בס''ד
Originally published in Blogcritics Magazine, 4 December 2009
Copyright © R. Kossover, 2009
There is no more effective way to stifle opposition than setting up your own opposition — something that was done in East Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, and Hungary during the era of Soviet imperial rule there. The government of Israel, which in many ways reflects the culture of Stalinist Russia and the political culture of pre-revolutionary Russia which was shared with the early Zionists who came here a century ago, is following the same instincts as the communists did in setting up their own opposition in Eastern Europe.
The Status of Judea and Samaria under Israeli Law
Before we get to what is actually going down with respect to the fake opposition and what it really means, let's examine briefly the status of Judea and Samaria under Israeli law. In May 1967, Jordan governed three provinces west of the Jordan River: Nablus in the north, Jerusalem in the center, and Hebron Province in the south. Jerusalem Province included the Old City of Jerusalem and the area immediately to the east of the city, east of the 1949 Armistice Lines, what is now called the Green Line. After the Six Day War in June of that year, the Israeli government pledged to the people of Israel that Jerusalem would never be divided again. The Old City, and a goodly portion of the land east, north, and south of the Old City were annexed to the State of Israel. All of that territory is under the rule of the civilian government of Israel — sort of.
The remaining territory was a problem for the government. They wanted badly to annex the land, but did not want to annex the Arabs living on it. However, Moshe Dayan, by blowing up the bridges linking the territory to Jordan, prevented the Arabs living here from leaving, which is what most of them wanted to do — so the government was stuck with Dayan's stupidity. To make a long story short, the government called together a commission, headed by a man named Meir Shamgar, and he (erroneously) decided that the land was "occupied territory." The Israelis gave the three former Jordanian provinces the title "Administered Territories," and set up a Civil Administration under the aegis of the Security Minister. The laws in the Arab villages, the laws of Jordan, were to remain in force, except for the law banning the sale of land to Jews. For a long time, the Israeli government discouraged Jewish settlement here. Under the premiership of MenaHem Begin, the title "Administered Territories" was replaced with Judea and Samaria, which is what the area really is to us in Israel. But Jewish settlement here was still discouraged.
When the peace treaty with Egypt began to take serious effect, with Israel having to withdraw from the Sinai, Israelis began to look at settling Gaza, Judea, and Samaria very seriously. The huge buffer of the Sinai was no longer available, and suddenly the idea of having a large Jewish population to anchor Gaza, Judea, and Samaria under Israeli control looked a whole lot more attractive. Gush Qatif (the "shoulder bloc") in Gaza was settled first, in the very early '80s. Then in the mid 1980s serious settlement of Judea and Samaria began. Ma'ale Levona, where we live now, was an empty hilltop used by the IDF as a "listening post" to check communications of Arabs in Samaria. Twenty-five years ago, when Ariel, ReHelim, Ma'ale Levona, Shilo, Sh'vut RaHel, and 'Eli were built, this area of Samaria was empty. There were two Arab villages, Sinjil and Turmus Aiye. But because Arabs were hired to build our houses, they built villages for themselves around here too.
The question was, though, "What would be the status of the Jewish villages and towns in Judea and Samaria?" The status decided upon was that they would have internal administrations responsible to regional councils, just as the rest of the country does, but ultimately, the governing authority would be the Security Minister, and the entire area would remain under military rule. For example, we live in the Benyamin Region, whose administrative center is in P'sagot. We get to vote in regional elections for the Benyamin Regional Council as well as Knesset elections on the national level. We do not get to vote for officers for Ma'ale Levona, as we have not officially requested to join the agudá, or community, here. When we are accepted as members of the agudá, we will be entitled to vote for the secretariat that rules the village. Within the village, and the other Jewish villages, Israeli law applies, not Jordanian law. But decisions of the Security Ministry apply here, as they do in all other parts of Judea and Samaria. In other words, the chief executive officer for all of Judea and Samaria is the Security Minister (MK Ehud Barak [Labor]), under the supervision of the Security Cabinet. This is why the recent construction "freeze" was decided upon by the Security Cabinet. In other words, Security Minister Ehud Barak is carrying out a decision of the Security Cabinet.
