The Disengagement Lie

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
July 17, 2005

From the very day Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced his 
policy of disengagement from Gaza and portions of northern 
Samaria, Israelis have been asked to buy into a set of lies. 

First off, the media swallowed the phony "disengagement" term 
hook, line and sinker. Sharon's plan does not disengage anything 
or anyone. It plainly and simply calls for dismantling Jewish 
communities and the eviction of Jews from their houses. 

"Disengagement" is no less of a loaded term than "expulsion." 

The claim that the plan gets us out of Gaza is also nonsense. 
Some Israeli communities over the Green Line are closer to 
Arab population centers than those in Gaza itself. Netiv Ha'asara 
is closer to Gaza than Katif is to Khan Yunis. 

Polls have also distorted reality. From the very beginning they 
supposedly revealed that "a majority of Israelis" supported the 
disengagement plan. But the questions they were asked ignored 
reality. That is why, when asked "Are you for or against withdrawal 
under fire in the disengagement plan?" only 37 percent of 
respondents in a recent Maagar Mohot Institute survey supported 
disengagement.
That brings us to Sharon's lie that there will be no disengagement 
under fire. 

When does disengagement start? Champions of the expulsion 
bragged two weeks ago that it had already begun. Yet the dozens 
of mortar shells and rockets that have been lobbed in the past 
several days at Jewish communities in Gaza and the Western 
Negev make a mockery of Sharon's "no disengagement under 
fire" pledge. 

The IDF can force Jewish residents from Gush Katif and northern 
Samaria out of their homes in three weeks, it can put Gaza's 
Arab areas under siege, but all hell could easily break loose the 
day before, or the day after disengagement. 

Then there is the claim that the settlers are against the rest of 
the country. That, too, is a lie. A majority of disengagement 
opponents live inside the Green Line. 

Another distortion is that the Knesset passed the disengagement 
law; and thus its opponents are not honoring democracy. 
(Never mind that Sharon turned democracy inside out and 
twisted it out of shape.) 

The media is also part of the lie. No less than Nahum Barnea, 
one of Israel's leading Hebrew journalists, wrote in The Seventh 
Eye that the media have been "the guard dog of disengagement 
more than the guard dog of democracy." 

Yet, the media continue to do whatever they can to allow the 
government to trample democracy. Police have interfered with 
perfectly lawful attempts to demonstrate, for instance, stopping 
buses and cars and trying to force disengagement opponents 
to "break the law" by attempting to withdraw march permits. 

The latest lie is Sharon's vow to deal with violence in our society. 
He made the promise in a speech to the same police which, 
only a few days before, was chastised at a Knesset committee 
for brutality. The media and leftist civil rights groups have turned 
a blind eye to the thug-like behavior of some police who, while 
rightfully arresting people who block roads, also manhandled 
girls and boys on the sidelines of such demonstrations as well as 
grown men for not showing their identity cards. 

Judges have jailed teenagers - without charge - for the same types 
of crime that labor leaders and truck drivers have committed on 
a larger scale. 

Is it any wonder that some soldiers refuse orders? Is it a wonder 
that children, my own children from the ages of 17 to eight, 
don't believe the authorities? 

My children are not dummies. They know that the judicial system 
has let government officials off the hook time after time. 
They know that the government is using the IDF to carry out a 
political plan. They know that Sharon got rid of an IDF chief of 
staff who disagreed with him. 

They know very well that the only difference between the hundreds 
of rockets and mortars that have fallen in the past few weeks and 
the ones that fell in Netiv Ha'asarot is that someone inside the 
Green Line got killed. They know that when their two friends were 
killed at Bet Haggai last month, the government did not retaliate.
The Big Lie of Oslo 2 is literally exploding in our faces.