Media figure Yehuda Schlesinger referred to his military role during the deportation program 20 years ago - and asked for forgiveness from those deported from the Katif organization.
In a monologue on his Channel 14 program, Zelinger said: "Twenty years have passed and the time has come to open this wound. The soldier in the picture is me. I negotiated the disengagement. I served as the IDF spokesman, head of the religious communications desk, a cog in the machine that negotiated and facilitated this crime.".
""I was there when a threatening swarm of people dressed in black entered in two columns through the gates of the settlements. I was there when parents of babies were dragged out of their homes like sacks of potatoes. I was there when the best of the best sat on the synagogue floor begging to avert disaster and no one listened.".
Want more news, videos and stories? Join the Haredim 10 WhatsApp channel >>
He said candidly: "For twenty years I have been racking my brain trying to understand how this happened? How those who warned were silenced, how those who predicted what would happen were labeled as delusional, how it was so easy to see the light and so many were in terrible darkness. Today, when I work in the media, I understand very well - I was brainwashed and mind-engineered. I was inundated with newspaper headlines, reports in editions and media that broadcast only one narrative - the settlers are violent.".
""There were headlines like 'Fear of firearms,' 'Settlers stockpiling weapons,' and all sorts of 'assessments and warnings in the IDF of settler attacks.' It was a really bad, disturbed, unrestrained, and mostly fake smear campaign, a fake from start to finish against the best people in the world. I was brainwashed by a shelf of messages that included hollow clichés like 'with determination and sensitivity,' maintaining statehood, and woe, woe if the army fails to carry out a mission.".
""Twenty years later, there is a moral: what happens to a country that surrenders and flees from terror? Everyone has already learned after the October coup. What I learned is that it is no longer permissible for one side to control the media. Twenty years later, I express my opinions without shame or hesitation. There cannot and must not be one side that is responsible for consciousness, there are no more etrogs who maintain dangerous left-wing agendas, there are no politicians who sit in studios disguised as commentators without being exposed.".
""Today, I have only one thing left - to ask for forgiveness and pardon from the deportees and to ensure that it never happens again, and that it never will.",
