Tel Aviv Occupation Espresso

Haaretz's Gideon Levy can't stand that anyone has a good word to say about settlers, which is why the following statement blew his mind.

"I love the settlers, they are the salt of the earth...the insufferable ease with which they are denigrated and harmed and the statements made against them is just disgusting." (Ha'aretz)

That statement was made by none other than Police Major General Shlomi Katbi, outgoing commander of the "Shai" region (Shomron and Yehuda; "West Bank").

Knowing the source of the denigration, he threw his barbs at Tel Aviv, who described his his words, "whose willingness to contribute to the state is one big zero."

Katbi, who will retire from the police force after 30 years of service, launched a lengthy verbal diatribe against "those who sit in Tel Aviv, park their jeeps on the sidewalk on Sheinkin Street, drink espresso with one foot resting on the other, and allow themselves to level criticism and to tell stories."

Personally, I know many people in Tel Aviv who do contribute to Israel -- but they aren't the ones castigating the settlers around the clock.

Gideon Levy spews out the following:

Tel Aviv is the oasis of normalcy in an insane country. Between the espresso and the SUV arise art, culture, finance, science, intellect, media, openness and a healthy (albeit insufficient) introspection of the State of Israel, without which it has no real backbone. May God protect Israel if, heaven forbid, it ever turns into Yitzhar: violent, isolated, conservative, religious and backward. May God protect it if the majority of its police officers think like Katabi. Yes, we sit with out legs crossed on Sheinkin Street, sip espresso, and some of us even park our SUVs on the sidewalk. But at least it's our sidewalk, not a stolen sidewalk that belongs to another nation.

It's time to call a spade a spade -- the Palestinians consider Giedon Levy a settler just as much as me. While the settlement I'm living in wasn't stolen from anyone, and was "State's Land" before 1967, without any private person living on it, Tel Aviv, and many of the Leftist hideouts in pre-1967 Israel were Arab villages.

Israel's founding was turbulent and difficult, but to dump all of Gideon Levy's guilt on the settlers is totally hypocritical.

Levy's "willingness to contribute to the state is one big zero"...as opposed to the settlers.


Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד