David Bloom of Adalah New York writes me apropos of my post on the Israeli settler who wrote to Haaretz about the rights of Palestinians:
“… That settler has deluded himself into thinking that he can live
in Gush Etzion and not be impacting negatively on the Palestinians
who live in the area. The following is from a 2003 anti-occupation
manifesto by religious Zionists, published in Yediot and Ha’aretz,
which I reported on in my blog WW3 Report at the time:
“The following personal account, included with the manifesto, is from
signatory Shlomo Wagman, 28-year-old economic consultant:
“‘Most of my life was spent at Alon Shvut, a settlement in the Etzion
Bloc south of Jerusalem. Thousands of times I have passed army
checkpoints. Thousands of times I saw, without really noticing, the
young Arabs crouching at the roadside, waiting for the checking to
end so that they could pass through. They were a kind of transparent
part of the landscape. I saw them but did not feel any deep
empathy… And then, one day, I saw at a checkpoint an old man with a
young girl child. They were not being specially mistreated. They were
just told to wait and obeyed with weary resignation… And suddenly
something clicked into place in my mind. I suddenly understood that
this was not an issue of security. That all this enormous military
activity was needed so that I could live in a beautiful villa, with a
terrific view from the windows… That hundreds of thousands of human
beings–old people, women, children, people who are no kind of
security risk–had to pay the price for our life there. That they had
to endure checkpoints, searches, closure and curfew so that I could
have a quiet life as an observant Jew in my beautiful settlement. I
decided to stage my own unilateral withdrawal. I left Alon Shvut very
soon afterwards, though I knew I would miss a place which I love. I
now live in an ugly urban center inside the Green Line. I can’t
explain my own past blindness and the present blindness of my family
and friends who still live there. We just don’t see the same reality.'”
Weiss: I’d add one thing. Douglas Feith’s former law partner, Marc Zell, was reported by the Guardian to have bought land in Alon Shvut, and to have moved there.
