Arutz Sheva News Service <http://www.a7.org>
October 18, 1999 - Cheshvan 8, 5760

Singing to Victory

Almost 6,000 people participated in a demonstration last night, organized by the Dor Hemshekh (Next Generation) movement, against the evacuation of the Yesha outposts. Dor Hemshekh leader Hevron Shilo addressed his public remarks to Prime Minister Barak: "If you continue along this path of destruction, Honorable Prime Minister, we will be forced to begin a struggle - a just struggle, but responsible; tolerant, but determined. People ask us how we will struggle. I call upon everyone, every outpost that is to be evacuated, to come with musical instruments. We will sit on the roads and sing, we will stand next to the tractors and we'll dance. No one can promise us victory here and now. But a Jew who knows how to sing his faith, a Jew who can sing for his Land and who can sing for his G-d, can rest assured that in the end, his faith will emerge victorious."

Shimon Riklin, head of Dor Hemshekh, said that many young people had requested to join the outposts, and that he was surprised to see that many of them were "bare-headed, except for their long hair..." Yechiel Chamdi, Secretary of Kokhav HaShachar and a resident of the scheduled-to-be-evacuated outpost of K'ramim, read aloud a chapter of Psalms.

MK Nachum Langental (NRP) told HaTzofeh correspondent Chani Luz that he was opposed to the rally because "it creates rifts in Israeli society and distances the settlement enterprise from the national consensus." MK Meir Porush, head of the United Torah Judaism party, disagreed. Speaking against the evacuation of the outposts at a different gathering last night, Porush said, "Whoever thinks that even the evacuation of some of the outposts will put an end to the demands by Arafat, is simply mistaken. After the outposts will come a demand for the settlements. And after that, may G-d preserve us, will come a demand for the return of millions of refugees. And then will come a return to the 1967 borders, what the statesman Abba Eban called nothing less than 'Auschwitz borders.'"

Uri Ariel, Mayor of Beit El and chairman of the National Union's Tekumah movement (and next on the party's list to enter the Knesset, following Tzvi Hendel), took the middle ground: "Like any compromise, no one comes away totally satisfied. I can assure you that no one in the Yesha Council recited the Shehecheyanu blessing afterwards... It is the right of the residents to protest, and it is even a good thing - I don't think that [this compromise] should pass without a reaction from us. But at the same time, we must remember that the struggle should be just, and not pass certain lines - there should not even be verbal violence."

The Israeli Media said the demonstration was an incitement [for political assassination] and that the demonstrators and the Rabbies did not learn the lesson of late PM assassinated Ytzchak Rabin (za"l).

Every word against the left-wing government policy is decribed as incitement by the Israeli media and the left wing parties.
Is the freedom of speech in danger in Israel ?