Israel’s settlements are rarely out of the news. But just who are the settlers? Are they all the same? And what motivates people to live on the most contentious land in the Middle East?
40 years on from the Six Day War, we are spending 2 months on settlements to discover the truth behind the propaganda. This is not your usual tit-for-tat Israel-Palestine conflict report. It is instead a detailed, personal and intimate study of some of the most controversial people and places in Israeli society.
You can hear some strange opinions in Israel. Among the stranger that I’ve heard recently is the theory of the mixed multitude, as follows: When the Israelites fled Egypt, it is believed that certain Egyptians and others were amongst them. This “mixed multitude” thus contained non-Jews, and it is held by some that the descendents of these non-Jews are still living amongst the Jewish people – an infiltration of Goyim has polluted the purity of the Jewish nation. Which means that some of the world’s Jews are – God forbid! – not Jewish. Oi vay! Shame, shame, shame upon them...(read on here)
Standing precariously close to the edge of the mountain, the two boys gazed down at the town below them as they waved their outsized flags with pride. But they weren’t a couple of valiant explorers who had successfully scaled a previously unconquered peak, and they weren’t inviting the villagers below to share their sense of jubilation. What they were, instead, were two religious settler youths who’d come back to the abandoned settlement of Homesh and were taunting the townspeople below with the Star of David. Why? To, in their words, “show them that we’re back – and that we’re not going anywhere”... (read on at commentisfree)
“I feel we are part of the Bible. It’s a very spiritual experience.”
Daniella Weiss, the mayor of Kedumim, sees her West Bank settlement as central to the Jewish people’s return to the Holy Land. On the wall behind her hangs a familiar looking landscape, but I find myself disorientated as I gaze at the unrecognisable and rather bizarre marble structure in the foreground. After a few seconds I realise that this is the imagined Jerusalem of the future – complete with a rebuilt Temple where the Al-Aqsa Mosque now stands. It is an emphatic illustration of Daniella’s vision, which is apparently one step closer to being realised, now that the Jewish people have returned to Judea and Samaria... (read on at commentisfree)
