Gershon Baskin says it all:

'Zionism is not about occupying the West Bank and Gaza. The continuation of the settlement enterprise is an act of suicide for the Zionist dream. It is not only about demographics. It is perhaps even more so about values, morality and lessons that we, as Jews, should understand better than anyone else.

'The disengagement from Gaza is a Zionist act. Ending our occupation and domination over Gaza and its people is an action aimed at saving Zionism from those who have tainted the noble aspects of its cause since 1967. The Zionist dream is still in danger and the Zionist enterprise is at risk as long as we continue our occupation and domination over the West Bank and its people. The march out of the occupied territories must continue. We must return to ourselves and build Israel from within.

'The future appears ominous. Over the past months I have watched the streets of Israel and, in particular Jerusalem, turn orange. As the streets, the trees and the fashion has adopted this new symbol I have found myself confronted with the very strong visual image of a people I do not recognize.

'How could these people – with their messianic vision and value system that justifies treating the "other" as less equal than Jews – and I be part of the same nation? We have the same roots, we share a common heritage, we come from the same places, yet there has been a split; for some time they and their kind have been very different from me and my kind.'

The disengagement appears to have brought the moral crisis that has engulfed Israel out into the open. The terrible danger, of course, is that this weakens Israel still further at a time when the Arab enemies who wish to annihilate it are seizing their moment and redoubling their attacks. The orangistas are thus handing Hamas victory on a plate. This hysteria is suicidal. The country should pull itself together to back the disengagement, and put an end to the disgusting, Holocaust-denying equation being made between the resettlement of Jews from places where settlement was always a moral and strategic error -- a disengagement fraught with extreme danger which is being undertaken in order to safeguard the Jewish state -- and the pogroms and ethnic cleansing of Jews by those who wished them dead.

A country can survive a threat from without -- but not if it is simultaneously tearing itself apart.