A must-read column from Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to Ruth King): “Column One: The end of mythology”:
The deportation of the Jews from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria over the past week and a half and surrounding events have put paid to two of the foundational myths of the narrative that has been propounded for the past 30 years by the Israeli and international Left. In attempting to analyze these traumatic events in a manner that will — at least to a degree — mitigate the dangers to Israeli security that the expulsions have engendered, it is important to identify these myths and dispel them now. For if we do not do so, we will find ourselves, again, waging an uphill battle to dispel these lies after the next die has been cast in favor of still more Israeli retreats and expulsions — this time from Judea and Samaria.
And so, even as our souls cry out in pain as we stare wild-eyed at the sight of 8,000 Jewish patriots, transformed in a moment into homeless, wandering Jews in the Land of Israel, our duty is to soldier on and work to preempt further destruction.
The foundational myth of the Left is that Jewish extremism, not Palestinian terrorism, is the cause of Israel’s present security woes and the source of the constant wars that have plagued us since the dawn of modern Zionism. What we saw this week was that these people — whom one British reporter standing outside the synagogue in the now-ruined Neveh Dekalim so eloquently referred to last Thursday as “the hardest of the hard-line settlers” — are anything but extreme.
The expelled residents of Gush Katif — from the farmers of Atzmona, Katif, Netzarim, Netzer Hazani and Kfar Darom, the surfers and fishermen of Shirat Hayam, the Torah scholars of Neveh Dekalim and the mothers of Gadid — are not “hard-line” or “extremists.” They are the finest sons and daughters of Israel. They are the bravest soldiers in the IDF and the most patriotic citizens that Israel has produced.
Read it all. Please.