Tel-Chai Nation

I was thinking of writing about this, and now, it looks like an article/argument on the subject has already been published on Israel National News. People are understandably angry with the Yesha Council's current leadership/management, and feel that it must be shown the door:

"Of all the factors in the country that were in play, those who brought about the present failure were the Yesha leadership," Kedumim Mayor and longtime settlement activist Daniella Weiss told Arutz-7. "The Yesha Council has not done an internal examination, and I don't think they reached the proper conclusion from the failure."

Weiss claims that from the very first meetings regarding how to successfully prevent the removal of Jews from 25 communities in Gaza and northern Samaria, the Yesha Council was more concerned with public opinion than preventing the expulsion. "There was stammering from the very beginning regarding the supposed implications of 'defeating the IDF,' she said. "They were preoccupied with the image of the IDF, even though the proposed actions were aimed at defeating the dictatorial government, not the army. They framed it as, 'woe unto us if we beat the IDF,' without understanding that if the IDF would have said - not just the religious officers, but the whole IDF - 'we are unable,' it would have saved the army, not defeated it."

I remember that they once tried to say that the army/police threatened to open fire at people with bullets. This, if anything, is an exaggeration. Neither the army nor the police would be so foolish as to truly allow that to happen, and when I read about that in the press (possibly in Makor Rishon?), that's when I really started wondering.

Women in Green founder Nadia Matar, who took part in the establishment of tent cities in Gush Katif to house families who managed to enter the area in order to oppose the expulsion, has even stronger words to describe the Yesha Council's approach. "It was the espousal of statist fascism," Matar said. "The insistance that 'the state and the army are above all' - even when the state and army are comitting a crime against humanity - is what enabled the crime to take place."

Matar also added that regardless of one's opinion with regard to how much force should have been used against the expulsion forces, the Yesha Council repeatedly misled the tens of thousands of people who looked to it for guidance on stopping the expulsion. "Once their campaign for a referendum failed, it was obvious that they had decided to engage in a purely symbolic struggle, to be recorded in the history books, but not prevent the expulsion," said Matar. "They lied to people about their intentions to march toward Gush Katif from Kfar Maimon, lied about supporting civil disobedience and lied about many other things which we are gathering evidence about right now and will certainly publicize in the future."

And they certainly lied about authorities shooting with guns. I'd say to push ahead with an investigation into these phony leaders and see to it that they write a confession in the end.

Shaul Goldstein certainly provides some clues to his own duplicity in this next part:

The Gush Etzion mayor says he has no interest in continuing his work with the Yesha Council as his position is Mayor of Gush Etzion, a position to which he plans to give more attention now that the Disengagement is over. What he does feel is the necessary next step in the ongoing struggle for Judea and Samaria is More 'face to face' programs, more explaining to Israelis about the security dangers of a Palestinian state. "Perhaps we will yet win," said Goldstein.

Maybe, but for now...if he's unwilling to keep on working with the Yesha Council, or any other Zionist movement for helping to save the Land of Israel...then he's pretty much taken off his own mask, and written out his confession.

So the verdict here is: the current Yesha Council leadership, led by Bentzy Lieberman and Pinchas Wallerstein, must be given the pink slip and be fired from the job. If they cannot or will not stop their stuttering, then they have no business in wasting their time "representing" the country's grass-roots citizens.

Update: Batya Medad's got an interesting argument on the subject too.

Labels: Israel