(Editor’s Note: The Jewish Press received the following column from Rabbi Riskin just a few hours too late to make the Feb. 17 issue. Though the column appeared in a couple of other media outlets last week, Rabbi Riskin asked us to consider running it this week – a request we agreed to due to the seriousness of the subject.)
Why was the demolition of the nine homes in Amona accompanied by so much violence on both sides of the ideological spectrum, whereas the destruction of the Gush Katif settlements only seven months ago took place amid comparative understanding and sensitivity, with crying and decrying, with dancing and denying, but in largest measure devoid of the use of force?
Apparently the overwhelming majority of those who feel part of the settler community, while strongly disagreeing with the “disengagement” policy – either on Zionistic or humanistic grounds or because they are against giving a prize to terror and Hamas in this critical time of Palestinian internal dissension and external aggression – might well endorse passive resistance but would clearly stop short of violence.
So what happened half a year later in Amona? I’m not merely writing about the youth who demonstrated in Amona; I’m talking about murmurings throughout the settler community, which has been radicalized far beyond the red lines of Gush Katif.
The explanation lies between the lines of a survey conducted by Professor Dalia Mor of the College of Management in Rishon Letzion, aimed at examining the attitudes of Israelis toward the various sectors of our broader society: Ashkenazim, Sephardim, secularists, settlers, haredim, rightists, leftists, Israeli-Arabs, new immigrants and foreign workers.
The survey revealed that the sector most hated by Israelis is the Palestinians, with the settlers a close second. And among those respondents who defined themselves as left-wingers, hostility toward the settlers ranked higher than hostility toward the Palestinians – 67 to 55 percent.
This study explained to me a curious phenomenon. Israelis may have many faults, but lack of generosity to people in trouble is not one of them. Our telephones and door bells ring every ten minutes with requests for aid to needy families and institutions, Israel as a fledgling country welcomed under-privileged and undereducated refugees from Third World countries in numbers unrivaled by any other country, and our nation was among the first to take in the Vietnamese boat people and to send volunteers and raise funds for victims of the recent tsunami and Pakistani earthquake as well as the homeless of Hurricane Katrina.
With this history, why is there no national outcry on behalf of the expelled residents of Gush Katif, most of whom are still waiting to receive their government subsidies and are living in substandard housing, without any means of employment? It’s not like these residents of Gush Katif built their settlements as thieves in the night. They were sent as agents of every Israeli government since the Six Day War, and they turned a desert into a garden of fruits, vegetables and flowers. Why is the government, as well as the majority of the populace, so indifferent to their fate? It can only be because the entire settlement community has become a demonized and delegitimized sector of Israel society.
This explains why in Amona the government (and Supreme Court) would not accept a mere seven-day delay to enable the settlers themselves to dismantle their homes and restore whatever they could as they resumed their lives in Ofra, and why the policemen came out on horseback, brandishing clubs and often striking indiscriminately, as pictures seem to testify.
I certainly do not condone in any way the stone throwing of many of the youth who were there. But the settler community had come to Amona already feeling disenfranchised and abandoned, and unfortunately those who feel pushed against the wall of hatred and indifference often act with violence because they sense they have nothing to lose. Tragically, the overreaction of the police only exacerbated the perception that we settlers are Public Enemy Number One.