Hotheads who break laws are, first and foremost, victims of their teachers, representatives and rabbis. They can better be described as lost individuals than criminals. The condemnations coming from the Right over the recent spate of violence are not wholehearted. Danny Dayan, the head of the Yesha settler council, condemned the recent vandalism against a West Bank army base in an Op-Ed on Wednesday, but incorporated into his condemnation a direct criticism of GOC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrahi. Dayan also blamed the Left for criticizing the Right for failures of law enforcement, and took the opportunity as well to slam Israel's leaders for sending soldiers into settlements to dismantle homes built on private Palestinian land. In this way he obstructs and dilutes his actual condemnation of the vandals. If the polite, cultured and thoughtful Dayan behaves this way, how can we possibly complain about terrifying people like (extreme right-wingers) Michael Ben-Ari and Yaakov Katz? Meir Brettler, the head of a settler youth group, was recently released from police detention after having taken a group of hilltop youth on a trip to a Christian site near Jericho (in area A, which is under sole Palestinian jurisdiction). He called me yesterday to tell me that this excursion was in no way violent. If he had known that other hilltop youth were going to break into an army base on the same day he would have postponed the trip to the religious site so as to not be lumped together with the law-breakers. They harm the settlement movement, he said. It is forbidden to attack the military. "Even in Syria the masses are united with the army that is killing them," he said to me. "My voice represents the hilltop youth. It is far more authentic than the voice of the politicians condemning the events. I wholeheartedly condemn all attacks against soldiers, unlike people like Katz who condemn with a sly wink." How do we combat the unrestrained trend that is threatening the unity of our country? The trend that in its stupidity renders any consensus, patience or compromise null and void? The trend that could easily drag us not only into a civil war, which is bad in itself, but into a far worse situation of brother fighting against brother. I will discuss this question in depth in my next column. As an emergency measure, it is not enough for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to formulate yet another emergency plan that by the time it is approved will have been forgotten. Our leaders must display conviction and authorize the use of force. But as of now all we're getting is faint hands and soft hearts. I can't justify the conduct of soldiers who, terrified, failed to stand at the gates of the army base and prevent the vandals from entering, but I do understand them (some of them did perform their duty and hold back the invaders). If they had struck them and dealt them heavy blows the vandals would have been afforded a quick visit to the hospital while the soldiers, having acted as they should, would have been subject to derision at the hand of their politicians, protests at their parents' homes and racist German captions on their Facebook photos as well as an internal military investigation into their actions. It is imperative that the soldiers are given a different set of orders, and it is more imperative to create an atmosphere in which they will not be afraid to carry out these orders.
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