Setting up camp

...Haya, one of the founding members of Gush Emunim and a pioneering settler in the West Bank since 1974, admits that at first the group were viewed as a bunch of lunatics. Thousands of settler activists came to the mountains of the West Bank in 1974 and 1975 and stayed in tents until the army evacuated them. Seven more times they did this and every time the rest of Israel looked on in disbelief. Who were these wailing rabbis and scarf-wearing women who brought their many long-haired children to live in the middle of these ancient olive groves? " 'Who are these strange, hallucinating people?' they asked," Haya recalls, smiling faintly... (Read on at commentisfree)