Why do they hate us (the settlers) so?
This question bothers me. After all, we're not like the Chareidim - we serve in the army, we work, we pay taxes.
They once called us the best soldiers and the best citizens. There are more religious-settler officers and elite combat soldiers in the army than there are secular ones. A mere 8,000 Gazan Jewish settlers made up some 20% of Israel's agricultural exports. We are certainly doing more than our share for the State of Israel than the average secular Israeli.
Yet, suddenly, we find ourselves demonized. We're pariahs, hated and criticized, even beaten and banished. We're treated in ways that even the most hated Chareidi in Israel has never experienced.
It's all too easy to say the reason is that we stand in the way of the Israeli panacea. We settlers are 'obstacles to peace'. If only we weren't here, the Arabs would either accept, or we could unilaterally implement, a two-state solution. We dastardly settlers are keeping the country at war. (Even though a two-state solution could be (and actually has been) implemented right now, without removing a single settler.) On the simplest level, there is no doubt that has been the explicit message to Joe Israeli - whether that settler was from Hebron or the Golan Heights.
We could say that we succeeded too well and they are jealous. We stole their army from them. We built wonderful communities. We are tax-paying professionals and business leaders. Our kids don't beat their teachers or stab their fellow club-goers. But that, too, is far too easy and unsatisfactory an answer.
I think we need to look deeper. We need to examine the battle-cry of the Left. They desire to be a nation like every other. They desire to assimilate and remove the vestige of Jewishness from the appendage of their humanity.
In Germany, the battle cry of the Reform was, "Be a Jew at home, and a man in the street." Reform Judaism certainly never succeeded at being Jews at home, and when the man on the street shoved them into the gas chambers, they were shocked at the affront. "But we are men just like you," they cried, while the world indicated otherwise.
As Meretz and Shinui lead the new struggle against Judaism in their blinding desire for national assimilation, they look at those who are preventing that goal. In pre-Nazi Germany, it was the religious who prevented the Jews' complete assimilation and disappearance into Germany's superior culture; similarly, for many years in Israel, it was the Chareidim.
Those Chareidim refused to become "New Jews". They refused to shuck off their old traditions and quaint customs. They refused to participate in Israeli society and accept the overt and covert attempts to turn their community into New Jews - like the secular Left forcibly did to the Yemenite immigrants and other Sephardic communities. And so, that is why they really became hated.
Numerically, there are about as many secular Jews as there are Chareidi Jews who don't serve in the army. And we won't even discuss the percentages of other Israeli minorities who do absolutely no national service for the country, unlike the Chareidim who open and run national charities and aid centers that serve the entire Israeli population, Jew and Arab alike.
Alas for the poor, secular Jew desiring to integrate, assimilate and disappear, chozrim b'tshuvah, secular Jews returning to Judaism, are still growing in number more than ever. And worse, many are becoming hated Chareidim.
Now we turn to a new front - the Religion of Peace (and Assimilation).
After Nazi Germany, what could possibly be more indicative that we have properly and completely assimilated than if no one was trying to kill us anymore? And who more than anyone else is preventing that Messianic peace from arriving? Hamas? Syria? Iran? Egypt? The Palestinians? No, of course not. The Arabs are simply reacting to our Jewishness. If we were the same as them, quietly eating humous in Damascus, then we too would be accepted.
Humanity understands why we "expropriated" Tel Aviv and Haifa. After the Holocaust, we needed it to survive (so we can assimilate properly on a national level). The Arabs would understand and accept that too, if only someone didn't stand in the way of their particular national aspirations. Who is that someone?
Certainly, it's not the Israeli living in a former Arab home in Jaffa. Of course it's not. It's none other than The Settler moving on to a barren hilltop.
The secular Left cannot accept that the Arabs speak the truth when they say they want "all of Palestine". After all, the secular, humanistic Israeli understands compromise and the Arab obviously would too, if only those pesky obstacles to peace weren't there.
And worse, those settlers aren't just obstacles to peace; they are religious obstacles to peace, just like the Chareidim. Double whammy.
And so, they must be removed, debased, destroyed and deported.
As long as a single settler stands on land that the secular Left chose to not "expropriate" for their post-Holocaust needs there can't be peace.
Don't confuse them with the fact that the Arabs won't be satisfied with everything over the Green Line (unless it means both sides); that unlike the secular Israeli's religion, in which the Green Line is holy, the Arabs maintain no such confusion. For if it disagrees with the religion of Peace and Assimilation, then it can't be true.
So, the Settlers are hated, but not because we 'cause them more reserve duty', and not because we are preventing the Arabs from making peace with us, and not even because we make them 'interact' with the Arabs, and certainly not because we are against the 'rule of law' (as if they were actually big upholders of it).
No, we are hated because they believe it is we religious settlers who are preventing the national assimilation of the Jewish people. And they are completely right. If that makes me hated, I can live with it.
