It's Time to Awaken
Take to the Streets
More and more, I believe the time has come for me to awaken as well. All my life, I thought that if I strived to avoid wrongdoing, stood alongside the weak and oppressed - whether they are Jews or non-Jews, and acted within my limited capacity for peace and solidarity, perhaps the world would be better. In the meantime, I have not succeeded, and moreover - I see how the path of the wicked has prevailed.
So perhaps the time has come to join the other side. For instance, this past Saturday (Jan. 4, 25), settlers from two illegal outposts in the southern Jordan Valley demonstrated how they and their herds can infiltrate Palestinian communities, feed their flocks with Palestinians' straw, threaten local residents, and assault human rights activists who attempt to mediate between the intruders and the residents - all while the army and police turn a blind eye (and sometimes even cooperate) and without facing punishment. Lords of the Land.
In the past year, such incidents have been occurring at least twice every day in the West Bank. Settlers are acting as instruments for the plan to cleanse the West Bank of Palestinians, a plan that is an integral part of the messianic ideology of their representatives in the Knesset and government. To implement this plan, they spare no acts of violence, and their agents do not conceal the patronage and funding they provide them.
On the night following that Saturday, during a demonstration in Tel Aviv advocating for the release of the hostages, emissaries of the criminal minister in charge of national security, Itamar Ben Gvir, were harassing the hostage’s families and their supporters without any response from those entrusted with maintaining law and order. In the worst cases, the harassers were politely asked by the police to step back. These same police officers shortly thereafter forcibly removed from the crowd demonstrators, whose hearts broke in the face of the brutal reality, beat them, and even arrested them.
These are two sides of the same coin, or two faces of the same phenomenon, whose characteristics have long since spread from the occupied territories into the Green Line.
Yes, the time has come to awaken – take to the streets! Do not allow the moral and political decay of the bloodthirsty government and the messianic parties to continue spreading.
