Main Street ExtremistsYesterday I was walking with my wife and son on Main Street in the Kew Gardens Hills section of Queens when a middle-aged woman stuffed a flyer in my hand and told me that she was collecting money for Gush Katif. She started explaining what was being done with the money, but I politely told her that we were in a rush and gave her a dollar.
As I walked away, I looked at the flyer. It was by Chabad, and explicitly equated the unilateral withdrawal from Gush Katif with the Holocaust and accused Ariel Sharon of perpetrating another Holocaust. It even responded to critics questioning the comparison to the Holocaust by insisting such analogy is apt.
The irony is that almost all of the residents of the communities slated for destruction are fairly moderate, and have opposed the government's decision without resorting to this sort of lunacy. With a small number of exceptions, the Jewish residents of Gaza are not extremists, but the extremists in the United States who compare the Sharon plan to the Holocaust, and the extremists in Israel who block and place oil and nails on roads, have done much damage to their cause.
posted on 7/11/2005
