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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/26859/full/26859/mainstream-values-not-fanaticism-carried-the-day/ <br /><br /> <b>Mainstream values, not fanaticism, carried the day</b> <br /> Thursday, August 25, 2005 | by <p>saul singer </p> <br /><br /><p>Modern people are not attached to land. They flit about from place to place. The rich ones have multiple homes. They are citizens of the world.<br /><br /> Settlers, therefore, aren’t modern. Politics aside, most Israelis, who are modern, can’t relate to settlers, and vice versa. Who can explain, to those who don’t understand it, the attachment to austere hilltops from which, with a little imagination, one can envision our ancestors grazing their flocks 2,000 years ago?<br /><br /> One might think that modern people could appreciate the romantic and spiritual side of such an endeavor. To some extent Israelis do, as reflected in the relative tolerance of most of the public for the extremism of some settlers. But there remains a huge gap between the post-modern Israeli and the pre-modern settler.<br /><br /> The great mistake of the settler movement is that it has never seriously attempted to bridge this gap and become mainstream. Fanaticism, after all, is a form of elitism. The fanatic, whether of the religious, political or secular variety, considers himself to be in a rather exclusive category of righteousness. The fanatic, by definition, projects a holier-than-thou attitude, because otherwise it is impossible to justify the usually high societal cost of separation from the mainstream.<br /><br /> The fact that settlers have become fanatics in the public eye should not be blamed entirely on them. Most, after all, quietly set an example of incredible fortitude and restraint, particularly over the last almost five years of terror war. There could hardly be a more pure example of sacrifice and of the opposite of the hypocrisy we all claim to hate. <br /><br /> Labeling the settlers as fanatics is an easy way out for the mainstream, since if they are fanatics there is no need to take their moral example seriously.<br /><br /> It should be obvious that there is nothing more important for the settler movement than to bridge the yawning gap between it and mainstream Israeli society. Had that gap not existed, disengagement would never have happened. It may be too late even to prevent further unilateral withdrawals. But it is hard to imagine preventing such withdrawals so long as the rift between the settlers and the mainstream remains.<br /><br /> What can the settler movement do to defanaticize itself?<br /><br /> First, it must be noted that the movement has recognized the need to bond with other Israelis. The largely successful orange ribbon campaign was an attempt to demonstrate popular support. “The people are with the Golan” campaign seemed effective, but this is not a fair example because the Golan settlers did not have to confront the accusation of blocking a Palestinian state. The Gush Katif slogan “We have love and it will win,” based on a popular song, was of this mold. But it actually combined the soft touch and a power play, as if to say: We’re lovable, but don’t try to stop us.<br /><br /> The problem has been that opposite every jingle that has taken the softer, bonding approach, the thrust of the settler argument has been deliberately extremist and alienating. Though those who actually wore yellow stars or tattooed numbers on their arms were a tiny minority, the anti-disengagement campaign was permeated with terms recalling the Nazis: deportation, expulsion, transfer and Judenrein, to name a few. There has been a constant effort to claim that there is “no difference” between what the Nazis did to the Jews, and what the government of Israel is doing to the citizens of Gush Katif.<br /><br /> Equating the government and, by extension, the public that supports disengagement with the greatest enemies of the Jews is not a promising way to win friends and influence people. It is not a serious attempt to persuade, rather to intimidate, shock and shame. It also seems to reflect a resignation that the majority will never be won over, and so democratic values must be trumped rather than appealed to.<br /><br /> All this might make some sense from the settler perspective were there nothing to lose. Yet the settlers themselves feel they have everything to lose, and must struggle all the more bitterly precisely because this withdrawal is only the beginning.<br /><br /> Their strategy, indeed, seems to be to make the evacuation of 10,000 settlers close to impossible, so that removing many times that number from other settlements outside the security fence in Judea and Samaria will be unthinkable.<br /><br /> But the settlers’ apocalyptic strategy is detracting precisely from this aim. As will be seen, the obstacle to dismantling settlements, now or in the future, will not be the physical or even emotional difficulties. The only way further withdrawals will be stopped is if a large majority of Israelis can be persuaded that it is a dumb thing to do.<br /><br /> The Palestinians, given their own well-known penchant for squandering opportunities, might be counted on to do the settlers’ job for them. But this can hardly be relied upon, given that Israel is now setting the precedent that it will withdraw unilaterally, with terror happening and the threat of further terror openly on the table.<br /><br /> Accordingly, becoming mainstream is the settlers’ only real possible salvation. Can they do it, especially after the extremely polarizing path they chose to take?<br /><br /> A telling picture of a teenager and her toddler sibling cheerfully planting new rows of tomatoes in Gush Katif prior to the disengagement illustrates both the problem and the solution. It shows an intense faith, almost completely alien to the average modern Israeli, that God would not let disengagement happen. <br /><br /> In the settlers’ mind, Israeli society has failed. But in the public’s mind, the disengagement demonstrated which value the settlers held higher — the democratic will of the Jewish state, or an invented right to substitute their own religious or political will for the state’s judgment.<br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /> <b>Saul Singer</b> is a writer and editor for the Jerusalem Post, where this column previously appeared.<br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /> Two Views:<br />Who really won in the disengagement battle?<br /><br /> <a href="/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/26824/format/html/displaystory.html">The settlers triumphed — despite themselves</a></p> <p> </p>

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