For years, the weekend protests of Bili'in have developed into an international activist jamboree. The focus is on the "separation wall" that does makes difficult to the Palestinian villagers to enter Israel proper. Bili'in inhabitants carry Palestinian passports and are de facto and de jure non Israelis. Why this permanent international agitation?
I presume the protests are focused in the town on the other side of the wall, called Modi'in Ilit (Kiryat Sepher). It is a strict Orthodox population, mostly dirt poor large families from Jerusalem haredi neighborhoods. I have worked in the place and didnt like it much. The major is a young Orthodox rabbi and the population is surprisingly young for Israel. There is strict separation between the Ashkenazu and the Sepharadi tribes, and in my experience, Municipality personnel is equally divided between them and both are equally corrupt. These people care not about politics except milking the State, and they came for one and only reason: to live a Jewish life. The town is the poorest of Israel: its sole occupation is to study and teach the Torah.
They are not settlers in any sense and they are definitely anti-Zionists (they are expeting the Messiah) and in my opinion they are economic and religious refugees. But they are Jews in the most visible sense, and that gets on the nerves of the leftist antisemites of the world. Moreover, they are not dying off. On the contrary, they have large families. The city grew an astonishing 7.7% last year. That and their black kapotes upsets the enemies of the Jewish people.
5 comments:
Isn't the wall built through the Arab village? If not, and if no Arabs lived there before then I don't care in the slightest and the Israelis should do whatever is necessary to protect themselves from the rock throwing protesters.
The wall (and fence) is far away from the village. Every weekend it is a rock throwing/videotaping festival. International brothership and healthy fun. No danger at all. The soldiers are shooting tear gas.
Sometimes leftist fun can become dangerous - ask Rachel Corrie.
Refugees from what? Brooklyn?
This kind of agitation will continue until permanent borders are set, but no Palestinian leader, not even the "brave" Arafat, is willing to set realistic borders. The only borders that will not get a Palestinian leader assassinated ala Sadat are borders which include Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa inside Palestine. So the charade will go on and on.
K
The people moving to Modiin Illit are refugees from the overcrowding in Jerusalem's haredi neighborhoods and its international tourist character. They dont want tourists coming to take pictures of them, nor homosexual pride carnivals.
They have homosexual pride carnivals in Mea Shearim?
The Amish in the US have learned to live with tourism, to make a living FROM tourism - giving buggy rides, etc. If the Orthodox were not subsidized they would have to get real jobs and they would value the tourists instead of fleeing from them or throwing stones at them. Israel has a dysfunctional relationship with its haredim and it's not all the haredim's fault - the rest of Israel is enabling their mishegos. My parents grew up in a culture where Jews were real Jews from the tip of their toes to the top of their head, from morning to night, from birth to death, whose very language was called Jewish, but real Jews worked for a living. They despited the hasidic parasites who distort what real Judaism means.
K
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