The left, which in Israel owns the mainstream media, has begun a campaign to repel any notion of following the anticipated victory over Hamas in the Gaza Strip with a return of exiled Jews to Gush Katif.
On March 23, Haaretz called Minister Orit Strock “one of the darkest people in Israel” because she said in an interview that Israel must return to the Gaza Strip. It would take sacrifices, she admitted, but so did the expulsion. “Gaza is part of the Land of Israel,” she declared, “and the day will come when we will return to it.”
On March 21, the Knesset repealed Israel’s Disengagement Law of 2005 regarding northern Samaria, paving the road for the evacuated Jews of four settlements, including Homesh, to rebuild their homes. Last Wednesday, Likud MK Amit Halevi submitted an amendment to the revocation law to permit the free movement of Israelis up and down the Gaza Strip, which would include resettling the 17 uprooting communities of Gush Katif.
Back in March, even folks on the right did not envision a return to Gush Katif, whose 8,500 Jews were expelled by the soon-to-become-a-vegetable M Ariel Sharon and his soon-to-become-a-prisoner-for-crimes-of-corruption deputy Ehud Olmert in 2005. That’s the thing about prophecies – they sneak up on you.
When the Disengagement Law was revoked in March it generated fierce criticism from the Biden administration, but Netanyahu, who did his best to block it, couldn’t. On the issue of Jews returning from their exile to Gaza, Netanyahu has stressed more than once that he is not interested. Or, as he put it, “Israel is not interested.”
Will Netanyahu be able to block a right-wing tsunami demanding a return to Gush Katif? The left and mainstream media in Israel suspect that he won’t, and are already engaged full-on in combating the very notion of redeeming Jewish Gaza.
HAARETZ LEADING THE OFFENSE
Here’s an indirect example: on Friday, the Haaretz editorial urged: “Fire Smotrich.” It wasn’t clear who should fire Smotrich, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rather able finance minister, and whether Netanyahu should be getting his political counsel from this bastion of white-bright hatred of things Jewish and normal. But the gist of this call was that because Smotrich is refusing to transfer all the funds his office collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority so that it apportion some of them to Hamas and some to terrorist prisoners and the families of dead terrorists – he is “endangering the state.”
“Smotrich should be removed from the government now because he is pushing the Palestinian Authority into a corner and increasing the chance of a conflict in the West Bank,” the Haaretz editorial opined – you couldn’t make them use “Judea and Samaria” if you kidnapped half the editorial staff to Gaza.
“The chance of a conflict?” Hamas squads and Hamas-incited individuals are roaming the highways of Judea and Samaria hunting for Jews right now. Last Thursday, Elchanan Klein, 29, father of three, was murdered when terrorists sprayed his car with bullets and it overturned. We have conflict right now, and Smotrich is merely trying to stop the funding for the killers.
These days, with the IDF having its way with the forces of darkness in Gaza, no one in the government has said anything about the day after. The Americans have said plenty, repeating their “two-state solution” mantra with utter disregard for the fact that the last time the Palestinian Authority ruled the vacated Gaza Strip independently, it took Hamas less than two years to start throwing them off rooftops tied to their office chairs. The Biden administration has yet to internalize the bit of reality about an independent PA always being just a precursor to Hamas rule.
Does Israel want Hamas posted not only in Gaza but only a few kilometers from Kfar Saba and Ra’anana, in Jenin and Tulkarem?
On Friday nights, Israel’s mainstream television channels — 12, 13, and 11, drop the pretense of maintaining a balance of views from left and right. The observant Jews in Israel are busy with their Shabbat meal, and the left is allowed to rule the news panels. Last Friday, every single one of those panels dedicated a large chunk of its main news show to putting down, rejecting, belittling, ridiculing, and vilifying the very idea of resettling Gush Katif. They enlisted former IDF generals, Arab studies experts, political scientists specializing in US-Israel relations. It was as if they were trying to forcefully erase these aspirations from the public’s mind. And for good reason: the 2005 expulsion was only an offshoot of the 1994 Oslo betrayal. If the rising right is allowed to fix the Gush Katif anti-Zionist atrocity, soon enough they would eliminate the 1994 anti-Zionist atrocity.
They can’t have that, because without the yearning for peace in our time with the “Palestinians,” the left has nothing left to sell. They gave up on socialism long ago, they also have nothing to do with the poor and needy in Israel, their only remaining political goals are: 1. Get rid of Bibi, and 2. Establish a Palestinian State in the “west bank” and Gaza. You take that away and Labor, Meretz, and even Yesh Atid are left with nothing.
ISRAEL’S RIGHT IS AWAKENING
Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Benny Gantz’s partner in the hastily cobbled National Union Party, last week hinted at a chance for returning to the settlements in Gush Katif. “We will have to go back and remember that in the foreseeable time frame, any territory in the Land of Israel that was handed over to the Palestinians, unilaterally or in an agreement, will certainly become an armed base for wild aggression against Israel and its citizens, as happened in the past.”
Israel Hayom wrote on October 12 that the horrors that took place on October 7 can be traced directly to the expulsion from Gaza in 2005. “The causal connection between the disengagement in the summer of 2005 and the collapse in Simchat Torah 2023 and the many rounds of fighting in the south throughout the years that preceded it” is the most significant, the newspaper noted and pointed out that PM Olmert was starting to work on the “gathering” of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria (they called the Gaza exile “disengagement”), when the second Lebanon War torpedoed his plans.
Israel Hayom warned that even now, after the Hamas massacre, there are still plenty of useful idiots in Israel who are advocating for a Palestinian State in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.
The IDF released moving videos showing infantry and armored forces rushing along Gaza’s northern coastline where Gush Katif settlements such as Dugit and Elei Sinai used to be. The IDF soldiers were seen waving Israeli flags in the reclaimed areas, and folks reacted with unrestrained glee online, declaring, “We will be back soon, in Gaza,” and, “Gush Katif, we are coming.”
Chairman of the World Headquarters for the Salvation of the People and the Land Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe of Lubavitch sent PM Netanyahu a lengthy letter explaining that victory would not be achieved by merely cleansing the Gaza Strip of terrorists. The only victory that would leave an impression, the good rabbi argued, would be imposing Jewish sovereignty over the entire area of Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip. He warned that if Israel stopped short of that, the October 7 massacre would look like a walk in the park compared to what would happen next (he used a more respectable language).
MESSIANIC LEFTISTS GATHERING AROUND THE CROSS OF “PEACE”
The Marker, the economic arm of Haaretz, on October 20 asked the question: “Should Gaza be occupied?”
“Were the Oslo Accords, the withdrawal from southern Lebanon, and the disengagement from Gaza wrong moves, and should the state return and control Gaza through occupation?” The Marker asked and offered this stunning answer, which is an enviable example of religious faith only a few observant Jews can claim. They actually wrote:” Israel’s leading military strategists agree that there is currently no chance of a political settlement – but there is also no choice but to continue striving for it.”
And they dare call the right-wingers in Israel “Messianists.”
Merav Arlozerov, the author of that masterpiece of secular religion, wailed: “The greatest strategic achievement of Hamas in its murderous attack on Simchat Torah, is not the murder of more than 1,300 soldiers and civilians, but the elimination of the chance for peace.”
But then, as I noted above, this secular psalmist continued: “But there is also no choice but to continue striving for it.”
Lemmings, every last one of them.
