Peres Recommending To Expunge Lawless Settlers’ Records
This newspaper has written a lot in recent months about the upturn in lawless conduct by settlers. In this context, you may think that the state would take a zero tolerance policy towards such actions. But it seems that a very different approach is being taken.
The upturn in settler lawlessness, or more correctly lawlessness among the right fringe of the settler movement, is a direct response to the disengagement from Gaza in 2005. The organizing principle is “never again” – settlers were evacuated from Gaza and they wish to show that they will make things much more difficult for the state in the case of further large-scale evacuations. This is why every minor evacuation now, even just from a single hilltop, tends to spark violence.
It is strange, in this context, that President Shimon Peres has just recommended that the courts expunge the records of 59 people who were detained during acts of protest against the 2005 disengagement from Gaza. “The recommendation,” said a statement from the President’s office, “derives from the unique nature of the disengagement and related events, which were aberrant events in history.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO