If you don’t know what happened in Amona last week, please refer to any news source that covers the goings-on in Israel.
Many bloggers in the Jewish blogging world have been commenting on this. I haven’t written anything so far because I am still going through my own thoughts on the issue. Here is what some others have had to say:
- For Pinchas, this is one of the harbingers of redemption (could be. don’t hold your breath though)
- Orthodox Anarchist says that the settlers
had it coming to them forshould have expected this to happen. It has been happening for years. And they got off easy. Read about OA’s experience in 2003 NYC. (edited 2/7/06 14:23, see comments below) - Sarah points out that everyone is a hypocrite (except for her). Even so, the police crossed over the line here and were too rough. As they do with the PLO.
- Jameel gives an accounting of what happened, including pictures. He concludes “The tragedy of the situation is the demonization of the settlers and the movement to settle the land…The Jews of Amona and their supporters are motivated exclusively by a deep passion and love for Eretz Yisrael. Their entire ideology and way of life is being targeted by the Israeli government and media as the enemy of the state.” (I agree)
- Carl gives over a first-person account of the brutal violence (I have heard the same from other people and on the radio)
- Arutz Sheva has sent out a whole bunch of eye-witness accounts of the brutality. They also published on their hebrew site an article about how the Police told medics to go into a house to help the wounded. After the medic went into the house, the police started beating the medic. I would not call special attention to this (not more than any of the other reports) but for the fact that the medic in question lives on my yishuv. I davened with him last Shabbat mincha. He helps run things in the administrative office. And he helped deliver one of the other babies who is in my son’s nursery. (He doesn’t make up stuff like this.)
- Rav Yaakov says that while the police were brutal, we can judge them favorably and say that maybe they were just brutal here because they have have gotten used to to being brutal with other groups. And they have been brutal for a long time against Chareidim, so everyone who is crying, is crying too late.
- Gil lets the pictures do the talking. And reports on an eye-witness account.
- JoeSettler analyzes why there is so much hatred of the settlers in Israel today. Punchline: “No, we are hated, because they are completely right, it is we religious settlers who are preventing the national assimilation of the Jewish people.” (I agree, this may be one of the root causes. Evidently though we need to work more on the prevention)
- Ben calls the police bad names and tells about how his children were beaten at Amona
- Best for last, David has a great post about why Olmert (yemach shemo) felt it necessary to avoid a peaceful compromise and sent in the gestapo police with their battle armor and with orders to break skulls. A must-read. Pay attention to the punchline. If self-defined conservatives like Treppenwitz are saying things like this, then this is only going to get bloodier. Also check out his post responding to the common left-wing responses to Amona.
As for me? Well, I live less than 10 miles away from Amona. I know people who were there. I know people who know people who were there. The police were brutally violent. They cracked skulls with the intent to injure and kill. They did not come to arrest or stop a demonstration. They came to prove a point. They were sent for political reasons by a stand-in prime minister who needs to prove something and who wishes to demonize every Jew who lives on the “wrong side” of an imaginary green line. Compromise was not acceptable.
There may have been a few bricks (or light bulbs) thrown. Or it may be just as much of a myth as the caustic soda that was not thrown in Kfar Darom. But there was nothing that called for the violence.
It is a scary time here. Although as many people have (rightly) said, the Police are here to protect us and deserve our support, it is tough to toe the party-line on that one. In this case (and Sarah, OA and Rav Yaakov pointed out, in others as well)the police were brutal. They came with the intent to injure, not to bring order. Personally, right now when I see a police car, I cringe. I do not regard them as my defenders. I think of them as people who hate me and who want to hurt me.
I have read in other places of people talking about this being the beginning of a civil war. God forbid such a thing should ever happen. But right now, seeing the way us settlers have taken the place of the terrorists as the national enemy, and seeing how most of us want nothing more than to help do our part in settling the Land of Israel and defending the Jewish people, it is not inconveivable that things could escalate anymore.
February 7th, 2006 at 13:59
Just FYI, I didn’t say that Israeli security forces are “too rough” on the PLO.
What I meant to communicate is that, just as the police here were brutal against Israeli civilians who were unarmed, so too it is very possible that they sometimes act overly quickly or violently against unarmed Palestinians.
I have absolutely no moral issue whatsoever with the Israeli army doing whatever they want to do to those they know to be involved in terrorist activity.
February 7th, 2006 at 14:15
oh i see my comments are now appearing, so i’ll restate:
you completely misrepresented my post. i did not say that the people in amona had it coming to them. not in the slightest. i said police brutality is an issue which effects all people, from the left wing to the right, from arabs to jews. it’s a shame that the right wing is now crying victimhood when the left has been screaming about police brutality for a decade. the right has never stood up for the left; when rachel corrie was killed they made jokes about rachel corrie pancakes; when tom hurndall was shot in the face they said he had it coming. i’m entirely opposed to police brutality and what the cops did in amona is unjustifiable. but the right should keep in mind that they were breaking the law; they physically interfered to prevent the enactment of state policy; and that they shouldn’t be surprised that they were attacked. they should consider themselves lucky. if they were left wingers, they’d have been getting shot with rubber bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas from the outset.
that’s not “you had it coming.” that’s “what did you expect?”
the story about my arrest in nyc was to demonstrate my personal experience with police brutality.
