Wild Flowers Grew in the Garden

By Moshe Feiglin

Excerpted from Moshe Feiglin's new book, "The War of Dreams." Click here to order.

To fight against the expulsion from Gush Katif, the heads of Manhigut Yehudit Youth established the National Home movement, leading thousands of youths to road blockings with complete willingness to be arrested. This article was written after hundreds were arrested.

Iyar 5765
May, 2005

After completing his service in the Israeli army, Yehuda married Tamar, who had just received a B.A. from Bar Ilan University. The loving couple built their home in a well-established settlement located 25 minutes from Jerusalem. Shamir was prime minister and it seemed that the Likud would rule forever. Although the Left continued to pressure for retreat, nothing seemed to threaten the future of the settlements. Government publicity on TV encouraged Israeli citizens to buy houses beyond the Green Line. The campaign slogan was "a place in the heart" (of the country).

Then, in 1991, Shamir gave in to the pressure of the Left and went to the Madrid Conference. There in Madrid it was already clear that Arafat was returning to the scene. When the Israelis realized that this was the name of the game, they toppled Shamir, who had waged a fighting retreat, and elected Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin, the Defense Minister in the Six Day War, was regarded as Mr. Security and, more importantly, promised a peace agreement within six months.

At the beginning of the decade that followed Rabin's handshake with Arafat, Yehuda fought to return to Israel what it had lost. He still remembered the feelings of victory, of belonging to a country in the right, of solidarity that crossed all the political lines. He was an enthusiastic Zionist, and wanted to return to the good, old Zionism that he knew.

However, when Netanyahu continued the Oslo process, he realized that the problem didn't lie simply with who was in power --the Left or the Right, the Labor Party or the Likud. Yehuda joined the ranks of Manhigut Yehudit (The Jewish Leadership Movement), and instead of clinging to the Israel that he had lost, the old-style Zionism, he began to dream and to promote the belief based alternative that would eventually replace the system that had failed. A new spirit began to emerge in Yesha.

Yehuda and Tamar's son, David grew up to become a strong, vital boy. Unlike his father, David had never experienced the feelings of victory. The State hardly existed for him. It had not protected him from the Arabs who constantly hurled stones at his school bus. It had not prevented the terrorist attack in which his best friend's father was killed. Instead, it released jailed terrorists and Shmuel, who sat behind him in class, had his legs blown off.

For David, a bulletproof bus, concrete walls, and sandbags in the windows were routine. Not only had the State failed to solve the problem, it had in fact created it, and even persecuted those who tried to defend themselves.

When Sharon decided to destroy entire settlements and expel their residents, David and his friends were 16 years old. They grew up with a great contradiction; wonderful G-d-fearing education, love for the nation and the country, restraint, pioneering, and self-sacrifice that they received from their parents -- and the impotence, nihilism, and criminal abandonment expressed by their State.

Last week David and his friends sat down in the center of a major traffic route. When the policemen hit them, they laughed, as they had already seen far more dangerous things. When the police officer announced that those who wouldn't leave would be arrested at once, David and his friends surrounded him and vied to be the first arrested. David and his friends had already won.

When the prisoners were brought to the cells they sang loudly, and when the Police requested them to identify themselves, to give fingerprints and be released under restrictive conditions, they laughed again and refused to cooperate. Their feelings of moral superiority dispelled their fear of the system and its enforcement agencies. The weapon of arrest and trial had totally lost its power of deterrence. The system found itself helpless in the face of a reality it had never expected.

However, the real measure of strength demonstrated in the "Practice Run" could only be appreciated two days later. David and his friends were brought before a judge for extension of their period of detention. "We are prepared to release them," explained the exhausted police representative to the judge, "but none of these minors is prepared to identify himself or to pledge not to repeat his action."

The judge looked in astonishment at the happy youngsters facing him. "Where are their parents?" he cried. "What kind of parents abandon their children in this way!" Yehuda, who sat at the back, stole a glance at his son who was clearly one of the leaders of the group. Tamar held back her tears. The situation wasn't easy for a mother who wanted to get up and hug her son.

But David was already in the future, in a liberated Jewish Israel. Yehuda and Tamar had given up the old Israel and they were with him --with little David who had run forward, and had jumped from the existing "enlightened" dictatorship to the consciousness of freedom.

Yehuda and Tamar are nearing forty. Their son, David, is 16. They are together in this struggle and no one can defeat them. They have already won.