Teen Wounded in Arson-Rock Terror Attack on Yitzhar JewsOver the years, there quite a bit of attention has been on Yitzhar.Why Yitzhar?
Nissan Ratzlav-Katz, 8 Tammuz 5769/June 29
(IsraelNN.com) In what appears to have been a coordinated attack on Jews from Yitzhar, in Samaria, a group of Arabs set fire to agricultural fields on Monday evening and then released a barrage of rocks at people responding to the arson. IDF forces responded to the incident and dispersed the attackers. (Read more...)
I'll tell you why. It's really quite simple.
Yitzhar is by far the most ideologically-loyal town in the Shomron, and thus the biggest threat to the Israeli government.
Take down Yitzhar, and most everyone else in the Shomron (Samaria) will get up and go quietly.
Thus, Yitzhar has been one of the government's main [what I like to call] "Jewish Expulsion Laboratories," (That's expulsion, not propulsion.) experimenting with a variety of strategies to remove Jews from their towns and homes.
1. Torah-hating Jews and Yishma'elim (Arabs) have been given free reign to burn and destroy everything in their path. They have systematically burn fields, uprooted vineyards, including just before and during the Shmitah (Sabbatical) year, when Jews were powerless to do anything to repair most of the damage.
2. They even accuse Jews of doing some of the damage, sometimes even when trees have been properly pruned.
...said that left-wing activists look for trees that have been pruned, and then blame the Jews for cutting them. "They have even admitted to the police that they do this," he said, "such as in the case of Ein Avus near Hawara [south of Shechem]. In that incident, they blamed the people of [nearby] Yitzhar, because Yitzhar was a convenient media target. (Read more...)
3. IDF guards have, at the very least, not been given proper training regarding true, Torah Zionist culture. One soldier ignored an Arab entering the town on Shabbath because he assumed that it was a Yishma'eli worker. Of course, unlike other towns, the residents of Yitzhar would not allow any "work" to be done on Shabbath; they would not allow any Yishma'elim into Yitzhar at all! That "misunderstanding" resulted in the stabbing of a nine-year old boy.
4. Rabbis are arrested for teaching Torah and halachah, (Sabbatical) which happen to be contrary to Israeli Law.
5. So-called "Administrative Detention" orders have been given out by the IDF Central Command, resulting in the expulsion of Jews from towns, placing unimaginable financial and marital stress on residents.
Even un-Jewish [former] MK Zahava Gal-On (Mere"tz) has raised her objections to the use of this strategy:
"Noam Federman should be put on trial or released. Circumventing the law rather than upholding it points to hysteria and bewilderment and does not achieve its purpose." (Rosh HaShannah 5764/Sept. 30, 2003)
6. Recruitment of die-hard mamlakhtim (undying state loyalists) to relocate to ideological towns, thus changing the electorate. This has been done quite successfully just south of Yitzhar in K'far Tapu'ah, by the previous mazkir (town manager), who was believed to have been a plant. Reports of such a strategy being implemented in Yitzhar have been reported to me as well.
7. Of course, there are the [generally] biannual Shabba"k (General Security Service) "sweeps." Last fall, the investigations were supposedly about the alleged attack on Prof. Sternhell. A month ago, 15 residents of K'far Tapu'ah were dragged in, for I don't know what. It has been suggested that Shabba"k agents must justify there hours, by keeping logs of their activities, much like police officers have been accused of giving out large numbers of tickets at the end of each month to meet their quotas.
I am not so sure of that. Personally, I believe that the government has more devious motives, than its departments having to justify their budgets. Since when has the Israeli government garnered a reputation for financial responsibility? Besides, while Jews are building Sukkoth or cleaning for Pesah (Passover), what else does the Shabba"k have to do?
Yitzhar is not alone. Bat-Ayin, southwest of Efrat, has seen an increase in harassment on Shabbath in recent weeks, with Torah-hating Jews arriving on the scene to "help" the Yishma'elim (Arabs) work their fields. Only two months ago, Bat-Ayin suffered yet another horrible tragedy, the murder of a 13-year-old boy, and the wounding of a 7-year-old boy.
