Yoaz Hendel
The law of the jungle
Selective law enforcement across Israel to blame for settler violence
The State of Israel of the recent decades teaches its citizens the law of the jungle: The strong ones win. Those who riot more and who resort to despicable thuggery, issue threats, and regularly violate the law will ultimately get what they want.
This is true for both Arabs and Jews. It’s true for the squatters in the south, the Bedouin cattle thieves in the north, the radical leftist camp, and yes, it’s also true for the margins of the rightist camp.
The rightist “price tag” policy was invented by the State of Israel when it decided to enforce the law selectively – that is, enforcing it when it comes to “good citizens” but not to problematic ones. The hilltop youth and youngsters in Yitzhar merely learned the lesson.
And after this introduction, it’s important to clarify the following: The chaos created by law authorities in the State of Israel is not an excuse for faithful Jews to behave like Cossacks. The Jewish people has too much history to afford to go easy on the lawbreakers in its midst.
Settlers pay the price
At the same time, at the end of the day, those who should be concerned by the rioters from Yitzhar are not the authorities or leftist champions of democracy. Those who are directly hurt by the loss of control and the process of declining fear of the law and of divine morality are in fact the settlers – 300,000 law abiding citizens who every time have to pay the price for the actions of dozens of Jewish thugs.
The paradox is that in our shallow Israeli discourse, nobody really cares anymore. Each side has its own conditioned reflex and doesn’t care about what will happen later.
The detached Left immediately accuses all the settlers, their families, and their relatives in the city of heartlessness, lowly morality, and crimes against humanity.
Meanwhile, the Right in Judea and Samaria hears about the settler riots and immediately puts on a self-righteous armor, mutters some words of apology, and takes cover until the storm subsides.
Both sides would do well to forget about politics in this context and focus on creating a backwind for law enforcers.
