Why I Envy The Settlers

by Larry Derfner
The Jerusalem Post
January 13, 2005

As an Israeli leftist, I walk in the opposite direction from the 
settler movement. I have no use for its Jewish supremacist 
ideology, for its political and religious extremism, for its 
natural bent toward conspiracy theories and violence.

I'm not, of course, talking about every individual in the 
movement - I am talking about the driving personality traits of 
the movement as a whole.

But that goes only for the settlers' politics and religion. 
When I judge those true believers by the way they actually live 
their daily lives, by the kind of society or community they've 
built with one another, then as a leftist I can only admire them. 
More than that - I envy them.

In so many important ways, the ideological settlers live by what 
the Left claims to stand for, while the day-to-day life of the leftist 
"community" in Israel is a mockery of its own supposed principles.

I ask myself: If I were stranded in the desert and only one car 
was going to come by, who would I prefer to be in it - a family of 
religious settlers from Beit El or a post-Zionist Ph.D student from 
Tel Aviv University? There's no question.

When it comes to going out of their way to help others, the settlers 
are just world-beaters, while leftists live their own lives, they're 
individualists, they like their privacy to think their own thoughts.

Giving of yourself to help the other guy is supposed to be a core 
value of the Left. Who lives it, and who doesn't?

And what about materialism and status seeking? The Left is 
supposed to have an alternative to the Western obsession with 
"things," with taste-mongering, with always climbing some ladder, 
and that alternative is supposed to be about forgetting the old ego 
a little and dedicating your life to some larger, selfless principles.

Where do you find more of that - in Ofra or Ramat Hasharon?

Now how about the mother of all contemporary leftist ideals - 
multiculturalism, also known as inclusiveness? Go to a Peace Now 
rally and all you will find are Ashkenazim, white people - 99 percent, 
no exaggeration. University types, all of them.

It's not, God forbid, that working-class Mizrahim aren't welcome - 
in fact, if a contingent from Shlomi or Yeroham wanted to come to 
Kikar Rabin, I'm sure Peace Now would charter helicopters to bring 
them and take them back. But the fact remains that only 
well-educated, mainly bourgeois Ashkenazim go to these things.

Now take a stroll through the crowds at the settlers' anti-disengagement 
tent camp outside the Knesset. You'll see almost nothing but Orthodox; 
but within this religious, right-wing Jewish community there is no one 
class or ethnic group. There are Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, there are 
even Ethiopians, the poorest of Israeli Jews, whom you never see at 
a left-wing rally. Classwise, some of these protesters look refined, 
some look rough.

There's the same "multicultural inclusiveness" seen at every giant 
right-wing rally. True, the crowd is virtually all religious, and there 
are no Arabs. But at the peace rallies there are no Arabs either, 
except for the occasional guest speaker, and virtually everyone is 
secular.

So where do you go if you want to see a real left-wing demographic 
picture - the rainbow nation, the human mosaic, The People? 
Do you go to Jerusalem or North Tel Aviv?

Once the Left had laborers and farmers on its side; now all it's got 
is intellectuals. The Left once had its own version of the settlements - 
a living showcase, a model community of down-to-earth people, 
a way of life built on left-wing principles.

It was called the kibbutz movement, and for the last generation there 
has been no more demoralized community in this country. 
The kibbutzim ditched the "we" for the "me" with an eagerness 
unmatched outside the former Soviet republics.

Kibbutzniks don't dance and sing around the campfire anymore. 
If you want dancing and singing, you have to go to the settlements, 
to Jerusalem, to the gatherings of the Orthodox. That's where you'll 
feel the spirit, the warmth, the togetherness - not in the academic, 
"free professional," elite circles of the Left.

It is right-wing Orthodox Jews who are the true Israeli masses. 
Today, they are the ones making a noise that sounds like the cry of 
humanity. The only noise leftists are making is restaurant chatter.

In the battle for Israel's future this year, the Right will be a multicultural, 
inclusive presence on the street, while the comfortable, Ashkenazi Left 
will be indoors. We'll let the army and police handle this.

But for all the above, I don't want anybody to misunderstand - I'm not 
switching sides, not at all. Right is right and wrong is wrong, and the 
settler movement is wrong, and destructive, and we can't go on like this. 
I seriously hope that scores of settlements ultimately get taken down 
and that the ideology of the movement gets defeated.

But if that happens, I also hope the human and communal spirit of the 
settlements lives and grows - over here, on the Left's side of the 
Green Line. If the settlers were to resettle and rededicate themselves 
inside the borders of a democratic, Jewish country, I, as an Israeli leftist, 
would no longer see them as an obstacle to anything.

Instead, I'd see them as role models, as an inspiration. Even as heroes.