The Israeli government's experiments with how to expel thousands of Jews from their homes, in order to hand it over to our Yishma'eli enemies have also been taking place in Homesh, Havath Gil'ad, Shvuth Ami, and Adei Ad in the Shomron, and Hevron and Ma'on in Yehudah (Judea).
And who can forget Amona?
But, you ain't seen nuthin' yet...
When
The Israeli government will have to send a real message to the settlers that they mean business.
Of course, many settlers are like those in Migron, who seem to be getting ready to get up and move. Once in Ofra, it was decided to take down a satellite neighborhood, before the IDF had a chance to. Gee! That really showed 'em!
Most everyone else will have their eyes on Yitzhar. The prevailing attitude will be, if they can take down Yitzhar, they can take down any town.
There is no need to say that they will come at night.
The efforts of Yitzhar's residents to reduce the IDF presence in their town, and to do their own guard duty will have been fruitless.
Cameras will be destroyed. Cellular phone and Internet communications will be jammed. But just for good measure, police name tags will be nonexistent. The government will have learned from the mistakes it made before and during the expulsion of Jews from Azza (Gaza).
Escape routes will be blocked off, and no child's cave or makeshift fort will be unturned. No warning will be given. No bags will be packed. Nothing will be spared, not a single pair of tefillin, not a single teddybear.
Everything will be burned to the ground.
The government will proclaim large amounts of compensation,...which Yitzhar's expelled residents will never see.
Photographs of the aftermath, along with a few of men with long payos striking a soldier and a police officer or two, will be carefully chosen and leaked to the right media outlets. Fear will be the result, not outrage. The media will already have succeeded in demonizing the settlers enough, so that everyone will think, "They got what was coming to them." Although, this will never be heard out loud, except for maybe in a house or two in K'far Shmaryahu, Ramat Aviv Gimmel, and yes, even Giv'ath Shmu'el.
All of this will surely come to pass, unless...
...unless we cast away our rose-colored glasses and naivete, and acknowledge what the government is trying to do.
...unless we cast away silly notions that the government is "holy."
...unless we cast away the idiocy that the government and the Torah are never in conflict.
...unless we finally stop whining that, "There's nothing we can do. We must accept that ge'ulah (redemption) will come qimah qimah (slowly, slowly),* sometimes takes a step backwards, and there's nothing more important than loving our fellow Jews...(even though that's not the halachah and even though these "Jews" are throwing you out of your homes and giving your land to our Yishma'eli enemies)."
Unless we stand up and do our part, Yitzhar and towns like it will be history.
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*Talmud Yerushalmi 4b, 1:1; funny that this is the only two words in the entire Talmud Yerushalmi, the average mamlakhti on the street knows by heart. They conveniently forget the part about ge'ulah coming slowly in the beginning. But, hey, what do I know?
Read more about Yitzhar, by clicking here!
Great post. I agree that Yitzhar's importance transcends the town itself. The inevitable standoff will come to symbolize the battle of the holy against the profane.
ReplyDeleteThanks. Too bad some "rabbis" don't even know the difference.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that reading this kind of stuff makes me hate your position even though before reading it I probably would have agreed with it. Why do you think that is? (I don't myself know)
ReplyDeleteYa'akov,
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking the time to leave a comment.
I don't know either. I was going it's because your a JTS student. But you'd be surprised.
Perhaps if you told me what exactly you hated about this position....
That fact the Torah is the ultimate authority in Eretz Yisrael, and not the Israeli Gov't and not the polically-correct cultural sensibilities of the West absorbed by Jews over the past 1700 years?
I don't think it's any secret, and thus no conspiracy, that the Israeli gov't intends to [try to] comply with the demands of the UN, EU, and "liberal, progressive, so-called enlightened" American Jews, by attempting to expel Jews from the heart of Jewish Homeland.
Whether you believe this to be the right or wrong thing to do, you have to admit that it makes sense for the gov't to investigate the most efficient way to do so. (May God forbid its success)
Or maybe you just didn't like my application of the terms "Torah-hating" and "un-Jewish."