Protect Netanyahu! Attack the Religious Nationalists!

By Tuvia Brodie


How convenient. On the night of December 12-13, 2011, fifty ‘youth’ attacked an IDF ‘army base’. Who were these hooligans? According to the media, the politicians and the army, the answer has been so obvious that no investigation is necessary. The culprits were Jewish West Bank ‘settlers’ who are so elusive that they cannot be found, captured or identified. Apparently invisible, they attempt to destroy us. Who has time to investigate? They are terrorists!

Meanwhile, on the night of December 17, 2011, a man identified as an Arab stabbed a security guard stationed at the entrance gate to Maale Adumim. No one complained. No one warned of the dangers of Arab terrorists.

What evidence exists that those who attacked that IDF ‘base’ were West Bank ‘settlers’? There is plenty of evidence. For one thing, they got away. Arabs never get away. For another, the IDF—in the dark—identified them as ‘hilltop settlers’. The IDF always knows how to identify a ‘hilltop settler’, especially in the dark. Then, as Caroline Glick has already pointed out in an essay (Jerusalem Post, October 21, 2011) on another occasion of media failure, the media repeated here what it had done with the Oslo Accords: it opted to manipulate (in favour of the Left) instead of analyse as headlines screamed: Jewish terrorists! Politicians on the Left weighed in, condemning Religious Nationalists. A former Cabinet Minister suggested that the IDF should ‘shoot-to-kill’ all Rightist protesters (even as the IDF has warned that any soldier who shoots at Arab protesters will be subject to arrest). Finally, the Prime Minister declared his own outrage by announcing that he would not allow ‘extremists’ to spark a civil war!

Civil war? Absolutely. On December 15, 2011, Tzipi Livini declared that, if anyone thinks there is no connection between the ‘riot’ at the IDF ‘base’, and a recent incident involving religious soldiers and singing women—they’re wrong! They are both part of a religious wave to wash Israel away!

Is that what this is all about-- the Left declaring that Religious Nationalists want to tear Israel apart?

How convenient: as Likud begins its primary season, head of Likud Netanyahu is reported to want to lock-out Rightist West Bank settlers from upcoming Likud primary elections so he can continue his increasingly anti-Nationalistic and Leftist policies. Then, just as West Bank Rightists in Likud are perceived to have increased their powerbase, they choose to project this influence by torching mosques, attacking their own IDF and providing Israeli media all the headlines Israelis needed to reject everything ‘Religious Right’? We are fortunate indeed to have discovered the truth about these terrorists before those primaries. We can now see their true colors. They are not loyal Israelis: they want to destroy us.

How convenient. Although Jews as a group generally do not believe in inconsistencies and coincidences, we are surrounded here by some questionable inconsistencies and coincidences: the attackers’ mysterious and perhaps miraculous escape from one of the world’s best armies; the media’s failure to question how wonderfully these unsubstantiated reports help Netanyahu’s Likud hegemony; and the settlers’ uncanny ability to select (primarily) empty/ unused mosques to torch and roads to block.

How convenient. Just as Netanyahu expresses a demonstrable fear that Rightist ’settlers’ might flex too much power in a Likud primary, the ‘settlers’ demonstrate an uncontrollable need to attack targets perfectly selected to enrage a willingly enrageable media.

On December 15, as the outrage and anger towards Religious Nationalists reached a crescendo, Eliyahu Zalmanovitz, writing in the Haredi (ultra-orthodox) newspaper Hamevasar, noted the inconsistency between the outrage over the so-called ‘hilltop settlers’ (who caused few personal injuries) and the silence over more than 130 IDF and police injuries at Arab/ Leftist protests in just one Arab community, Bil’in, over the last several years. These violent demonstrations have not provoked the same ire—or the same cries of ‘terrorism’--as these unidentified attackers. Zalmanovitz wrote, “IDF soldiers and Border Police were injured in demonstrations in Bil'in just last Friday [December 9, three days before the ‘attack’ on the IDF ‘base’]. If you have not heard an outcry and seen ministers moved to the 'depths of their souls' at the injury of our soldiers, it is because the protesters were Leftists” (see Arutz Sheva, Who dares raise his hand against a soldier?, Gavriel Queenann, December 16, 2011).

We are lucky that the ‘settlers’ have chosen to be so accommodating in their own demonization just weeks before their successful behind-the-scene accumulation of power is about to bear fruit. Why should these ‘settlers’ settle for replacing Netanyahu as head-of-Likud when they can torch unused mosques and attack the IDF in the dark?

Something smells here. The media, the politicians and the army have already decided who will be lynched. The stench is familiar. It's from the dark days of Oslo. The Leftist government then (accompanied by a lap-dog media) fought an all-out propaganda war to pass that malodorous Accord no matter what (see Caroline Glick, above). They launched a concerted campaign to demonize and de-humanize the religious/nationalist Right by laying the blame of all Israel's troubles, including the eventual assassination of Rabin, at the feet of the "settlers".

History replaying? How convenient for Mr. Netanyahu.