Palestinian chief thug Abbas has demanded that Israel pull all settlers from Hebron. Heavily provoked by the government’s plan to evict Jews from the Peace House in Hebron, throngs of unruly Jewish youths engaged hostile Arabs in stone-throwing fights. As both sides keep pelting each other, Border Police started their standard anti-riot measures. Dozens of Jews, even girls, were arrested. Some of them were not engaged in any violence, but had simply entered an abandoned Jewish house (Beit Shapira) nearby. Police blocked the road to Beit HaShalom in order to stop new defenders from coming; the blockade was unsuccessful.
Olmert concurs that Jewish pioneers are somehow a threat to Israeli democracy. Olmert is a bit inconsistent: if Israel has abandoned Hebron, the ancient Jewish capital, to the Palestinians, then what do the events there have to do with democracy in Israel? Also, it’s great if the pioneers actually threaten the Israeli strain of democracy where state-controlled media convince Jews to abandon common sense, patriotism, and the Torah.
Obscenely, Olmert’s remarks came in his speech at Ben Gurion’s memorial. It was Ben Gurion who took Israeli land from Arabs, evicting them en masse, and wouldn’t be anything but sympathetic to the Hebron settlers. The Israeli establishment has turned many hawks, such as Ben Gurion, Levi Eshkol and Yitzhak Rabin into post-mortem doves.
Olmert misrepresented the Supreme Court’s decision as mandating the eviction, though the court has only allowed it.
Barak has now reversed his promise of two days ago, and braces for the eviction. Livni has joined the chorus of self-hating Jewish leaders who prefer to be harsh with their fellow Jews rather than with our enemies in the Palestinian-occupied territories, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.
The Council of Settlements initially rejected negotiations with the government over the Peace House eviction—a welcome change from their earlier tactics of collaboration. Now they plead with the government to stop the eviction. Local Jewish leaders, on other hand, have lost hope in the negotiations and openly encourage the house defenders to stock rocks.
The defense is completely disorganized, which is astonishing given the considerable number of experienced, IDF-trained commandos who support the patriotic movement. The Yeshiva kids who fill the house are completely unsuited for a confrontation with tough Border Police. They overreact to irrelevant news, vacillate between courage and fear, run randomly under stone attacks, and cannot execute most simple maneuvers. Lumpens and unruly kids in need of discipline are equally useless for defense. A small contingent of two dozen trained soldiers could defend the building way better than the motley bunch herded there by their hapless, militarily incompetent leaders.
