Face it, he did something as an elected PM and he did it despite his right wing roots. Olmert, not Barak, offered to internationalize Jerusalem.

I will demonize any person who undermines the integrity and impartiality of the IDF. Right now, we are discussing right wingers who seem to be Hesder soldiers. I am not demonizing all of these soldiers and I am not demonizing all settlers, but I am most definitely demonizing those who participate in these actions that undermine the IDF and Israel.

I agree that Israeli academia and the courts are dominated by the Left. The courts have some serious impact, the academics less so. The media, however, has plenty of people from the Right writing and broadcasting.

Finally, this business of “elites” really pisses me off. You sound like the feminist who blames everything bad on the male-dominated-whatever-it-is-she’s-interested-in, the Mizrahi who blames everything bad on the Ashkenazi-dominated-whatever-it-is-he’s-pissed-off-about, the settler who blames everything bad on the kibbutznik-dominated-whatever-it-is-he’s-pissed-off-about, the Republican twit who blames everything bad on the Democratic-dominated-whatever-it-is-she-wants-to-bitch-about, etc.

Give me a break. It’s not all black and white. The only thing here that has no shade of gray is that these young soldiers, egged on by settler leaders and funded by settlement supporters, are literally tearing apart the fabric of the IDF from within. None of your excuses make this black into gray or white. It needs to be stopped now, harshly. Then steps need to be taken to wean these combat units from these wackos.

RE: Sharon – please don’t be so disingenuous. We all know that Sharon rolled over the will of his voters, the Likud, and the rule of law to carry out the expulsion – and the people who claim to be bringing the fruits of progress to their barbaric brethren were his water carriers and “etrog guarders”.

Similarly, American Jews look away from the damage done to Israel’s democratic fabric by people they agree with or feel comfortable with.

The rise of Shas and militancy in the knitted-kippah community are fueled by that hypocrisy. If your response is to further demonize the MOTs that you disagree with – you are not building towards democracy, for all your self-congratulating condescension.

Public discourse and policy in Israel are still controlled by Leftist elites that have barricaded themselves in the media, courts, and academia.

That elite has been selective and two-faced when it comes to the fundamentals of representative democracy – shutting up speech, denying free assembly, and trampling due process or representation when it suits them.

How many of these “hilltop youth” have you spoken with?

If you’re a 20-something junior officer – the patriotic and Jewish Labor party that built the country is not in your lived experience.

There is no shell game. What there is are fringes who think they have the right to undermine the IDF and the Israeli democracy which benefited them by building and defending their homes in Judea and Samaria. These ungrateful hypocrites who received the fruits of democracy would now like to undermine those who funded, supported and protected them even as they pursued an agenda which may be harmful to Israel in the long run and with which many Israelis disagree.

This is not the outcome I want, either – but most Israelis were not raised in a working representative democracy as we were, and the White Queen behavior of the ruling left-wing elites (”democracy means just what I want it to at any one time”) has convinced them that it’s a shell game.

And then American Jews like you ignore the abuses of the Israeli Left simply because you agree with them, and have your own axes to grind with the Orthodox…

So the two groups most identified with “promoting democracy” – the Labor elite and liberal American Jews – have taught Israelis one clear lesson by their actions: the end *justifies* the means. Fancy-pants talk is used to keep other groups in line – and out of power – but the rules of representational governance are suspended at will to impose the “progressive” agenda.

So much for building towards a working democracy here…

None of it is justifiable, however, regardless of your claims about why it is.

By the way, a commenter on one of the Israeli newspaper sites pointed out that some organization in Yesha gave $5000 to one of the groups of soldiers who raised a banner.

Which is a drop in the bucket compared to the money and free publicity lavished on soldiers who refused to serve in the “occupation” – and were never disciplined by the army.

… or the EU-funded backstabbers who paved the way for Goldstone with their false accusations of IDF misconduct.

The monies raised cover legal fees and other expenses of the married soldiers who protested.

Middle – you can’t cry “democracy” just when it’s your political ox that’s gored.

The left rolled over democratic due process again and again during Oslo and the Gaza expulsion. So when you write:

you will be living either in Palestine or in a Jewish dictatorship within the decade.

We’ve already seen the left try to create both – at once!

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

A policy of “free speech for me and not for thee” leads to more obnoxious and forceful speech.

Use of a citizen’s army to implement a policy most oppose leads to dissent among the ranks.

So: the patriotic mainstream has stopped waiting for the other side to fight fair, and are playing the same power games.

In the distorted context of an country struggling to get out from under left-wing oligarchy – spare me the eye-rolling self-righteous blather about the rule of law and following orders.

When they send soldiers to dismantle them, this is because of the opposition they have come to expect. Maybe if there was mild or no resistance, they could send in different forces. For example, if I were in charge, I’d diffuse tensions by sending in attractive female bureaucrats in high heels and fashionable suits who would be carrying pens and notebooks instead of guns.

It’s a little hypocritical to complain that the army shouldn’t be there when they are there only because of the resistance they have learned to anticipate.

And what do you say of the politicians that cynically use soldiers, rather than policemen, to carry out expulsion orders? Does that not amount to politicization of the IDF?