"If someone comes to kill you, then you kill them first, says the Torah."—Roni, 14.
Excerpt from the Girls at War, an article by Elizabeth Rubin for Tablet magazine (the ones in italics are mine):
Girls from Ulpana (High School) Ma'ale Levona in the West Bank are known for their strong personality, radical political stand and willingness to fight on behalf of the settlers against the state of Israel. Instead of afterschool sports they did afterschool fight-the-state.
The school, steeped in the teachings of Kabbalists, would nurture a new kind of girl—smitten with God, righteous, ideological, ready to fight and procreate for the cause of restoring biblical Israel.
“I got arrested six times.”—Moriya, 19.
Moriya was 13 at the time of the evacuation of Gush Katif...She and her friends took buses to Gaza to block the soldiers...They were thrown in jail, and stayed there for 40 days because they refused to give their ID cards—a symbol of the state.
"The intifada. Self-sacrifice is how they (people of Egypt) got land. So I am proud of my kids getting arrested. If they do things for God, I’m proud...The Arabs have Islam. The Quran gives them motivation and that’s why they are dangerous...You can’t be a technical robot. We need Judaism.”—Lenny Goldberg, father of Roni and Moriya.
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Sure, they fight, alright. But not for your idea of peace. And definitely not in a sweet girlish fashion.
They fight for survival. They fight for what they believe is their right. And they fight for what they truly believe in: to restore the biblical state of Israel.
They are the product of the lethal mixture of faith and youth. A concoction locally brewed at the Ma'ale Levona in the West Bank.
Fierce and fearless, these girls are extremely vocal, echoing the same radical political ideology, participating in local vigilante looking for vengence, not afraid of getting into trouble with the law.
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
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Read the article in full - all 8000+ words of it - at Tablet. Photo by Gillian Laub.
Disclosure: the article is written about Jewish people by a Jew for a Jewish magazine.