Zionists are not tattletales

Israel Harel
Haaretz
20 May '10

Out of fear over demographics and anxiety over the position of the Obama administration, a good many Jews are prepared for concessions in the West Bank and a temporary cessation of construction in Jerusalem.

But the Jewish public's deeper instinct remains Zionist. The public knows that the state arose thanks to the settlement of the valleys, the Galilee and the Negev. If it supports - as does the government - accepting American dictates, the public arrived at this point sadly. It certainly does not share the joy with which the radical left welcomes the American dictates. It disdains this left, whose campaign over the years, funded by foreign elements (some of which reject the fundamental existence of the Jewish state ), encourages alienation from parts of the homeland. The obvious outcome of the left's activity is rising violence between Jews and Arabs and strife between Jews.

For these reasons and others, fewer than 1,000 people (as reported disappointedly by Army Radio, which had earlier worked hard to fill Zion Square ) turned out for the leftist "mass demonstration" under the slogan "Zionists, not settlers."

Zionists, as every high school student knows, even if he studies civics using the post-Zionist text "To be a citizen of Israel" (and most high school students study from this, as the Education Ministry's official text ), always settled the land. Without settlement, the State of Israel would not have been established. And the moment the settler movements began to undermine their own foundations and reject the just nature of their historic path, they crumbled socially and economically. The best of its young people left the country, their creation dried up and their impact on the culture and values of the rest of Israeli society faded.

The leftist coalition that organized the rally - "the national left" of Meretz, Peace Now and what remains of the Kibbutz Movement (just before the rally internal dissent forced it to remove its name from the list of organizers ) - broadcast hatred, alienation and denunciation. Hatred and excoriation were woven into almost every section of the "manifesto" of the "national left," initiated by Eldad Yaniv and Shmuel Hasfari, first and foremost against the settlers. A movement does not emerge from such an insulting and destructive text, even the greatest opponents of the settlers concede. Such a movement certainly does not emerge that is renewing the constructive, unified and pioneering path of the national Zionist left, as its writers and supporters allege (and only in that realm; it has almost no support among the general public ).

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