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Moshe Feiglin is head of the Jewish Leadership faction in the Likud and can be reached via the web site.
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By Moshe Feiglin
September 28, 2005
The eviction from Gush Katif is not our worst downfall, and nor are the destroyed settlements or the destroyed synagogues. Of course, this was the first massive expulsion in the modern era that Jews perpetrated against Jews. To make matters worse, they did it in front of cameras from all over the world, making it a mega-desecration of G-d's name.
Naturally, the eviction is a horrific personal tragedy for the refugees from Gush Katif. But this is not the deepest point of the crisis that the belief-based public is facing. What really breaks the innermost depths of the souls of all faithful Jews after this calamity is the loss of our basic
legitimacy.
Not only did this "sensitive and determined" expulsion trample all basic human rights and any hint of democratic rules. Not only did it obliterate human honor, liberty, property rights and equality before the law. Not only did it utterly destroy a flourishing region of the Land of Israel, but it also proved that there is an entire sector in Israel that is not legitimate.
This expulsion could not have happened to any other sector of Israeli society. It could be perpetrated only against the belief-based public. Why? Because the belief-based public does not have equal rights.
The Israeli media wept more for the poor cats to be left behind in the destroyed settlements than for the human beings to be uprooted and rendered homeless. We have become a sector that is less than human, a problem of sub-humans that at one stage or another will have to be solved with finality. This is the real crisis.
We wanted so much to be Israelis. We wanted so much to be the most Zionistic, the greatest at settlement and the top in the army. We tried so very hard to show that we are a sector that gives of itself and that we are pioneers, well educated with values. Heaven forbid and perish the thought that we are violent.
Suddenly we find ourselves pushed not only to the sidelines but also way beyond them.
How did it happen?
It is certainly true that the soldiers were indoctrinated and brainwashed in the past year and a half, but that is not the whole picture.
It also is true that the media and the Israeli cultural elite have attacked and slandered us at every opportunity for thirty years. There is no doubt that we are the victims of a collective character assassination that paved the way for the expulsion, but blaming the media is like blaming the bacteria for the infection.
We provided the anvil that allowed the hammer to strike. We supplied the conditions for the infection. The expulsion could not have happened without unwitting cooperation from the victims.
The bottom line is that we are now considered an irrelevant sector because we never really tried to be relevant! We thought we would build settlements and that reality somehow would synchronize with our new facts on the ground. We thought we would run to Sebastia and to Gush Katif and that somehow the Arab problem would evaporate. We thought we would settle Hebron and Bet El and that the Jewish people would connect to their roots, to its Jewish
identity and to us.
We didn't bother to propose an all-encompassing belief-based alternative for all facets of Israeli life. We certainly didn't take responsibility and propose that we lead the nation. On the contrary, leadership was a dirty word. We were the pure pioneers, running to settle the hills and not sullying ourselves with politics.
At first, the nation waited for a relevant pronouncement from our settlements. Israeli writers and thinkers clearly expressed this expectation. But we were like the captain who closes himself in his room instead of steering his ship. This is the open wound that we created and
that the Israeli media hurried to contaminate. This is the anvil without which the hammer could not strike.
If you are the first to ascend the hill you have two choices. Either you call for everyone to follow or you become the fool who is initially ignored but who must ultimately be eliminated (with sensitivity and determination, of course). We never attempted to lead the nation. We ascended the hill and sufficed ourselves with that. Today we have been cast as the fool on the
hill and stripped of human rights because we are irrelevant.
Hopefully, we will fight the coming battles more successfully. If we do not get up and lead, we will continue to prove our irrelevance and will continue to be treated like the fool on the hill.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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