A Forced Immigration

I hope in reviewing this post in two weeks I will smile at this. Now I'm feeling that same feeling my reserve unit shared three days after Passover in 1988, when we were activated in order to maintain order in Shchem (Nablus). The way was unclear, the criteria for success... unwritten.

D-Day has begun with clashes, tire slashes, and underage youths as the footsoldiers for their elders. Dare I point out that our cousins the Palestinians have been using their children, albeit for more lethal errands, since my time in Shchem? The youth of today won't be the soldiers of tomorrow. They will be a fanatical thorn in the side of Israel's society; believers in transgressing the law if only their rabbi, or any rabbi, sees fit.

The soon to be uprooted settlers are angry to leave home, and fearing to come to their new homes. Ten days in a hotel and then off to trailer parks hastily set up and 50% the size of their original homes... Israelis have all heard this before. Every wave of Aliyah (going up to live in Israel) has been like this: bad planning, empty promises from politicians more interested than the sound bite than the solution. When the Ethiopians were imported en masse, taking over apartment blocks straight from the desert, they were lost. These forced immigrants, coming from the luxuries of homes, lawns, farms and detached garages are entering their own shock. It's off to the trailers, to new neighbors and schools, to the uncertainty of how their lives in this new and alien country will continue. Because, for them, this is not the country they left. It's no wonder some settlements locked themselves inside their settlements.

They're reading the Israeli papers on the radio now, before the dawn. The settler leaders sent the punks to get some sleep, to "save their strength for tomorrow." With morning comes the real work, the work of forcing an Aliyah on those who feel they are already on a higher plane of existence.