Israel Matzav

The Logic of Betrayal - How Israel's Ruling Elites Became Cossacks

I know that a lot of you who have not spent a lot of time in Israel are wondering how Israel's police and army could have done what they did to a group of unarmed teenagers at 'Amona' last week. Those of us who live here know the answer deep down. Now, I'm going to share it with those of you who were not aware of it before. Quite simply, like many American Jews who have substituted 'liberalism' for Judaism, many Israeli Jews have substituted 'Israeliness' for 'Jewishness.' 'Liberalism' and 'Israeliness' have a lot in common - one of the things that they have in common is scorning the significance that the Jewish faith places on the land of Israel. This article by Eugene Narrett, Ph.D. explains some of how we got where we got last Wednesday at 'Amona.' I can only add that for those of you interested in further reading on the topic, I highly recommend the first 100 pages or so of Yoram Hazony's The Jewish State.

Hat tip: Irene in Passaic, New Jersey.

In the spring of 1967, thirty-nine years ago, the Arab states and their hordes surrounded Israel, their snouts in the air quivering at the scent of Jewish blood. Ther gross public incitement, boasting and threats about obliterating Israel, to "kill the Jews wherever you find them; kill them with your hands, with your nails, with your teeth" [King Hussein]; about finishing the Nazis' work are well summarized in Samuel Katz's seminal book, "Battleground," especially chapter 3.

But here we are focusing on the logic by which Israel's dominant elites, largely against their will but thanks to Israeli soldiers and civilians, turned away from the glorious opportunities of the victory of June 6-12, 1967, a victory won largely against their will and thanks to Israeli soldiers and civilians. Let's focus on what this turning away did to the elites and what they, as a result have done and are doing more and more to the Jewish people.

Remember this: among the main blessings they squandered was peace. They squandered it by running after it, like a female donkey in heat in places where it could never and will never be found: chasing their arab lovers, their would-be American or European 'guarantors.'

Back then, after months of intensifying threats of imminent belligerence, with Egypt's, Syria's and Jordan's armies massed at or near its borders (that is, about ten miles from the Mediterranean), with the gates of Auschwitz staring them in the face, Israel struck Egypt. The armed forces did their job, though the politicians held them back as much as they could. The Egyptian army and air force were obliterated but civilian farmers from the Hula valley, under Syrian fire for twenty years, had to plead personally with Levi Eshkol (remember him?) to order the IDF to take the Golan over the resistance of Moshe Dayan, the 'great white hope' of the New York Times who didn't want the attack and liberation to go forward. And who, not incidentally, returned the Temple Mount to the muslims and brought them back to Hebron.

During the struggle with Egypt and then Syria, these same elites pleaded with Hussein not to attack, to keep his hold on all Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem including the old city, Temple Mount, plaza and all; but he smelled blood, and he heard Nasser's boasts still resounding on the air waves. So to the chagrin of Israel's ruling caste, "Jordan" attacked and in two days the IDF was on the east bank of the Jordan River and all of Yesha was in the nands of the Jews, sort of. All of the Gilead and Bashan could easily have been reclaimed.

Here was a two-fold phenomenon: Victory for the armed forces of the Jewish people, for all the Jewish people everywhere, and consternation for the communist - socialist elites. Having all this land confronted them with what they wanted to forget: that they were Jews and that the Jews had definitively thrown off their dhimmi status and returned triumphantly, from the ashes, to their ancient homeland. The dream was real, just as it states in psalm 126: but they didn't want it.

For the first time in 19 centuries, Jews again could be truly and fully Jews, more so than at any time since Solomon since the nation and most of the land was there with all the Torah and new life it supports. THAT WAS THE PROBLEM: THEY DIDN'T WANT TO BE JEWS, THEY WANTED TO BE ISRAELIS, "like Monaco with a University" as Weizman had said, like Sweden, the socialists were fond of saying before that nation found its way back to the source of prosperity, property rights.

If they were to incorporate most of ancient Israel into the renewed state Jews would settle it, the holy sites were bound to be rebuilt, and used! To them this meant a "return to the ghetto and its smells," another Weizman chestnut.

But to reject the land, to play the part of Esau and spurn the birthright, how could they openly do something so self-negating and treacherous? How could they live with the guilt this would create?

Only by alienating the land in the name of what, to them in their little-bit-of-knowledge which is worse-than-total-ignorance was the greatest of all Jewish values: PEACE! That's it, we'll give the land back in the name of PEACE! Haven't Jews always greeted each other , said hello and goodbye by intoning SHALOM! What great p.r. that will make: Israel who only wants PEACE! PEACE NOW!

...

And so on February 01, 2006, the cossacks of Peres--Olmert's Kadima party rode down the teenagers and all Jews they could find at the beautiful Jewish settlement of Amona. They rode them down, whipped and beat them into the ground like Ukrainian beasts because those beautifully simple, honest, unpretentious people remind them of what they have spurned, of the heart they've torn out of themselves, calling the mutilated results "PEACE," blaming the victims of their own cowardice and stupidity.

That is the logic of the betrayal whose horrible last pangs we experience today. We are witnessing the insanity and violence of deeply ramified guilt and its reflex, homicidal violence.

And since it is a mutilation, not peace, there is no peace and will not be any peace until Israel settles entirely in its land, per the contract.

Read it all.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:37 PM