The Wicked Son

[The long-overdue Amona Post]

One of the lessons that has remained most firmly in my memory from the many Passovers I served as bandleader at the Fontainbleu Hotel in Miami Beach is an extremely insightful and non-traditional examination of 'the four sons' section of the seder that a very wise Rabbi shared with me:

In case you're a little fuzzy about this particular section of the Passover Hagaddah, let me refresh your memory:

"The Torah speaks of four children: One is wise, one is wicked, one is simple and one does not know how to ask.

The wise one, what does he say? "What are the testimonies, the statutes and the laws which the L-rd, our G-d, has commanded you?" You, in turn, shall instruct him in the laws of Passover, [up to] `one is not to eat any dessert after the Passover-lamb.'

The wicked one, what does he say? "What is this service to you?!" He says 'to you', but not to him! By thus excluding himself from the community he has denied that which is fundamental. You, therefore, blunt his teeth and say to him: "It is because of this that the L-rd did for me when I left Egypt"; `for me' - but not for him! If he had been there, he would not have been redeemed!"

The simpleton, what does he say? "What is this?" Thus you shall say to him: "With a strong hand the L-rd took us out of Egypt, from the house of slaves."

As for the one who does not know how to ask, you must initiate him, as it is said: "You shall tell your child on that day, `It is because of this that the L-rd did for me when I left Egypt.'" *

This Rabbi (his name was either Rabbi Felder or Farber... I'm embarrassed that I can't recall), explained that the traditional understanding of 'the four sons' was that they were four children of one family who are addressed differently by the parents according to their respective ability or desire to understand the story of the Exodus from Egypt. 

However, this Rabbi felt that it made more sense if the four sons were viewed as four kinds of children... and more importantly, that the reason for their demeanor and/or receptiveness to accepting the 'statutes and the laws' was based entirely upon the way their respective parents habitually answered them.

He said 'look at the end of each statement... the way the parent has spoken... and you will understand why each son has turned out the way he has'.

Simply put, the 'wise son' is wise because he is given a full explanation and is completely included in the process.  The simpleton is simple because he is spoon-fed only a tiny portion of the information.  The son who doesn't even know how to ask is completely clueless because his parents give him a completely useless explanation that doesn't in any way connect him to the seder or the events it is supposed to commemorate.

But nowhere is this cause & effect relationship more apparent than with the 'wicked son' and the way his parents have ostracized him.  When one pays special attention to the way the wicked son is addressed, it becomes clear that he has become wicked because he's had his 'teeth blunted'... and because he's been excluded from the proceedings and completely disenfranchised.

I've dragged you through this long-winded explanation because I am firmly convinced that for better or worse, religious settlers have been deliberately relegated to the unenviable role of modern day 'wicked sons'.

Starting in the run up to the disengagement this past year, the Sharon government, enthusiastically supported and abetted by the Israeli media, affected an 'about-face' in the way it related to the settler movement. 

From the moment at the Herzylia Conference that Sharon announced that he intended to unilaterally disengage from Gaza, he effectively used both word and deed to disown, marginalize and vilify his ideological child; the settler movement. 

This isn't to say Sharon was its founder or its only advocate... but for two decades he was the leading governmental cheerleader for the settler enterprise... exhorting patriotic Zionist pioneers to "settle every hilltop so no future government can contemplate giving away the land".

But in the wake of Herzylia, his official and unofficial spokespeople immediately began feeding an enthusiastically receptive public statements about various unsubstantiated 'dangers and threats from the extreme right' (code-speak for the settlers).  These statements became defacto justifications for extra-judicial suspension of various civil rights... and the smallest misdeed by a settler, no matter how vehemently condemned by the YESHA leadership, was trumpeted as proof of the danger religious settlers posed to Israel's liberal democracy.

Shockingly, the very core of mainstream Jewish theology - the patient anticipation of the arrival of the Messianic era - suddenly became analogous of the most worrisome aspects of fundamentalist Islam.  Despite thousands of years of every Jew sitting at a seder table and proclaiming their fervent wish for Messianic redemption with the phrase "next year in Jerusalem", the word 'messianist' suddenly became a dirty word.  In the blink of an eye the reasonable views of anyone with a long skirt or kippah were dismissed as the rantings of religious fanatics and zealots.

