Last week, I was walking up the street to meet a friend. I saw ahead what looked like some sort of commotion. Looked like ambulances and IDF (army) stuff.

There was a bus turned sideways in the middle of the road.

bus/chaos

Oh, my. There’s been a piguah (bombing), I thought. I instinctually reached for my cell phone to start calling everybody I knew to make sure they were OK. As I kept walking, I gave myself a little pep talk about being able to handle this.

As I got closer, it became clear that whatever it was wasn’t that.

There were gates up blocking the street, and IDF guys checking bags and stuff (standard security measure in these parts.) The bus, it seems, was parked funny in part to serve as a blockade.

Why?

Demonstration.

At the kikar (circle/square) at the top of the street, there were a lot of people gathered. Settlers. Part of the 100 protests going on at the same time against Sharon’s plan to pull out of Gaza.
settler demo

Some of them were wearing orange shirts to match the orange signs. Even the trees were wrapped in orange. There was, not surprisingly, some pretty inflammatory language on some of their material.

who killed Rabin?

The part that really struck me was the next day, when that same square was filled by Women in Black, Shalom Acshav (Peace Now) and some other people whose politics are about as far away from the settlers’ as possible.

women in black

I think I’m starting to get a sense of why so many Israelis are so jaded and angry and also confused.
angry someone

(This says, praise/thank God, because (He) is good. In the psalm, there’s no question mark.)

I just hope the kikar gets a day off sometime soon.

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