Zionists are not settlers. Zionists are not racists

Israel Harel unsheathed the doomsday weapon that the right wing reserves for use when it feels threatened, in his article "Zionists are not tattletales" on this page on May 20. When Israeli patriots stand up and seek to end the occupation, with or without an agreement, and to establish an exemplary society here, that is when the right attacks.

Their weapon used to be din rodef - the Talmudic "law of the pursuer," which permits the extrajudicial killing of someone who endangers a life. But that ended with a pistol shot in a city square, when a Jewish terrorist shot prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in the back.

So now it's din moser, which permits killing a Jew who intends to turn another Jew in to the gentile authorities. Thus we witness the right calling the left "shtinkerim," i.e. "informers."

The uproar broke out 10 days ago, when the National Left, Peace Now, the Ofek student association and other leftist Zionist groups held a rally. Instead of demonstrating in our own little area, Tel Aviv, we decided to gather in Zion Square, in downtown Jerusalem. We came wearing white shirts and waving Israeli flags and placards saying "Zionists, not settlers," and we sang "Hatikva." And we paid for everything from our own Zionist sources, without any help from foreign governments.

This infuriated Harel and his cohorts. The national flag and anthem have been the exclusive property of the right for years. That is why they won the elections.

But the right is not the "national camp"; it's the binational camp. The national camp is the left, which wants to get out of the territories. For though the left fears Qassam rockets, it is terrified by the fact that since 2008, there has been a Jewish minority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea - and by the fact that if we do not leave the territories, Zionism will drown in a binational ocean and Ahmed Tibi will be prime minister.

Harel claims that Ofra is the equivalent of the prestate "tower and stockade" settlements, that today's settlements in the territories are a continuation of the pioneering enterprise of that time.

But when David Ben-Gurion and the Jews in Palestine encouraged settlement under the nose of the British, they were building Jewish sovereignty and creating a Jewish majority in places that the world had designated for a Jewish state. When Harel and his friends establish settlements, they are undermining the Jewish state's sovereignty and its internationally recognized borders, and aiding the Palestinians in perpetuating an Arab majority. And they are thereby fostering the declaration of a binational state.

Harel accuses us of "hatred." The founding manifesto of the National Left, he charges, is phrased in the language of excoriation. But Harel himself headed the Yesha Council of settlements back in the 1980s - when, in a politely worded resolution, it demanded that the territories be annexed, and that "the legal status of Jews who reside permanently in in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and Gaza be set as [making] them subject to Israeli law, courts and administration." In less-laundered language, like that of the above-mentioned manifesto, Harel and his council were demanding that we become an apartheid state. We refused, because that isn't Zionism.

Since that unfortunate resolution, that stain on the people of Zion, Israeli law has still not been applied to those Jews. But Harel and company still seek to impose a settler law code on the Arabs. For example, when a soldier removes a caravan from an illegal outpost, there is a "price tag": A mosque will be torched, or a Palestinian wheat field set alight. Harel, who tries to depict himself as a settler with a Jewish heart, doesn't hear of such things, or see them or smell them.

But when something is said about the settlers, he is quick to react: "Shtinkerim! Zionists are not tattletales!" And other similar sentiments, all in refined Hebrew.

We prefer to reply in our Rabinesque language: Zionists are not settlers. Zionists are not racists. Let the Zionists return to their own borders.