1. Arutz 7 reports in it's e-mail edition:

Despite close to 50 mortar shells on Jewish Gaza targets in just over 24 hours, the government has ordered the army to save its efforts for the "disengagement" expulsion/evacuation plan.

A senior military source says a comprehensive battle against continuing mortar shell onslaught versus Jewish Gaza communities requires the call-up of reserve forces. By government order, however, the army is saving the reserve forces for the disengagement plan. Up to 5,000 policemen and soldiers are expected to be utilized to pull residents out of their homes and make sure they do not return.

In a word: expose your own people to enemy fire, so that you can then use your own people to surrender their territory into enemy hands. If this is not national suicide, what is?

The web edition shows a modified story, to which you can post comments.

2. JPost has joined the chorus or those who malign, slander and attack the Gaza Strip pioneers. In a characteristic article, this one, by YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI the JPost writes:

Why, then, haven't we heard passionate warnings from settler leaders about the apocalyptic dangers of another assassin emerging from their own camp?

There are, among the settlers and their supporters, perhaps several hundred misfits and "errant weeds," as Rabin assassin Yigal Amir was called by settler leaders, who actively hope for Sharon's death. In terms of the general settler population, that is indeed a tiny fringe. But several hundred potential assassins threaten the most minimal sense of solidarity among Jews and are therefore a threat to the survival of the Jewish state.

All this flies in the face of the "three no's" declaration by the leadership of Yesha's pioneers: not violence, no organized refusal in IDF, no orange stars.

3. If this is what one gets from JPost, imagine what one can expect from the unofficial PLO organ, al-Ha'aretz. In one piece, Yoel Marcus writes:

MK Zvi Hendel (National Union) says he regrets that the prime minister was "hooked up" to those who are delegitimizing "the pioneers who are loyal to the state." Like all their lying contentions, here, too, the lie cries out to the heavens. The prime minister was not "hooked up" to anyone. The disengagement plan is entirely the initiative of Ariel Sharon, and the settlers are not pioneers but residents who for 37 years have been spoiled with land and money. Water and electricity infrastructures were built for them, and brigades and divisions saw to their security. Israel's finest sons were wounded and killed to uphold a policy whose time is past and that has turned us into brutal occupiers in our own eyes and in the eyes of the entire world.

In the eyes of "the entire world", depending on the term's definition, Jews also use the blood of non-Jewish children for their rituals, they control the world, they are the worst danger to world peace, and they are spreading AIDS. Since when is the "the entire world" a criterion for anything but disgust?

4. A national calamity is in the making. Nine thousand pioneers are about to be expelled and resettled. Isn't that funny? Well, the PLO unofficial organ, al-Ha'aretz thinks so! Where overt incitement and attempts to deligitimize pioneers stop, another authors takes up with scorn. Al-Ha'aretz writes:

There is no end to the diversity and the bizarreness of the arguments and the gimmicks that the settlers are capable of coming up with in the face of every evacuation attempt. They bring to mind the scene in the Marx Brothers movie in which Harpo removes from his inside coat pocket the entire contents of some loopy attic from hell: a horn, sets of cutlery, a hot iron, a sledge-hammer, a bundle of ropes, a candle burning at both ends, a boiling kettle, a fish, a stuffed animal.

5. Meanwhile, Israel's patriots are not sitting on their hands. Following is today's e-letter from Ruth Matter, with a call to action:

UPCOMING ACTIVITIES

WOMEN IN GREEN are engaged in a campaign to have soldiers and reservists sign a Petition which declares: We will not participate in the uprooting of Jews from their homes. Nor will we destroy their schools and synagogues, nor will we disinter the graves of their loved ones. Women in Green are joining with Protective Shield, Gamla Shall Not Fall Again, and other extra-parliamentary groups, and as a result we are getting more and more Media attention.

The Chief of Staff claims he is worried about the thousands of soldiers and reservists who have already signed the Petition. By signing, they are saying that they will not lend a hand to this immoral Plan.

By these soldiers adding their names to this Petition, they are proclaiming that they will not defy the word of the G-d of Israel, He promised the Jewish People in our Bible that this Land belongs to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Every week we gather many hundreds of signatures. Our purpose is to advise Prime Minister Sharon of the extent of the opposition to his Disengagement Plan.

Judea, Samaria, and Gaza are part and parcel of the Promised Land. No one has the right, as Ben Gurion recognized in a speech to the Zionist Congress many years ago, to give up any portion of this Promised Land to the hostile Arab enemy or to anyone else.

PLEASE COME THIS SUNDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2004 AT 9:30 A.M TO THE CENTRAL BUS STATION IN JERUSALEM. Help us to gather more and more signatures to the Petition.

Jerusalem, December 24, 2004
Ruth and Nadia Matar