I’d like to see one TV anchor in Israel introduce a story on the Gush Katif settlers without the mandatory pained expressions. I’d like to see one pro-disengagement politician or IDF general talk about the pullout without the mandatory somberness in his voice.
The key word here is “mandatory.” The message going out to the Israeli public via the mainstream media is that the withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria is to be treated like a funeral, like Yom Kippur. One should not be lighthearted, one should not laugh, one should not by any means appear joyful — at least not in public.
When thinking about disengagement, a good, respectable, patriotic Israeli Jew should always be preoccupied with the pain it’s causing. The pain of the about 9,000 settlers being forced out of their homes. Also the pain of religious right-wingers giving up of parts of Eretz Yisrael. And, of course, the pain over the bitter division in the nation.
The whole western world is congratulating Israel on getting out of Gaza, on finally doing the right thing, the smart thing, the best thing for Palestinians and Israelis alike — and here in Israel the Jews are doing their damnedest to be miserable.
So can we stop it now? I don’t mean the anti-disengagement minority, but the pro-disengagement majority — can we admit that we feel like a stone is about to be lifted from our hearts, that we’re going to be breathing a tremendous sigh of relief when Gaza and the upper West Bank are finally off our hands?
Can we admit that we think a great, great thing is about to happen in this country? Can we stop trying to exaggerate the sympathetic hurt we feel for the settler families being dislocated, and instead start to — dare I say it? — celebrate?
Yes, there is one genuine source of pain in this story — the settlers being forced to move. They are definitely deserving of every Jew’s sympathy. But this has gone way, way out of proportion.
These settlers are not exactly being thrown to the dogs. Their compensation will range roughly between $150,000 and $400,000 per family, according to the disengagement administrators, which may be an exaggeration, but if so, probably not by much.
Israel is building new residential communities on the Mediterranean coast just for the Gush Katif settlers. The hothouse farmers will be able to set up new farms not far away. If the “caravillas,” or luxury trailers, in Nitzan are too small, as the new tenants complain, they’re just temporary.
These people are not martyrs. The personal travail they’re going through is rough, even very rough, but it’s not tragic.
There are two main reasons, I think, why the settlers’ hardships have been hyped into a would-be tragedy, and turned into a melodrama. One is because the popular media naturally emphasize the human-interest angle, the emotional side, and the most emotional, human side of the disengagement story is what the settlers are going through.
For all the right wing’s self-serving paranoia about left-wing media bias, the Gush Katif settlers have gotten copious, sympathetic, up-close-and-personal coverage not only from the Israeli media but from much of the foreign media as well. I did stories on disengagement for two foreign publications whose (gentile) editors each told me to play up the personal ordeal of a Gush Katif family. This was the most dramatic part of the issue, they said, the part foreign readers could most easily grasp.
The other reason why Israel has had such an over-the-top reaction to the settlers’ anguish is because this anguish has been conflated with the rage and insult felt by the entire religious right, which really is of epic proportions.
Disengagement means the shattering of its spiritual and political ideal. To the well-intentioned among them, i.e. those who are not contemptuous of all Arabs, I’m sorry n they’re feeling such dismay, but this is also no tragedy. You win some, you lose some. People in the pro-disengagement camp have had their spiritual and political ideals shattered, too, in large part by the settlers, and I don’t remember any national outpouring of sympathy for us, certainly none from the winning side.
And if I feel a little bit of sympathy for decent-minded right-wingers over the crisis they’re going through, I feel none whatsoever over this ideal of theirs that’s being shattered. Eternal Israeli rule over land that’s populated overwhelmingly by Palestinians is an unworthy ideal, always has been, and always will be. Good riddance to it.
The only thing the pro-disengagement majority should be feeling bad about is the emotional wound to the settlers being uprooted against their will — and they will be able to plant new roots.
But while these settlers are the most dramatic, emotional, easily-absorbed part of the disengagement story, they are not the main part at all.
Here, I think, are the main parts:
• The Israelis and Palestinians who will no longer have to die fighting each other in Gaza,
• The 1.4 million Palestinians who will no longer have to live under Israel’s guns in Gaza (even if they end up living under the still more intimidating guns of other Palestinians),
• The young Israeli soldiers who will no longer learn how to be bullies in Gaza and northern Samaria,
• The state of Israel that will instantly become a much more just, peaceful and Jewish country, with a strong chance of disengaging itself completely from the Palestinians in the coming years.
Isn’t this a little more important than Israelis being forced to move house? Isn’t it time for the Israeli majority to stop being compelled to see the glass of disengagement as 5 percent empty instead of 95 percent full?
In a few weeks, won’t a celebration — a quiet, dignified one, so it doesn’t seem like gloating — be in order?
Larry Derfner is a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, where this column previously appeared.