I thought about driving up to Migron, last night, this morning.
Many years ago, after moving to Kiryat Arba, while studying in a Torah “Kollel” – study program for married men, I participated in founding the local ‘Chevra Kadisha,’ that being a volunteer organization that prepared deceased people for burial. While looking for others to join in this holy work, one of the Rabbis told me, ‘sometimes, people with experience, won’t agree to participate. After a while, a person can reach a saturation point of dealing with death and dead people. They just don’t want to see it any more.’
Perhaps that explains how I feel about witnessing, and filming, continued expulsions. You can reach a point of whereby you really don’t want to see it again, or be a part of it, if you really don’t have to.
The atmosphere at such events tends to regurgitate itself. Massive security forces, male and female, in uniform – police, border police, the riot squad, IDF, and ‘shabak’ – Israeli intelligence personnel, usually noticeable because they have small earphones tucked into their ears, whispering quietly with their hands cupped, covering their mouths, dressed in suits with a weapon hidden away behind their jackets.
As the troops step down the stairs from the buses that have transported them to the site, they tend to hug each other.
Media people also mob the area, each person looking for a good picture, a unique photo representing the occasion.
And of course, there are the victims, the expellees, the people being thrown out of their homes, sacrifices, not on the altar of justice, rather on the altar of piece, which others, mistakenly, spell ‘peace.’
Additionally, others, usually young people, arriving at the scene to participate, to protest, to be amongst those being displaced.
It’s a familiar scenario, that makes me sick to my stomach.
Breaking down doors, carrying the kids out, a few others on rooftops, awaiting the moment of their eviction.
Families, or what’s left of them, marching as brave warriors, surrendering after a battle lost, some with stoic expressions and, without doubt, expressing confidence that ‘we will return.’ A few crying, a few screaming, and others, shrugging their shoulders, as if saying, what’s there to say?
At Migron the events seem to be being played out as if scripted, directed, and now in production. Even though I’m not there, the community’s execution is being broadcast live, via internet on ynet.
We’ve seen it before.
In Hebron, we’ve experienced it, many too many times. It brings back black memories of Neve Dekalim and Kfar Darom, Homesh, and way back when, Yamit.
Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is, what’s next, who’s next, where will this all end?
It’s so ironic. Watching the three-ring circus live on internet, while reading articles about the Arab who poisoned a family in Ra’nana, while hearing more and more about the Iranian threat to our existence, while Obama’s United States distances itself from Israel, rockets fired from Gaza continue hitting southern Israel and we continue tearing ourselves apart.
It makes no sense.
Actually, I almost feel a little sorry for Netanyahu. It didn’t have to be this way. He wasn’t elected to expel Jews from their homes. Yet he is following in the footsteps of his predecessors.
What happened to them? Begin flipped out, Sharon is still alive, but in hell, and Olmert may soon find himself behind bars. And even if not, the disgrace of a former Prime Minister having to defend himself against major corruption charges in a court of law, that too is a live nightmare.
One small factor Bibi hasn’t taken into consideration: Any leader, especially the Prime Minister of the state of Israel, in order to succeed, needs major ‘Sa’atya d’Shmaya’ – that is, Divine assistance. Such help is necessary all the time, but more than ever when major decisions must be reached. And following those decisions, their implementation. Particularly when people’s lives and the future existence of the state are at risk. And above all, when the eyes of Jews around the world, and through the centuries, past, present and future, bore down at you.
It really isn’t nice to spit in G-d’s face, and then turn around and ask Him to help. Tossing Jews out of their homes in Eretz Yisrael, similar to the way people throw away disposable diapers, is spitting in G-d’s face. It’s saying, ‘we really don’t have a claim to this land, but help us hold on to in anyhow – spit spit spit. ‘
It’s not an omen I can pretend to be happy about.
We are not disposables. Our land is not disposable. Our Torah is not disposable. Neither is our G-d disposable. Our presence here is not temporary.
Bibi, Arik, Ehuds, Shimon, they are the disposables. They spit in G-d’s face.
But G-d knows how to spit back.
The above, seemingly trite words, will come to pass. We will return – to Migron, and to all the other holy places disposables have expelled us from. We are permanent, from time immemorial. And we will stop the spitting at our good L-rd.
