Those settlers are at it again. You know what happened last time they were allowed to vent their anger and rage.
But let¹s get something straight. This time as well as last time, the hysteria was warranted. They are screaming for their lives and for the future of the Jewish People in the Land of Israel. Our children want to live and they want to live in their land and no, they won?t share it with homicidal maniacs. So when they were told to vacate as a good will gesture to a people that are, as of today, unfamiliar with the term good, they vigorously protested. What could be healthier? Sounds like a basic survival instinct to me.
The government, on the other hand, ain?t feeling so well. It seems that Defense Minister Ben Eliezer, under the watchful eye of our Prime Minister chose not only to exacerbate an already precarious national and world situation, but he decided to do his dirty work on the Sabbath.
Now, supposedly the current government stands under the banner of National Unity, a sacred concept, like Shabbat, to the Jewish People. But the very presence of Oslo architects in the government is a desecration of all we hold dear. Unity does not mean compromising our G-d given values and principles in order to please a perverse fringe of self-hating Jews. The general, if not unified, consensus in Israel is that Oslo and the Left-Wing government that gave birth to it was a terrible a mistake. This very acknowledgement by most of the population constitutes the type of unity that we should be seeking. Any Israeli citizen interested in the continuity of the Jewish people and the survival of the State of Israel knows in his heart that all peace overtures to the Palestinian leadership will lead to nothing but grief and must be halted.
Our settler and national religious youth have a far better concept of their Jewishness and their responsibility than the overwhelming majority of our Knesset members. These young people are grounded in their past and in their heritage. Shimon The Prophet Peres, on the other hand, has a different view of history that he expressed so profanely in the following interview:
"I am totally uninterested in the past. If you wouldn't ask me I wouldn?t talk about it. The past bores me. Listen, it bores me for two reasons: it never repeats itself and secondly it is unchangeable. So why should I concern myself with it?" ( Shimon Peres Interview with Michael Kapel, Australia/Israel Review, June 6-June 26, 1997)
Ben Eliezer should step down as well as Peres, Burg, Ramon, Sarid and anybody else who stands by accords and initiatives that have wrought nothing but a deluge of disaster and tears for Our People. But it doesn?t stop there. The now infamous handshake on the White House lawn was nothing short of a pact with death that was signed, sealed and delivered between the Free World and agents of terror.
We knew it then, and our children know it now and they have a very fierce and passionate way of expressing their outrage. You won't find the settler?s children tripping in Goa or throwing rocks at last night's soccer game. No, they?re staking a claim to their inheritance, to their land and to everything that a Jew should hold sacred, including the Sabbath.
Will they defy army and government orders? Probably. Do I sound a bit undemocratic? Possibly. Could things get out of hand? Perhaps. But if it comes to offering my children up on the alter of proper Knesset protocol, or finding a face-saving solution for Arik Sharon and his unity government, then I prefer to exercise a very basic human right -the right to exercise my lungs and scream in protest.
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Ellen lives in the Golan Heights with her husband and six children. She is a painter and writer.
Ilan-acu@Netvision.net.il