Make no mistake, there are religious fanatics among the Jews in the settler camp.  But these zealots are a tiny minority who have been 'elected' as representatives of all religious Zionists by those for whom organized Jewish observance of any sort is anathema.

Israeli politicians, both within the  government and without, took careful note of the overt 3-way alliance that developed between Sharon, the secular left and the media.  The lesson that was lost on nobody was that the antipathy with which the majority of the Israeli population viewed the settler movement had allowed self-described libertarians, humanists and liberals to temporarily set aside all the 'inconvenient' trappings of Israel's vaunted liberal democracy in order to justify the shortest possible route to a desired political end.

The irony, of course, is that the consensus among the Israeli electorate was that the only way to finally accomplish the goals of the center-left would be to temporarily adopt the most Machiavellian and extreme mechanisms ever attributed to the far right.

Unfortunately once Sharon was incapacitated, Ehud Olmert and his fellow Kadima coat-tail riders found themselves with a national election looming and quandary of epic proportions:  They had a comatose ideological figurehead and not one person on their party's list with the 'strong-man' credentials necessary to reassure a jittery electorate that they could follow through with Sharon's promise to finally establish Israel's permanent borders.

Olmert, seen by most as, at best, 'Sharon-Lite', found himself with a 'perception problem' at the worst possible time.  He needed to act quickly and decisively to reassure his core constituency that he had the ability to employ certain 'less-than-democratic short-cuts' in dealing with those evil settlers... and that like Sharon, he too was a bulldozer capable of imposing his policies through sheer force of personality.

So, despite the fact that he was the head of a caretaker government in a political party that nobody had elected to power, Olmert decided his only road to a political win was to begin a program of 'dealing firmly' with illegal settlements (many of which had been created with his full knowledge and support).  By most rational standards, such an agenda should have waited until the electorate handed a legal mandate to a coalition selected by the people.

Why he selected Amona - an insignificant collection of 8 or 9 semi-permanent structures - as his object lesson is a matter for conjecture.  My personal feeling is that he needed an easy win... and like any weak bully, he picked a victim he felt was unlikely to give him a bloody nose.

However, two problems immediately became apparent... both of which tie in with my 'wicked son' theory:

First, Olmert horribly underestimated the sense of 'otherness' and disenfranchisement that had taken hold of the teenagers in the settler movement as a result of the unrelenting and heavy-handed rhetoric directed at them.  Last summer they had watched and listened in horror as their own government and media addressed them in very much the same accusatory terms as the wicked son of the Passover seder.  The Israeli public and government in effect said of each settler youth "By thus excluding himself from the community he has denied that which is fundamental."   

The second, and perhaps more pressing problem that Olmert overlooked was that despite the 'devil-may-care' attitude of the youthful protesters, there still remained a seasoned moderate leadership in the settler camp, including several Members of Knesset, that were determined to work within the legal system to negotiate, if not a win... than at least a draw.   Unfortunately, with the elections looming and Sharon's over-sized mantle hanging on his lanky frame like a kid wearing his father's suit, Olmert realized that a draw would appear to the majority of Israeli voters exactly like a loss. 

When Olmert refused to consider a reasonable compromise offer by the settler leadership to move the offending structures to the nearby legal community of Ofra within one week, it became clear to all involved that he was determined to foment a direct physical confrontation.  There can be no other explanation for his unwillingness to allow a peaceful, face-saving, resolution to the stand-off.  And his decision to deploy the Yesamim - a para-military police 'special missions unit' whose ranks have been deliberately swelled with non-Jews whose antipathy for religious Jews is legendary - telegraphed a clear message that compassionate hugs and tears were but a distant memory from Gaza. 

The settlers were to play the part of 'the enemy' and the government was sending in combat troops to soundly defeat them.

There are plenty of videos and still pictures from Amona floating around showing clearly what happened.  Several of my neighbors and friends were there and I have been able to hear many first-hand accounts of what transpired.  A neighbor's son heard with his own ears the Yasamim receiving orders to "club them on the head, go straight for the head"... and the films showing the police swinging freely at the unprotected heads of teenagers who were sitting non-violently with arms linked bears this out.

