The Oslo Generation comes of age in Israel at Beit HaShalom

The Oslo Generation. They are a generation of Israelis who were born or grew up in the shadow of Oslo. Teenagers and twenty somethings whose disconnect with ordinary Israelis comes from growing up with a separate history.

They have never seen the strong Israel which defended its citizens and its land. They have never seen the IDF unleashed in a last ditch effort to turn back the enemy. They have never seen the Israel which was built out of the dust into a resolute independent nation with its own culture and heritage.

Instead what they have seen in the Shadow of Oslo, the agreements which gave Arafat a terrorist state inside Israel and set off two wars, one of the Palestinian Authority against Israel, and one by the Israeli government against Zionism, is a far different dark mirror of Israel. The Israel they have seen is a weakened nation slavishly waiting at the beck and call of Washington, London and Moscow. They have seen government after government come to give guns to the murderers of its soldiers and jail cells to Jewish farmers. They have seen a nation which has turned appeasing terrorists into its highest moral and political virtue, and treated Zionism as a crime.

And now at Beit HaShalom, that fragment of the Oslo Generation which has not been lost to drugs and numbing apathy of an exported European and American party culture, which has not tried to escape into frenzied entrepreneurship and refused to accept the crooked way as the corrupt way, is fighting back and coming of age.

Beit HaShalom, the House of Peace, part of the land that is the ancient heritage of the Jewish people, bought legally from its Arab owner, has been targeted for eviction has nevertheless been ordered by a left wing government in order to orchestrate this very crisis.

Israel's unpopular left wing government which is facing new elections has turned to the time honored tradition of manufacturing a crisis in order to declare a war on Jewish "Right Wing Extremism", so that even while Livni and Barak free more Arab terrorists, they can appear to be defending the nation against the real threat of "Right Wing Extremists".

But this time they may have badly miscalculated. Not because they won't succeed in evicting the residents of Beit Hashalom. With enough force directed at the problem, they will no doubt succeed. But in doing so they are walking down a very dangerous path, because amid the injustice, oppression and violence directed at their efforts to preserve the Land of Israel, the Oslo Generation is coming of age.

The pro-government press and the tabloids are full of hysterical headlines fulminating over the "Hilltop Youth", calling them extremists and accusing them of perpetrating a "pogrom" against Hebron Arab, while not bothering to report that a 16 year old Jewish boy lies in the hospital in critical condition with a crushed skull, a victim of the press' pet Arabs.

Even some in the Zionist camp complain that they are ragged, undisciplined and violent. They say that they don't listen to the Rabbis or to any leadership, but act on their own. And that of course is true, since every form of leadership on the right has either been discredited by its appeasement of the left, or has discredited itself by failing to achieve even the most modest goals. So if the Youth don't listen to the leaders and to the Rabbis, it is perhaps because they have nothing to say worth listening to, except the same old mantra that comes down to turning the other cheek.


While some older and wiser heads in the Religious Zionist camp lapse into apathy, or expect that the shortly expected coming of the Messiah will resolve all their problems, relying on Autistic children for prophecies, and await miracles instead of acting, thus reversing G-d's curt reply to Moshe at the Yam Suf, "Why do you cry to me? Speak to the children of Israel and let them go forward", the Youth following that original command all these thousands of years later, and they go forward.

For those truly old enough the cries of "Hoodlums", "Violent Extremists" and "Criminals" directed at the Youth should sound familiar enough. They were after all the very same cries directed at the Youth of Etzel and Lehi when they fought against Arab Terrorism and the British to redeem the land of Israel.

The Oslo Generation parallels the Mandate Generation that grew up under British rule and watched as their land was subdivided further and further, and transferred into Arab hands, watched Arab riots and atrocities grow by leaps and bounds unpunished, and finally lost for leadership, began to act on their own.

They were condemned on all sides, maligned, hunted, imprisoned and executed. And yet on the issue that mattered most, a free Israel, they prevailed. And in those freedom fighters, those "Thugs", "Hoodlums"and "Extremists" became Prime Ministers and the future of Israel.

As the Oslo Generation comes off age in a period that has seen far too many echos of the Mandate, and that now threatens to usher in a new Bevingrad in a once again divided Jerusalem, enforced by foreign troops, their time may now be here.

The Likud and the right have once again failed to offer any real political alternative. Rather than being prepared to end the terrorism and terminator Oslo, Netanyahu and Yaalon continue to echo the same "Peace with Security" rhetoric, followed by proposals to hold the PA accountable while arming and equipping it. Israel's master statesmen who are supposed to represent the Zionist line, can brilliantly state the problem and then propose to dust off the same failed policies that even they admit will not solve it.

With Sharon's coup that dealt mortal wounds to Israel's two major parties while illegally seizing power in an office he was not elected to, followed by the frame up of Israel's President in a fraudulent sex scandal allowing Peres to take his office, and the implosion of the right wing parties in a haze of egos and political maneuverings, the Oslo Generation has naturally concluded that politics represents a political dead end. They have no faith in Israel democracy because if Israeli democracy is not quite dead, it is on life support. So instead they have chosen direct action.

They have tried non-violent protest and were beaten bloody for it and imprisoned on indefinite sentences. They have tried settling the land, and had their caravans destroyed, their water supplies sabotaged and their crops destroyed by Left Wing thugs and Arabs. If they turn to violence, it is not because they have not already exhausted every other measure.

When Kadima and Labor politicians preach sanctimoniously about respect for the army, it is an obscenely hypocritical display from the political liars, traitors and thieves who sent out unprepared soldiers without clothing, food or equipment to face Hizbullah terrorists in Lebanon a few short years ago. The same liars and thieves who pocketed the money from contractors who never delivered, who raped the Israeli army by directing it against its fellow citizens and left them unready and untrained to fight in Lebanon, who politicised the IDF's officers and generals, firing any and all who did not comply with their Anti-Zionist ideology and agenda.

That the same despicable political scum who sent IDF soldiers to throw their own family members out of their homes, turned IDF personnel into sex symbols in the name of tourism dollars and who throughout Oslo have armed and equipped the very terrorists who time and time again have murdered IDF soldiers, dare to open their mouths and preach about respect for the army is nothing short of an abomination.

When Peres, the grandfather of lies, opens his mouth and proclaims that whoever throws a stone at a soldier, throws a stone at the nation... one must ask, what of the Fatah terrorists on his friend Arafat's payroll who did not merely throw stones at Israeli soldiers, but shot bullets, planted bombs and murdered them with weapons provided by Peres' government.

And what of Barak, self-proclaimed Soldier No. 1, who abandoned IDF soldiers fighting and dying at Joseph's Tomb in Shechem. What of those soldiers who died riddled with bullets waiting for help while Arafat's gunmen shot into the air outside. If only the dead could speak, what a terrible tale they would tell.

If one who throws a stone at an IDF soldier has thrown a stone at the nation, then what should we make of the likes of Peres and Barak, whose greedy hands are stained red with the blood of countless soldiers.

No the Youth have little time and patience for listening to the empty sanctimony of those whose actions have brought bus bombings across Israel and bulldozer attacks into Jerusalem, rockets into Ashkelon and turned Sderot into a ghost town. And as little time for listening to calls of inaction. They are in the field because they understand what few of their elders do, that there are no other alternatives.

They have grown up in a country corrupted and co opted by the left, under governments that have turned their back on Jewish and Zionist values, in favor of appeasing terrorists and their Western allies. They see clearly with the focus of youth, and they are willing to make great sacrifices for their ideals, to go to prison, to be beaten, to risk life and limb for the land of Israel. And in doing so they have become the true Tzahal, the true Israeli Defense Forces.

The IDF once evolved from watchmen who protected Jewish farmers from Arab raiders, from Jewish militias who protected Jewish neighborhoods from Arab rioters, from patriotic and national groups loosely organized but determined to fight for a Jewish state. It may evolve that way again.

They are not shining untarnished heroes good and pure. No more so than the youth who made up Etzel and Lehi's recruits were. No more so than those who fought for Soviet Jewry in the 60's or the Macabees themselves. Heroes are not born made of sterling silver, they are refined by the choices they make and defined by the actions they take.

Kadima and Labor now go down a very dark and dangerous road, the path of revolt. Because the Oslo Generation is coming of age, and they have the same relationship to the government that the Mandate Youth did to the Yishuv. The Kadima-Labor Kleptocracy are confident that they have no shortage of batons and prisons to deal with the problem, but they have learned very little, even from recent history.

At each step their brutality and outrages against democracy and any notion of a just civil society have radicalized the opposition. And when you radicalize the opposition, the broad pillar on which the temple of democracy rests crumbles and what emerges is a sharp blade. In Gush Katif and at Amona, Olmert and his minions demonstrated the decisive use of force against a civilian population. And so they no longer face a purely civilian population protesting against the government, but something in between.

The Youth of today were shaped by Amona, shaped by the ethnic cleansing at Gush Katif, by the imprisonment of their friends and the brutality of Olmert's thugs. Batons and prisons will only radicalize them further. And as the process persists, they will go into prisons as teenagers and emerge as soldiers. It is not a process exclusive or unique to Israel, but one that could be seen in Czarist Russia or Ireland or in a hundred other places around the world. The Kadima Kleptocracy is arrogantly sharpening a sword, and are too in love with their own hysterical propaganda about the dangers of right wing extremism to contemplate the possibility that they might someday face a genuine Jewish uprising, rather than a phony incident or two staged by their own agent provocateurs in time for a national election.

Only time will tell whether we are moving toward Lexington and Concord or a Whiskey Rebellion. And only time will tell whether Israel will survive it all.

But if the older and wiser heads who frown at the Youth want them to listen, they must speak less of love and more of victory. Their tactics have failed, and if they are to harness that great energy of the Oslo Generation which can be seen on the hilltops or among Beitar Jerusalem fans, they must speak directly and to the point and provide leadership for the greater struggle against the Arab and the Left's war on Israel. Nothing else will suffice.


As an afterword, let me close once again with the opening of Elnakam by Ezra Yakhin

It was just another cold winter morning when I set out for work at the Jaffa Road Central Post Office. Lightly running down the steps of our house in the Machane Yehuda Quarter, I left Tachikimoni Lane and turned into Jaffa Road, which was at that hour humming with children, some carrying school bags and others, like me, hurrying to their place of work.

A quick flick of the hand to brush my uniform - the dark blue suit of a messenger boy in the Postal Service of the Government of Palestine (Eretz Yisrael), a pat along the scarlet piping running down the length of my pants, a final adjusting of my cap to the desired angle - and I was all set for the office from which, riding a red bike, i would begin my day's work.

A large crowd pressing around the billboard besides Oplataka's Pharmacy caught my eye, their breath steaming in the cold morning air as they stood reading a large placard. Curious, I pushed my way among them eager for a look. It said;

To the Hebrew youth of Zion

A Temporary Hebrew government must be proclaimed immediately...
Raise a Hebrew army... admit the Jews of Europe into Israel... Damn all traitors and down with the cowards... do not obey any orders issued by the foreign governments... break them and swear to obey Hebrew rule alone.

The mass demonstrations against the White Paper held when I was just eleven years old came to mind. At that time unbeliveable rumors of the devastation of European Jewry had begun filtering through to us, becoming progressively more terrifying as the truth began to emerge, and the cold indifference of the British, adamant in their refusal to admit more than a handful of survivors to the country was more than flesh and blood could bear.

With the beginning of the demonstrations I had hoped that the people would rise and rebel against the tyranny, just as they had done in the glorious days of Yehuda the Maccabee and Bar Kochba, driving the alien rulers from the land. That was four years ago, four years of frustration and a growing sense of helplessness. But now? Would my compatriots content themselves with high sounding slogans printed on bill boards, or was the proclamation I had just read the long awaited harbinger of rebellion?

Politics held little interest me at the time, nor was I especially attracted to any single party. It never occurred to me to ask who was responsible for the proclamations -- enough that the struggle had begun, and I followed each development with breathless eagerness.