The poor dears

Gideon Levy, Haaretz, February 18:

Who said the Israeli left has disappeared? Thirty intellectuals from the left have published a petition calling for putting an end to the “neglect of the evacuees from Gush Katif and northern Samaria.” Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, David Grossman, Uzi Dayan, Shulamit Aloni and Yossi Sarid, the cream of the crop, signed a manifest drawn up by the evacuees that refers to the “law’s directive” and “morality’s directive.” “This is the fundamental tenet of democracy,” they write with characteristic pathos, in an outburst of concern for the population that for years did everything it could to undermine the law, morality and democracy in Israel. This petition is a disgrace to its signatories.

In recent weeks, there have been many heartbreaking reports about the evacuees’ difficulties, especially in a series of articles by Nadav Shragai in Haaretz. The Gush Katif Committee claimed that 49 percent of them are unemployed (the government’s employment service, by contrast, reported 25 percent); that 500 families are experiencing a difficult economic situation; that there were ten cases of eating disorders and 12 cases of attempted or contemplated suicide – and here is the punishment: 90 percent of the evacuees’ children will not serve in elite Israel Defense Forces units.

Has anyone checked how many people are contemplating suicide in Jaffa or looked into the number of eating disorders in Shlomi? What happened to Shulamit Aloni? What swept over Yossi Sarid? What flame engulfed these luminaries? Does the lame excuse suggesting that “their neglect [of the evacuees] is liable to strip the state of the legitimacy for taking similar steps in the future” justify defending yesterday’s violators of law and morality, upon whom the state has already showered more than enough assistance and rehabilitation funds? After all, this mobilization of leftists only augments the “tragedy” of the settlers. Is this the weakest sector of the population, on whose behalf these personalities need to mobilize? Is it the most ethical part of the population? Is it not more correct to ask today, after all the huge investments and the blood spilled in vain: Who should be compensating whom?… 

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