The Yesh"a Council
המועצת יש''עThe term Yesh"a is a Hebrew acronym, the letters
yud, shin, 'ayin being short for
yehudá, shomrón, 'áza, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, which were the three territories under the Civil Administration, which is, as mentioned above, the civilian arm of the military government responsible for governing, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. When the Jewish residents of Gaza were expelled in 2005, Gazan Jews ceased to be part of the Yesh"a Council - there were no longer any Gazan Jews. But the original name continues to be used anyway.
The "Yesh'a Council" referred to in this article is a government creation. While it is supposed to consist of the mayors of the towns and villages in Judea and Samaria, and a chairman, the chairman gets his checks once a month from Jerusalem (like all government employees), and the mayors and village secretaries all get checks from the Regional Councils; the checks of the chairman says medinát yisraél on it: "State of Israel." The village mayors and secretaries will concentrate on representing their own constituencies, as it is the constituencies who elect them. The chairman is supposed to represent all of Judea and Samaria. In reality, the chairman represents the central government.
It should be borne in mind that it was this "Yesh"a Council" which led — and which then sabotaged — the opposition drive against the expulsion of Jews and the destruction of Gush Qatif four years ago. We'll get back to that in a couple of moments.
As I said, there is nothing like setting up your own opposition. The late Bella Abzug understood this also, and regularly set up and funded opposing candidates in congressional races when she was active in politics.
What's Really Going Down
Remember to keep in mind what I've explained in the above four paragraphs. It will give you all an idea of the limits of Arutz Sheva as a news source as well as clarify for you what is really going down.
According to a recent Arutz Sheva article, the Yesh"a Council has pledged not to cooperate with the government regarding the construction "freeze" in Judea and Samaria. The Yesh"a Council adopted a resolution which called the construction freeze a "declaration of war" on the residents of Judea and Samaria, and which called upon the government to cancel this construction freeze which is so like the "White Paper" the British adopted in 1939, closing the whole country to Jews.
This event occurred Wednesday night (2 December 2009)in the city of Efrat, in Judea. The very next morning (Thursday, 3 December 2009), the Yesh"a Council had been summoned to meet with Netanyahu.
According to the Arutz Sheva article reporting this the Council head, Danny Dayan, and the members of the Council were meeting with Mr. Netanyahu after having sort of refused to meet with Security Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday night. Sort of refused? Part of the Council did meet with Barak, as his orders affected most of one town, and the mayor of that town was certainly there. Of course, this was not the real news. The real news was buried deep in the article, and reads this way:
Excerpts of what Barak told his visitors: “The settlement blocs [where construction has also been frozen] are an inseparable part of Israel in any future negotiations with the Palestinians… The Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea are areas that are close to my heart… I know that this is a difficult move, but it is critical for the State of Israel today. Our ties and coordination with the U.S. are vital for Israel politically and militarily…
At 15:45 Thursday afternoon (3 December 2009),
Arutz Sheva came out with this report on the meeting that the Yesh"a Council members had been summoned to in the morning. This was the headline:
Netanyahu to Settlers: Protest, but Abide by Freeze Decision. Go ahead and look at the article — but pay very careful attention to that headline.
Arutz Sheva was stating in bold print what the purpose of the Yesh"a Council is — a place to blow off steam while abiding by the law, no matter how illegal or racially prejudicial against Jews that law is. Bear in mind that
Arutz Sheva is supposed to be on the side of those of us who live in Judea and Samaria, as opposed to
Ha'aretz or
Ynet News, media outlets which are opposed to our presence here. There is a real limit that even
Arutz Sheva cannot afford to pass, without worrying that the Shaba"k or the Communications Ministry will find some way to shut down their website. As I've stated many times, Israel is not a democracy. It is not a dictatorship, but "rule of law" and "equal application of the law" are concepts unknown to this country.
The Fake Resistance, the Phony "Voice of the People"
Now let's look at how the Yesh"a Council wrecked the resistance to the Gush Qatif expulsion.
