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My opinion on "settlers"; Reuters prove they're dickheads
Posted on: Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Not an earth-shattering event the following but I thought I'd give my two cents' worth anyway. HaAretz carried the story yesterday of a prodigious group of Yesha settlement residents (popularly known as "settlers"*) who for the second time in a few weeks prevented Tzahal from emptying an illegally erected outpost in Yesha. The outposts are illegal under both international and, crucially, Israeli law and the security forces have legal authority to take them down. Now, your opinion about the settlements and outposts may be one way or another but government actions are challenged in court, not by mob rule. At least Israel has a tried and tested fair judicial system so opponents of the decisions reached by both haMemshalah and haKneset regarding evacuation of outposts can easily seek a judicial review. The most ironic (and infuriating) aspect of this is that these same people foam and rave on a daily basis about the supposed illegality of Dr. Sharon's Aza disengagement plan and here they are flagrantly disobeying the law themselves.
* I strongly object to the term "settler" not because it is inaccurate but because of the manner in which it is being used and the connotations it carries. Just like the term "boy" when applied to an African American gentleman, labeling a person as a "settler" aims to dehumanize them and legitimize violent or terroristic activities against them. They are not my most favorite of people but they ARE people. A lot of them ARE religious zealots who think they have a G-d given prerogative to dwell in Yesha whatever the cost. They have caused many sickening incidents with their Palestinian neighbors: provocation, intimidation, beatings, destruction of property, etc. (truth be told, they took their fair share of it themselves) and when you listen to many of them talk, you cannot help but beget the same revulsion toward them that one feels when one absorbs the bullshit spewed by Bush's neo-conservative fuckwits. I've seen footage of a Palestinian lady being abused as she had to walk a gauntlet of settlement residents: I beheld a woman wearing a massive kipah purposing violently to take off the lady's hijab while a child of about five or six was attempting to kick the latter in her shin. It was gut-wrenching and left me bewildered as to how on earth these individuals could insist they were acting out the will of HaShem. At the same time, there are quite a few settlement residents who are secular, temperate people and who came to live in Yesha owing to a particular set of circumstances. The point is: don't presume and assume, don't despise and hate apropos of those assumptions.
While on the subject, a lot of people who try to polemicize with me about the conflict in the Middle East quite predictably project their prejudices and misconceptions onto me and don't even bother asking me what my position is. So, what DO I think regarding residents of settlements in Yesha? Nothing much; as I said, one gets all kind of people subsumed in that category. Do I think they have the right to live there? No. At least, not on the basis on which THEY think they do. Should they be booted from the settlements in the interest of achieving peace? Well, this one's a bit more complicated. Settlement residents comprise maybe 8% of the population of Yesha and the settlements physically occupy 3% of Yesha territory. (Of course, currently it is more than 3% because there has to be an exclusion zone around the settlements, protected roads and tunnels, exclusion zones around those, etc. etc. but in real terms it is 3%.) So, surely they are not such an obstacle to peace; surely they would not so seriously imperil the demography of a Palestinian state; surely it's not as if Palestinians would have nowhere to live if the settlement residents stayed. The persistence on kicking settlement residents out of Yesha as a precondition for peace is therefore either a red herring or it discovers as the true nature of Palestinians (or at least their leadership) intolerance and inability to live but in a Judenrein state. All the same, the settlements really should not have been built in the first place and so I think they should go, as far as Israel is concerned. If the residents are unhappy with that, they should not be forcibly evicted (Israel spends far too much money because of them as it is and we mustn't waste more trying to knock sense into them). So, we should not remove them kicking and screaming but, rather, should leave them to their own devices. If they should so desire, they could negotiate their status in a new Palestinian state of their own accord. I abhor the idea of abandoning Jews and ideals which I do understand and which are close to my heart but I do not brook religious arrogance and zealotry, or flouting of common sense. And anyway, achieving peace IS worth making concessions--not that these are as much concessions as they are equitable and common sense.
* * *
In the meantime, Tzahal executed an operation last night whereby its combined land and aerial forces attacked and razed a Chamas training ground in Aza near its border with Israel. Fourteen terrorist monsters were eliminated. Congratulations go to our forces and a big boo-boo to Reuters. Reuters in its report of the operation included the usual eulogies to terrorists, called them "militants", declined to distinguish the innocent civilians murdered by Chamas in Beer-Sheva from armed and insane murderers and the usual crap. But then to top it off they said that in this action, get this: "More than 20 people, including militants and bystanders, were injured [...]." Now, seeing as this operation was executed at midnight (local time) and seeing as Aza is not really an environment which boasts a thriving night-life (no clubs, pubs and similar), what BYSTANDERS could there POSSIBLY have been present at a training camp of a terrorist organization? Were there families perchance having a picnic on the clearing next to the assault course? Perhaps some swans swimming in the nearby lake were, too, decapitated by big Zionist missiles. Fucking absurd. But that's Reuters for you.
Posted on: Tuesday, September 07, 2004
ב''ה
Not an earth-shattering event the following but I thought I'd give my two cents' worth anyway. HaAretz carried the story yesterday of a prodigious group of Yesha settlement residents (popularly known as "settlers"*) who for the second time in a few weeks prevented Tzahal from emptying an illegally erected outpost in Yesha. The outposts are illegal under both international and, crucially, Israeli law and the security forces have legal authority to take them down. Now, your opinion about the settlements and outposts may be one way or another but government actions are challenged in court, not by mob rule. At least Israel has a tried and tested fair judicial system so opponents of the decisions reached by both haMemshalah and haKneset regarding evacuation of outposts can easily seek a judicial review. The most ironic (and infuriating) aspect of this is that these same people foam and rave on a daily basis about the supposed illegality of Dr. Sharon's Aza disengagement plan and here they are flagrantly disobeying the law themselves.
* I strongly object to the term "settler" not because it is inaccurate but because of the manner in which it is being used and the connotations it carries. Just like the term "boy" when applied to an African American gentleman, labeling a person as a "settler" aims to dehumanize them and legitimize violent or terroristic activities against them. They are not my most favorite of people but they ARE people. A lot of them ARE religious zealots who think they have a G-d given prerogative to dwell in Yesha whatever the cost. They have caused many sickening incidents with their Palestinian neighbors: provocation, intimidation, beatings, destruction of property, etc. (truth be told, they took their fair share of it themselves) and when you listen to many of them talk, you cannot help but beget the same revulsion toward them that one feels when one absorbs the bullshit spewed by Bush's neo-conservative fuckwits. I've seen footage of a Palestinian lady being abused as she had to walk a gauntlet of settlement residents: I beheld a woman wearing a massive kipah purposing violently to take off the lady's hijab while a child of about five or six was attempting to kick the latter in her shin. It was gut-wrenching and left me bewildered as to how on earth these individuals could insist they were acting out the will of HaShem. At the same time, there are quite a few settlement residents who are secular, temperate people and who came to live in Yesha owing to a particular set of circumstances. The point is: don't presume and assume, don't despise and hate apropos of those assumptions.
While on the subject, a lot of people who try to polemicize with me about the conflict in the Middle East quite predictably project their prejudices and misconceptions onto me and don't even bother asking me what my position is. So, what DO I think regarding residents of settlements in Yesha? Nothing much; as I said, one gets all kind of people subsumed in that category. Do I think they have the right to live there? No. At least, not on the basis on which THEY think they do. Should they be booted from the settlements in the interest of achieving peace? Well, this one's a bit more complicated. Settlement residents comprise maybe 8% of the population of Yesha and the settlements physically occupy 3% of Yesha territory. (Of course, currently it is more than 3% because there has to be an exclusion zone around the settlements, protected roads and tunnels, exclusion zones around those, etc. etc. but in real terms it is 3%.) So, surely they are not such an obstacle to peace; surely they would not so seriously imperil the demography of a Palestinian state; surely it's not as if Palestinians would have nowhere to live if the settlement residents stayed. The persistence on kicking settlement residents out of Yesha as a precondition for peace is therefore either a red herring or it discovers as the true nature of Palestinians (or at least their leadership) intolerance and inability to live but in a Judenrein state. All the same, the settlements really should not have been built in the first place and so I think they should go, as far as Israel is concerned. If the residents are unhappy with that, they should not be forcibly evicted (Israel spends far too much money because of them as it is and we mustn't waste more trying to knock sense into them). So, we should not remove them kicking and screaming but, rather, should leave them to their own devices. If they should so desire, they could negotiate their status in a new Palestinian state of their own accord. I abhor the idea of abandoning Jews and ideals which I do understand and which are close to my heart but I do not brook religious arrogance and zealotry, or flouting of common sense. And anyway, achieving peace IS worth making concessions--not that these are as much concessions as they are equitable and common sense.
* * *
In the meantime, Tzahal executed an operation last night whereby its combined land and aerial forces attacked and razed a Chamas training ground in Aza near its border with Israel. Fourteen terrorist monsters were eliminated. Congratulations go to our forces and a big boo-boo to Reuters. Reuters in its report of the operation included the usual eulogies to terrorists, called them "militants", declined to distinguish the innocent civilians murdered by Chamas in Beer-Sheva from armed and insane murderers and the usual crap. But then to top it off they said that in this action, get this: "More than 20 people, including militants and bystanders, were injured [...]." Now, seeing as this operation was executed at midnight (local time) and seeing as Aza is not really an environment which boasts a thriving night-life (no clubs, pubs and similar), what BYSTANDERS could there POSSIBLY have been present at a training camp of a terrorist organization? Were there families perchance having a picnic on the clearing next to the assault course? Perhaps some swans swimming in the nearby lake were, too, decapitated by big Zionist missiles. Fucking absurd. But that's Reuters for you.
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