Where's the Democracy?
by Netanel Epstein
What have the Jews of Gush Katif done to deserve this kind of treatment?
What the media have been spreading throughout the country, day in day out is: Settlers are neither Jews nor Israelis, nor anyone you could ever identify with. That's what the nation is being fed through television, radio and newspapers. Only this week, a front-page story about Netanyahu being assaulted by Chabad youth and having his car tire punctured, was proven to have been blown out of all proportion. Netanyahu himself testified he was never attacked and the police found no evidence that the tire was punctured. Yet it was front-page news, and no one is going to read the tiny print on the fifth page to say it was a "mistake". Talk about free press. If there have been threats to the prime minister, they've been the madness of a handful of individuals, who are frowned upon by the "settlers" as much as everyone else. However, no disengagement opposer is free from the stereotype of "prime-minister-assassin, and murderer of democracy".
Last month, a man was arrested by the police and taken into questioning. Completely stunned, he asked why he was arrested and what he was charged with. "Suspected involvement with organizing buses to the anti-disengagement demonstration outside the Knesset," was the answer. Isn't the right to demonstrate one of the basic rules of democracy? And since when is organizing a bus considered a crime?
The week before, the buses from Gush Katif to the demonstration outside the Knesset were held up at the roadblock for hours. The army admitted the only reason they were being held up was because they "did not want them to get to the demonstration". Freedom of travel/passage – another fundamental rule of democracy broken.
Any minister who opposed the disengagement plan found himself sacked. Where's the democracy in that?
Where's the morality? What kind of country is current leadership turning Israel into? I'm going into the army in five weeks time. I want to fight for a country I can be proud of. For Citizens of Israel. Living in the land their fathers and brothers died to win back to Jewish hands. Living and thriving in the Land of our forefathers, the land that was promised to us by G-d. The land we Jews have been dreaming of and desperately missing during 2000 years of exile.
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