Presidential demagoguery

During President Shimon Peres’ public relations campaign on behalf of the Netanyahu government, he sank as low as to defend the weakest national-religious-Orthodox bluff: The myth of natural growth as a pretext for settlement construction. After the American vice president refused to be impressed by this folly, our honorable president gaped at him with amazement and a sense of insult. What do they want? He asked in a whiny voice, that young couples will get married and have nowhere to live? All his listeners wiped away a tear, and national-religious-Orthodox community leaders are already marketing this catchy material. However, Mr. Peres, where does it say that young couples must live near their parents? And where does it say that the State’s duty is to supply every young man and woman with a plot of land at their birthplace? Were the children in Savion, for example, given the right to reside in their upscale community forever? And do the children of Netivot have to stay in Netivot? Does every young couple in northern Tel Aviv see the government build an apartment for them in northern Tel Aviv? Or is this bizarre prerogative only reserved for the children of settlers and their partners? Our honorable president would do well to be informed of the following: There is plenty of room between Metula in the north and Eilat in the south. In this great space, every settler couple can find a place of residence in line with their financial abilities. This is what any other young couple in Israel does, and there is no reason why a young settler couple would conduct itself any differently. Yet to be honest, I am wasting my time here. After all, Mr. Peres knows well that this is precisely the aim of the demand to curb settlement construction: Preventing young couples from living there, so that more and more sons and daughters will go back home; and so that the growth of this monster, which curbs Israel economically, diplomatically, and morally, will be stopped. So this knowledge would not prevent our ninth president, a master in the art of self-righteousness and playing dumb, from continuing with his public relations efforts. However, all the others are welcome to laugh out loud every time they hear this demagogic nonsense.