by Emanuel Shilo, Editor of the Besheva weekly magazine, translated by Hillel Fendel.
The tremendous damage caused, both in the past and present, by left-wing organizations such as "Brothers in Arms" leave them no moral right to impose their divisive stance on the majority.
1. The Israeli organization that calls itself "Brothers in Arms" revealed this week again its belligerent, divisive and hostile face, after having put on a show of unity and cooperation during the first months of the war. The "Brothers" have now returned to openly place atop their agenda what has always been and still is their overall goal: the overthrow of the Netanyahu government.
Is it really too much to ask for a "ceasefire" in their ongoing aggression, at a time when the rest of us are working together against cruel external enemies supported by the hypocrisy of the international community? Do they not realize that practically the only thing that our soldiers who continue to endanger their lives, both physically and often economically, are asking is: "Stop fighting with each other!"
Instead, they have now advanced to their next stage of their no-holds-barred campaign: violent protests and sieges against Israeli drivers. And we know that if all this doesn't work, they still have more ideas – some of which they have used in the past - as to how harm the country and step on its neck until their minority opinion succeeds in toppling the emergency unity government.
The other alternative, of course, is for the usually silent majority to wake up and make it patently clear that this time, they won't succeed; that we won't let them divide us and cause strife; and that those who waved the flag of "refusal to serve" over the IDF, and who violently disrupted the Yom Kippur prayers in Dizengoff Square, have lost their moral right to guide Israeli society and force their opinions upon us.
2. When it comes to the judicial and punitive measures leveled against the protestors, the "selective enforcement" cries out to the heavens in its injustice. The stench of the discrimination in favor of the left-wing protestors attests to a deep rot in the State Prosecution and the legal system. When Moshe Feiglin led civil protests, including road-blockings, 30 years ago against the Oslo Accords, the police cleared the roads very forcefully and quickly, and Feiglin was sentenced to six months of public service and a year on probation. Does anyone think there's a chance in the world that Shikma Bressler, a professor from Weizmann Institute who is using similar, but more acute, methodology in the current protests, will be prosecuted in the same way? No one on the left forgets to mention at every opportunity that Betzalel Smotrich was arrested by the Shabak on suspicion of wanting to light fires on the Ayalon Highway to protest the retreat from Gush Katif – but does anyone expect that those who lit the fires on Ayalon last month will sit even one day in a Shabak prison? Other examples abound, of course; the point is clear.
It appears that the judges have decided that the left-wing protests must be allowed to continue under all circumstances, while the law itself that prohibits, or at least inhibits, such acts must be enforced only against hareidim, right-wingers, Ethiopians, and other citizens who are not part of the "enlightened" camp.
3. This does not mean that there is never room for blocking roads as a means of protest. But this tool can be justified only when it is used in the correct proportions, in extreme cases, and of course when those who use it are willing to pay the legal price of doing so. Road-blockings, if carried out, must be a form of protest – not blackmail! Their objective must be to raise public awareness regarding an issue that has not found expression otherwise. But regarding the protests of the Kaplanists [those who protested against the government every week for months at the Kaplan Intersection in Tel Aviv, and who have now resumed this practice], there is no need to block roads in order to bring the issue to the public agenda – for it is in the public eye absolutely all the time, thanks to the many large media outlets that have enlisted for the cause.
And even when done for the right reasons, road-blockings must be for short periods of time. The idea is that they will be merely bothersome, but not cause misery or harm by forcing tens of thousands of drivers to be stuck in their cars for hours at a time. The Kaplanists and Brothers in Arms are not following these guidelines, nor are they willing to pay for their actions, and this is why the broad public is sick of their divisive and damaging tactics – especially in the midst of a war.
4. Under normal circumstances, "Brothers in Arms" should have disappeared from the public arena immediately following the Oct. 7th massacre. Anyone with eyes in his head saw that one of the reasons Hamas set out to slaughter us was because of the assumption that the IDF had been significantly weakened by the noisy threats of refusal to serve, led and inspired by the Brothers. The fact that in the event, many thousands who had threatened to abandon their country did not do so, and instead fought bravely against the enemy, does not atone for the acute blow to our deterrence that was caused by their threats.
In this war that was forced upon us, the sociological composition of the combat units was clearly seen in the list of IDF casualties, with a disproportionately high number of religious and Yesha-resident soldiers. This fact alone totally neutralizes the Brothers in Arms' arrogant claims that they speak in the name of those who bear the brunt of the war effort.
The leaders of Brothers in Arms would be well advised to sit in the corner in shame. If they wanted to contribute once the war started and take positive action on behalf of the country – perhaps in order to make up for the some of the damage they caused – they should not have done so under the logo of the organization that caused so much harm. Yes, they did some good things, but these were accompanied by a well-funded PR campaign that presented them as if they were the only body helping out during those difficult hours, and as if they had saved the country. Even if there were any truth to this claim, the bandages they offered us were much too small, in light of the tremendous wounds they caused us beforehand. They were actually just one body among very many that provided help without PR and the need to use their accomplishments for political gain.
5. Public personalities, including leading journalists and Religious-Zionist rabbis, rushed at the beginning of the war to embrace the left-wingers of Be'eri and Kfar Aza who paid such a heavy price. This was in the framework of their desire to increase brotherhood and unity. But they erred when they included in their embrace the leaders of Brothers in Arms as well, before receiving any type of commitment to refrain from again using the weapon of "refusal" in the future. Instead, the Brothers used their newly-gained legitimacy, including recognition by the Knesset Finance Committee as an organization with tax-deductible status, to return to their divisive and dangerous political activity - and during wartime at that.
A word to the well-meaning: Those who are not intimately familiar with the way these activists work, would be well-advised to utilize the services of those who follow them day-to-day so that they not fall into the trap of granting them legitimacy which they then use to harm the State of Israel.