The Western image of tough Israeli settlers is just another media lie. The early settlers, leftists, were indeed tough. They enjoyed full governmental backing, were strong and proud of it. Since 1970s and especially 1980s, the face of settlers has changed: they are religious conservatives, at odds with the government, thus habitually insecure.

Settler leaders developed an understanding with the government that anti-establishment rhetoric would be there, some clashes are allowed, but no major resistance takes place. This happened infamously in Kfar-Maimon when the chief settlers sent a huge crowd of Gush Katif defenders in roundabout march along the fence to exhaust the crowd. The understanding held for Beit HaShalom evacuation: the leaders’ goal has been to erect hurdles before the evicting forces, and that’s it. Obviously, those amateur hurdles couldn’t stop the well-trained and battle-hardened government forces. So it came down to farce.

It took the military policy hardly an hour of a surprise attack to clear the entire building of its hapless defenders, mostly disorganized kids. Almost immediately after police broke into the building, the defenders started walking out - and who would expect yeshiva kids to do anything else when they don’t even have physical training lessons in their school. Girls and women acted more bravely.

Considering the circumstances, the violence was minimal. Dozens of the defenders were lightly wounded, but the violence fell far short of a typical crowd dispersal in any civilized country. Four are seriously wounded as the police clubbed their way into the rooms. Tear gas and stun grenades fall short even of the summer’s pogrom in Mea Shearim where police used colored water cannons.

Typically for the evacuations, kids tried to kick the policemen in riot gear - to no avail, of course. Others prayed as were being dragged - also to no avail because God doesn’t perform miracles to those who wait for them passively. Aiming incompetently for the PR effect, local men left their wives with small children crowded in one room - but policemen brought the wall and escorted the abandoned ladies out relatively politely.

Evacuation went so smooth as if the government merely slapped settlers in the face. Insulted at the eviction’s straightforwardness, some started low-level riots, hurled stones at Palestinian houses and a man has shot a few random Palestinians non-lethally. Palestinians, in their turn, engaged in stone-throwing contest with Beit HaShalom defenders.

The settlers will try to re-enter the house despite the army post there.

There is no point in condemning the government. Of course, it only consists of rodef and malshin traitors who don’t even realize the obscenity of evicting Jews as Palestinian rockets keep falling on Sderot and hundreds of Jewish petitions pending against Palestinian squatters. The eviction demonstrated decisively the settler movement’s political bankruptcy. The official right-wingdom is still worse: bizarrely, Uri Ariel, Yuval Steinitz, etc denounced the grassroots violence which is the right’s only hope to prevail against the leftist monster of a state.

Hardly coincidentally, state prosecutor closed a major investigation against Olmert, the Bank Leumi privatization case. His thirty pieces of silver were meted out in exchange for Olmert’s acquiescence to the Hebron eviction.

The Times reports that Hussein Obama’s Kenyan grandfather was an active member of Mau Mau revolt. Now misinterpreted as a popular uprising against British rule, it was not so: just 32 British citizens were killed. The participating tribes butchered between 50,000 and 200,000 of each other’s members with considerable brutality; children constituted up to half of the victims.

On a side note, British troops behaved in their usual manner: there are abundant reports of torture, killing of POWs, mass executions, and rape. Fifty years after the event, the British presume to teach us on the treatment of Palestinian enemies.

8,796 Palestinians entered Israel for medical treatment in the first half of 2008, as opposed to 7,176 for the entire 2007, and 4,932 in 2006 (figures by Jerusalem Post). As the rocket attacks on Sderot doubled, Israel’s concern over the Palestinian health tripled.