Those Angry Youth

Moshe Kempinski


When the news first broke of the police expulsion of the residents of the Peace House I was overwhelmed by a wave of anger pain and disgust. Memories of facing the horsemen at the street corner demonstrations during the early Oslo years, , standing against the cold lifeless faces of the soldiers in Kfar Maimon, and driving helplessly along the roads by the Gaza strip trying to find a way in , all came up like poisonous bile. Memories of the water cannons, the grey shirted Yassam thugs and the brutal forces at Amona all chilled my heart again .

Nothing seems to have changed and nothing seems to have been learnt. Just like in Amona the possibility of an agreed upon solution was discarded in favor of confronting the "powers of evil" as a way of lifting the political prospects of our Minister of Defense.

No...the powers of evil were not the terrorists holding Gilad Shalit. It wasn't the murderers lobbing death missiles into Sederot. It wasn't even radical Islam which murdered so many good souls just this last week.

It was a stand off against young ideological and faithful Jews living in a house that they legally purchased.

Yet the expulsion on Thursday was not the worst of the crime . The media defamation and hateful lies regarding the settlers of this house and of all the Biblical heartland was horrific. Reports were repeated about a soldier blinded by acid poured on him. Just as in Gush Katif this news story proved to be false. Suddenly young religious Zionist youth were all branded as homeless toughs with no controls. The young families in the Peace House represented the greatest threat to Israeli democracy since the Altalena. Reshet Bet news correspondents described the people demonstrating in the street corners as "thrill seekers". Psychologists and pundits wondered on radio talk shows “ why these youth were so angry.”

Lets see if I can help.

You arrested them as they sat in intersections in a cry of anguish after terrorist murderers.

You threw 14 and 15 year old kids into jail for long periods of time as you were releasing terrorists murderers as a "gesture"

You ran over them with your horses and you attacked them with water cannons

You brutalized them with hooked batons and heavy clubs in Amona.

You threw them out of their homes

You blamed them for everything from Rabin's murder to the spread of world wide Islamic terror.

You called them thugs and wild weeds and yet let them die for your ill planned wars in Lebanon.

You threw stun grenades and tear gas canisters at them when you wanted to evict them AGAIN from a home they purchased

And you wonder why they are angry and mistrustful of you…