that's at play here. As such stupidity is annoying enough, but behind the wheel of a car or in a government seat it can be lethal. Much more so than a stone thrown....

excellent article.

The stones that the Palestinian throw are so lethal as the Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria.

wrong??

Their wild assaults on the IDF, Jews and Palestinians are crimes.Those who see our army as an enemy, who attack its troops, commanders and property, who continually break the laws of the state, price-tagging Palestinians and Jews with no exception - the state whose citizens' revenues, that's our taxes folks, have been funding these people for decades - have put themselves beyond the state, have made themselves enemies of it. We treat enemies - all of them - in the same way, with no exceptions, and so with these enemies too.

Israel should be proud of them! While Israelis in Tel Aviv are wasting their time having fun ,the so called Settlers are at the frontline in the fight against Israels worst enemies.While most Israelis do not know wy they live in Israel ,the Jews in the Settlements have a program : working and settling the land according to the scriptures! My respect is with them! And i will pray for their succses!

The deranged response to Rightist violence, is not because the government and police fear the protesters, they fear Hamas. The establishment knows that religious-Zionist Jews are not a threat to the IDF. Their fear is that the protesters will give an excuse for Hamas to escalate the violence.

The leftist self-hater, Islam worshiping crowd is missing you at Haaretz. This is --mostly - a pro-israeli forum where your Israel hatred, Leftist propaganda is not appreciated.

Don't be fooled by the propaganda - the Israeli government under peacenik and Jew-hater Barak does not want you. Should you insist upon coming to Israel anyway, they will make your life a misery, - specifically, they plan to take your life and property and that of your family. Do not be fooled.

The author ends this poignant article by asking: Have we gone mad? Israel is not going mad. However, the left is. For decades, a tiny leftist "elite" minority in the judiciary, educational and political establishments have easily dominated Israel. Despite the fact the vast majority of Israel oppose their views. Now rightist parties are increasingly dominating the Knesset. There are growing calls for reform of the anti-democratic ways leftists assume power. The left desperately clings to power. A desperate left is an even more dangerous left. That is why prominent leftists are going so far as to call for shooting Jews who are, for the most part, guilty of little. Meanwhile, these same leftists support leftist rioters who main police and the release of thousands of Arab mass murderers.

They hate with a PASSION anyone who is really Jewish. Unbelievable the level of this vile and deadly hatred. You see it in the faces of the police and IDF when ever they deal with Jews living in Judea Samaria. I think the government hires them on purpose. The meaner, the viler, the better. They beat you senseless while saying: "Dirty JEWS". And to think this happens now, in Israel after what we experienced in Europe and throughout the world. What the HELL is wrong with this governement?

This has gone much too far. The idiot 'young kids' who were probably led by agent provocteurs should certainly be jailed. However, any one that writes word encouraging demonizing Jews that happen to live in one disputed area, by saying shoot 'settlers', is a real security risk. Stop this nonsense now, there are 2 very separate issues - one regards lawless behaviour of misguided youth, and the other concerns the encouragement of mass murder against Jews...You the reader decide where the lines are drawn? I wouldn't wish such a fate against Jewish brothers, no matter what their religious or political orientation!

There was a euphoria when the WB territories were captured in 1967. There was an obvious parallel: the capture of territories during the war of independence in 1948. But WB is proving itself a trap from which Israel has not an easy way out. Giving the WB to an independent Palis state is a way out. It is a much easier choice than a civil war.

but LEFTIST media would NEVER mentoin this. they WHITEWASH everything from the LEFT.

The mad Israeli left is supported and instigated by the "tom friedmann-s" of Obamao's court Jews. Their obsessive, fanatical hatred of Israel is reminiscent to Stalin's times when Leftist Jews created a new Jewish "homeland" -- called Birobidjan -- in E. Siberia which is still exists today. (Google it) For them Israel is a "bourgeois nationalist" idea, contradicting to their leftist "universalistic" ideology. Not only them want to destroy Israel as the State for the Jews but simultaneously working on the U.S. to remake it as a Socialist paradise.

Your comment acquired a meaning.

