[Peace-discuss] What we're supporting

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Yes, hate
	10.28.2008
	Haaretz
	By Gideon Levy

My settler colleague, Israel Harel, his community's champion at rolling his 
eyes, playing innocent and speaking with a honeyed tongue, is once again 
grieving and playing the victim. In a column published here last week ("Have we 
become Sodom?" October 23), he complained that the reason for what he termed 
destructive criticism of the settlers is hatred. And indeed, Mr. Harel, this 
time, you're right: Large segments of Israeli society do indeed hate. But this 
is not baseless hatred, not hatred for the sake of hatred, to use your words. It 
is hatred for your enterprise. You have earned this hatred honestly - the only 
honest thing about your enterprise.

Yes, there are Israelis who do not want to see their countrymen despoiling the 
vineyards and burning the fields of poor farmers. Yes, there are Israelis who do 
not want to see troops of masked settlers beating elderly shepherds with clubs. 
Yes, there are Israelis who do not want to see other Israelis sicking their dogs 
on and puncturing the tires of the soldiers who protect them. Yes, there are 
Israelis who are embarrassed by the fact that tens of thousands of their fellow 
Israelis live on privately owned lands that were robbed, stolen and extorted, 
both in broad daylight and under cover of darkness.

And yes, there are Israelis who think that you have brought disaster upon us, a 
tragedy that will last for generations. That via your actions, you have brought 
wars and bloodshed and the brutalization of society upon us. That if you were 
not there, none of us would be there any longer, in a land that is not ours. 
That just as we withdrew from occupied South Lebanon - solely because, 
fortunately, you were not there - we would also long since have been able to 
withdraw from the areas you have occupied. Yes, there are Israelis who hate all 
this.

Harel complains about the fact that Israeli society is angry at the settlers as 
a collective. Unfortunately, he does not get out enough, for their enterprise is 
flourishing. Every class and institution of Israeli society defends the 
settlements, finances them from its own pockets, and is a full partner in the 
theft, even if some of them are disgusted by it. The collective guilt is 
justified: Every settler and every settlement is equal. There are no illegal 
outposts and legal settlements - they are all illegal, according to both 
international law and universal justice, which have no need of legal 
sophistries. There are also no moderate and extremist settlements: No one who 
chooses to live in occupied land is a moderate.

And now for the playing innocent part: There are "some young men," Harel writes, 
just "a few dozen youths," who attack Arabs. Harel says that he, like most of 
his colleagues, "cannot understand" this. He has already told them, during a 
"heated discussion," that "this is not my halakha." And he goes on to say that 
his fists clench when he sees violence against the elderly in Haifa and Tel Aviv 
or gang rapes in Ramat Hasharon. But in Ramat Aviv Gimmel people do not ask what 
values were instilled in these youth, Harel writes; there, it is just juvenile 
delinquency. Yet when the same thing happens among settlers, the guilt is 
collective.

So here is the real difference: Secular society denounces and rejects those who 
rob the elderly and rape young girls. The perpetrators are given a fair trial, 
they receive lengthy sentences, and both the media and secular society ostracize 
them totally.

But what happens in your community? Have you ever heard, Israel, of a single 
settler who filed a complaint with the police against another settler over a 
rampage against Arabs? After all, you, too, see the rioters every day, on the 
road from Ofra - much of whose land, incidentally, is private land that was 
stolen. And what do you do when you see those rioters? Have another "heated 
discussion"? When we see people who assault the elderly, we call the police. Do 
you?

And if such a thing were to happen, how would your aggressive society treat the 
"informers"? After all, people who have dared to voice even a hint of 
"moderation" in their positions - and we are not even talking about anything as 
drastic as a complaint to the police - have been forced to abandon the 
settlements where they lived for fear of vengeance. It is not the lawbreakers 
who are ostracized in your community, but those who try to denounce them. Look 
at what happened to Rabbi Yoel Bin Nun - with no ostracism and no denunciation, 
other than laughable lip service. Only on the day when the settlement leadership 
starts cooperating with the law enforcement agencies will I believe you that 
those "few dozen youths," who are in fact a large and violent army of thousands, 
are indeed loathed by you.

You must admit the truth: To you, they are the pioneers who go before the camp, 
the ones who stand at the forefront. They are the ones who are realizing what 
your generation tried and failed to do in its day. In the deepest recesses of 
your souls, your hearts go out to them.

You spoke with Benny Katzover and Elyakim Ha'etzni, and they told you that the 
main opposition to the olive harvest stemmed from "security worries"? Had you 
not stolen the harvesters' lands, there would be no security risk. And after you 
have taken over their lands, you dare to justify the theft of what little 
remains to them on the grounds of security - your security only, of course? 
Evidently, chutzpah also has no limits.

And finally, the punch line: Harel writes that people like him will soon be 
hunkering down in bunkers due to the "unbridled" events in commemoration of 
Yitzhak Rabin's assassination. It is not the murder or the events leading up to 
it that were unbridled, but the commemorations? It is not we who have all been 
in bunkers for 40 years because of you, but you, the robbed Cossacks*? That is 
already one sentence too many - perhaps even for your too numerous fans.

_________________

*[Uri Avnery explains the phrase.  --CGE] The Cossacks were settlers in Southern 
Russia who were granted land by the Czars in return for their obligation to 
defend the border. They were known as fierce and ruthless fighters, and in 
Jewish memory they became notorious as the perpetrators of the most abominable 
pogroms.

Therefore, there is a lot of bitter irony in the old Jewish adage "a robbed 
Cossack". It describes a Cossack who not only causes havoc, murders, rapes and 
plunders, but also accuses his victims of robbing him. The perpetrator pretends 
to be the victim, the robber pretends to be robbed...

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