Settler Violence

What an offensive and demeaning term. It's offensive when I read it from liberals, and it's worse when I read it being used by citizens of Yehuda and Shomron. A "settler" is at once both Israeli and Jew, and neither, spat from the lips of the menage-a-tois of leftist politico, academic and journalistic pseudo-cognoscenti. It is a depersonalizing and polarizing epithet used to brand a fictitious group of people that do not share a homogeneous political ideology, religious creed, ethnicity or social status, to round them up and condemn them in one neat little package.

Let me clue you in: there is no difference between a citizen living in Ariel or Ashkelon, Talpiot or Tel Aviv. I know "settlers" who are members of Knesset, doctors, lawyers, professors, journalists, teachers, shopkeepers, entrepreneurs and mechanics. Settlers who are charedi, chardal, and chiloni, frum from birth, baalei teshuva and converts. They are co-workers, friends, and relatives. And yes, they are leftists, centrists, and rightists. So the attempt to use the term to conjure up a single image of some uncouth religious zealot is a failure. You can stop now; you're only embarrassing yourselves.

It is disingenuous for the government to turn around and implement policies against the very same people they subsidized and offered incentives to develop their homes, businesses and land for thirty of the last forty years. To do so and then expect them not to react while their Arab neighbors act with impunity is just plain fucking stupid. After all, the people have been in these areas for forty years; the government has been in power less than four. The people will continue to be in these areas long after the government has changed hands.

Civil disobedience is not non-violent resistance (though the latter is a type of the former), but there is a significant difference between it and rioting. In the case of the people in last week's confrontation, the aim/goal/purpose was to establish a new residence; they did not go simply to confront the army. It wasn't a pretense to attack soldiers or vandalize the base. By contrast, the ongoing Bi'lin Riots goal is only to violently confront the police and army. There is no constructive purpose in their actions, or even pretense of purpose.

The physical confrontations we are now witnessing are the outgrowth of the frustration against a completely arbitrary and increasingly hostile military junta in Yehuda and Shomron, which is completely anachronistic in 2011. Post American Civil-War Reconstruction lasted only 12 years; why is it now forty years later and Israeli citizens are living under military rule of law?

It's not my place to condemn or condone violence; I cannot be blamed for the actions of others any more than others can be blamed for mine. But the continuous threats, renegations of promises, evictions and administrative detentions has escalated the brinkmanship between the government of Israel and its people to the point where the citizens are able to justify a more hostile responses against the agents of the Government because they feel increasingly like they are being backed into a corner. "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" is not some great philosophical idea; it is just a line from a science fiction novel.

For years now I have come to expect nothing fair or balanced from the Mainstream Media. But the hypocrisy when journalists decry "settler violence" as a unique, somehow worse form of violence than the continuously unreported "leftist violence" against the IDF is physically nauseating, and smacks of incitement.