Thomas Knapp wrote that “jackbooted thugs” were forcing homeowners from synagogues at Neve Dekalim and Kfar Darom and journalists who referred to these settlers as “extremists” were guilty of “Newspeak”. What were the Israeli soldiers when they forced Arabs out of Gadid to make way for these settlers and set up check points to defend their facts on the ground? What are settlers who paint the Star of David on the doors of Arab neighbours who refuse to leave their homes, assail them with racial slurs, cut off their water supply, and utilise the military to make them prisoners in their own land? Deeply idealistic?
The High Court of Justice is to rule in the coming days on a petition by the rabbi of the settlement of Elei Sinai, Yishai Bar-Chen, who is asking the state to move the synagogue building in its entirety from the Gaza Strip to within the Green Line. This is a disingenuous petition which, like other petitions of the settlers, makes sophisticated use of liberal principles like individual and community rights in order to carry out deranged messianic acts.
The walls of the synagogues, their floors, roofs and any other part of the structure in which people pray, are neither sacred nor sacrosanct. There is no reason not to take the buildings apart, sell them or make any other use of them the state sees fit. In any case, the communities will bring out the synagogue’s sacred objects and memorial plaques. But moving entire buildings just because they served for a time as synagogues will create a dangerous precedent that will show up the weakness of the institution of statehood in the face of the settlers’ emotional blackmail.
This blackmail is in operation all across the ritual board that stems from the teachings of the Yesha rabbis, Chabad and the like. They have sanctified not only the furrows of the earth, but the trees and the rocks. Neveh Dekalim is suddenly defined as a “holy place.” The religious college may not be touched because it contains sacred objects, abandoning trees planted in Gush Katif is a serious infraction of halakha (Jewish law), for which transgressors will be punished in the world to come, and on and on with other inventions of this ilk, in the twilight zone between the devotion of the gullible and the simple, and cynical exploitation by religious politicians of their religion and their religiosity.
That smug little idea that “the facts have changed on the ground” is a two-edged sword. What changes easily once can change just as easily again. Plus it contains the message that the land is just real-estate to the grabbers, not sacred ground as it is to the nationals evicted.
Commiserations on winning another Golden Willy this year, by the way. Maybe one year you’ll be spared.
Thanks for a nod I don’t deserve.