“Already now, when there is just talk of the destruction of the outposts, that everyone knows is the first stage of the destruction of the settlement enterprise as a whole, with the goal of establishing a Palestinian state instead, we must make the mental switch and internalize that each of us has the responsibility and obligation to leave our everyday lives and participate in the struggle for Eretz Israel. In my humble opinion, we lost the struggle for Gush Katif and northern Samaria because we did not relate to Eretz Israel as a supreme value for which self-sacrifice is needed. If there had been some preposterous government decree that IDF soldiers must enter the homes of Jews on Yom Kippur and forcibly feed them nonkosher food, I assume and hope that a wall-to-wall consensus would take shape among our public on the need to refuse to obey this anti-Jewish and anti-moral order. The victims of the “force-feeding” would not begin a “With Love We Will Be Victorious” campaign, but rather, they, too, would vigorously resist.”

And I ask: Why is what is so clear regarding Shabbat and kashrut observance is not clear regarding Eretz Israel?”

Sign at a recent Women in Green rally in Jerusalem

The fact that she feels the need to ask why Jews relate differently to their personal practice of religion and their life as citizens in a civilian state reveals her blatant rejection of the most fundamental tenet of any country that wishes to be democratic: the separation between religion and state.

Although Israel’s population is largely secular, the state does not separate between religion and state, as evident from its civil laws regarding marriage, birth and death. Moreover, Israel’s determination to remain a “Jewish” state dangerously obscures the line between a democratic country and a theocratic one – setting a precedent for the belief in the Biblical right to the land to be construed as a political right.

The notion that keeping kosher and taking over a hilltop in Judea are considered equivalent forms of “Jewish observance” is not as fanatic an idea as it may seem when you accept that one’s Jewishness and Israeliness should be one in the same. And when you see that the IDF primarily functions as a protector and militia of illegal settlements throughout the West Bank.

Sure, many Israelis are, in principal, against the violent settlers they see on TV, abhor the ultra-Orthodox who attack police on Saturdays and for a two-state solution in which most of the West Bank is relinquished. But they also live in a country whose founding and dominant ideology is to equate Jewish and Israeli identity in an effort to eternalize the legitimacy, survival and sovereignty of the Jewish people in its ancient homeland. Unfortuantely, there are enough Israelis who believe it is their right and obligation to settle and build anywhere they please in the West Bank, and too little Israelis who are willing to do something about it. After all, we are a Jewish state, right?