imaginary family values presents
yesh omrim
a blog that reclines to the left
Burning the storehouses
17 August 2005
According to the Talmud (Gittin 55b), when the Romans beseiged Jerusalem, the zealots ruling the city burned down its grain storehouses, so the Jews would have no choice but to fight the Romans.
Two thousand years later: “As the police tried to enforce the law allowing moving vans to enter to pack up the belongings of residents who want to leave voluntarily and legally, the protesters—many of them young, devout and living in other settlements on the West Bank—feared that the evacuation of Neve Dekalim was about to begin. They confronted the officers, and while there was some scuffling, the most serious incidents occurred when one young man threw a caustic liquid, probably ammonia, into the eyes of a police cameraman, and another tossed urine on a female police officer and paint on a senior commander.” [Emphasis added.]
Apparently, for these folks, Jews who want to obey laws passed by a democratically elected government of Jews are part of the problem. Perhaps if the law-abiding citizens can’t move out past their neighbors, they’ll realize that they have no choice but to stand and fight the Israeli army.
[Updated to add: Alternatively, some people were spoiling for a fight so badly that when they saw the police come through in large numbers, they didn’t stop to think, hey, the “walk out of Gaza or we drag you out” deadline hasn’t passed yet, so these officers aren’t yet doing anything that we have to oppose. Not as bad as the first-century zealots, but still pretty bad.]
There’s a lot of whinging from the settler movement about how “Jews don’t expel Jews”, as if eviction from one part of Israel to another constitutes “explusion”. I fear that some day, chas v’shalom, God will get fed up with how certain Jews have turned real estate into an idol (again), and remind them what real expulsion is like.