������� ��� ��������� A Kfar is a city. Our "Tale of Two Kfars" (with apologies to Charles Dickens) brings us from Kfar Darom to Kfar Shaul.
Kfar Darom was a Jewish city in Gush Katif that was dismantled (read: destroyed) by the Israeli government in 2005.
Kfar Shaul is a hospital complex for the mentally disabled.
In this "disengagement," as the government called the tragedy, the government fought a battle against its most loyal citizens. The government won the battle. Everybody lost the war.
As a result of the manner in which they were treated by the government following its victory, some good people from Kfar Darom may eventually be relocated to Kfar Shaul.
Many people justifiably saw the destruction of Jewish cities as a tragedy. They perceived the great protest assemblage at Kfar Darom against the disengagement as a glorious outpouring of Jewish youth, many of whom represented the future of the State of Israel.
In truth, the demonstration led to the greatest tragedy of our generation. It marked the beginning of the end of a nation of loyal, thinking people. Our leaders turned these youth into vengeful, critical fighters against society. They taught them to rebel against events that were already beyond hope. They tried to use the optimism of these children to compensate for the inaction of their elders.
The nation's elders trained Jews to fight other Jews, in order to accomplish truth, justice, and a Jewish state. They were taught to rebel � and the obedient youth responded by doing as they were told. Those youth were never trained to stop rebelling, so they continued to act as they were taught - in school, at work, and in their other activities.
Let's try to understand what happened beyond those massive demonstrations.
It was no secret that entire schools bussed their students to Kfar Darom. The students had no say about whether to participate. Any student who stayed behind stood a risk of becoming an outcast among his peers.
So, how do we count the real number of people who cared? Should we subtract the schoolchildren? Should we ignore the youth movements? Shall we count whether leftist schools were able to bring out more children than the rightist schools?
That's right. A head count at these demonstrations means nothing. Please keep that in mind when people urge you to attend demonstrations in order to show that you care. Your appearance as an individual will be lost among the schools, and the attendance of those schoolchildren means little or nothing at all.
Those schoolchildren demonstrated fruitlessly at Kfar Darom, and then they were told to move on to Amona � where the government waged a tough, ruthless, cruel, and brutal war against its own loyal citizens. The government's best psychologists had trained an immense team of soldiers that the settlers were unfaithful and disloyal. They were met by an outpouring of youth who were engaged in a counterattack about how bad the government was. Both sides denigrated and cursed other Jews.
As a result, a generation of youth now hated their brothers.
This was not a glorious outpouring. Kfar Darom was the beginning of the end of today's finest youth. Combine this horrific national crime with an educational system in crisis and with a rebellion against the army, and we may well question where to find the next generation of idealistic builders of the State.
Yes, the government did hire fine psychologists in order to lead a successful campaign of psychological warfare. Interestingly, there was no funding to hire those same expert psychologists to help children who had been forced out of their homes. The government does have its priorities, after all.
On the other hand, it may be better that those psychologists were not brought in to help the youth. After successfully turning brother against brother, and after having created two opposing sides, both of which were propelled by hate, it is questionable whether any therapy could reverse their actions.
Some people looked back at the great outpouring of masses at Kfar Darom, at the excitement of meeting friends, and at the joy of being able to shout, fight, and scream at the government. The herd instinct had brought them all to the same ecstatic level of hatred.
Others saw the demonstrations as the beginning of the end of a sane, thinking youth of tomorrow. They feared that our youth would turn into a sick and deranged nation for whom some people have announced, "I cannot marry these people."
They do have a point. Hate cannot lead to love. Hate is always more powerful than love.
That's right: Some of the best of today's youth now avoid those who fought to remain in their own settlements, as well as those who brutally removed others from settlements. They rightfully feel that people who faced either of those tragic circumstances have become deranged.
Those who were forcibly removed from their settlements, and were then forgotten by the government service bureaux and psychologists, had changed. They were bitter, unemployed, angry refugees.
Those who were trained to hate their fellow Jews and to create a civil war were shunned by their brethren.
Those who had undergone training for these crucial missions, but who were not selected to fight, were rejected as well. They had been affected by the training, by the evacuation, and by the fact that they could have been there.
Still others were rejected as well. They had been taught to lie in order to avoid military service. They lied in the name of truth and honesty. They lied so that they could avoid being sent to the front against their brothers. Many of them felt guilty because they had avoided active service. Again, no government psychologists were available to help them recover.
Against all of these who had been corrupted and violated by the government, there were other masses of silent youth who stayed behind quietly. They did not join the service, and they never went to a dangerous settlement in order to support their country. They retained their sanity, while their activist brothers followed their leaders down the wrong path. They caused others to re-open the time-honored question of Josephus: Should survivors be given our respect?
Perhaps we have to look beyond all of these people in order to find today's ideal Jew. It is possible that somebody who remained in the Diaspora and avoided our twisted, violent society should be considered our national hero. Those youth will remain sane, while we will suffer with the victims that we have created.
If so, then Israel will have to find a way to live with its generation of deranged people. Israelis will marry Jews who will be selected to drive them out of their own homes. The politicians will remain, but what will be the future of those marriages?
Perhaps we can hope for some people in Israel to remain normal, despite these crazy times. After all, many shell-shocked soldiers throughout history have been able to live a reasonably normal life and to raise a family. Perhaps some people in our generation do have a future, after all.
We certainly hope so. After all, the army and the police injured everybody randomly. Politicians and leaders were injured as well as civilians.
Of course, a person who gets hurt is not necessarily a leader, even though it is undoubtedly to their credit that they do not remain behind while sending others to the front.
Those politicians did not bother to take a stand as leaders at the right time. However, they did know how to get their pictures in the newspapers. They demonstrated after the fact, even if it meant that they would get hurt.
Those politicians were not brave enough to admit that they had failed in their job. It did not occur to them to do tshuva and to correct their ways for the future. Instead, after forgetting the need to prevent the government's wrong decisions, they told their brethren to stand up against the Israeli security services. Such blind and self-serving leadership is nothing less than criminal.
Our basic issues have changed. Some time ago, we questioned whether the Israeli security services should be involved in removing our brethren. Now, we ask whether Israelis should stand up against their own brethren in those security services.
The misleading headlines in the rightist newspapers implied that the determination of today's youth to fight the army is the only hope for the settlement movement. If that is indeed the hope of the settlement movement, then there is no hope for Jewry. If Zionism depends on fighting our own brethren, then Zionism is dead.
We no longer look to become engaged. We now look to avoid disengagement.
We no longer sing "Home, home on the range." Today, we announce "Home, where I'm deranged."
Our golus mentality has taught us to sit quietly so that we won't anger the goyim. Today's mentality causes us to rise up and fight our own brothers. We have forgotten who we are, and we do not remember who is our enemy. We do not realize that we are all trying to build this nation together.
Although we have merited the long-sought ingathering of the exiles, we haven't learned how to live with our ingathered brethren. We fight each other. We live in Israel, but we've created a different Golus. Violence against other Jews is our modus vivendi. It is our way of living with other Jews.
Those who promote this violence within our own ranks imply that a united nation requires a civil war.
They are wrong.
If unity requires a civil war, if we must lie in the name of truth and honesty, if justice requires violence, and if our brothers are our enemies, then Kfar Darom has surely brought us to Kfar Shaul.
Take care of yourselves
Deuteronomy 4:15
Numbers do not count
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