“Israeli MK caught together with dozens of far-right activists crossing into Gaza.”

In a regular news cycle, pointed out one commentator, a story of an MK breaking the law and endangering troops would be the top story. But in a government where every other member is under investigation and the PM is on trial, we shrug our shoulders. We’re already angry about so many things, it seems more like a mosquito – an immediate annoyance but not one that’s lethal – than the rabid tigers and hungry hawks we hear circling our camp.

Of course, we have not had a regular news cycle in quite a while. These days, we see our newscasters drooling all over themselves as they repeatedly tell us how many troops, planes and long-range missiles are aboard the two US aircraft carriers making their stately way into attack positions. Airlines cut their flights to the region and news pundits talk about the dangers of “miscalculatzia,” while we wonder every evening whether the fireworks will start at 3:00 a.m. or if, possibly, we’ll get one more night of sleep.

And those are exactly the conditions – low-key, controlled hysteria – that benefit the far right. Under cover of a news stories about the next war, the former army attorney general under indictment for lying and the members of the PM’s office holding secret meetings in the middle of the night, they make their moves.

The first time, they are removed from the military “yellow zone” around the inside of Gaza and we are told that legal proceedings against the encroachers has begun. No worries. She and her little group won’t be punished any more than her friends May Golan or David Amsalem will serve time for misuse of funds and accepting bribes.

They have already told the country they intend to return at Pesach with more settlers, ostensibly to scout out the real estate. No worries.

By the third time Limor Son Har-Melech and her minions breach the border fence and wave some blue-and-white flags, it will be so normal, it might barely rate a mention in the news. If you don’t believe it, just look at the West Bank, where Jewish settlers are grabbing land and terrorizing citizens. It happens every day; it’s not even news anymore. So – no worries.

In that case, why am I worried?

Our government has ostensibly agreed to a peace settlement in which Hamas is disarmed and the IDF pulls back to the former border. Even though our PM deftly slipped out of his responsibilities in attending the first meeting of the “Peace Board,” Trump apparently intends to send foreign troops to Gaza and to enforce the conditions laid out in phase two of his peace plan.

To Son Har-Melech and her ultra-right group, the peace plan is barely a distraction. Either she can simply pretend it does not exist, or else she intends to puncture that plan with an Israeli-flag-shaped spike. Because she knows that while Israeli troops are still in Gaza, no one will really be able to stop her. And once they’ve managed to set up a tent or two, schlepping them out will be public and ugly. The current government has no stomach for this, and the ghosts of the former pullout will make this one harder for any government.

Her far-right party, Otzmah Yehudit, is in the government coalition and out of it. It decries the peace plan – any peace plan – and prefers razing Gaza (all the better to settle it) to any form of negotiation. But it enjoys the power that comes with holding decisive positions, and, like the ultra-orthodox parties that extort billions of shekels for their parochial schools while refusing the draft, they exercise that power whenever possible. It beats actually doing their jobs. While Bibi went ahead and agreed to a peace plan, he won’t stop the settlers associated with the party from any form of illegal action. He still needs their votes.

We shrug our shoulders, because by the time the story of crossing into Gaza is mentioned, our heads are full of the coming missiles and bombs, the war that may or may not be restarting, the number of ICBMs left in the Iranian arsenal. Who has time for a handful of crazies thinking it’s safe to just walk into Gaza?

But ignoring them could have long-term repercussions for the country, long after Bibi and the Likud are voted out of office.

I’m worried because she and her of fanatic group are so-called “Messianic Jews,” that is, for them God supposedly marking new territory with a big Jewish star trumps “love thy neighbor” or any peace plans. And they believe, with absolute certainty, that God told them Gaza belongs to them. That is a seductive kind of cultish belief. Even if you are not swept up in their fervor, it is easy to see them in a romantic light or agree they are, as they claim, the next logical step in Zionism. (Their name, Nachala, invokes the first Hebrew towns over a century ago.) They seem to us a sort of reincarnation of Bar-Kochba and his band of rebels, with the same sort of fatalistic trust in their version of religion, willing to put themselves at risk for their beliefs.

I’m worried because when we don’t really prosecute these sorts of crimes – and yes, crossing into a war zone is a crime that could have had serious consequences – larger crimes follow. In the West Bank, settlers emboldened by getting away with uprooting olive trees and harassing Palestinian farmers move on to arson, theft and wholesale abuse. We are promised those who set fires and cause harm will be arrested, but we know a handful will be detained and released the next day.

I’m worried that we’ve forgotten the lessons of pulling out of Gaza the first time, when soldiers were dying to protect a tiny assortment of settlers, and then, once the settlers were forced to leave and the fence went up, and later the siege took effect, Hamas was allowed to fester. Do we really intend to allow a new tiny extremist group to repeat the cycle?

I’m worried that, even as we ignore these people and dismiss them, they become the face of Israel. And then we wonder why we are accused of all sorts of crimes.

Limor Son Har-Melech, soft-spoken and modest, sounded by children, by God, with her pastel Guinan hat and long dresses, may seem pleasant compared to fellow MKs Tali Gottleib and Miri Regev. She’s not. She is a dangerous, racist fanatic, and her Messianic ideas are an anathema to the democratic state I once believed to exist.

We need to prevent the next incursion, before the flags are planted, the tents raised, and the peace plan jettisoned in favor of bigger fences and higher walls. She and her friends have been accused of a crime. The photographic evidence is on Facebook. Let’s see the army, police and courts – understaffed and besieged as they are – do their jobs and prevent this seditious group from crossing into Gaza even a second time. And let’s get the peace plan done! Let her try crossing a border guarded by Turkish and Indonesian soldiers. Right now, she and her group see a window of opportunity. We need to close that window as quickly as we can.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)