By David Wilder
December 21, 2004
Thus proclaimed Pinchas Wallerstein, Mayor of the Benyamin Regional Council and Former chairman of the Yesha Council:
"I want a large part of the public that I believe are willing to go to prison to say so today so the decision-makers will understand where we are going."
"If someone were to try to pass a law for a transfer like this of some Arab village... all the knights of justice and civil rights would immediately protest and scream their hearts out to the heavens. But when it concerns residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, there is no justice and there are no rights?"
"The evacuation/compensation law which has already passed its first reading, and with the new government has nothing standing in its way, is an immoral law. This is not only because of the Stalinist way in which it was formed, and not only because of its inhumane clauses such as those that negate compensation from whoever objects to being thrown out of his home, but primarily because it legalizes an unspeakable crime: the forcible uprooting of Jews from their homes."
"Only if there will be a large population already today that is committed to be in Gush Katif and northern Samaria (if and when there is forced evacuation) and bodily resist transfer, only then is there a chance that this government will understand the gravity of its steps. I'm not scared of going to prison, and I hope that many people will understand, like me, that this is the price we must pay in order to object in a non-violent manner to this unethical crime."
"There won't be enough prisons in the country to hold them all, and something will have to give."
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Today it is incumbent upon on all lovers of Zion, supporters of the Jewish right to all of Eretz Yisrael, all who oppose uprooting Jews from their homes and their land in Gush Katif and north Samaria, to actively support the Wallerstein Proclamation.
I call on all people who oppose the Sharon expulsion program to sign a petition supporting the 'Wallerstein Proclamation.'
I call on all lovers of Eretz Yisrael, Jews and Gentiles alike, to assist in preventing the uprooting of over 9,000 Jews from their homes in Gush Katif and north Samaria, and the abandonment of Eretz Yisrael to our enemies.
I call on you to come to Israel and help us, blocking the 'disengagement' with your bodies, preventing Israeli security forces from expelling men, women and children for their homes and their land. Tens and hundreds of thousands of people, standing in the roads, in homes, in communities, non-violent Civil Disobedience, can and will stop the destruction, prevent the exile.
The time has come to tell Ariel Sharon -- you will not be able to move us. You will have to imprison multitudes of people who refuse to surrender Eretz Yisrael to our sworn enemies who desire our collective demise. We will not abandon Gush Katif. We will not abandon northern Samaria. We will not abandon Eretz Yisrael. We are here to stay!
The American philosopher of civil disobedience, Henry David Thoreau, wrote this in 1849:
After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? -- in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right?"
"The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God...."
"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison...."
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