Settler boy stands by tires gathered for a protest against the eviction of the illegal outpost of Ulpana, June 12, 2012. (Photo: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)
Israel’s largest Zionist youth group has joined the battle over the Ulpana settlement and called for a mass uprising against state regulation over Jewish expansion in the West Bank. Danny Hirschberg, the leader of the far right brigade, Bnei Akiva, called for the group’s 100,000 members to “take to the streets and make your voices heard.”
“No more destruction of homes and settlements in the Land of Israel,” said Hirschberg in a statement reported by Ynet News. Continuing, “No more injustice, immorality, and lack of democracy in the State of Israel. No more fanning the flames of divisiveness and hatred in the Jewish people.”
Hirschberg goes on to say the state has “no reason” to evict the settlers, despite Palestinian landowners already proving valid ownership to an Israeli court. Hirschberg stated, “We don’t have the strength to remain silent in the face of this social and moral injustice perpetrated against dear families who wanted to build homes in the Land of Israel.”
Jewish tourists in a Bnei Akiva military “experience” program.
(Photo: Bnei Akiva)
Under Hirschberg’s tenure as secretary-general for Bnei Akiva, hundreds of Israeli government officials and thousands of tourists have been brought to the occupied Palestinian territories annually. According to Arutz Sheva, earlier this year on Tu Bishvat Hirschberg led four-thousand to plant trees in the West Bank. In addition Bnei Akiva runs one-year hasbara programs for its international members, including a $900.00 military “experience” with Marava, an eight-week army training for Jewish tourists.
Settler protest tents in Ulpana. (Photo: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)
Bnei Akiva’s Ulpana endorsement comes after weeks of Benjamin Netanyahu attempting to placate settlers in order to convince them to leave the outpost. Earlier this month the prime minister offered Ulpana 20 temporary mobile homes and promised to build 300 houses in a different neighborhood of the outpost. Despite the appeasement, Ulpana’s residents are not budging. Taking cues from Tel Aviv’s social protest movement, last week settlement supporters established a tent encampment in the settlement, dozens went on hunger strike and hundreds marched from the outpost to Jerusalem.
Although most of the extremists have adhered to non-violent tactics, over the past few days two “price-tag” attacks were carried out. Tagged as “revenge” for Ulpana, on Sunday tires were slashed and graffiti was sprayed in the coexistence village of Neve Shalom Wahat al-Salam, and on Monday tires were also slashed in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafut. Also, earlier this week the Times of Israel reported pamphlets with instructions for price-tag actions against the military were found in Ulpana:
The pamphlets, which suggested slashing the tires of military vehicles, filling their gas tanks with sugar and sand, and spray-painting slogans on IDF bases, were written in a sarcastic and pseudo-innocent tone, instructing potential vandals what ‘not’ to do, but actually meaning the opposite.
And Ynet‘s Kobi Nahshoni is also reporting settlers are quietly preparing for an escalated showdown with the army on Ulpana’s July 1st eviction date:
Some on the Right have already designed a plan to fight the evacuation, and activists plan to block the operation by closing roads and throwing Molotov cocktails and paint-filled lightbulbs, as well as by burning tires and barricading themselves inside the homes.
Meanwhile private contractors behind Ulpana’s Palestinian land grab also warn following the government’s evacuation, they plan to rebuild. Head of development Baruch Gordon said to the Jewish Press, “If the state prosecution wants to dictate to us, we will build ten houses for every one you are taking down.”
“on Monday tires were also slashed in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafut.”
Shuafat is a refugee camp in occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem.
“No more injustice, immorality, and lack of democracy in the State of Israel. No more fanning the flames of divisiveness and hatred in the Jewish people.”"
BS
The ongoing pandering to these Jewish fundamentlaists is like the Greek debt bailouts for the sake of the banks – every time more debt is added to buy time the situation deteriorates- the wrong people are supported and the machine moves closer to total failure
It’s about time Jews disowned the settlers. The French gave up on the pieds noirs when it was too late.
It’s always too late when righteously (justice, freedom, etc.)-motivated, yet strenuously-resisted change occurs. Sad fact. Many dead people as a result. Always.
One would think that that historical forecast/imperative/lesson would be heeded, but it never is. There’s always something “different” this time around…
I wonder what Finkelstein has to say about this 100,000-strong group. And these are merely the young segment of the colonial population.
After all, he does claim that the core of settlers — those who in a permanent two-state solution would resist removal from the occupied West Bank — would be a small number of perhaps 10,000.
So?
The notion that the settlers could be somehow managed back to Israel if international law could be implemented is very optimistic.
The settlers are the ultimate Jewish welfare queens . How do 100K people have the TIME to defend Ulpana? Don’t they have productive jobs to attend to? No, they don’t.
When YESHA eventually goes tits up around two hundred thousand Jews are going to be sans occupation and without a meaning in life.
Did he say so? He’s hallucinating. It’s the mad aunt in the basement-syndrom: everybody knows she lives there, but no one dares to mention her. Same-same for the Big Bang that’s coming up in the shape of an Israeli civil war, that will be the inevitable result of the implementation of int’l law (c.q. end of occupation, Israeli withdrawal from the Westbank).
Let’s get this straight. Does anybody believe that 700.000 settlers will be willing to pack up, leave the premises and go home? Or is the civil war the elephant in Finkelsteins room here?
I don’t even see how to avoid it. At some point the ultra’s will pick up their weapons against anyone that gets in their way — either by offering the Palestinians a state of their own, or else Israeli statehood within a binational state.
Are you trying to say that anybody ever believed this varmint will meekly go back behind the Green Line? No one in his right mind can believe that, and anyway no one can ever believe that the Zionists will ever peacefuly go behind the green line either!
And what “civil war”, exactly? It’s not “civil”. There won’t be war among Zionists, but sure as hell against them. In exactly what shape is unknown, but it will happen and it’s the only way it is going to happen. And no, Finkelstein may be many things, but a starry-eyed, pink-tinted-glass-liberal he ain’t. As opposed to several here. Of course nothing will happen non-violently.
The settlers are fabulous example of why illegally housing, funding , arming and pandering to unemployed religious bums with no job prospects in the real world is very bad policy.
These fanatics are going to bring down the Jewish state. We don’t need a Jewish state if this is what becomes of Jewish States.
“We don’t need a Jewish state if this is what becomes of Jewish States.”
“If”? Maybe someday when I need a laugh you could tell me what else could have happened to a “Jewish” State? I must say I haven’t been disappointed! The “Jewish” state has exceeded my wildest expectations.
I was thinking there would be world class latkes and blinis for everyone but it didn’t work out.
“the Land of Israel” a magical fantasy land, bearing no resemblance to the actual sovereign territory belonging to the State of Israel and having no legal meaning what so ever.
It’s hilarious stuff. Just make it up … anything … anything at all
“Jewish tourists in a Bnei Akiva military ‘experience’ program.”
Because today’s diaspora Jews don’t just want to see the criminal activity of the fellow Jews against the Palestinians, they want to pretend to do it themselves.
It’s like a bunch of European whites taking a tour of the American South in the 1920s and pretending to be Klansmen, complete with genuine lynchin’ ropes.
So the legacy of the summer Tent Protests is cooptation by the settlers. Great work running away from the Palestinian issue, Tent Protesters! Now watch as the settlers get everything they want.
We are reminded over and over how some Germans treated Jews and Slavs as subhumans. What about these Jewish skinhead types? I mean they view the Palestinians as subhuman. They talk about morality, but morality does not include the non-Jewish Palestinians. The never again idea only applies to their fanatical group. How sad.
Brigades?? Umm, there’s stuff here that needs clearing up.
Bnei Akiva claims to be the largest religious Zionist youth movement in the world, with a membership of 125,000 members worldwide. link to en.wikipedia.org
But far from being the largest Zionist youth movement in Israel, a 2005 survey put Bnei Akiva at third largest below (HaTsofim)
link to israelscouts.org
and Hanoar HaOved
link to en.wikipedia.org
The Bnei Akiva youth movement evolved out of Bachad (founded in Germany between the two World Wars) link to bauk.org
with its hopes of reaching out to the Arabs living in Israel and from which emerged figures like Avrum Burg’s father Dr Yossef Burg, but also Gush Emunim (seeded the settler movement) and what are known as the Hardalim (acronym for haredi religious nationalists). The Netivot Shalom movement with its short-lived Meimad party also came from a Bachad-Bnei Akiva background as do religious peace mavericks like Rabbi Froman, who signed a peace proposal with Hamas’s Khalid Amayreh and people like Eliaz Cohen, Nahum Pachenik, etc. and their movement, Yerushalom. They want to live in a binational state. Here’s what Yehouda Shenhav says about them:
“Eliaz Cohen from Kfar Etzion says that if we don’t draw the border on the Green Line, then the right of return for the Palestinians and Jews will be reciprocal: ‘Just as I have a right of return to Kfar Etzion, he says, ‘there’s no reason that Palestinians from Nablus shouldn’t have a right of return to Jaffa.’ It’s a utopia, but this is a group that is a lot more leftist than Amnon Rubinstein and Ari Shavit and Yossi Beilin and David Grossman. This is where the categories have to be overturned and recreated in a new way. For the Zionist left, all the settlers look alike and think alike. But there are at least 250,000 people in the settlements, which are the lower classes that should have been and could be a central part of the Israeli left. ”
link to haaretz.com
I don’t see from where this Hirschberg guy is going to bring 100,000 “brigades” onto the streets for those Ulpana buildings, but it sure made a nice headline.