Being a Hilltop Youth

I would like to invite you for a tour of a kind you have not held before. This is a guided tour in the head of the hilltop youth who threw a stone this week at IDF officers. This will not make his action more legitimate or less terrible, but it will explain a few things that cannot be disregarded as if they did not exist.

Six years ago, his friends and relatives were expelled from Gush Katif. A military bulldozer destroyed their home. This happened despite the fact that in the democratic elections, the people chose the opposite political approach, but no one cared about this. The media, which were always described to him as the defenders of democracy, applauded the move.

For years he has lived under Palestinian terror that is not felt at all in Tel Aviv. Several of his neighbors in the settlement were murdered. Others were injured. He and his friends are attacked by stones and firebombs to this day, but nothing of this succeeds in making it into the news.

The Tel Aviv press is more interested in the olive tree of Ahmed the Palestinian from the nearby village than it is interested in the bleeding head of his neighbor, the eighteen month old baby. He knows that extreme left wingers riot every Friday in Bilin, Naalin and Nebi Salah. That they throw stones at IDF soldiers. Not just once, but every week. “If you’re so concerned about the safety of the soldiers,” he wonders, “why don’t you attack them this strongly too?” But there is no answer.

He sees how the media regard the riots of the Israeli Arabs with understanding and seeks a bit of this for himself as well. After all, he is also a citizen here. His father is a civil servant. His brother serves in a combat unit. “The Arabs are deprived,” people explain to him, “that is a completely different matter.”

He sees gravestones of Jews shattered every day on the Mount of Olives, and tries to understand how no news flash tells about this, while the latest graffiti that he sprayed featured in the main headlines. When he utters a word against the law or against a High Court ruling, he is made into an anarchist. “Hello, this is a state of law,” he is reprimanded in articles. “Fine,” he replies. “But why is it permissible for you? Why is it that when you don’t like the Grunis bill, the NPOs bill or the anti-defamation law, you can mock it and incite against it?”

And then he comes to Ramat Gilad. A plot of land purchased about 30 years by Moshe Zar, a 90-percent disabled person, mostly due to an eye that he lost in the Suez Campaign while wearing an IDF uniform, and the rest of his disability as a result of a murder attempt by a Palestinian. Zar paid the Arab land owner and has been cultivating the land for decades, but now the extreme left wing argues, with the support of the State Attorney’s Office, that since the deal was not registered properly, this is private Palestinian land.

Zar, the state demands, must evacuate the settlement he built on it, which bears the name of his son, a major in reserves and father of eight, who was murdered in a terror attack. “But I bought the land,” Zar cries out, “I want to see one Palestinian who says that it is his.” The thing is that there is no such Palestinian.

In Ramat Gan, no one will ever be evicted on the grounds of trespassing, unless someone comes and asserts that his property has been trespassed upon. With the settlers, everything is permissible. And this hilltop youth sees how Moshe Zar tries to bring his very simple story before the media and fails. And he sees how this 74-year old man sits with his wife opposite the Prime Minister’s Residence, in order to express his protest, and the press is unwilling to listen.

The youth observes all this and is beside himself with grief. He was taught about a free press. About democracy. “Where are all these when it comes to me?” he asks. And yet, there is no one there to respond. He looks around and sees dozens of Palestinian houses built illegally and without the necessary permits. “Why is nothing done when it comes to them,” he seeks to know.

And yet, there is no answer to this. And neither is there some curious reporter who will raise a discussion on the issue. But when the delusional idea of declaring the hilltop youth a “terror organization” is raised and subsequently rejected by the prime minister, all these reporters are quick to pounce on him in a fit of rage. They are always curious when it comes to such matters, these journalists who just two weeks ago, declared for the God knows what time, that Israeli journalism must do some soul searching over its partisanship and one-sidedness. A soul searching that will apparently have to wait for a new opportunity.

And so this confused, scarred and hurt hilltop youth observes and loses faith. In the state. In the media. In the court. In the democracy all these institutes proclaim in vain. The vast majority of his friends, miraculously and admirably, reach the age of 18, bite their lips and enlist en masse to the Naval Commando or Golani Commando. Some of them, who were also once called anarchists, and who people like Fuad say ought to be shot, are buried in his settlement’s military cemetery.

He, however, has failed to overcome his feelings. The insult. The pain. He believes he has learned the lesson he has been taught by these knights of democracy. “There are rules to the game,” they tell him, “only they don’t apply to you. For you there are other rules.”

And when this is the message, let us not be surprised, that much to our detriment, the stone is the only means this youth has to fight this feigned democracy.