Israel Matzav

What's at stake in Hebron

... Hebron's Jewish community has come under fierce attack due to disturbances in the city a week ago. How did Hebron's leadership relate this turbulence and the youth involved? Quite simply, these youth are neither hoodlums or hooligans. Rather, they are some of the most ideologically motivated people in Israel today. These young people are true lovers of their land, of Eretz Yisrael. They are still crying the pain of expulsion from Gush Katif and northern Samaria. Their hearts are still bleeding for our land abandoned to our enemies.

They hurt the hurt of thousands of homeless Jews, who committed no crime but to live in Gush Katif.

These youth want to prevent more expulsions, here in Hebron, in Amona, and in other places throughout Judea and Samaria. Enough is enough! No more expulsions, no more homeless, no more abandoned Jewish property.

Eretz Yisrael belongs to Am Yisrael, the Jewish people.

AND WHAT about the excessiveness, the seeming violence? Sixteen-year-olds don't react the same way as 50-year-olds. Sometimes the reactions are exaggerated, but then again, remember what they are struggling for.

Is ideological motivation a "struggle for supremacy"?

Clearly, all honest people must be able to live with themselves, with their actions and their conscience. True Jewish ideology has it roots in an eternal Torah, which has existed, not for 50 years, but for thousands of years. This Torah, as David Ben-Gurion told the Peel Commission, is the justification for our national existence in Eretz Yisrael.

Religiously observant Jews have no problem obeying the law of the land, as long as that law does not force them to overtly transgress their beliefs.

Should the Knesset pass a law demanding that one meal a day must include pork, or that Shabbat must be desecrated by each and every Israeli citizen, of course it would not be heeded. Eretz Yisrael is no different.

Chopping up our land, or demanding that it be abandoned is certainly no less serious than eating treif meat. Why is one publicly acceptable and the other decried? [I think he goes too far here. While I'm opposed to giving the 'Palestinians' Hebron or any other part of Judea and Samaria, the prohibition on giving land away to the 'Palestinians' - like the prohibitions of violating the Sabbath and eating treif meat - succumbs to the command to save lives. Say what you will about whether giving over land to the 'Palestinians' will save lives (I happen to believe that it won't and that it may endanger them), the question is usually much grayer than the question of whether violating the Sabbath or eating treif will save lives. CiJ]

...

In January 2003, then-Jerusalem mayor Olmert issued a 166-page book, together with Dore Gold, called Illegal Construction in Jerusalem, which enumerated over 6,000 instances of illegal Arab building in the capital. The conclusion declared: "Illegal construction has reached epidemic proportions."

Yet, an overwhelming majority of those illegal structures are still standing. Why then is there such an urgency to forcibly remove nine families in Hebron and destroy nine buildings in Amona, when so many other illegal structures are being overlooked?

The answer, it seems, is that Acting Prime Minister Olmert has undertaken to use Hebron and Amona as a means to politically prove his worth: "I too know how to throw Jews out of their homes, whatever the cost."

The real question is: are we dealing with the rule of law and order, or an attempt to usurp political power for political purposes?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:47 AM