Let the Show Go On

By Moshe Feiglin

Av, 5768
August, '08

This article will appear in Hebrew in the Friday edition of the Makor Rishon newspaper.

The Orange/religious media was thrilled at the scoop of the week: The sincere remorse of a woman soldier who had evicted Jews from Gush Katif. Her guilty conscience, sleepless nights and request for forgiveness were splashed all over the religious newspapers and airwaves.

If we analyze Israeli reality three years after the Expulsion, though, we will discover that while the soldier's story is a great journalistic item, most of the soldiers who took part in the Expulsion have not suffered the same remorse that this soldier reported. According to a poll taken among the expelling soldiers, it turns out that the absolute majority of the expellers sleep just fine at night. No guilt feelings disturb their slumber. The nightmares promised them by the broken-hearted Orange expellees have inexplicably stayed at bay. It may not be pleasant for us to accept, but this soldier's story is out of the ordinary.

Is this because the IDF soldiers do not have emotions? Do they have hearts of stone? True, the brainwashing - or in Orwellian terms, the 'mental preparation' - to which they were exposed accomplished its goal. During the expulsion, their hearts really did turn to stone. But from my personal experience I can testify that the eyes of the soldiers who came to expel us were not bad.

Three years have passed. Why is this guilt-ridden soldier still a lone blip on the screen? Why doesn't remorse engulf the thousands of soldiers who participated in the Expulsion?

In a radio interview, the soldier explained that what is engraved in her memory is the scene of a young boy who refused to leave his home in Kfar Darom. Ultimately, his parents dragged him outside. Another realization that changed her outlook is the fact that the people who she expelled from their homes really had nowhere to go. The fact that three years later, most of them still do not have a proper home to replace the home from which they were expelled made her understand that the Expulsion was real.

What can we learn from this soldier's story?

Throughout the entire Expulsion saga, this soldier was convinced that she was nothing more than an actress in a play with a pre-determined end. The play had good guys and bad guys. What she was sure of from the start was that at the end of the play, all the actors would join hands and take a bow. Of course, no real harm was supposed to be done and we would all be able to watch the sequel the following evening.

The little boy who refused to leave his home broke the spell. He refused to be an actor in the play. The tears and speeches of his parents didn't budge her. As far as she was concerned, they were just playing their part. But the little boy - not yet confused by state supremacy theories - convinced the soldier that for him, there was no play, simply because he refused to leave.

Three years later, this soldier realizes that the Orange actors were genuinely harmed. They really do not have houses or fields or jobs. It really wasn't a play. Now she realizes that if it's not a play, she wasn't just an actress. She was a real live soldier driving real live people out of their homes.

Those Orange leaders who chose to protest instead of to fight wrote the script for all the actors in the play. It's no wonder that the expellers sleep well at night. Did you ever see an actor in the role of the bad guy who feels that he must apologize?