The only wannabe here is Joe Millis who is not a stakeholder in the Jewish State whereas the thousands of families whether born here or overseas (many of whose ancestors never lived in Europe let alone America) including my own who have settled and in some cases resettled what was and will always be part of the Land of Israel are full stakeholders; we are citizens whether we are new olim or second third fourth or even more generation makes no difference. Only stakeholders in the State have the right to say who or who will not be our government and the interference by outsiders in internal Israeli politics is neither welcome nor acceptable.
The settlements did not appear overnight and nor were they born of a single ideology. Approval for the first settlements in the 1970s was made by the Labour party and this process has continued over the last forty years. Not all settlers are religious and not all religious people want to live in the settlements.
No Arab was displaced to make way for the construction of the property in which I now live since it was arid desert the same however cannot be said for many parts of Israel which lay inside the "Green Line". Certainly no Arab ever had sovereignty over the land on which I live. However that is not the point. The whole of the Land of Israel including that now within the State of Jordan until it was gifted by Great Britain to the Hashemites was awarded by the League of Nations to the Jews for settlement and certainly not to any people calling themselves Palestinian. Hence our living in Karnei Shomron or in Tel Aviv or in Haifa or in Netanya or in Herzlia or in Pisgat Ze'ev is perfectly legal. The cost of the settlements would have had to borne whether they were in Judea and Samaria or in the Negev or the Galilee. It was legal for Jews to build and live here before 1948 there is no reason why that should not be the case now.
Endeavouring to diminish us by calling us zealots or the like or even scum as one poster has just reflects their own nihilism. Blaming the current high price of property or even the crisis in the health service on us has no basis in fact and is just a rather sinister effort to scapegoat us for the failure of successive governments to tackle the ever widening gap between rich and poor in this country. These problems have been endemic in the State for years. It is no secret that a small group of very wealthy and powerful families has a disproportionate say in what goes on in this country. It is also no secret that the red tape involved in obtaining and effecting planning permits has led to bribery and corruption at the highest levels of government. If anything if you ask the ordinary citizen that is what he is protesting about. That and the fact that housing especially in the major inner cities is being provided for rich overseas investors rather than the people living here and the fact that the shekel has appreciated substantially against all major foreign currencies and the saving has not been passed on to the consumer.
Only the extreme left who have an an agenda all of their own and funding from outside foreign agencies are blaming it all on the settlers and the settlements.
The left in general are somewhat disappointed that unlike the "Arab Spring" their little attempt at an uprising has received little or no attention abroad, neither the BBC nor Sky have anything about it, and CNN only has a short piece. Harriet Sherwood wrote her usual rubbish in the Guardian. There were more protestors against the expulsion of Jews from Gaza.
All in all most Israelis are coming round to the fact that this has been a carefully orchestrated attempt by the extreme left funded by the NIF to do something they were incapable of doing at the ballot box. For sure it has given the government of the day a jolt which was long overdue but it certainly is not as the left would have loved it to have been - a revolution.