The Knitted Kippah of Yom Kippur Worshipers in Tel Aviv Has Brought Disaster on Israel - Opinion - Haaretz.com
Listening to the outcry over the “pogrom” in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square on Yom Kippur, the “sanctity of the day” and the offense to “the worshippers’ feelings,” it’s impossible not to recall the daily offenses that they commit against us, the secular leftists. But in Israel, secular people have no feelings. Only religious people have feelings that must not be offended.
Their feelings were offended? In that square, it suddenly became clear that we also have feelings. Their values were desecrated? Ours were desecrated long ago. Moreover, a large proportion of the harm done to us, the secular democrats, has been caused by the complainers in Dizengoff Square.
When I see Israelis in knitted kippahs and their gleaming white Shabbat shirts, with their ritual fringes hanging out the sides and their guns poking out from behind, organizing prayer services in the heart of this secular square, this greatly offends my feelings. It reminds me that they and those like them go out every Friday night (and other nights) for rampages against their shepherd neighbors wearing those same festive Shabbat clothes, carrying the same guns, backed up now by clubs and iron bars.
Even if most of those praying in the square don’t take an active part in these rampages, it’s reasonable to assume they support them, at least through their silence. The rioters are their own flesh and blood. They come from the same village, yeshiva, women’s yeshiva, or high school. This takeover of public spaces in Tel Aviv by settlers and their abettors offends my feelings, just as their actions harm me greatly.
For years, Israel has been shaped in their image. For years, Israel has been dragged in their wake, until they finally tipped the balance through violence, deception extortion, threats, and fraud. Had it not been for them, perhaps we would be a democracy. Instead, because of them, we are a racist apartheid state.
Rosh Yehudi, the organization behind that pure and innocent prayer service in the square, is decisive proof of the close connection between religionization and the forcible takeover of the occupied territories. In the Shiloh Valley, they do it through thuggery; in Dizengoff Square, through saccharinity. But the goals are the same.
In the Shiloh Valley, there’s no one to stop them anymore. In the square, there were suddenly people to stop them. No tears should be wasted on the harm done to them; they don’t even deserve crocodile tears. The harm they have done to us is many times greater.
No cloying act of “brotherhood” of the kind they advocate, no dialogue and no joint Torah study can paper over the fact that they, with the backing of all Israeli prime ministers and the Israel Defense Forces, are guilty of turning this country into an apartheid state. Had there been no religious, nationalist, messianic, racist right, there would have been no settlers. And had there been no settlers, there would long since have been no occupation. How simple, and how true.
Protesters clash with police, Sunday evening in Tel Aviv.Credit: Tomer Appelbaum
When they come to Dizengoff Square, they bring their arrogant, nationalist ideology with them. And the height of their audacity was that they came to the square in the name of freedom, liberalism, and democracy. The settlers and their abettors, members of Rosh Yehudi and their supporters, are the community that is forcibly depriving their Palestinian neighbors of these values. And now, they are trying to gradually do the same to Tel Aviv. They have no right to benefit from liberalism. They are its enemies.
Seeing members of the Garin Torani movement – young religious Jews who move as a group to city neighborhoods – in the heart of Tel Aviv also offends my feelings. Anyone who has paid visits in recent years to the Palestinian towns that became mixed Jewish-Arab cities in 1948 knows what the members of this movement plan to do – Judaize, provoke, stage a forcible takeover, and, in the end, push the locals out.
Go to Ramle, Lod, or Acre and you’ll see. There, they are offending a great many feelings. And now, it’s both all right and necessary to block them in Tel Aviv. You can find everything in the Garin Torani movement, except good intentions.
Yes, the knitted kippah has become a symbol that sparks resistance. Many of those who wear it bear responsibility for this. It’s the symbol borne on the heads of more and more IDF officers and senior officials at Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank, as well as many judges, journalists, and politicians – too many.
The knitted kippah makes its wearer a suspect until proven otherwise. The knitted kippah has brought down disaster on Israel. And this needs to be said.