Stampede in a one horse town. Wild horses could not drag them away…An unwashed mob, scheming to steal the ruling class’s public prestige, the social capital of “neutrality” ; making them look bad. “And after all we’ve done for them!” They can paint themselves as defiant subversive rebels resisting the hordes of undemocratic jews carrying the traditional values of the diaspora, but it all P.R. spin. The image of the feeble and passiveness intrinsic to Judaism just won’t stick to the wall no matter how hard they try. Those “uppity” settlers just can’t seem to be “civilized” . Gun toting wild men and women, Bugsy Seigal’s and assorted molls with skull caps and candlesticks. To the Torah-phobic secular elite, these tolerated guests are overstaying their welcome. They are hurting out international business interests. What do you mean; judaism to them is not an unfortunate birth defect? We don’t want to invoke the Warsaw ghetto, but if push comes to shove with these oven dodgers…
—This Wednesday morning at 5:30am, tens of police and yassam forces arrived in “Mitzpe Erez”, in the Jewish community of Bat Ayin, not with paintball guns as in the terror flotilla, but rather with batons and machine guns, and destroyed two houses that were built in the Bat Ayin forest after and in reaction to the murder of Erez Levanon HY”D.
In a letter that the families wrote a few days ago when they heard that their houses were slated for destruction they say:
“Our settling in the forest is not an irresponsible picnic by young couples who are looking to relax but rather a clear statement of growth and expansion at a place where the life of Erez Levanon HY”D was taken away cruelly and heinously, with the clear purpose of scaring us and paralyzing us so we should not dare to go out and expand.
Our settling Mitzpe Erez is the one and real answer to all those who try to paralyze and silence us — whether it is the external enemy or the government, especially at a time of the “freeze” whose meaning is-the destruction of the settlement enterprise and is very dangerous for the future of the Jewish People”. —Read More:http://www.think-israel.org/jun10bloged.html
Of course, when the settler movement and their supporters dig in their heels, and prepare themselves for an Alamo if need be, their hostility, antagonism when articulated is framed by the elite as examples which constitute incitement which is equated with Judaism being incompatible with democracy. This is desperation when the long used accommodationist ideology is exhausted from fatigue; that is, giving the settler movement, the religious, a sense of inclusion, artificial as it may be, while at the same time casting them as having all the characteristics that justify the moniker of inferiority on them. Sounds like Germany of Der Sturmer, Julius Streicher salad days. In short, religious Zionists, also something of a contradiction, are in essence, a weight on the ruling class, like a hefty, proud jewish nose that refuses cosmetic surgery to look assimilationist and pretty in an era of globalization and international trade. Effectively, metaphorically and realistically, after being pounded on the head, beaten and dragged, they finally realize how conditional and precarious their membership in a shared Israel project really is….
( see link at end) …Police are getting ready for a confrontation with residents and protesters in the Ulpana neighborhood. On Sunday, Arutz Sheva’s Hebrew service uncovered a training plan for Border Guards and other security forces, that included drills aimed at providing troops with skills to remove men, women, and children from the Givat Ha’ulpana neighborhood of Beit El. On Monday, Ha’aretz reported that some 1,000 troops were to be provided with that training.
—At the time Amir Peretz was the defense minister.
Violence broke out in Amona, in part in reaction to the ease with which Gaza residents were pulled from their homes the summer before. They had fought a civil disobedience battle for Gaza under the slogan, “Love will win out.” The lesson learned by young adults as bulldozers flattened Gaza settler homes was that “love,” as nice as it sounds, might not have been the best strategy.
For days before the demolition of the Amona homes on February 1, 2006, activists streamed to the isolated hilltop outside the Ofra settlement in the Binyamin region of the West Bank.
Even before the IDF arrived, some 1,500 people were waiting to defend the outpost of 35 families.
They had time to rig the nine endangered homes with boards, barbed wire and tires.
Activist stood firm against some 6,000 border police and soldiers. In the clashes that ensued, 86 security personnel and 85 activists were injured.
Activists have come to believe that it was the specter of such violence that has prevented any further significant demolition of outpost homes, although certainly small groups of homes as well as temporary construction have been destroyed since then.
Read More:http://m.jpost.com/HomePage/FrontPage/Article.aspx?id=90273129&cat=1
…According to a decision by the High Court, Jewish residents of the neighborhood have until the end of the month to leave their homes. When they do, they will find themselves living in flimsy “caravillas” – essentially cheap mobile homes – while permanent housing is built for them. A plan by the government to physically move the five buildings in question off land claimed by an Arab has been called everything from brilliant to ridiculous, with many residents of the compound, as well as other right-wing activists, saying that plan is just a “fig leaf” for the complete demolition of the neighborhood.
The drills are said to be taking place at an IDF base in the Jordan Valley. Along with border police, members of the feared Yassam police unit are participating, as are a group of officers on horseback. Both groups are expected to participate in any forced removal of the Ulpana residents, ominously recalling the actions by Yassam and horseback officers at Amona several years ago….
