Also in yesterday's Ha'Aretz a piece by Gideon Samet about the way in which people like Yehudah Etzion and dangerous zealots are ridiculed by many and taken seriously by only a few. Samet also condemns the easy use of the word Shoah/Holocaust in Israeli politics and society, and about the - ironic - similarity of idiom between some of those who most often use Holocaust-related comparisons and the most vicious and successful haters of the Jewish people: "the sanctity of land, the spine of the nation, the weakness of the regime, the need for spiritual redemption, a romantic return by the people to its holy values, and the knife the government is stabbing into the back of the settlers". If men such as Etzion were Arabs, Samet rightly states, they already would have been jailed or killed. He concludes: "When the extremists of the land insist on speaking about a fifth Holocaust, it's best to pay close attention. It is very possible that they, under the nose of a complacent nation, will be the ones who make it happen".

 

PS: Always, on pictures of this or that demonstration by the Temple Mount Faithful, nearly all participants look quite old. It seems that if I was to join them I would lower their average age by about a year or so ( at a high estimate of 30 demonstrators and a low estimate of their average age, 66 ). Could it be that these are just some people who realize that their chances of seeing redemption with their own eyes are slim, and therefore they are keen to speed-start the redemption process? No really, I should not ridicule them and take these men and women more seriously.