February 7th, 2006 at 14:33
OA – sorry about my misreading of your post. Your points were there. I just got my lasting impression after reading it was your caption under an image of armored police officers clubbing people:
Text above has been ammended.
However, for all of your talk about civil disobedience, it seems that though nearly all of the people there may have met your definition of Civil Disobedience, your are considering them all to have been legitimately treated as physical attackers. I disagree. From all that I know (listening to personal accounts, and radio, as well as the traditional news sources) 99.9% of the people there were resisting passively. And nearly got killed for it.
And I do not think this is comparable to Rachel Corrie. She was one person who decided to lie down in front of a tractor that whose driver (did | didn’t) see her. Here we have hundreds of people who held hands outside and inside houses, and were trambled with horses, and beaten repeatedly when they presented no threat. Different cases.
February 7th, 2006 at 16:48
here is video from cnn of protestors throwing rocks and bottles at the police, as well as dumping sand and liquid on them from the rooftops.
here is a story about a police officer who nearly lost his eye to a glass bottle.
out of the 200 wounded in amona, 80 were police officers.
it is just a tad disingenous to suggest that they were purely engaging in non-violent civil disobedience. the video of the kids being beaten inside the houses follows the battle that took place outside before the cops even got inside the houses. by that point they’d already been pushed beyond the breaking point (which, in israel, is already not so difficult).
also, no one knows precisely happened the day rachel corrie died. that her death happened within weeks of several other activists being beaten and shot indicates that it may not have been an accident at all, and the fact that the second occupant of the bulldozer never testified and that the idf coached the driver through his entire testimony does not, in my book, equate to an “open and shut case” as it may for you.
if the israeli authorities can do the awful things they seemed to have done to the jews in amona, imagine what they’re capable of when their opponents are not zionists.
February 8th, 2006 at 6:48
Ignore Mobius, he is like a barking dog.
With that being said.. excellent run down, it gives me many new things to read. Thanks a bunch.
February 8th, 2006 at 11:02
at least i’m not a fake zionist living in texas.
February 9th, 2006 at 6:21
What’s wrong Mo? You never got over me calling you out for trashing our traditions? It’s okay, I told you, it’s water under the bridge.
Secondly Mo, you don’t know anything about me, or who I am, or what I do… so stop acting like you do, and grow up a little.
February 9th, 2006 at 18:55
Mobius and Tovya – if you guys want to yell at each other, please do it somewhere else (like on your own blogs, perhaps).
Only comments connected to the subject at hand will be accepted. Thanks for your understanding.
February 10th, 2006 at 18:10
Sorry for the ridiculously off-topic comment, Yaakov, but I thought you’d need to see this: http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/sports/special_packages/olympics/13824349.htm
Shabbat shalom.
February 10th, 2006 at 18:13
…and apparently it’s been said already. Sorry.
February 13th, 2006 at 20:36
Orthodox Anarchist …. Just understand that whatever you have to say is considered meaningless because you weren’t there and you probably havent spoken to many that have. Now I understand that you are very conserned in the matter, but, realize that when we threw rocks at the police they had shields and what not. And as we were on the roof they were doing other things as well it wasnt just us throwing things. And you should also realize that saying that Israelis are short tempered, is no excuse for them beating us up. These are men and woman who have all gone through training. If there commander pissed them of they wouldn’t move a finger or even say a word, they know how to control themselves. And I am astonished that you will even bring the policeman that got hurt in the eye into this, because when we were throwing things he probably had a shield. You can’t prove that we did that, but, I will tell u something that I know as a fact and that is that the police did bash the windows of the houses. So most likely he got the glass in the eye then. And if you still don’t like that, then think about it logically. If i throw a bottle at you and it hits you in the eye will it crack? No it will bounce off of your eye and kill, but it deffanately won’t crack…. We the “protestors” were trying to save our land something given to us by G-d many many years ago. Now what you havent realized is that this land isn’t bamba, its not a car which if you want you can get rid of it. This land is ours and we have to do anything to keep every centimeter of it. If i have to fight for it then I will. There were kids of the age of 12 years old being beaten by these “policemen” and old woman of 70 years old now tell me, that in any way, that should be tollerated. One of my closest friend’s whole body was black and blue all over it was hard to look at his body, another one of my friends was knocked out on consious and they didnt stop beating him, another they broke his leg …. now clearly you have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to Amonah so I would like you to stop talking about it until you see the truth in what happened. In gush katif they dragged the “protestors” out. In Amona they would walk up to you, tell you to get up, and when of course you said no, they would just start beating you over the head, explain how that is in any way human like!!!!???? And do you wanna know what they said is the reason for being so violent? … They wanted to show us that when they say somethings gonna get done it will get done and no one will stop them. And now I promise you one thing, that what they tried saying did not come out, because we are just angrier than before. Everyones going to go and fight, we are never going to give up. This is our land, our home, this is who we are and we will never stop fighting for it!