In my previous post I said that as a reservist who refuses to serve in the territories, I cannot debate the right of soldiers to refuse to evacuate settlements. But I believe there are crucial differences in the reasoning to do so.
I refuse to serve in the territories because I cannot, in good conscience, be part of the immoral oppression of the Palestinian people as expressed by the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began in 1967. Now, for the sake of argument, if Israel annexed these areas and granted the Palestinians the right to vote, my basis for refusal would no longer exist. But for a variety of reasons too extensive to discuss here, this did not happen.
As naive as this may sound, I see the Palestinians as human beings. Some of them are terrorists and want to kill me and other Jews, and there is little we can do to change this, but this hatred is not sufficient to justify the means Israel uses to continue holding the lands in dispute.
Build the wall and make it tall! The separation fence, security barrier or whatever you want to call it certainly seems to be working in the areas where construction has been completed. But the end of terror means the end of the reason the right-wing sells to the rest of Israel for the need to keep the territories.
On the other hand, the very basis of the right's refusal is that the Palestinians are not equal to Jews. Right-wing rabbis and others cite the Torah as the authority forbidding the evacuating of Jews from this land. However, very conveniently the Torah is silent on the issue of evicting non-Jews, such as Palestinians, from their lands so that Jews may take it.
In other places in the world such reasoning is called religious fanaticism. But in Israel it's accepted as just part of life here.
The right values land more than it does human life, and I mean Jewish and Palestinian life. The wall is making it more difficult for the terrorists to carry out attacks, but its completion would mean the end of the religious fanatics' dream of a Greater Israel.
It would also mean the end of their power over the rest of Israel. This, and not the Palestinian threat, is the right-wing's greatest fear, for it is the very basis of their existence.
But I'm just a secular infidel who thinks that some parts of the Torah - and not just the bits about pork and shrimp - should not govern Israeli policy or be twisted to suit the amoral agenda of the religious right.
