Settler leaders on Wednesday accused Prime Minister Sharon of demonizing and delegitimizing them, Haaretz reported today.
"They have marked us as an enemy, as air, as dust - and dialogue with us is conducted on the hills of Yitzhar in a pre-planned provocation," said Pinhas Wallerstein, head of the Binyamin Regional Council.
Does Wallerstein really believe the Israeli public is going to sympathize with the settler movement now?
Let's set the record straight.
It is the settlers - and not Ariel Sharon - who have demonized and delegitimized themselves, with their desperate actions intended to foil Sharon's disengagement plan.
It is the settlers who established an illegal outpost at Yitzhar and other sites in the West Bank.
Wallerstein and other settler leaders simply cannot grasp the new socio-political reality in which the majority of Israelis are no longer willing to carry the burden of the settler movement.
The majority of Israelis want to leave the Gaza Strip altogether.
The majority of Israelis have reached the conclusion that we gain nothing by remaining there.
The majority of Israelis are no longer willing to let their sons and daughters risk their lives in the army and defend the messianic delusions of a small, but politically powerful, minority.
The settlers are losing their stranglehold on government policy and the allocation of resources in the country - and it's a painful realization. Wallerstein may not have realized how approrpriate his comment was that the settlers have been marked as air and dust, for it captures their diminishing influence and relevance.
(Speaking of demons, Mobius recently met the Devil himself and lived to blog about it.)
