A new voice has been heard today. It is the voice of a group of young women, many of whom are married to IDF officers, who live in those pastoral neighborhoods where neighbors take care of neighbors and concern about the environment is actually lived daily – have you guessed? These are the "unauthorized outposts" so vilified in the press. Those very communities that are the focus of the ire of the ire of no less than the President of the Free World, Barak Obama.
These women and their neighbors have lived in their homes, raising their families as governments have changed, American Secretaries of State and other US messengers have come and gone. They have continued with their beliefs, moderate, rational, Zionistic, conciliatory – the feminine voice rarely heard.
But something has moved them from their silence. It is not Obama, Mitchell or the Netanyahu's upcoming address which brought these young women's voice to be heard, but the Right-wing so-called hilltop youth, those seen in the media burning fields, blocking roads and shouting at Israel's security forces.
"Price tag (of revenge)", that's not us," says Tsofia Dorot from Kidah. "We need to repudiate this and say loudly that this is not us. Our communities are not political demonstrations. It must not be allowed that a small group of people, lawbreakers, receive all the media coverage while the real way of way of life, which 97% of the residents live, remain unseen and unheard. Those who burn fields and threaten the security forces need to be in jail. They are exactly 2% of the Jewish residents in Judea and Samaria. I don't want to be one of them and I am not one of them. They are part of the same Nation as I am but I am not willing to be seen as part of them."
Friends of Tsofia's live in a neighboring community, near Yitzhar. Their community is an unauthorized outpost but aside from this status, they have nothing in common with the hilltop youth. They speak with a different voice, dress differently, read different books, listen to different Rabbis, and live out the life of a totally different kind of "settler". They are first generation settlers – having been brought up deep within the Green Line borders – and don't dream of raising goats and riding tractors. There's nary a large, woolen kipa to be seen or a pair of peyot swinging in the breeze. Their husbands are graduates of the Bnei David Mechina in Eli, who served in fighting elite units in the IDF and are academics who voted Likud or HaBayit HaYehudi. Once upon a time people such as these were called the salt of the earth – now they've been turned into criminals.
The State of Israel, for them, encompasses all their values and serves at the G-d's foundation on earth. The IDF is holy and IDF officers are admired. "The very fact that there is a Jewish army after so many years is a huge thing in and of itself", Tsofia wrote this week to her fellow residents. "And how is it possible for these lost children to threaten IDF officers, who work day and night to keep Israel secure? There are hundreds of thousands of residents in Yesha with firm opinions and strong ideology who are not 16 years olds, easily enflamed and incited by others. It is good to have a strong, idealistic youth but a shame that they are used in such a manner."
http://www.yesha-israel.com/news/current/type/article/id/1259/index.htm
Topic: "So-called Hilltop Youth" - Yesha Council Attacks Hilltop Youth (Read 746 times)