Robert Onderdonk painting.—In addition, since the Amona demolitions in 2006, extreme-right activists have employed a “price tag” strategy of vengeance acts against Palestinians, which adds an specter of violence not known six years ago.
As with the first Amona, there is now a countdown toward a demolition date. The High Court of Justice has ordered the state to destroy five apartment buildings there by July 1.
The area is heavily populated. Ulpana has 14 apartment buildings, in four tight rows.
It sits on the edge of Beit El, a settlement of close to 6,000 people that also houses a yeshiva. It would be difficult for Barak to make a move on Beit El without alerting people in the settlement and the yeshiva, many of whom would immediately come to the aid of the Ulpana homes. There is also plenty of space in the settlement to house additional activists who want to engage in the newest battle for Judea and Samaria.
Physical resistance has not, so far, been the first choice for activists who oppose the demolition of the Ulpana homes. They held a hunger strike, they lobbied politicians, they rallied and manned a protest tent.
Aside from Eldad’s words, they have not stated a clear intention to hold a violent battle. They have spoken of self defensive acts and added that they will not be the ones to instigate violence.
But when Knesset legislation designed to thwart the demolitions failed on Wednesday, they folded their protest tents and spoke of defending their homes from the streets.
For activists fed on faith and a deep belief that they are safeguarding the state by living on the hilltops of Judea and Samaria, it would be difficult not to chose to physically defend the Ulpana homes with their bodies. In recent months, both the courts and politicians have failed them, they feel.
Offers to relocate the homes have not appeased them or the Ulpana residents, because they believe that the ideology underlining the removal of the homes endangers some 9,000 other Jewish West Bank structures, which they fear, could lead to a second disengagement.—Read More:http://m.jpost.com/HomePage/FrontPage/Article.aspx?id=90273129&cat=1 image:http://www.agribusinesscouncil.org/Jennings%20Heritage/Oldest%20Alamo%20Hero.htm
The report said that the troops expect to be ready to act by the end of the month, and to go into action immediately when ordered to do so by the government. Any such order would be personally given by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Meanwhile, residents of the Ulpana, and of Beit El, plan to dig in and resist, if they can. A letter by Rabbi Zalman Baruch Melamed, Rabbi of Beit El and head of the local Yeshiva, was distributed to residents Sunday night. In the letter, Rabbi Melamed urges residents and activists to be ready to “make sacrifices” in order to save the neighborhood. Quoting Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook z”tl, Rabbi Melamed writes that “all faithful Jews must stand ready to act selflessly against the plan to take the Land away from us and transfer it to non-Jewish hands. All Jews are commanded to join in this struggle, without regard for life or limb,” Rabbi Melamed continued in his quote from Rabbi Kook….
—The state will pay 45,000 S
ls in compensation to Benny Rahamin, a Jewish refugee from the demolished Neve Dekalim town in Gush Katif, who had been beaten by a Yassam officer and badly injured in 2005. The incident occurred at a demonstration protesting Israel’s controversial “Disengagement” from the Gaza region.—Read More:http://www.indynewsisrael.com/tag/yassam
Rabbi Melamed had special praise for National Union Chairman MK Ya’akov Katz (Ketzaleh), whom he said was “at the head of the battle against this terrible edict of destruction. He follows the path of Rabbi Kook, with self-sacrifice, and I congratulate and bless him for his leading of the struggle so far, with great success.” In the letter, Rabbi Melamed adds that he “calls on the entire community, and to the MKs who are loyal to the Land of Israel, to join the struggle in the spirit of sacrifice.” Read More:http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/156996#.T-CX_PVb76M
—“We must defend these homes with our bodies,” said Yitzhak Shadmi, who heads the Binyamin Citizens’ Committee.
“Everyone for whom the nation of Israel is dear should come,” he said. “If thousands are here there won’t be any demolitions.”
“This business that it is easy to tear down Jewish homes when thousand of unauthorized homes are being built nearby in Area C, this terrible discrimination has to be stopped,” he said in reference to rampant unauthorized construction by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in the Gofna hills and other parts of Area C financed by the European Union.
Shadmi was speaking to journalists alongside Beit El Mayor Moshe Rosenbaum and residents of the Ulpana neighborhood at a press conference held in a large tent outside the apartment buildings slated for demolition.—Read More:http://www.indynewsisrael.com/activists-preparing-ulpana-resistance image:http://www.vosizneias.com/108177/2012/06/18/jerusalem-police-hold-large-scale-drill-ahead-of-ulpana-evacuation/
… implicit in this approach of course, is a discrediting of Judaism and by extension that the natural habitat of democracy lies in secular values. Add to this the millions wasted on projects and bureaucracy devoted to the promotion of a common culture; instead of the stae withdrawing from such a venture, this state sanctioned culture ultimately preserves the interests of a secular elite that runs it irrespective of the government in power….
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