Barry Chamish, an investigative reporter who covered this event himself in 2005 and tried to rally residents of Gush Qatif to forcibly and actively resist police and soldiers sent to destroy their homes and ruin their lives, sent me this link to four YouTube videos to help me with this article. I strongly advise you to watch this series of videos. It details how thousands of people were led to resist the expulsion — by the Yesh"a Council — and it details how the Yesh"a Council betrayed the very crusade it spent millions of shekels organizing.
Roughly, the story goes this way. Thousands of people were led down to various points near the Gaza Strip where they would break into the Strip by cutting fences and invading the Strip, flooding it with people, and making it impossible for the army and police units to expel residents of Gush Qatif. And then, as the videos detail, the Yesh"a Council betrayed all of these plans, stonewalling at various points to make the project fail, while marching thousands and thousands of demonstrators around in the wilderness near Gaza.
At the same time, these "leaders" — who drew their salaries from Jerusalem and who got their marching orders from the traitors there — prevented any violent confrontation between the residents being expelled from their homes, and the soldiers and police who did the expelling. The result was a smooth operation, beginning just after Tish'a b'Áv and ending five days later. The government got what it wanted, the Yesh"a Council crowed about a great moral victory — and the residents whom the Yesh"a Council supposedly represented got screwed. They lost their homes, and the majority of them are still internal refugees who have not, and who will not, have their lives made whole by the government that encouraged them to live in the Gaza Strip in the first place.
This act of treason will smear the name of the IDF, the Israel Police, the government, and especially of the Yesh"a Council, until it is rectified.
This is what happens when a government organizes its own opposition. This is how Bella Abzug won term after term in the US congress. This is how Eastern Europe was effectively kept enslaved by Soviet puppets for decades.
Encore! Encore!
It is painful enough writing about this betrayal. But now we see the encore performance, a performance specifically not asked for by the "audience," the Israeli electorate.
The same trash are cheerleading for the bad guys as did in 2005. Ha'aretz, with its whore of an editor, David Landau, who once asked Condaleezza Rice to "rape Israel," ran an editorial Thursday (3 December 2009) entitled "Israel must crack down on settler lawlessness." According to these paragons of righteousness and sanctity,
Only a few kilometers from Tel Aviv, the laws of democracy give way to the law of the jungle. Once again it turns out that only an ultra-thin layer separates the rebels and tree cutters in the illegal outposts from the core of the settler establishment.
That's why the scum who bring the violence of the jungle, the Yassamniks, the Border Patrol, the Israel Police, who all act with all the gentility of apes on a rampage, attack us, brutalize us, and then arrest us for attacking them! And half the time, the scumbag judges of the
Hiloní G-d-hating and Torah-hating establishment hold these bastards faultless, and make police volunteers like me feel ashamed of ourselves when we put on a uniform that says "Israel Police" on it.
This is what CAMERA, a watchdog organization that seeks to insure that truth instead of lies are put out about Israel, says about Ha'aretz.
Together with Ha'aretz's like-minded publisher, Amos Shocken, Landau has promoted an extreme political position, characterizing Israel as "apartheid" in both the news and editorial pages. Moreover, a number of the paper's contributors go so far as to participate in radical anti-Israel activity outside the country, and figures such as Danny Rubenstein and Gideon Levy denounce Israel in extreme statements at one-sided United Nations meetings. The promulgation of the apartheid slander, like Landau's comment to Rice, is part of the use of the paper as a tool to cudgel Israel down Ha'aretz's preferred political path.
So much for the "newspaper"
Ha'aretz.