Modesty and dress codes for army graduations... zealots living in the hills fighting for religously-mandated lands/ideals, disrespect for the secular law and authority... Very interesting how we are becoming more and more like our neighbors, a little frightening but not necessarily unforeseeable and frankly, not unrealistic given where we live and the history of this place. More and more I see the days of "Shalom Achshav, Doar Shalem, Doar Shalom" and and Meretz as just a western European wishful projection that manifested for a few years and then died. Now, for better or worse, we are coming into our own as true Middle Easterners, fighting rather than compromising, putting women into the Chador and living in ecclesiocratic bliss...

#16 Michael. Judea and Samaria are no "trap". They are the cherished ancestral, more than 3,500 year old heartland of the Jewish people. All but a small and ever declining minority of Israelis know this. Recent polls show almost 80% of Israeli Jews oppose ceding Judea and Samaria. Moreover, Judea and Samaria Jews have one of the highest birth rates in the Western World. Jews ar a growing majority in Israel; including Judea and Samaria. Michael, your views are entirely far left propaganda. Not one iota of truth in them.

#18 Tom. You make an excellent point. There is a good reason why Israel haters contribute so generously to the New Israel Fund, Peace Now and other far left organizations. These organizations do the work of Israel haters. This is also why Israel haters strenuously object to limitations on foreign funding of leftist Israeli groups. It also explains why Israel haters ONLY fund leftist groups. Many Israeli leftists are tools of foreign Jew haters. That's the bottom line.

Shooting Jews does not appeal to anyone contrary to what this author has written. Yielding to fascist extremist ideology and criminal behaviour from the Jewish religious right, or from any quarter, appeals even less. This author has rationalised the settlers tacit support for violent settler behaviour as being due to the public's opposition to racist, undemocratic legislation proposed in the Knesset putting the responsibility for ongoing violence back on the Israeli public who oppose a racist, undemocratic outlook! This situation was born out of out of religious dogma and the will of successive governments to pander to it as well as from wars and open hostility from neighbours. It has reached breaking point and the solution is not to embrace the fanatic religious right but for everyone in Israel to embrace a vision of how they want this country to look in the future.

Let's not call teenage thugs "patriots" when they attack the IDF with stones-no sovereign country woould accept this benignly. There are no excuses=either you accept the fact that the civil government rules or you go elsewhere, period

This article and much of the talkback is a gross over-reaction to a totally predictable development on the part of the settlers. The government has encouraged and nurtured them for four decades. Is it possible that our world class intelligence services have been caught off balance? No lessons learned from the Rabin assassination? Or maybe it is just that the police and army do not know how to control violent demonstrators and obtain evidence to prosecute them without resorting to disproportionate force? There may not be much experience of this in the West Bank as the approach towards Palestinians seems to be disproportionate force, random arrests and 99%+ successful military prosecutions. (Unknown to the author of the article, it is evident that the justiciary does indeed permit "selective rules of engagement" for different ethnicities in the West Bank). But there are well-known means for controlling violent (even stone throwing) demonstrations without resorting to disproportionate force, and also for tracking down the perpetrators of aggression and prosecuting them. This seems to be understood in France, Italy, ... But I have the feeling that the primary purpose of this op-ed is to divert attention from the self-evident exaggeration of the extreme right to the hardly visible left.

Demographic trends mean that either a civil war will occur to establish a new status quo between religion and the state, or seculars will leave the country en masse and the economy will fail. One of these two things will happen within 50 years - anyone with any foresight can see it plain as day.

on if Israel had be STUPID enough to let the leftists give it away to a madman. Map out the areas Israel is going to keep and settle it. Stop with the nonsense talk of killing your own people, the ones who love the land more than the not-supreme court.

The state of Israel was created for the survivors of the Holocaust, not economic migrants from America and Eastern Europe who have no claim to any part of Judea and Samaria - surely the indigenous Palestinians have more right than them to the land. Israel has lost its moral compass and ideals by embracing these opportunist land thieves as Israeli citizens.

Maybe this will work: Noar Hagvaot (hill boys?) should seceed from the state and set up their own state. The Mea Shearim guys should do the same. But just the men. They don't like to be near women so they could have their own state inside Jerusalem and bus in the women on totally kosher women-only busses once a week. The far left anarchists would surely want a state of their own too. Then all the weirdos who want democracy and rule of law could have it their way on whatever is left.