"You should be ashamed of yourself," I said as I passed him. I was referring to the orange Star of David he was wearing.
"It is you who should be ashamed," he replied. I turned around and resumed my walk home.
Settlers and police facing off Sunday evening in Tel Aviv.
Can you spot the orange Star of David? (AP)
Maybe he was a Holocaust survivor himself, I thought. But he's invoking the memory of the Holocaust, and possibly his status as a survivor, to justify a policy today that directly affects me and other Israelis who serve in the army. And there are plenty of other survivors who think using the orange star in this protest is despicable.
Of course the settlers had the usual banners "Let the IDF win" and the like. We're witnessing the death throes of the settler movement. I was surprised by the large number of women and children there and the absence of men. I guess their PR people wanted to ensure photographs of Israeli police confronting "defenseless" settlers.
I hadn't intended to enter the fray, but police had closed Kaplan Street to traffic. By the time I realized it was closed because of a settler demonstration, I had already gone a few blocks and I didn't feel like backtracking. Kaplan is my normal route home from work when I walk rather than take the bus. And my bus was stuck in traffic due to the commotion of the protesters.
When I first entered the street, there was a long stretch that was pretty much empty. Then I saw the settlers standing in front of a police barricade and plenty of police.
I asked a policeman it was ok for me to walk through. He asked where I was going. When I said home, he let me pass.
At the same time, a teenage settler boy standing next to the cop, probably about around 15-16 and wearing an orange Star of David, smugly uttered in my direction, "If you go in, you won't come out."
I hadn't intended to confront anyone. I just wanted to go home, walk my dog, and make a little something for dinner. But this arrogant teenager was wearing an orange star. He was warning me where I could walk in my own city. And he felt entitled to wear that star because his elders in the settler community, some of them survivors, had given him the legitimacy to do so.
But many more older Israelis, some of them survivors, condemned the use of this charged symbol in this battle - and it's becoming increasing clear that this battle is not about Israel's security, but rather the narrow interests of a settler community convinced it is entitled to the way of life that is subsidized - both financially and ideologically - by the greater Israeli population living outside the territories.
This is the reason I told the old man he should be ashamed. And I stand by that statement.
(If you can get past his tendency to overdramatize, Bradley Burston has an interesting piece in Haaretz today about the settlers' use of the orange Star of David.)