But that's only one side of the club. Then we get to the government organized opposition, the Yesh"a Council. Once again we see it thrusting itself into the fray, pretending to represent the residents of the Jewish towns and villages that dot Judea and Samaria, people who struggle under the constant slander of the so-called "mainstream media" which does whatever it can to smear the good name of the Jews who carry forth the vision of settling the Land. The PA thugs have already signaled Israel that its freeze on construction in Judea and Samaria is pointless. But the government presses on anyway, and even Ha'aretz reports that
Settlement leaders met in Jerusalem last night and expressed satisfaction with what they called "the success of the determined struggle" so far. But after some participants expressed concerns that the struggle might turn violent, they decided to launch an explanatory campaign stressing that activists must not raise their hands against the building inspectors. They also decided to hold a mass demonstration in Jerusalem next Wednesday. [emphasis added]
Here we see the same tactics of non-resistance sabotaging our attempts to stop the illegality of the government ruining our lives, bit by bit, home by home, shekel by shekel.
Barry Chamish, writing on this very topic on Thursday (3 December 2009), sent this e-mail out, his newest piece called "Back", which I quote in part.
The folks who got Gaza Jew-free, are back in the fold, mucking up the latest evacuation. Shall we remind you what they did previously?
I saw a similar performance by Binyamin Region Council head [in 2005], Pinchas Wallerstein. Recall that he stirred a few waves in a proclamation calling for civil disobedience. So we all gathered to hear his plan. Now I lived through a period of civil disobedience and know how it works. In today's Israel, protesters would sit peacefully en masse at the entrance to the Knesset or in roads leading to it, forcing the police to make the first violent moves. Instead of such actions, Wallerstein's plan called for a protest vigil in the park opposite the Knesset. This hopeless action will begin on Monday, Jan. 3 and nobody will watch as a few disheartened suckers freeze in the rain and snow.
It was Wallerstein who sent thousands of Yesha youth to wet, leaky, freezing tents in January to protest for a month outside the Knesset. The result, as anyone could have anticipated, was an utterly futile fiasco which visibly wore down the resistance of the protesters.
Now it was July and he dusted off the same plan in reverse. This time, he would send the protesters marching in near 100 degree heat for two days to break their spirit. And if the day wasn't torturous enough, we were being bitten to shreds by mosquitos at night.
Wallerstein started speaking and he heard disinterested rumbling from the crowd. Quickly, he threw a tantrum, shouting, "Shut up! I'm talking! Pay attention!" This man finally revealed his personal weakness: He is a certifiable nut job.
This is what I'm talking about when I talk about sabotaging a plan of resistance.
Just today, in the mail, I got a message from the Benyamin Regional Council, signed by its present head, Avi Ro'i.
In it he points out the actual nature of the present construction "freeze". It is extensive and thorough. It forbids all work on one's own home, and forbids not only work that is contracted out but work that is done by oneself. In addition, it recites that it supersedes all previous permits obtained from the Regional Councils, the villages, and the Ministry of Security.
Let's use a practical example to illustrate all this. In this village is a home presently owned by the bank — the owner, the one who had the mortgage originally, is sitting in a mental hospital, and the bank has repossessed the house. Let's say my neighbor Haim, who bought the house, wants to commence its repair so that he can live in it.
At this point the house is a fixer-upper. The windows need replacement, the floor needs repair, the electric wiring needs repair, the toilets likely need to be checked if they still work.
According to the government of Israel, under the pressure of the government of the United States, Haim cannot repair that house. He cannot repair it whether he brings in an electrician or does the electric work himself. He cannot either bring in a plumber or repair the plumbing himself from his own research on the Internet.
Needless to say, we will sharply resist this illegal action by the Israeli government, a racist, discriminatory action that is reminiscent of the actions of the Jew-haters in Europe in the way they persecuted Jews in die judenstrasser in Europe. It remains to be seen if the present head of the Benyamin Regional Council will walk the sinful way of his predecessor, PinHas Wallerstein, or not. Acting like a leader and not betraying the trust of one's constituents is a far harder task when you have to lead your flock alone, and those who stand to lead the resistance to the enemy will be alone — in human terms, at least.
If the leaders of the Jewish towns of Judea and Samaria will sell out to the traitors in Jerusalem, we Jews individually will have to fight ourselves.
And we will. We will not get screwed over again.
Labels: Corruption, Economics, Foreign Control, History, Israeli Politics, War
