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Posted on 06/13/2004 8:53:00 PM PDT by Alouette
The Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip on Sunday billed the evacuation of settlements under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan for unilateral disengagement an apocalyptic showdown, as it set the stage for what movement leaders called the fight for its life.
August 14, 2005, Gaza's Gush Katif bloc of settlements alerted reporters Sunday, "is the last day of the existence of Jews in Gush Katif. It also happens to be the Ninth of Av, the day of the destruction of the First and the Second Temples and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain."
The message was hammered home at a 1,000-person rally in Gush Katif Sunday night, with National Religious Party chairman Effi Eitam and council chairman Benzi Lieberman lambasting the NRP's continued presence in a government that would evacuate Jewish settlements.
The council is deciding on a new strategy to throw thousands of dedicated volunteers into torpedoing Sharon's plan for taking down Jewish settlements in the 340 sq. km. strip. Its first order of business is toppling Sharon, said settlement leaders and the NRP's rabbis and.
On the wall above council acting general-secretary Yehoshua Mor-Yosef's desk is a state-distributed picture of Sharon – the council is after all a semi-governmental body. The frame is now cracked and Sharon sits there askew, barely hanging on the wall.
On the one hand, explained Mor-Yosef, the council needs the NRP to leave the government. But without the NRP, and with Labor in its stead, he said, the hawkish Likud ministers would be rendered powerless. Nevertheless, the settlement body announced it would throw its weight to driving the NRP out of the government.
Either way, the settlers' council is done trying to convince the prime minister – it is ready for a new one. Gush Katif's Hof Aza Regional Council debated the issue of how to deal with Sharon late Sunday night, while behind stage officials swapped the names of men they thought suitable.
During the Likud referendum last month, the council managed to disseminate 400 kilometers of banners, not to mention hundreds of thousands of bumper stickers, fliers, and flags, said Ohad Bratt, the campaign and rally organizer for the council since 1993. His volunteers might have to work harder as the date of the cabinet's March 2005 discussion on the evacuation of the settlements approaches.
"Our goal is ultimately to reach regular voters like you," said Bratt to a reporter. "That way, in one or two rounds of elections, going door to door to beg voters will become irrelevant."
But his volunteers, typically religious men between 20 and 40, are used to fast campaigns. They are the foot-soldiers of the council's political campaigns, explained Bratt.
The Likud referendum, he said, worked perfectly as thousands of volunteers canvassed the country in a span of two weeks. Now he and his 10, two-man teams have nine months within which to work, and their mission is to bring to their message, not 200,000 Likud voters, but an entire nation.
The activists' primary objective is reaching rabbis and schools. Rabbis disseminate critical information to their flocks on Shabbat, and schools of the national-religious curriculum offer a vast pool for volunteers and rally-goers from seventh graders on up, said Bratt. But much of the infrastructure for a national campaign comprising rallies, large and small, already exists, and Bratt at any moment can summon activists in almost any town.
The council is an old hand at political activism, a fact that greets visitors to the group's Jerusalem offices. Banners, leaflets, and blunt slogans, like "Uprooting settlements, a victory for terrorism," litter the basement offices' cramped lobby. The offices are modest for a political machine with such power: several cramped rooms, primarily adorned with the council's own propaganda posters.
In his little office, Bratt describes his final method for victory. "We are having babies at a much higher rate than the rest of the country. The national-religious camp is growing at such a fast rate that in 15-20 years there will be no choice for Israelis."
But the key, observed Bratt, is installing a prime minister who possesses "the principles and ethical code of the Land of Israel, rather than pure pragmatism."
Sharon is acting like a power-crazed megalomaniac dictator of the third world country.
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I totally disagree with what he is doing but he probably has the support of the majority of Israelis.
Sharon is acting like a power-crazed megalomaniac dictator of the third world country.
His policies are turning it into a third world country. Just like Zimbabwe, he is seizing farms from private individuals and distributing it to who he wills without any thought of purchase. Even kings are bound by the laws of theft, and no king is above Gods justice.
Mr Sharon, the ends do not justify the means.
In the long term, nobody will invest in their future, if the king shows he will destroy at will with no thought to law or justice. In the short term, Sharon may save Israel, but in the long term is destroying it.
Only in the liberal media. Either I just happen to hang with conservatives in the Israeli circles I am in, or like the States, the media reflect the pipe dreams of the liberals, not reality.
Honestly, how many Americans would give the Alamo back?! Jews are no different.
We have troops in nearly every ally's back yard EXCEPT Israel. The Jews are the only ones we know that want to fight their own battles!!!
CLUE, Get one.
Sharon is playing with fire by setting this precedent. He is offering the Jews of Gaza $300k to leave. Suppose the EU starts offering money to Jews to leave all of Israel. I bet more secular liberal Jews living along the coast in Tel Aviv and Haiffa will be receptive to that than the nationalists in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.
What Sharon is doing would not be criminal, if he did not stack the vote by firing those who would vote against him.
Imagine what Congress would be like if the Democraps just fired every Republican.
Clintoon Dictatorship.
Here is a question nobody has ever answered for me, so I am hoping that a group of intelligent people here can assist me with this one:
According to the Old Testament, the Jews were God's chosen people. According to the New Testament, repenting of your sins and accepting Jesus as your savior is the way to get to Heaven. Well: If the Jews don't believe that Jesus was really the Son of God, what's going to happen to them when time comes? In the Bible it speaks of the 144,000, but there's alot more Jews than that. So what's the deal? Can anyone shed a bit of light on this topic for me?
He said it. Demographics is fate.
Yes, but it is the US who whores to ARabs for oil and makes Israel stand still to be bombed, so own policies of misplaced love of Saudies not hurt.
Russia fights own battles, often through walls that West create.
In the Bible it
speaks of the 144,000, but there's alot more Jews than that. So what's the deal?
Is Gush Katif really being evacuated on Tisha B'Av? I've never heard that -- I've heard they'll have till Sep. 2005 to leave. Plus, there's no way for religious reasons that Israel would ever take any significant action like that on Tisha B'Av.
I got give prop to the settlers I bet they improved the property what would PLO Going do plant mine bomb
I THINK SO
On this date there will be no entry or reentry (of Jewish residents) into Gush Katif. The residents will have until September to leave though. Sharon did this to prevent thousands of supporters from pouring into Gush Katif and holding a Alamo/AIM Alacatraz/AIM Wounded Knee/Masada/Waco last stand, with some level of horrible consequence.
IMHO there will be a symbolic last stand, and a small convoy of supporters rolling in, with a load of counterseige supplies. But it's just speculation.
Is there any chance for Netanyahu to come back?
That's what I was just thinking,When is Netanyahu going to step in and take over this mess?
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