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Commentary;
I’m going to speak in the 1st person here.
Aside from the dirty tricks and “stinking manuevers” which marked the campaigns of 2 of the 3 Mayoralty candidates in Beit Shemesh; what irks me is that there seems a definite connection, like links in a chain, between the winning candidate, the parties who backed him, the lengths to which they went to bring about his election (with the possible resultant exclusivity partition of Beit Shemesh/Ramat Beit Shemesh) and what the religious parties, ALL of them — including Mafdal (on a national level) — an across-the-board indictment — regarding what none of them bothered to do to save their Jewish brethren formerly from Gush Katif.
As such, the Beit Shemesh municipal elections, and the massive Shas/Chareidi win reinforces the old adage — “where there is a will, there is a way.”
We have come to view as normal that certain sectors pull out all of the stops in the final hours before election to insure victory, i.e. Rabbanim at various levels issue their p’sakim as to who their Kehillot MUST support, that Rabbanim from outside Beit Shemesh are brought in to impose their political wills on their followers, where meetings are held and those who attend who don’t “toe the line” and seek to speak out as to their reason why are ousted in the crudest fashions.
But while one of this election’s Mayoralty candidates was trying to infiltrate into Gush Katif with others, just over 3 years ago during the days of the expulsion in what turned out to be vain efforts to fight it, all of these same Rabbanim, who descended upon Beit Shemesh and Ramat Beit Shemesh just before Tuesday’s elections to impose their edict upon their followers and Kehillot to support a certain candidate, sat on their hands, close-mouthed.
These Rabbanim who brought all of the bochurim and Kollelim out of their Yeshivas, Batei medrashim and study halls in droves to hear their edicts on who they MUST support in the elections were the same ones who sat closed-mouthed while their disciples remained in front of their gemuras or conducted themselves business-as-usual running from store to store shopping for their own narrow concerns while their brethren had their homes, belongings, assets and lives stolen out from under them at legalized gunpoint by an evil, disdainful, loathing-of- Yiddishkeit national government of Israel.
And perhaps, these will end up being the same Rabbanim who will send the boys and the men out of their Yeshivas, Batei medrashim and study halls enmass to defend their own turf should the residents of Matityahu East [Kiryat Sefer], allegedly over the so-called “green-line (sic)”, face the same fate as the former Gush Katif residents faced.
One distinction though; We who love Eretz Yisrael, our fellow Jews, who know no distinction as to what sector they are (for we would be out even with the seculars were they ousted from their homes and neighborhoods in Tel Aviv, Yaffo, etc. which the Arabs claim as their property), would be there for those living in Matityahu East [Kiryat Sefer] simply because they are our brothers. Ergo, my abject bitterness over the Chareidi/Shas Rabbanim and their political election machinations which resulted in their candidate’s crushing victory over the one true menschlikeit, Yer’at Shemayim candidate for Beit Shemesh Mayor. MB