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By Hanoch W. Weber
March 18, 2007
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The first rule of Western journalism, at least for the past century, has been never to explain any phenomenon by reference to divine intervention. Largely as a result of the increasing secularization of Western society, that rule has been strictly adhered to, so that today no "self-respecting" major newspaper, radio or TV station would dare abrogate the no-God rule.
The media in the Holy Land is no exception in its adherence to the aforementioned rule, supporting it in the most orthodox fashion. However, it is particularly difficult for most Israelis -- especially in the past year and a half -- to ignore the great signs that the Lord has brought unto His people in His land. Despite the Israeli media's insistence on "God-free" reporting, the people seem more and more skeptical of its claim -- that God is not part of history and that His hand is not guiding and effecting events. Thus, the intentional ignoring and ignorance on the part of the media as to the real essence of the big events occurring in Israel, is a major cause of the disconnection and alienation between the Israeli media and the Israeli people.
What am I talking about -- specifically? Ever since August 2005, just days after the Fast of the Ninth of Av, the government of Ariel Sharon, in an unprecedented act of war, madness and causeless hatred against its own citizens -- those living in Gush Katif and Northern Sammaria -- embarked on a brutal campaign to expel them from their homes. The Jews who were evicted saw all they worked for and dreamed for destroyed overnight -- not by Arab enemies, but by Jewish enemies sent by Jews who gloated, cheered and egged the army and police to teach those "arrogant settlers some humility; to put them in their place." That was the self-confessed rationale for the secular Jews' hatred for their fellow Jews in the Gush, as shamelessly published by the secular idol of Israel --Yair Lapid. Yair Lapid and his ilk proved that their hatred is more destructive than that of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, for in the face of their five thousand rockets, the heroes of Gush Katif did not budge and did not suffer one death (an open miracle in itself). Only Jewish hatred succeeded in evicting them.
Ever since the destruction of Gush Katif the state of the State of Israel has gone -- militarily and politically -- from bad to worse. Immediately after the expulsion, the same Kassam rockets that fell on the Gush harmlessly began hitting Sderot and the kibbutzim and towns near the Gaza border, this time with deadly force. Unlike the "Gushnikim", their neighbors who refused to support their brethren in their hour of need, immediately began to panic. Anybody who could, left for safer abodes, that is, for homes outside the range of the Kassam rockets. The vaunted Israeli army was helpless in stopping the rocket attacks. Without a credible military solution the government was forced to settle for a cease-fire -- i.e. one in which Israel desists from retaliating even after the Hamas terrorists in Gaza send off barrages of rockets at will into Israeli territory.
The helplessness of the Israeli army, reinforced by the government policy of prohibiting it from re-entering Gaza in order to clean it of its rocket manufacturing cells and other ancillary terrorist activities, set the country up for its next military test -- a year later. This time Hizbollah in the north, emboldened by the non-response to Hamas' provocations, proceeded to kidnap two Israeli soldiers. In the ensuing war, Hizbollah unleashed thousands of Katyusha rockets against Israel's north -- from the upper Galilee down to Haifa and even Hadera. Again, the army, which was so "professional" in its war on its own citizens a year earlier, was abysmal in the conduct of the war against Israel's real enemy. The self-imposed expulsion of ten thousand Jews from Gush Katif was now answered, measure for measure, in the expulsion of one million Jews from their homes in Israel's north.
Despite the media's near unanimous "failure" to see the divine connection between the two expulsions -- to connect the dots -- many Israelis, especially those who always perceive the hand of God in Israel, could not help but be in awe of His message. When widows, orphans, the poor and the downtrodden cry out to the Lord, He does not forsake them and exacts punishment measure for measure on their behalf. For the sin of the expulsion in the summer of 2005, the people of Israel were punished with an expulsion in the summer of 2006.
The hand of God on the national level was clear. But what about the individuals who were responsible for the sin of the Great Expulsion? Here the Lord's attribute of exacting punishment measure for measure is ever more awe-inspiring! For the list of those responsible and the manner in which they met their ultimate fate is truly staggering. Let us begin the tally of the Lord's punishment for the expulsion crime.
Ariel Sharon: He was the mastermind, the bully, the bulldozer, who hatched, schemed, and rolled over all opposition to his master plan to expel the best of Israel's society in the most brutal pogrom-like campaign, betraying a lust for blood that should have horrified all decent Jews. But alas, there were not enough decent Jews to stand in the tyrant's way. He ruined the lives of ten thousand Jews, but did not kill them. God exacted His punishment in that precise manner. He ruined Sharon's life, leaving him comatose, but did not kill him -- measure for measure!
