I have had serious misgivings about the Disengagement from the very outset. Not because I have a problem with the evacuation of settlers from the Gaza Strip - I am all for territorial concessions, especially if they bring peace. My misgivings are more to do with the unilateral nature of the step, and the lack of coordination with the Palestinians.
Now that the Disengagement is happening, I am beginning to think that it might not be such a bad thing. Over the last thirty years or more, the Settler Movement have had it all their own way. The Gaza Disengagement, however, has exposed the grotesqueness and fanaticism at the very core of the settler enterprise, and has laid it bare for the Israeli public (and the rest of the world) to see.
The sight of little settler children and their parents wearing orange stars and holding their hands up as they were taken away by soldiers was certainly morally repugnant. To even suggest that there can be comparison between the Disengagement and the Holocaust is bordering on Holocaust denial. More than that, however, it trivializes the settler cause, precisely because there can be no comparison. Instead of creating sympathy, these settlers just invited ridicule.
Throughout the day, we have seen pictures of settler children being exploited by their parents for all it is worth, as a means to elicit sympathy. We even saw a bearded gentleman dangling his baby out of the window, ala Michael Jackson. I personally found these images appalling, and I started to wonder whether this whole struggle has crippled the settler movement as a whole in the eyes of the Israeli public. Israelis en masse will start to ask themselves why they are putting their lives at risk to defend such fanatics living in some hilltop settlement, or even in somewhere like Shilo or Beit El.
During the Second Intifada, the Settler Movement emphasized the importance of the idea of Lehitnahel Bilvavot -" to settle in the hearts of the Israeli people". It seems to me,however, that they have cut themselves off from the heart of the mainstream Israeli public.
