Those were very tense days in Israel and in Gush Katif in particular.
On Sunday, May 2, 2004, Tali Hatuel picked up her three oldest daughters from school and drove with them and their 2-year-old sister in the family station wagon towards her husband's workplace in Ashkelon to campaign against Israel's unilateral disengagement plan. Likud party members were voting that day in a legally non-binding; advisory referendum being conducted across Israel on Ariel Sharon's disengagement proposal. While traveling in the vicinity of the Kissufim Crossing leaving Gaza, at 12:40 pm, two armed terrorists, who had prepared an ambush near the highway, opened fire at the car, causing the car to spin off the road. The attackers, who were armed with automatic rifles, then approached the vehicle and fired their weapons from close range at Hatuel and her daughters repeatedly.
The same Kissufim crossing and the road leading to it had been the scene of numerous Arab attacks on Jewish residents. The IDF had recently planned to raze the building that eventually hid the killers due to its strategic and threatening position near the major road used by the Jewish residents of Gush Katif. The supreme court blocked the action on grounds of protecting property rights. Razing the building to protect Jewish lives was not sufficient cause. It was not "reasonable"
In July 2015 an entire row of homes was bulldozed in the Jewish town of Bet El in the Benjamin region.
Many Jewish families were put on the street.
Why? The homes were built on "Palestinian" land that was expropriated by the government years earlier for security reasons. The Arab owners will never use that land yet the supreme court insisted that the "reasonable " action would be to destroy the homes and the lives of the Jewish families with the only benefit to the Arab owners would be the satisfaction to see a Jewish court make Jews suffer.
In September 2016, a row of seventeen Jewish homes in "Netiv Ha'avot” was razed by Israeli authorities at the demand of the supreme court.
Leftist NGOs claimed that a part of the land on which stood the homes in the middle of the Jewish wish village was "Palestinian"
Once again, there was no possibility that the supposed owners might ever use the land in the middle of that Jewish town.
However, the supreme court following a long pattern of "reasonable" decisions ordered the families expelled and the homes demolished. Compensation? Not reasonable. How then would the Arabs and the Left NGOs satisfy their need to see Jews expelled and their homes demolished?
Certainly, the reasonable Israeli high court would not stand in their way.
In 2021 an Arab Bedouin man broke into a Jewish home in the Negev. He proceeded to rape a ten-year-old girl.
The court sentenced him to five years citing his good family background.
The above are just tiny examples of why the supreme court suffers from a continual slide in its approval ratings in Israel.
Since the sweeping judicial reforms introduced by the new government, there has been a constant howl by the usual sources - on the Left about the loss of democracy, the end of the state, the destruction of the third Temple, and civil war, etc.
I am not a judicial scholar but after a half-century of close observations am clear on some things:
If the people who have been wrong about every national issue of the last generation are against something once again, then it is probably a good thing.
Further, without going into the fine details of the legal and philosophical arguments for and against the reform I know one thing. Those who are for the reforms are far more likely to love me as a brother Jew than the opponents to the defenders of the supreme court's powers.
Those who are against the reforms have largely disconnected from the very Jewish ideal of Jewish brotherhood. because they have severed their ties to Torah and to the land promised by His People.
It’s a package
I am certain that given the choice, an Israeli Leftist, who champions Palestinian rights" would rather enjoy a coffee with a member of the terror Palestinian Authority than with me, a religious/nationalist Jew.
The Left abhors people like me because I challenge their hegemony and worst, remind them of the Jewish identity that they try so hard to flee.
The PA Jew-haters on the other hand would be perfect company as they can both enjoy attacking the evils of Jews like me.
No doubt.
That is why I don't need to listen to legal arguments anymore. The judges do not see me as their brother. On the contrary. I represent the enemy of "reasonable" Israel.
In 1948 Menachem Begin prevented civil war when the Left (Ben Gurion, Rabin) sunk the arms and immigrant ship, "Altalena" They tried to kill Begin and murdered seventeen Jews on board and in the water. Begin was popular and had to be eliminated.
The Left was ready for civil war. They welcomed it.
How is this conceivable?
When there is no fear of God and no "Love of Israel'' (ahavat Yisroel) it is all about power. Period.
Those that stand in the way of that power must be eliminated by any means necessary.
Begin was very different from them. That is why he did not return the fire.
In 2005 with thousands of Jewish families about to be expelled from their homes, the Left warned of civil war if the opponents resisted. After all, they remind us that every "normal" country has a civil war "phase" in its development.
Their lust for their "enemies" blood was confounded when once again Jews for whom love of Israel has deep meaning, restrained themselves and prevented the bloodshed that many on the Left hoped and called for.
2023 -The Left has not abandoned its dream.
Civil war!
Shalom Pollack is a tour guide and author
"Jews, Israelis and Arabs"
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