Am Yisrael Chai.
This question bothers me. After all, we're not like the Chareidim - we serve in the army, we work, we pay taxes.
They once called us the best soldiers and the best citizens. There are more religious-settler officers and elite combat soldiers in the army than there are secular ones. A mere 8,000 Gazan Jewish settlers made up some 20% of Israel's agricultural exports. We are certainly doing more than our share for the State of Israel than the average secular Israeli.
Yet, suddenly, we find ourselves demonized. We're pariahs, hated and criticized, even beaten and banished. We're treated in ways that even the most hated Chareidi in Israel has never experienced.
It's all too easy to say the reason is that we stand in the way of the Israeli panacea. We settlers are 'obstacles to peace'. If only we weren't here, the Arabs would either accept, or we could unilaterally implement, a two-state solution. We dastardly settlers are keeping the country at war. (Even though a two-state solution could be (and actually has been) implemented right now, without removing a single settler.) On the simplest level, there is no doubt that has been the explicit message to Joe Israeli - whether that settler was from Hebron or the Golan Heights.
We could say that we succeeded too well and they are jealous. We stole their army from them. We built wonderful communities. We are tax-paying professionals and business leaders. Our kids don't beat their teachers or stab their fellow club-goers. But that, too, is far too easy and unsatisfactory an answer.
I think we need to look deeper. We need to examine the battle-cry of the Left. They desire to be a nation like every other. They desire to assimilate and remove the vestige of Jewishness from the appendage of their humanity.
In Germany, the battle cry of the Reform was, "Be a Jew at home, and a man in the street." Reform Judaism certainly never succeeded at being Jews at home, and when the man on the street shoved them into the gas chambers, they were shocked at the affront. "But we are men just like you," they cried, while the world indicated otherwise.
As Meretz and Shinui lead the new struggle against Judaism in their blinding desire for national assimilation, they look at those who are preventing that goal. In pre-Nazi Germany, it was the religious who prevented the Jews' complete assimilation and disappearance into Germany's superior culture; similarly, for many years in Israel, it was the Chareidim.
Those Chareidim refused to become "New Jews". They refused to shuck off their old traditions and quaint customs. They refused to participate in Israeli society and accept the overt and covert attempts to turn their community into New Jews - like the secular Left forcibly did to the Yemenite immigrants and other Sephardic communities. And so, that is why they really became hated.
Numerically, there are about as many secular Jews as there are Chareidi Jews who don't serve in the army. And we won't even discuss the percentages of other Israeli minorities who do absolutely no national service for the country, unlike the Chareidim who open and run national charities and aid centers that serve the entire Israeli population, Jew and Arab alike.
Alas for the poor, secular Jew desiring to integrate, assimilate and disappear, chozrim b'tshuvah, secular Jews returning to Judaism, are still growing in number more than ever. And worse, many are becoming hated Chareidim.
Now we turn to a new front - the Religion of Peace (and Assimilation).
After Nazi Germany, what could possibly be more indicative that we have properly and completely assimilated than if no one was trying to kill us anymore? And who more than anyone else is preventing that Messianic peace from arriving? Hamas? Syria? Iran? Egypt? The Palestinians? No, of course not. The Arabs are simply reacting to our Jewishness. If we were the same as them, quietly eating humous in Damascus, then we too would be accepted.
Humanity understands why we "expropriated" Tel Aviv and Haifa. After the Holocaust, we needed it to survive (so we can assimilate properly on a national level). The Arabs would understand and accept that too, if only someone didn't stand in the way of their particular national aspirations. Who is that someone?
Certainly, it's not the Israeli living in a former Arab home in Jaffa. Of course it's not. It's none other than The Settler moving on to a barren hilltop.
The secular Left cannot accept that the Arabs speak the truth when they say they want "all of Palestine". After all, the secular, humanistic Israeli understands compromise and the Arab obviously would too, if only those pesky obstacles to peace weren't there.
And worse, those settlers aren't just obstacles to peace; they are religious obstacles to peace, just like the Chareidim. Double whammy.
And so, they must be removed, debased, destroyed and deported.
As long as a single settler stands on land that the secular Left chose to not "expropriate" for their post-Holocaust needs there can't be peace.
Don't confuse them with the fact that the Arabs won't be satisfied with everything over the Green Line (unless it means both sides); that unlike the secular Israeli's religion, in which the Green Line is holy, the Arabs maintain no such confusion. For if it disagrees with the religion of Peace and Assimilation, then it can't be true.
So, the Settlers are hated, but not because we 'cause them more reserve duty', and not because we are preventing the Arabs from making peace with us, and not even because we make them 'interact' with the Arabs, and certainly not because we are against the 'rule of law' (as if they were actually big upholders of it).
No, we are hated because they believe it is we religious settlers who are preventing the national assimilation of the Jewish people. And they are completely right. If that makes me hated, I can live with it.
Am Yisrael Chai.