Settlers bow to almost universal outrage
The LA Times reports:
On Thursday, faced with an outpouring of revulsion and anger from across the Israeli political spectrum, Gaza settler leaders acknowledged that it might have been a mistake to try to appropriate an image of such iconic power in service of their cause.
“We had decided to wear an orange Star of David in protest of the prime minister’s plans to expel us from our homes,” Motti Sander, a leading activist from the main Gaza settlement block of Gush Katif, told Israel Radio. “But we are attentive to the feelings of the people of Israel … and have therefore decided to stop this campaign.”
The Gaza activists’ capitulation came after leaders of the main Jewish settler group, the Yesha Council, moved late Wednesday to disassociate itself from the orange badge movement.
One prominent settler leader, Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, who until now has enthusiastically supported all protest measures employed by the Gaza activists, branded it an act of “craziness.”
Well, I’m glad that’s over. Wish I could say the same thing for our busy, busy thread on the subject. 48 comments and counting. Quality stuff too. Even I learnt a thing or two …
Now that they’ve stepped back, I feel it’s only fair and right to comment on the fact that these people in Gaza must be having a very painful and difficult time, having to give up their homes.
Hear, hear. I take no pleasure in seeing them get turfed out of their homes. None at all. My belief that we are doing theright thing is duly tempered by my knowledge that this will be seen as a capitulation, that it will give hope and succor to those who won’t stop till all of Israel is Judenrein (and in this regard I use a holocaust analogy on purpose). My hope is that our leaders know what they are doing. And for those idiots who see this as a sign of weakness… oy va voy lahem.
Everyone else in the world debases the Holocaust for their own stupid purposes…. A typical post about Israel, from our Iranian friends, over at Little Green Footballs.
Um, Jude, didn’t you already post that once?
I wonder why everyone thinks this ‘sepration/retreat’ plan is the country against the settlers? Or everytime there’s a protest, it’s always ‘settlers protest’ when actually many ‘regular Israelis’ participate as well?
The following opinion piece that you won’t see in the media is written by a non-Yesha settler, a successful Israeli millionaire who helped initiate a few sites such as israel21c.org and Jewsweek too, and I don’t think he’s religious.
The Orange Star
Reuven Koret
http://web.israelinsider.com/views/4659.htm
Just because you’re Jewish, doesn’t mean that the spurious Holocaust analogies aren’t offensive. update Thanks for listening, fellas….
Joe,
I don’t think that the issue of who can monopolize holocaust imagery has been given too much notice during the past week. On one side, Yad Vashem, the Israeli media, and a wide spectrum of Israelis has come out with the knee-jerk reaction against using the orange star, yet at the same time holocaust survivors living in Gush Katif, as well as survivors parents-of Gush residents supported this initiative as a disturbing reminder of ‘never again’.
What is more offensive? the orange star, or getting kicked out of your house? The settlers and their supporters are trying to use every play in the game book to stop this horrendous ‘gezra’ which goes way beyound being able to keep a cottage on a half dunam of land.
I have yet to see a representative poll of holocaust survivors and their opinions, so for now, it’s just the media (and masses who get their news from said media) against the settlers and their supporters. Can you provide numbers? If you find that only 30% of survivors are offended but 50% support, would that change your mind? Of course, I’m skeptic that the media wants to fund a poll that might not support their spin.
Josh, nobody is “monopolizing” Holocaust imagery. I’m not walking around with a star and I don’t know anybody who is. By taking it upon yourselves to equate what is happening to you in Gaza with what happened to Jews in the Holocaust, you have made a dishonest claim and are offending the memories of many survivors. This isn’t a democracy where you could say that if 51% of survivors accept it but 49% reject it, then it becomes okay…
I’m afraid you’ve been around ‘political correctness’ too much. Baruch hashem, Israelis see through that crap, which has no bounds apparently, and I’ve been able to practically ignore it for the past several years. Derech eretz is a fine ideal, not PC.
So ‘who’ does decide what’s offensive and not? Academics? Analysts? TV news readers? Bloggers?
Definitely bloggers. Definitely.
Josh, wait until the day the Palestinians begin to wear these stars and use the exact language you are using as justification.
Who is being PC here? You are taking a symbol that refers to the Holocaust and using it, as Jews, against an action taken by a Jewish state because you disagree. My reaction, and that of many others, has nothing to do with being PC. It has everything to do with the uniqueness of the Holocaust and with the genocidal murder of our people. What you’re going through, as painful as it may be for you, is nor related in any way. And yet, you are taking this symbol of their suffering and applying it to yours. Just stop it.
I didn’t come up with the idea. Holocaust survivors did.
What do you tell them after what they’ve been through and have ? Stop it?
Please tell me, what do you say to the holocaust survivors that dreamed up this idea? You are wrong? Stop hijacking the ‘real meaning’ of the ‘holocaust’? or do you dismiss them as being senile? What do you tell the survivor living in Gush Katif that suggested she find striped pyjamas to wear when they evict her? Do you try to tell her that her experiences in the forties were ‘unique’?
I might’ve been against this initiative, or similar idea, from the beginning if it hadn’t been supported by real holocasut survivors which give it legitimacy, IMO.
I would sit down and go over the same points that we discussed in the long thread and why she may feel great pain at being told to leave her home, but it is far from a desire to destroy her or her family. Rather, it is being done with the hope of helping her and her family achieve greater security along with the rest of Israel. I would explain to her why so many people who were harmed by the Holocaust, as well as their children and the children of those who didn’t survive, find the orange star entirely offensive. I would explain to her that putting on that star delegitimizes the Israeli government and the IDF to an extent that brings her closer to the Palestinians and the neo-Nazis than to other Jews, including Holocaust victims.
You know, Josh, being a Holocaust survivor doesn’t make one always right. It means that you were a human being who was victimized. However, you are still human and not immune from errors in judgement.
Only time will tell…
Thank you for every other informative blog.
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