Religious extremists threaten violence

[financeguy]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22630438/

"They can drag us away a hundred times and we'll come back," said Landesberg, 18, who like many religious Jews wears a yarmulke and long, curled sideburns. "And if the army wants to stay and guard it, then we win, because if the Israeli army is here, the land is being occupied by Jews."

The young 'settler' went a bit of off-message, he was supposed to say it's necessary to take the land in order to protect themselves from terrorists.

 

[yolland]

The very name of his settlement means "my people return," which pretty much spells out that preventing terrorism is not its inhabitants' top priority. Unfortunately, the settler movement and self-identified 'nationalist-religious' are increasingly becoming overrepresented within the IDF itself--the proportion of recruits they account for has increased more than 40% over the last several years, and while still only 9% of Israel's total population, they now comprise about a third or more of IDF combat forces and more than that of combat officers--because their birthrate is high and so is their motivation to serve, because the only other Jewish sector with a comparably high birthrate (the haredim or ultra-Orthodox) remain exempt from service altogether, because increasing numbers of other young Israelis evade the draft not through the conscientious objector route but by moving to another country for several years or claiming psychological unfitness. And if recent evacuation operations in Gaza, Hebron and Amona plus the assessments of commanders at the training academies are any indication, these settler/nationalist-religious soldiers simply cannot be relied upon to comply with evacuation orders--which creates a huge problem for the IDF, as they have so many of them in their ranks.

 

[AchtungBono]

I'm deeply appalled and ashamed of my fellow countrymen who break the law in the name of so-called ideology.

The dream of "a greater Israel" is no longer a reality. Like it or not, we have over a million Palestinians living next door to us and who aren't going anywhwere....and neither are we.

It's time to stop these provocative acts, shanghai the leaders of both sides, sit them down in a locked room and not let them out till they reach a settlement.

.....I'm kidding of course but you know what I mean.

During the period of "The separation" = the unillateral withdrawal of Israel from the Gaza strip, I used to ride the train every morning and see the religious youth with their backpacks adorned with orange ribbons (which was a symbol of their resistance to the withdrawal). Every time I saw one of them I wanted to shake them and try to knock some sense into their heads.

What these settlers don't understand that they're not helping Israel - quite the opposite - their actions are specifically meant to stall and hinder any future peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and in my opinion they're just postponing the inevitable because a Palestinian state WILL arise eventually, with territorial compromise attached to it, and there's nothing that can be done about it.

I'd rather dismantle 10 illegal settlements than have to treat the wounds of one injured child whose house was shelled in Sderot, or a child living in Gaza who was mistakenly wounded or killed by an Israeli airstrike aimed at the Hamas and Jihad terrorists (who deliberately hide among the civilian populace).

Peace is paramount to me and must be achieved by every safe and secure means possible.