Moshe Katzav: Israeli's president was in a unique position to help the Jews of the Expulsion. When they came to his residence and cried for his help, he glibly told them that nothing can be done on their behalf. Israel's democratic institutions have spoken, and they have to except their fate, he commanded. Had he demanded new elections, or a referendum on the issue, or said that their constitutional rights of ownership in their homeland were inviolate, he could have saved them. Rather, he admonished them for their obdurance! A year and a half later, he was accused of raping, assaulting and harassing his female employees. Today his reputation is mud. He is about to be impeached and will likely be convicted of those crimes. His defense -- the media, the Knesset, the attorney general have already charged him, tried him and convicted him. "There is no democracy in Israel," cries our tarred and feathered President. But, wait, wasn't he the one who most lauded Israel's democracy to those expelled from the Gush? As the Talmud says, "all the Lord's attributes are measure for measure!"
Dan Halutz and Moshe Karady: These were the executioners of the Great Expulsion. They -- the first as the leader of Israel's armed forces, and the second as the head of its police -- were picked by Sharon to replace their predecessors precisely because they agreed to do Sharon's dirty work without a peep, and in hindsight even with gusto. With gusto and glee was how they went about preparing their troops for this new war against the Jews. They trained for six months in anti-civilian tactics, as if the Jews of the Gush were the most hardened of enemies. Anyone betraying the least bit of hesitancy or reluctance to participate in this orgy of self-hatred was unceremoniously incarcerated and stripped of his rank. With the process of fear and brainwashing in place, the war against the loving Jews of the Gush and Sammaria went without a hitch -- all done in four days!
Exactly a year later, in a real war against a real enemy, Chief-of-Staff Dan Halutz was completely over his head. He didn't fathom the meaning of the campaign, did not see it as a real war, sent the troops into Lebanon too late, without proper equipment and even without food. After thirty-three days of military chaos, a cease-fire was brokered. For the first time ever Israel and Halutz were shamed on the battlefield. The real battlefield. After stalling for six months in the aftermath of the "Second Lebanon War", Halutz finally resigned -- in disgrace, his and ours.
Karadi, Sharon's police lapdog, in his eagerness to please his master, lost all sense of what is proper for a Jewish policeman to do. Lacking a moral compass in the War of the Gush, he was felled a year and a half later for lacking a moral compass as head of the Police's Southern District. Preferring to ignore the rampant corruption of his underlings, Karadi thus became another domino in the chain of divine punishments for the sins of the Expulsion.
Haim Ramon was one of the most outspoken "cheerleaders" of the Great Expulsion, actually one of its earliest proponents. As a political tactician and party "wise man", he also thought up Israel's version of the Great Wall of China -- a fence/wall along the so-called Green Line to divide the Jews who conquered little Israel in 1948 from those who conquered the rest of Israel in 1967. Ramon wanted to separate Jews from Jews. But Ramon had a long-standing weakness -- a need to conquer women, even against their will. So the Lord devised a plan -- the man who set up a false boundary between Jew and Jew will succumb to the real boundary between man and woman. Thus, Ramon was recently tried and convicted of sexually harassing a female soldier by kissing her, French style, against her will! This was yet another example of God's hand in the affairs of men -- measure for measure.
The list of those punished for the crime of the Expulsion includes the Army's Chief Rabbi Israel Weiss, who was relieved of his duties after failing to do his duty of abiding to the call of his teacher to resign before the expulsion, and for putting the Prime Minister's edict above that of his teacher -- the former Chief Rabbi of Israel.
To date, the final Expulsion accomplice to pay the price for his sin was Yonatan Bassi. He is the skullcap-wearing Jew who was recruited by Sharon to put the kosher seal of approval on the Expulsion by heading the department in charge of the expellees' resettlement. In his zeal to get them out of their homes, Bassi promised that each and every one of them will get a new home, a new job, a new life. A year and half later, nearly one half of the expellees are unemployed, and most still live in temporary caravans. Thousands of youth are in need of psychological aid. Parents are distraught, with mental illness, physical illness and morbidity all very much above the population average. In a word, Bassi's execution of the expulsion was catastrophic, so much so that co-kibbutznikim couldn't bear to sit, eat, and pray next to the person who promised the expellees so much and did in the end so little for them. His neighbors made his life so miserable in Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu, that he was forced to leave and resettle elsewhere. Measure for measure!
All of the above events shout in unison for all to hear and see: The Lord is our God! He is Here and Now! God is the Judge and He passes Judgment -- measure for measure! People abroad may be forgiven for not seeing God in their lives. But the people of Israel can't be forgiven for such blindness. He is here more than anywhere else, and now more than ever before -- for this is His chosen land, to dwell in amongst His People. Media or no media, we Jews know that our Father is with us -- for we are His children.
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