The flood of condemnations has not put out the fire. The torch procession is still thundering toward the Temple Mount mosques, to the great conflagration that will rage in all corners of the Temple. The denouncers can prepare their fire extinguishers and fire-and-brimstone preaching.
"The IDF is us," writes the head of the Yesha Council of settlements, characteristically washing his hands until the storm subsides. Indeed, this is what the Israel Defense Forces looks like - a settler militia. Moles have gnawed at its foundations, leaving but cardboard props. For a long time it hasn't been clear whose authority it answers to and rabbis have defeated the commanders. The general in command is deluding himself. He is not the commander in the area. Will a stone to the head make him understand?
The hue and cry rises this time only because the brigade commander has been attacked and his lieutenant wounded. No cry arose five days ago, when Mustafa Tamimi was shot and killed at point-blank range. This case too will be closed for lack of evidence or lack of public interest, like hundreds of cases before and since.
"It's only a handful, the settlers are a law-abiding community," people keep saying, worrying about angering the settler leaders and their followers. The whole country is filled with handfuls - a handful of settlers here and a handful of ultra-Orthodox there, not to mention a handful of nationalists.
For the record, all the settlements were built against the law, and now they're trying to sanitize the latest ones, on stolen private land. True, Ariel Sharon, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu all stood by the cradle, but still a bastard was born. They were all accomplices and one crime led to another.
So there is no need to be overly impressed by the orchestrated shouting about the Frankenstein that has gotten out of hand, because the denouncers are the ones who created him. They were warned a thousand times about creating a state within a state, an army within an army, but they didn't want to listen. They were too scared of the settlers and their rabbis. We see them in their disgrace, dancing in front of Zionism's coffin, and despise them.
You are losing this country, as you knew it, as you loved it. Perhaps you have already lost it, while you were sleeping. No more "rogue element" or "weed" - it's the whole orchard. The rotten apples have fallen too close to the diseased tree.
He who sowed the wind should not feign horror when the Jewish terror storm comes. He who poured oil on the flames should not pose as a firefighter trying to put it out. He who demands silencing the muezzin should not fake surprise when a mosque is burned. He who pardoned the first Jewish-underground murderers and the Shin-Bet Bus-300 murderers should not shudder when he meets those murderers' successors on the hills.
An incredible tale - dozens of terrorists raid an IDF base, wreak havoc and nobody is arrested. No one. Where is the "holy cannon" when you need it - as David Ben-Gurion dubbed a weapon that fired on the Altalena in 1948. Where are all those pretending to continue in Ben-Gurion's path?
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