Red Lines Shouldn’t Be Crossed, No Matter What

The residents of Gush Katif saw it as their mission in life to infuse life into this desolate region, and towards that end, they were sent to Gush Katif by successive Israeli governments.

The banishment of these people from their homes and uprooting them from their towns led to an ideological catastrophe and had calamitous results for many people and families. Today we all understand that the motivation behind this terrible plan was the caprice of politicians who put their personal considerations before everything else, and decided to propose the disengagement as a public agenda, resulting in one of the biggest crises this country has ever faced.

In recent years, it has become the norm for politicians motivated by all sorts of personal caprices to make the public the guinea pig that pays the price of them trying to reach their goals.

A year ago, we held elections, with the Yesh Atid party declaring that its banner issue was dealing with the chareidi community on two fronts.

The first was a blanket draft to the army and the second was to force them to go out to work on a mass scale. Again, we encounter the phenomenon of personal whims of politicians, whose entire objective is to garner as many votes as possible, causing upheaval in a certain sector, in this case, a community that perceives Torah learning as its mission in life. It is inconceivable that such a motivation should cause an entire community to change the lifestyle it has believed in for generations, with violence and aggression, just to realize the personal wishes of one politician or another.

I don’t expect people who have never been privileged to learn Torah to understand how Torah learning is above all and is really and truly the biggest protection that Am Yisrael has. But I do expect honesty and fairness and the minimum humane sensitivity for them to understand that there is absolutely no place for such harsh moves.

In conclusion, regretfully, we have seen in recent years, both in the Israeli public arena and in private life, a lot of violence and aggression. But when these things reach a level where entire sectors of the public are pitted against each other, all due to illegitimate motivations, that is cause for great concern.

I sincerely hope that after two thousand years of galus, we will learn to live together as one nation with mutual respect for each other.

This article appeared in print on page 41 of the March 5th, 2014 edition of Hamodia.