The media reports conveniently blur the division of the injuries by talking about "hundreds of injured protesters and security forces"... but the truth is that almost all of the serious injuries were sustained by the settlers.  There were unsubstantiated reports of a policeman in 'serious condition' yet no such case was ever admitted to the hospital.  There is one well publicized border patrolman who sustained a nasty (but non-permanent) injury to his eye, but that seems to be the most serious police injury.  Likewise, some of my fellow bloggers eagerly reported that a policeman had been stabbed in the stomach and that a settler had drawn a gun... but again, neither of these events were born out with verified injuries or arrest reports. 

Yes, a few policemen were injured... but I when the term 'hundreds' is used in the press, it cannot fairly be spread evenly amongst protesters and police.

The fact that almost nobody was arrested is perhaps the most chilling part of this event.  The role of the police in a democracy is to enforce the law and arrest those who break it.  I will freely admit that civil disobedience is a calculated breach of the law and warrants being arrested.  This is a time-honored form of non-violent protest when all legal means have been exhausted.  The majority of teenagers who showed up were fully prepared to protest non-violently and to be arrested for their civil disobedience. 

But the police showed up to this pogrom without handcuffs and without transport vehicles that one would expect if they intended to arrest large numbers of people.  They did, however, come equipped with full body armor, helmets, steel truncheons and horses. 

Extensive preparations were obviously made... but they were preparations for battle with an enemy, not preparations for enforcement of the law.

Ehud Olmert assumed (correctly, in my opinion) that the majority of Israeli voters hate the settlers far more than they do Hamas.  So in the wake of being caught completely flat-footed by Hamas' win in the PA elections, he opted to regain his composure by playing out the only scenario where he was guaranteed to be perceived as both strong and decisive:  He decided to beat Israel's 'wicked son' like a rented mule.

In the aftermath of the violence, a television crew that was stationed at a Jerusalem hospital recorded an exchange that took place between a police officer and the parents of a teenager who was in serious condition after having his skull fractured by a policeman's metal club.  Unprovoked, the policeman approached the mother and said "It's a shame he didn't die".  When the parents demanded the policeman's identity so they could file a complaint (something that by law is supposed to be displayed and/or offered upon demand), the policeman refused... and another policeman physically dragged the parents away from the scene.

Not surprisingly the public outrage that would have erupted had the para-military action in Amona instead been carried out against any of the thousands of illegal Arab building projects, has failed to materialize. 

President Katzav has expressed his 'shock and outrage' at the excessive and undisciplined use of force by the police.  But his 'shock' was roughly akin to the level of dismay shown by Captain Renault when he 'discovered' gambling going on in Ric's Cafe Americain in Casablanca.  "I'm shocked, shocked to find that [brutality] is going on in here!"

We are entering dark times now that even a weak 'transition government' has received the tacit approval of the populace to treat settlers as 'wicked sons'. 

I think that most anyone who knows me would consider me a moderate... or at least a 'compassionate conservative'.  Well, I feel disenfranchised and lacking equal protection under the law.  I feel that I have no legal recourse or protection for the legitimate expression of my views.  I feel I have been relegated to the status of 'wicked son'... a national whipping boy...  and I categorically refuse to stand passively and be beaten.

It is now a foregone conclusion that the settler blood Olmert shed in Amona will serve as the bonifides of his ability to 'deal decisively with those wicked settlers'... and a grateful left-of-center majority will certainly sweep him into office in the upcoming elections.  It also serves as a clear warning of how future 'dialogues' will unfold between the Israeli government and it's 'wicked sons'. 

Forgotten is the fact that the settler enterprise was a legal creation of successive left- and right-leaning Israeli governments.  Gone are the proud claims of paternity while the very politicians who gave birth to the settler movement and nurtured it in it's youth now actively delegitimize it.  An illegitimate, 'wicked' son is all anyone sees now, and such a child is unlikely to receive sympathy or quarter.

The one thing that Olmert has failed to take into account, though, is that once the wicked son has nothing left to lose... no hope of regaining a place in the family... the only obstacle to that son breaking the dual taboos of fratricide and patricide - is removed. 

I am a moderate... a reasonable, educated person who firmly believes in the rule of law.  But the moment I no longer enjoy the protection of law, then nobody will enjoy its protection.   If there are those in government who want to see me as the wicked son, then I will remind them at every turn that they gave birth to me and then callously sent me away.   

In short, I will behave exactly as they expect me to.

* Source: here