In the wake of the steps toward peace in our region, the large-scale exercise to examine Israel's readiness to defend itself from massive rocket attacks on population centers and strategic facilities reached its high point Tuesday. On the same day, a memorial rally was held in Jerusalem for the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva students who were killed 30 days before. Yesterday, one soldier was killed in southern Gaza while two Israelis were killed by terrorist gunfire at the Nahal Oz terminal. And of course, as per usual, rockets of peace continued to fall on the western Negev.

"Leading Israel Toward Peace for 30 Years," read the poster at the entrance to the site set up by Peace Now at Tel Aviv's Rabin Square on Tuesday, to mark 30 years since the organization's establishment. At the site, and especially in the discussion tent, some spoke explicitly about victory, and garnered applause.

Indeed, the movement began as a marginal group whose ideas were considered, even by the Zionist left, as radical and a challenge to the national consensus, but over time these ideas have managed to penetrate the center of Israeli consciousness. Its terminology ("the occupation," for instance) has become dominant in Israeli discourse - certainly in the media's rhetoric - and its ideology of concessions and withdrawals has been carried out in the last few decades by all Israeli governments, although not at a pace that satisfies the desires of its activists.

If Peace Now had the intellectual courage to analyze sincerely its achievements, its primary finding would be that the movement's intentions were positive but the means used to accomplish its goals were mistaken. The fact is that peace, which tops its list of objectives, is moving further away and the number of victims - Jewish as well as Arab - is rising.

In addition, when the movement pinned the primary blame for the absence of peace on its own people, it sinned against truth, and against peace as well. The ramifications of this sin are that it undermined many people's confidence in the righteousness of the Zionist enterprise, and even in the Jewish state's right to exist in the Land of Israel.

The more this feeling of Jewish righteousness was undermined, the more the Arab, especially the Palestinian, sense of self-confidence blossomed. For if the Jews blame themselves, as proven by Peace Now rallies (which a biased press greatly exaggerated, thereby strengthening the Arabs' feeling that time was on their side), then why move toward a peaceful solution? It's better to wait until there's no more wind in the sails of the Zionist state and it collapses.

Although the generation that founded Peace Now set the stage, it refrained from ripping the last shreds of Zionist solidarity. But their successors over the last few years, for whom the end justifies the means, are not as inhibited. Take the way they fight settlements. By petitioning the High Court of Justice, Peace Now caused destruction in Amona, and then rushed to petition the High Court regarding other communities.

There is no doubt that one of the movement's key victories was won over the High Court. But this, too, is a Pyrrhic victory. The High Court can harm only the margins of the settlement enterprise. But, as seen in the widespread support for Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann's campaign against the Supreme Court, the court has struck a devastating blow to the source of its power, the public's confidence in it.

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