The Sad Truth

A sane person would say that the State of Israel cannot afford to pull out of Gaza. Forget the crime that's being committed against innocent Jews -- simply from a defense point of view, this will exacerbate terror horribly.

You'd think that with the Arabs frothing at the mouth, continuing attacks, and ranting about how this is such a huge victory for them and their methods of terror, the government would stop the process.

But they don't.

And the sad truth is that it's not because they don't want to. Had there been no protests against the expulsions, the process would have stopped weeks ago in light of the Arab attacks.
I am NOT saying that the protests were wrong. They were exactly right. But we have to realize that the ruling power in the State of Israel now is no less an oppressive regime than the British were. Or to use a better, and perhaps more appropriate comparison, they are no less an oppressor than King Yannai Alexander was. Yannai was a Jew. The great-grand-nephew of Judah Maccabee. But he was our enemy.

This government, which hates everything about being Jewish, knows that Torah true Jews are a far greater threat to its way of life than the Arabs. The Arabs only want to kill their bodies. We want to win their souls, and the souls of our nation.

If they win, it will hurt us. It will hurt us so badly. But we are the heirs of those who survived Yannai. We survived Pharaoh and we survived Hitler and we survived Titus, and we'll survive Sharon.

If we win, it will destroy them. They are fragile, these haters of Judaism. They are empty shells, and they have nothing to live for. And somewhere inside of them, they know this. And they hate and fear us because we are not empty. Because we have everything to live for.

They would rather encourage Arab terror than Jewish pride. To them, withdrawing under fire isn't the issue. It's a choice of who they give in to, and they have chosen the lesser threat to their worldview.

Regardless of how events transpire this week, we will have won an important battle. We will have exorcised the "medina uber alles" attitude that has been such a big part of some streams of religious Zionism. What was once something recognized only by a few is now realized by multitudes.

Eretz Yisrael belongs to Am Yisrael. Not to the State. There was no transfer of ownership in 1948 from the Jews to the Israelis. There never will be.

The only question is, as Moshe Feiglin wrote in his article about grandmas and wolves: will enough of us remember this lesson, and avoid slipping back into the Holy State mindset? Will we learn from what has happened and what is happening? No matter what happens this week, we must not forget the black-uniformed soldiers who are right now at the gates to Jewish towns and villages. We must not forget that our allegiance is -- and must always be -- to Hashem Yitborach, and not to an earthly king.

Anyone who votes for Binyamin Netanyahu in the upcoming primaries is merely voting for a more urbane version of Ariel Sharon. Even a vote for Uzi Landau is, with all due respect to him, just a vote for more of the same down the road. We must take control of our own destinies. We must have a leader with a Jewish soul.