The test is scheduled for Thursday, June 23. Three days earlier, this coming Monday, 12th-graders will gather for a protest demonstration outside the office of Education Minister Limor Livnat in Jerusalem. The theme of the protest will be the presence of a "dictatorial regime" in Israel.
"We cannot remain silent in the face of this dictatorship, and then afterwards take a test on democracy," the students say. "The Prime Minister and the Education Minister are trampling crudely on our democracy. We cannot sit with folded hands while our brothers in Gush Katif are being thrown out of their homes!"
Representatives are still being sought in every high school to help with transportation arrangements. Final details are being worked out by the Ta Katom (Orange Cell) of students against the disengagement.
In other protest news, the National Home organization - that which sponsored the massive country-wide roadblockings of last month - will hold a seminar on Civil Disobedience this coming Sunday. It will take place at the Ramada Renaissance Hotel in Jerusalem at 6 PM. "We will stop this government!" blares the literature. "There's a limit to what this nation can tolerate from its government."
"We will stop the country on the day someone dares, Heaven forbid, to prevent Jews from entering northern Shomron and Gush Katif," states the poster heralding the event. MK Aryeh Eldad is quoted as saying, "A struggle like this one has not yet been seen in this land." Eldad has repeatedly made it clear that he totally rules out violence, but that civil disobedience is a legitimate tool to be used by citizens in a cause they feel to be just.
"Civil disobedience," Eldad recently explained, "is everything that is not violent in which people say that they are not taking part in this machine that is embarking on its path to perpetrate a historic national crime against the Jewish People. Everyone in his own way: A clerk can tear up a paper that he received and say he's not taking part; a teacher can teach that a state cannot legislate racist laws, even if he is fired for it; and another can say that [Histadrut Labor Union chief] Amir Peretz threatened to close down the country several times over money, without being blamed for causing bloodshed - but those whose most basic beliefs are being threatened who say that if someone can't travel from one place to another [when the government closes the roads in preparation for the expulsion] or reach their homes in Gush Katif and northern Shomron, then no one can travel anywhere - they are not permitted to do so? ... Regular citizens who see a road on which trucks will travel to expel the Jews should sit there and block it, and not take part in any way in this destruction..."