The Littering of the Literati

Some of Israel's literati - Eyal Meged, Zeruya Shalev, Said Kashua and Alona Kimchi - visited the Arab village of Khirbet Jenyah whose residents, most who reside in caves, are threatened with disengagement.

Shalev was quoted saying,

This Biblical setting and this Biblical way of life bring to mind two famous stories of injustice: the vineyard of Navot the Yizre’eli, and the poor man’s lamb. It sounds very similar, that the state is not letting them hold on even to that vineyard, to that poor man’s lamb.

Poetic license, it seems, is unlimited.

Right-wing religious nationalists cannot use the Bible but all of a sudden the Bible is employed to the benefit of the Arabs.

Think: if the "setting" is Biblical, whose "setting" is it?

If they are engaged in a "Biblical way of life", whose life is it?

Were Arabs present at that time?

Whose land is this?

Thus does not negate protection of civil personal liberties, of course, but if this is the thinking of our outstanding (best-selling) cultural intellectuals, who needs to read their books?


^