Give us a hug
When was the last time the settlers tried to reach out?
It has become “in” to reach out to the settlers, to identify with their pain, to empathize with them and to be patient with their objections to disengagement - in short, to love them and to understand them. The pathetic crybaby has become the underdog of Israeli society.
Things apparently change with time: just yesterday, they were criminals. All of a sudden, they are innocent victims.
All the empathy the Palestinians lost during the intifada has gone over to the settlers. Israeli society has forgiven and forgotten.
The settlers have are so convinced of their righteousness that they have absolutely no idea that most of Israeli society feels a near-total sense of altruism towards them.
Their incitement and violence have somehow translated into a group hug. Soon, ordinary Israelis will start an adopt-a-settler program.
No room, no hope
More than ever, the settlers are choking the national agenda, making decisions on behalf of everyone, bribing governments, setting both facts on the ground and a caustic reality that leaves no room for anyone other than them.
In their world, there is no room, nor has there ever been, for anyone else - not for discussion, action, even hope.
To the contrary, their dream has always been the majority’s nightmare. And yet, their pain has somehow aroused public sympathy. What else do they want?
So, to the settler community, listen up: you people knew all along you were going to disputed territory, that your presence there was controversial, and that an overwhelming majority of the Israeli public has no interest in any display of Israeli sovereignty in the Gaza Strip of Death. You disregarded the warnings.
You were already big boys and girls. You should have been masters of your own destiny and not masters of the land. You should have shown some semblance of responsibility for your actions, yet you chose not only to take action, but action that weighs down on everyone else’s shoulders.
Your absurd contention that “successive Israeli governments sent you there” is barely half-true. The brutal reality is that (messianic right-wing settler group) Gush Emunim has forced its highly ideological agenda on a long chain of governments, including on solid right-wing governments, and not the opposite.
To reason with you has never been possible. To raise the slightest question about your project has always been rejected as total heresy. The questions, the criticisms, have gone straight over your heads. More importantly, they have gone straight over your hearts.
You have treated those who have questioned you with condescension, as you do the Palestinians. Despite this, the government has been your greatest supporter. For years, you have been financed with abundant supplies of money and blood. Which of your sick demands have not been met?
A better life
We have uprooted trees for you again and again (to prevent Palestinians from ambushing you from behind them), and we have paved an entire system of “Jews only” roads for you. And all in full, unbelieving view of the neighbors you have never taken into the slightest consideration.
And now the State of Israel has decided to wake up from its delusion, to bring you back inside the country, to generously reimburse you, to resettle you and to provide you with a better, safer life than you have now.
Inexplicably, the country does not hate you, and does not feel estranged from you. To the contrary, people are in complete solidarity with your pain. When will you ever reciprocate?
I am confident that the settler leadership will do everything in its power to lose the support it currently feels from the Israeli public, support which in any event is shocking, over the top and manufactured. Your threats and the tragic scenes you will no doubt concoct for the cameras will leave you with no support and no country.
The government, such as it is, must rise up to expose itself as a government, and should cut off the hand that rises up against it.
