Israel vs. Jewish Extremists
The Economist reports:
Palestinian attacks are not even Mr Sharon's main concern. He is facing opposition from his former allies in the Israeli right wing, who blame him for “rewarding terror” by his planned Gaza withdrawal.
Shortly before the [Netanya] bombing [on July 12, 2005], he had gathered together Israel's security chiefs to assess the domestic situation. They had heard reports about hundreds of protesters flowing into the Gaza settlements, aiming to reinforce their inhabitants and complicate the pull-out. Violence by settlers holed up in a beachfront hotel earlier this month shocked mainstream Israelis, but gave a taster of what the army might be up against. Consequently, on July 13th the prime minister signed a decree blocking all Israelis who do not live in the Gaza strip from entering. This caused a fury amongst the protesters, who threatened to block (not for the first time) the main Israeli highways in retaliation.
Moshe Negbi writes:
Violent settlers in the Occupied Territories, encouraged by the impotence of the authorities and probably feeling they are above the law, have begun to assault not only Palestinians, but also the very soldiers sent to defend them. Recently a paratroop battalion commander was quoted as complaining that in the Jewish settlement of Yitzhar, in the Nablus area, “there exists a gang of law-breakers; I do not fear entering a Palestinian village the way I fear entering Yitzhar.” ... When a company commander serving in Yitzhar complained in a newspaper interview that Jewish settlers threw stones at his soldiers, threatened them with guns, and cut off their water supply, the Israeli Army reprimanded him for giving an unauthorized interview, and apologized to the settlers.
Similar but even more amazing is the complacent and lukewarm response of the authorities to dangerous incitement by prominent and influential rabbis who have repeatedly called upon their devout disciples, both soldiers and civilians, to disobey the law as well as military commands in order to prevent the prime minister from carrying out disengagement as approved by the Cabinet and the Knesset. Again, instead of prosecuting the inciters, army generals and Justice Ministry officials paid them complimentary visits, begging them in vain for moderation.
This is especially disturbing if one remembers that such rabbinical incitement against the democratically approved Oslo Accords led to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The assassin himself, Yigal Amir, said in his interrogation on the night of the murder: “Without a religious ruling issued by some rabbis, I know I would have had difficulty in committing the murder.” A mere 10 years later, the painful lesson that incitement “in the name of God” can be lethal has seemingly been forgotten. The very rabbis who incited a decade ago against Rabin also went unpunished.
When Israel’s attorney general is required to explain this tolerance for rabbinical incitement, he likes to speak about the need to respect freedom of speech. This explanation demonstrates that he overlooks still another historic lesson: the fate of the Weimar Republic, which was established in Germany after World War I. In the 1960s, the Israel Supreme Court cited this lesson when it ruled that a democracy has the right, indeed the duty, to defend itself against those who try to use speech not as a tool of persuasion but rather as a tool to paralyze, frustrate and eventually destroy the democratic process. The Supreme Court justices - some of whom were educated in the Weimar Republic and were first-hand witnesses to its demise - emphasized that democracy in Germany died because its enemies used political rights, and specifically free speech, to discredit and undermine it. No democracy, they said, can afford to repeat this mistake. [The Daily Star]
The Jewish extremists in the settlements (and in many settlements, especially the illegal ones, it appears that a significant majority of residents might qualify as "extremists") are unlikely to go quietly. For them, the policies of the Israeli government may be treated with just as much hostility as those of the Palestinian Authority. These extremists answer only and always to a higher power: their interpretation of the will of their god. This gives them, in their minds, the right to ignore laws, ignore international treaties, kill, steal, and generally imperil the prospects for peace in the whole Middle East.
Israel was created, in part, by radical Jews who engaged in terrorist acts against local Palestinians and British authorities. That radical streak has never disappeared, but for a long time the Israeli governments seems to have been able to control it. Now that Israel is working against the perceived self-interests of Jewish extremists, it's possible that they could resort violence again.
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Jewish extemistst in most western countries have been black mailing Governments for the last 60 years.
They have infliltrated into those countries political structures, news media, law intitutions,etc
They have been behaving in a manner not unlike the
German secret police during WW2.