"Wat do you say about Amona?” my friend asked me as we were walking home from Maariv last week.

“Well it’s a tragedy it hurts but it’s also sobering ” I told him. “It’s an eye-opener if you’re willing to learn from it.”

“How about explaining that?”

“Even the ones who holed themselves up in the shul?”

“Never mind them. Every community has its wild ones. They were screaming at the police to disobey orders while they themselves were disobeying the instructions of their rabbanim. Don’t let them spoil the amazing impression that all the others left me with the ones who listened to their rabbanim and kept it non-violent….”

“To see Jews forcibly thrown out of their homes in Eretz Yisrael is horrible. The heart can’t accept it. I cried at the sight of that young mother with a baby in her arms kissing the mezuzah at her front door for the last time and putting the baby’s hand up to the mezuzah too. And to think that now she’ll be schlepping from place to place without a real home left only with assurances from the government that probably won’t come to much in reality.”

“Yes but beyond feelings beyond this natural empathy what else do you say about this traumatic event? You always seem to put a new twist on these things.”

“Well there is what to say and I’m sure I’m going to draw fire for saying this: Amona was trapped finding itself in an untenable situation that has its roots in the very founding of the state.”

“Why because of the Supreme Court?”

“Who cares about the Supreme Court? The words of scorn they deserve shouldn’t even be put in print. No I’m talking about what came out in the court case that the court decided to consider the legitimacy of the complaint of some Arab from the Judean village of Silwad claiming ownership of a small section of the yishuv — who by the way was sought out as a claimant by the far-left Yesh Din.”

“What? I don’t understand.”

“Listen the destruction of Amona was probably a sham and those Arabs and leftists did a good PR job. But there’s another narrative that emerged a general feeling among a certain segment of the population that it doesn’t matter what a non-Jew in Eretz Yisrael claims. Now I’m not chas v’shalom referring to the residents of Amona who didn’t steal anything but we’re talking about a basic theoretical principle. While it’s true that Eretz Yisrael — all of it — is ours and no one else has rights over it it’s also true that within Eretz Yisrael a non-Jew can legally purchase land as a citizen and according to Hashem’s justice if the land is his then we have no right to take it from him without compensation. We’re not talking about war or the law of eminent domain which is a legitimate right of all governments but that doesn’t mean that a Jew can just throw a non-Jew off land that he purchased. According to the halachah you can even buy him out on Shabbos but you still have to pay.

“Over the last week since the destruction of Amona I’ve heard frum Jews claiming otherwise but I don’t know where they learned that from. Even Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook z”l the spiritual father of the settlements in Judea and Samaria told the people of Gush Emunim that they must respect the individual rights of our Arab enemies. Because the Jewish People are required to act differently. One mitzvah such as the mitzvah of yishuv ha’aretz doesn’t cancel out other mitzvos.”

“So are you accusing the Jews of Amona of robbery?”

“Chas v’shalom! Those hostile organizations that worked with such dedicated fervor to dig up this Arab who claims ownership of the land weren’t motivated by pursuit of justice. They just wanted to sabotage the Jewish settlements. And the Arab plaintiff isn’t a tzaddik who is only seeking restoration of his property. On the day Amona fell he announced that this was only the beginning and that they were going to liberate all of Palestine telling the Jews of Amona to go back to Europe.”

“Wait — aren’t you contradicting yourself?”

“Not at all. We’re dealing with two different sugyos. First there’s the moral aspect as defined by the Torah — that of Jews living on land whose legal status is questionable. That has to be resolved. Then there’s the sugya of the self-styled pursuers of justice on the left who were supposedly defending the rights of the robbed Palestinian. But they’d do better to keep quiet because after the war of 1948 their kibbutzim in the Galilee took over Arab fields and villages and forcibly annexed them to their righteous kibbutzim.

“So then who is to blame?”

“The government of Israel going years back to the days of “bulldozer” Arik Sharon and before. The government that didn’t have the sense first of all to put Jewish settlements only on state-owned lands. In their arrogance they didn’t take into account the risk that one day someone might bring a claim. But it all boils down to their twisted reasoning for Jews having legitimate rights here in the first place — which has nothing to do with security or a shelter for anti-Semitism.”

“So what should the government have done?”

“The State of Israel since its inception has a basic weakness. It hasn’t got the courage to stand up and tell the world that this land is ours by virtue of G?d’s decree and to declare publically that even if we agree to a two-state solution that’s a compromise on our part for the sake of avoiding war and bloodshed. But they can’t proclaim that because they don’t believe in it. And therefore they have no diplomatic backbone dragging their feet when it comes to international politics. But if they had that strength of conviction they could have pushed through a nice compensation package to that alleged owner of the land. The only reason it can’t be worked out in that manner here is that the government even the right-wing government is very poor in Jewish self-awareness. Their subservience to Western thinking doesn’t allow them to present themselves as Jews with a proud heritage backing them up and since their identity is so vague the world perceives them as weak and lacking conviction and ideals. And that left plenty of room for our enemies within the nation to bring Amona to court. The State couldn’t save Amona now after years of neglect and hoping that no one would notice.”

“And what now?”

“What now? Obviously the Eirev Rav among us won’t rest on its laurels. It will continue using Israel’s Supreme Court to try and uproot settlement after settlement. And on the face of it considering the present weak right-wing government and the national mood there’s every reason to think they will succeed.”

“So that’s your gloomy prediction?”

“I’ll just share this with you: One of the women who was forced out of her home said ‘The Borei Olam is the One who manages everything.’ And that’s it exactly. Think about it: Three times the State of Israel has retreated from parts of Eretz Yisrael destroying settlements that were built with toil sweat and love. In Begin’s time it was Rafiach Yamit and Atzmona. Okay you can make a case that it was in return for peace with Egypt. The second time it was Gush Katif. To this day it’s shocking how Arik Sharon who built up the settlements destroyed that flourishing community and let it turn into a wasp’s nest of terrorism. And now this third time the most right-wing government we’ve had yet has destroyed one of its own settlements. These events make it pretty clear that the Geulah isn’t here yet that we’re still in galus even in Israel.

“The pasuk in Yeshayahu says ‘And nations shall go by your light and kings by the brilliance of your shine’ but it hasn’t happened yet. For now we’re still going by their light.” —