They have been bred by an ardent admirer of the late "Rabbi" Meir Kahane, who was branded by the Israeli Supreme Court as a fascist. Their task is to protect the settlements and attack Palestinians. They are settler-dogs, or, rather, dog-settlers.
All our TV stations have reported on them at length and lauded their effectiveness and ardor.
All in preparation for "September."
SEPTEMBER IS not just the name of a month, the seventh in the old Roman calendar. It is the symbol of a terrible danger, an unspeakable existential menace.
In the next few weeks, the Palestinians will ask the UN to recognize the State of Palestine. They have already mustered a large majority in the General Assembly. After that, according to the official assessment of our army, all hell will break loose. Multitudes of Palestinians will rise, attack the "Separation" Wall, storm the settlements, confront the army, create chaos.
"The Palestinian Authority is planning a bloodbath," Avigdor Lieberman cheerfully asserted. And when Lieberman predicts violence, it would be unwise to ignore him.
For months now, our army has been preparing for just such an eventuality. This week it announced that it is training the settlers, too, and telling them exactly when they are allowed to shoot to kill. Thus it confirms what we all know: that there is no clear distinction between the army and the settlers -- many settlers are officers in the army, and many officers live in settlements. "The army defends all Israelis, wherever they are," is the official line.
One of the scenarios the army is preparing for, it was stated, is for Palestinians shooting at soldiers and settlers "from inside the mass demonstrations." That is an ominous statement. I have been at hundreds of demonstrations and never witnessed anyone shooting "from inside the demonstration." Such a person would have to be insanely irresponsible, since he would expose all the people around him to deadly retaliation. But it is a handy pretext for shooting at non-violent protesters.
It sounds so ominous, because it has happened already in the past. After the first intifada, which was considered a Palestinian success story (and brought about the Oslo agreement), our army diligently prepared for the second one. The chosen instruments were sharpshooters.
The second ("al-Aqsa") intifada started after the breakdown of the 2000 Camp David conference and Ariel Sharon's deliberately provocative "visit" to the Temple Mount. The Palestinians held non-violent mass demonstrations. The army responded with selective killings. A sharpshooter accompanied by an officer would take position in the path of the protest, and the officer would point out selected targets -- protesters who looked like "ringleaders." They were killed.
This was highly effective. Soon the non-violent demonstrations ceased and were replaced by very violent ("terrorist") actions. With those the army was back on familiar ground.
All in all, during the second intifada 4,546 Palestinians were killed, of whom 882 were children, as against 1,044 Israelis, 716 of them civilians, including 124 children.
I am afraid that the preparations for the third intifada, which is anticipated to start next month, are proceeding on the same lines. But the circumstances would be quite different. After the events in Egypt and Syria, Palestinian protesters may react differently this time, and the "bloodbath" may be much more severe. So will international and Arab reactions. I imagine posters condemning Binyamin al-Assad and Bashar Netanyahu.
But most Israelis are not worried. They believe that the entire scenario has been invented by Netanyahu as a trick to end the huge social protest movement that is rocking Israel. "The young protesters demand Social Justice and a Welfare State, like children demanding ice cream while disaster is lurking around the corner," as one of the colonels (ret.) put it.
THE SETTLERS and their dogs loom large in the upcoming scenarios.
That is quite logical, since the settlers now play a pivotal role in the conflict. It is they who prevent any peace agreement, or even meaningful peace negotiations.
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