8/6/10

Rioting for Settlements, Lo Alenu!

Unfortunately, Lo Alenu ("may it not happen to us"), some of the Jews in the
community of Bet El (located in the Shomron) actually physically attacked our police
officers and civil administration officials who came to dismantle structures in that
settlement which are considered illegal, as reported in the Jerusalem Post online
edition:
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177837

I really must stress how self-defeating this is, in addition to being absolutely wrong
from a moral standpoint! Of course, morally it is wrong to attack officials of the
government who are just doing the job they have been assigned. These are our fellow
Jews whose job is to carry out the policies of the government. While I agree that those
policies are totally incorrect regarding "the settlements", physically harming those
who implement them is simply hooliganism, and can even, Chas VeShalom (Heaven
forfend), lead to civil war, or at least Sinat Chinum (causeless hatred) between Jews!
If the policies are wrong, then we must politically challenge the government about
them and get those misguided policies changed; but there is NEVER a political reason
to physically harm another Jew. All of the arguments that some political decision, as
flawed as it may be, will eventually cause us to be attacked by Arabs, and therefore
we must beat upon other Jews to stop this; all of those arguments are TOTALLY
SPECIOUS! As much as I am extremely concerned about the welfare of our nation
and our land, I have NEVER seen such a justification which actually stands up to
simple common sense!

Additionally, as I mentioned above, these types of actions are self-defeating. If we can

justify holding ourselves above the law because we are certain that this policy is
wrong, then the left-wingers who are certain that having ANY settlements is morally
wrong can easily justify themselves illegally uprooting settlements by any means they
can find; and then social order totally breaks down when, as illustrated by the
Mishnah (Avot 3:2), each person will swallow his fellow citizen alive!

These types of actions are also counterproductive and self-defeating because the
purpose of having settlements is to expand our control over the land of Israel by
having Israeli government control extend to each settlement. However, if we
create "pirate" settlements, not legally recognized by the government of Israel,
and if we physically battle with the bureaucrats and the police and the soldiers
sent to dismantle such settlements; we actually distance Israeli control from
those areas, since we increase government antagonism toward having settlements
there! The only productive way to expand Israeli control over our land is to take the
battle to the government institutions and make it a political and ideological battle, not
a physical one! We have to make it clear to our government and our Knesset members
why it is important to have Israeli control over these territories of our land, and, since
there are many cogent reasons for this, we should not be doubting our ability to win
the battle in the political and ideological arena! We must remember that if we use
violence against our own brethren to force our point of view across, it is as if we
have declared that Jewish Sechel (reason) is not strong enough to convince the
Jews to do the right thing, and we are forced to use the evil tools of Esau to
achieve the goals of Israel!

Let's hope that all Israelis will remain law-abiding citizens, and that we will be able to
use our political acumen to direct our government into more productive policies!

Catriel Lev, Bet Shemesh

Email: clev@actcom.com; blog: http://vehashalomvehaemmet.blogspot.com/