
\"You called upon [us] to settle Dimona, Yerucham, Arad, Ofakim, Eilat, and Sderot. The common denominator of all these towns is that in all of them, amazingly enough, now live hundreds of religious-Zionist families, most of whom are identified with the \'settler\' public. Some of them are second-generation Yesha residents, and many of them have family living there.
\"You called upon the settlers to come to the towns and \"we\" will welcome you. Whom exactly were you referring to when you said \"we\"? If you check the figures of the past ten years, you will be surprised to find that the number of new Negev residents from the \'settler\' public is much much greater than those from your camp, the left. The settler public to which you addressed your call came a long time ago to the Negev towns, and has taken an integral part in building them, especially in education and welfare.
\"Unfortunately, it\'s actually *your* public that we don\'t see here too much. We invite you and your friends to visit these Negev towns, to visit the hundreds of religious families that have moved here over the past decade, and to see the social institutions that we have built here. We invite you to discover that the ideals that drive the settlers in the Negev are amazingly similar to those that guide our brothers in Yesha: an ideology of mission, of doing, for Am Yisrael and the Land of Israel.
\"Your friends are invited to take part in the settlement enterprise in the development towns. We will welcome them.\"
\"You called upon [us] to settle Dimona, Yerucham, Arad, Ofakim, Eilat, and Sderot. The common denominator of all these towns is that in all of them, amazingly enough, now live hundreds of religious-Zionist families, most of whom are identified with the \'settler\' public. Some of them are second-generation Yesha residents, and many of them have family living there.
\"You called upon the settlers to come to the towns and \"we\" will welcome you. Whom exactly were you referring to when you said \"we\"? If you check the figures of the past ten years, you will be surprised to find that the number of new Negev residents from the \'settler\' public is much much greater than those from your camp, the left. The settler public to which you addressed your call came a long time ago to the Negev towns, and has taken an integral part in building them, especially in education and welfare.
\"Unfortunately, it\'s actually *your* public that we don\'t see here too much. We invite you and your friends to visit these Negev towns, to visit the hundreds of religious families that have moved here over the past decade, and to see the social institutions that we have built here. We invite you to discover that the ideals that drive the settlers in the Negev are amazingly similar to those that guide our brothers in Yesha: an ideology of mission, of doing, for Am Yisrael and the Land of Israel.
\"Your friends are invited to take part in the settlement enterprise in the development towns. We will welcome them.\"