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Hirsh Goodman: The Giver and the Taker
In the early morning hours of Saturday, June 8, a terrorist attacked a small cluster of mobile homes perched atop a hill not far from the West Bank settlement of Karmei Tzur. Using a rifle and axe, he shot and hacked to death Eyal and Yael Sorek, both in their early 20s, she nine months� pregnant, and Shalom Mordechai, a 35-year-old reservist from Nahariyah who leaves a widow, a 7-year-old and a 5-year-old. Five others were injured in the attack, three of them army reservists pulled away from their regular jobs for a month or so at a time to defend their country.
The mobile homes atop the hill were one of the 60-odd "settlements" that have been erected since the start of the current conflict with the Palestinians, all in response to acts of Palestinian violence. Tzur Shalem went up in response to the January 2001 killing of Dr. Shmuel Gillis, a brilliant young hematologist who had been recognized internationally for a discovery that allowed thousands of women, who thought they would never have children of their own, to give birth. Gillis was driving home to Karmei Tzur after a long day at Jerusalem�s Hadassah Hospital, where he worked. At a bend in the road, just a few kilometers from home, he was gunned down. At his funeral the next day, the head of the Gush Etzion regional council vowed that their response to Gillis�s murder would be yet another new settlement. Thus was born Tzur Shalem, the site of Saturday morning�s massacre -- 10 mobile homes with 10 families, hastily situated on a hilltop with no real infrastructure and no ostensible purpose other than to express anger and revenge. While it is just 200 meters outside Karmei Tzur, which is adequately defended, Tzur Shalem was isolated and exposed. It was a tragedy waiting to happen.
The army did the best it could to defend it. It sent a platoon of new recruits from basic training, the only manpower it had available at the time, with the military conducting almost daily incursions into Palestinian-controlled territory to try and prevent horrific suicide bombing attacks before they happen.
After almost two years of war and the complexity of tasks it has to face, the best the IDF could do for the 10 families at Tsur Shalem was send the least trained recruits to the most exposed place. The net result: three more graves, one unborn child, one more widow, two more orphans and three more injured in an attempt to avenge the death of Dr. Shmuel Gillis, a giver of life, by creating a new settlement in his memory.
And there are some 60 Tzur Shalems -- all illegal and unrecognized by any state authority -- that need protection.
There is a very deep argument about the utility of the settlement movement in Israel�s post-1967 history. It was encouraged by all governments in one form or another, some for strategic reasons, others for ideological ones.
But now is not the time for that argument. We are fighting a war. It is the national responsibility of all of us to contribute to the war effort. The several dozen families in the several dozen caravans on 60 hilltops, in close proximity to Palestinian refugee camps, cities and towns, which need hundreds of troops each to protect them adequately, are not doing that. To the contrary, they are weakening the ability of the IDF to perform its duties by forcing the army to stretch its resources to the point where it is forced to put the lives of untrained recruits at risk, your children and mine, because a dozen folks have decided to make a point on a hill close to existing settlements -- which have many empty homes in them.
If the IDF is to be able to defend the citizens of Israel, all its citizens, it cannot cater to the whims of the settler movement. Enough resources are already being expended on trying to defend what already exists. Entire brigades are tied down in Gaza. Creating 60 more targets for terrorism for absolutely no purpose other than to make a point that hundreds of settlements with tens of thousands of settlers have already made, is folly. It is irresponsible.
If it were just the settlers putting their lives on the line because that is what they believe, fine. But they are demanding protection from the state as well. They are forcing the army to put the lives of kids not yet fit to hold a gun on the line. That is no longer an internal settler question.
The 60 caravan outposts in question are all illegal. They constitute a massive security risk. They divert national resources from other security priorities at a time of war. They have cost people their lives. They have to go.
I don�t know what the appropriate response is to honor those like Dr. Gillis who have been murdered and those who have been crippled by terror these past two years. I assume, however, that the terrorist killing of an unborn child, its mother and father and a young reservist is not what they would have wanted.
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