chomesh

My nephew, Baby Boy Blue, is having his pidyon today in Jerusalem, so we'll be heading down south later on this afternoon. I called my brother to give him some advice about what not to speak about. Some people might speak about the 2 times that you would do a pidyon, when your wife has a boy and when your donkey has a boy and then they would try to compare it. Women sometimes misunderstand the vort and think that you are referring to them in the same way you refer to a donkey. My brother agreed not to use that vort for the sake of shalom bayis. (He said he wasn't going to anyways, but sometimes you have to warn your little brother)

This week the settlers are trying to resettle the Shomron village of Chomesh. Chomesh was destroyed 2 years ago during the with Gazan Rezoning project, where they zoned all of Gaza to be prohibited to Jews. Unlike historic Miami, the zoning laws do allow dogs to remain.

I have very mixed feelings about what is going on in Chomesh. On the one hand, it is part of Israel and we should have the right to settle it. On the other hand, it says in pirkei avos, "pray for the welfare of the government, for if people didn't fear it man would eat his friend alive." The point is that we have a system of laws that we accepted and even if we don't agree with the laws there is something to following them in any case.If the law was against the Torah, obviously you have to stand up against it. But in a case of settling the land, you are not violating any commandment if you live in your own piece of Israel and don't try to settle another part. One of my big problems with the concept is that these people will run to the Israeli court systems to solve their problems, but if the court system rules against them then they call it illegitimate and biased against them. If that were the case, then they should take the road of not recognizing the court system and not running to it to solve their human rights problems. That being said, I think we need a dose of reality here and recognize that we do live in a system of laws. While we can protest the law and try to change it using political and diplomatic means, we should not resort to violence and vandalism to gain our objectives.

That the police and army use violence to disperse people who are breaking laws and refuse to stop peacefully is acceptable in every part of the world. There is no other option other then to allow the people to break the laws. I don't think they should be over-violent, but that happens when you push them to resort to the violence. As an example, if someone came onto my land and refused to leave, I would expect the police to physically remove him. If the law is that you can't be in a place and you go there I expect the police to physically remove anybody who breaks the law. When you force someone to use physical means to gain an objective, unexpected violence can happen.

The answer is to change the law. If we are such a small minority that we cannot, then that basically sucks for us.