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Photo: Motti Kimchi
'Every time we split and sink into a feud between brothers, we grow weaker'
Photo: Motti Kimchi
Photo: Shaul Golan
Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun
Photo: Shaul Golan

Amona residents, don’t resist evacuation

Op-ed: All acts of resisting Israel's government, the state’s institutions and the security forces in the past 42 years have completely and utterly failed and have brought no blessing to the Jewish people and to the Land of Israel. We have failed so many times, that it doesn’t take a genius to understand that this is not what God wants.

Amona pioneers, you have taken it upon yourselves to be the Jewish people’s emissaries in the long and complicated process of returning to our land, which includes sovereignty alongside settlement. The Jewish people selects its representatives in a democratic manner – the only possible manner for sustaining the Jewish people’s sovereignty in the Land of Israel, according to Torah of Israel. All other ways have been tried and have failed since the destruction of the Temple.

 

 

Elected representatives by the power of the Jewish people have the laws of the land under the Halacha, as our master Rabbi Kook ruled as did all those who follow his path. As far as private Halacha is concerned, each person from Israel sitting on this land is observing the mitzvah to settle the land with his own body, regardless of whether he lives in Haifa or Amona, Safed or Ofra, Be’er Sheva or Yatir, Ashkelon or Gush Etzion.

 

Amona residents. ‘There is no divine providence for any dividing battle against the State of Israel and its elected institutions’ (Photo: Motti Kimchi)
Amona residents. ‘There is no divine providence for any dividing battle against the State of Israel and its elected institutions’ (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

 

If the Israeli government moves settlers from one mountain to another mountain, even if the arguments for doing so are inappropriate, it changes nothing in each settler’s observation of the mitzvah to settle the land. The change is in the general mitzvah of the land’s inheritance, but that is a mitzvah imposed on the entire public and on its elected representatives. If they fail to uphold this duty properly, they must be convinced in all acceptable ways, and that you have already done above and beyond.

 

No chance for a dividing battle

No individual or group have the right or the authority to act on their own in the name of “the Jewish people,” and even if a tribe of Israel conquered part of the fatherland, it is considered nothing but an “individual occupation” (Maimonides, Hilchot Trumot 1:2), unless you have signed douments that prove you are the offspring of the families of the Benjamin (or Ephraim) Tribe, which had lands in the Amona mountain (the Shilo land dispute, by Joshua Bin Nun).

 

All the acts of resisting the Israeli government—the state’s institutions and the security forces—that have been carried out for 42 years, have completely and utterly failed and have brought no blessing to the Jewish people and to the Land of Israel.

 

I have personally taken part in many of these activities, with the strong and clear support of prominent rabbis, and even of my own teachers and rabbis – and none of them succeeded! There is no divine providence for any dividing battle against the State of Israel and its elected institutions.

 

All the remarkable success stories of the settlement enterprise since the Six-Day War were executed in agreements with the leaders of the government and state institutions, and I got to play a role in many of them since the reestablishment of Kfar Etzion.

 

All the bitter and painful failures the settlement enterprise has experienced came from the battles against the state and its institutions, and they only kept the values of the settlements and the mitzvot of the land away from the heart of the majority of the public.

 

Friends, don’t come to Amona

Thirty-seven years ago, the High Court of Justice ruled that the seizure of lands in favor of the Elon Moreh group of settlers on the Rujib hill was illegal. My master and teacher, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, instructed Hanan Porat and the Elon Moreh group to obey the court ruling, as the majority of the Jewish people opposes a battle against a legal ruling.

 

The vast majority of the Elon Moreh group, with families and children, climbed up the Kabir mountain range and reestablished the large community, which I doubt we would have managed to establish if it were not for the High Court ruling. Four years later, after completing the purchase of lands, the community of Itamar was established on the Rujib range. Thanks to the Elon Moreh ruling, two large communities were established on both mountain ranges.

 

The same can happen in Amona, if we act with the majority of the Jewish people rather than against it, with the State of Israel and its institutions rather than against them. “The eternal people is not afraid of a long journey.”

 

I call on all settlement supporters not to come and not to face the security forces in Amona, or anywhere else, not even for a passive resistance. We have tried that and failed so many times, that one does not have to be a genius to understand and know that this is not what God wants.

 

Battle can lead to many offenses

Amona pioneers, if you wish to continue to play an important part in the general mitzvah of settling the Land of Israel, get reorganized and agree to do so in the places suggested by the State of Israel and its elected institutions, in the name of the people of Israel.

 

If you wish to build your private life as part of the private mitzvah of every Jewish person in the Land of Israel, it is your full right to choose whichever place or places you like, and if you are entitled to it, the state’s institutions will even help you.

 

Protecting one’s home as a basic human right is a universal right, and it is not part of the mitzvot to settle the land, but as we know, it is subject in the entire world to maintaining the acceptable rules.

 

I call on you not to put any mental efforts and resources into a battle, even a passive one, against the State of Israel and its elected institutions, as there is no mitzvah in such a battle, and it may even lead to many offenses, and it is not what God wants.

 

In the War of Independence, we were divided in a serious feud between brothers, and God did not give but part of the land. In the Six-Day War, the entire nation united (for the first time since the days of David and Solomon!) and God gave us control of our fatherland (up to the Jordan River), in a remarkable victory.

 

Every time we split and sink into a feud between brothers, we grow weaker. Let’s together uphold the unity of the Jewish people in its land, because that is God’s only desire, and that is the only thing that will save us.

 


פרסום ראשון: 12.13.16, 12:01
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