In memory of Tsafrir Ronen

The late Tsafrir Ronen  was a personal friend. He was  dynamic; in many ways a chalutz.  In a 2006 Israpundit interview with Ronen, we called him  “a man on a mission – to save Israel from itself“.  After all he was a former Sayeret Matkal officer.  Watch this interview with Eve Harrow of INR a few months before his untimely death when he spoke about The Curse of Hadrian film project. Tsafrir was personally courageous and we joked about his emphasizing that he was secular and  a man of the  left originally.

By his actions  he had moved to the right and  vigorously defended the settler movement.  His  Nahalal Foundation was an effort to heal the wounds from the unilateral disengagement from Gush Katif. I recall vividly meeting and interviewing him on his trips to New York.  Especially abiding was his organization of treks of generations of thousands of both secular and religious Jews returning to the ruined settlement of Homesh in the Shomron. Watch the attached PowerPoint  presentation on The Return to Homesh we  prepared for him to use  here in the US back in 2007. 

My friend Doris Wise in Los Angeles  and I shared a tearful moment on the phone about a year ago  recalling him and what many thought was  the loss of  his important message.  His sudden death at so young an age, 53 years,  came before he could realize his dreams of annexation of the Shomron and Judea and creation of an Israeli satellite TV version of the Discovery channel. Not having seenThe Curse of Hadrian that Yisrael Medad  commented in Arutz Sheva, perhaps my chaver Ted Belman of Israpundit can.

But I can appreciate that the Israel Broadcasting Authority which bought the rights to the production from his widow might have exercised editorial license that  may not have expressed  the message and ethos of Ronen’s Land of Israel movement.  Perhaps in many ways, his spirit lives on in the program of Habayit Hayehudi under the dynamic leadership of Naftali Bennett, another Sayeret Matkal, alum. Bennett certainly lambasted Shtadtlan, former US Ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, Secretary State Kerry’s failed peace negotiator in this recorded debate at the Brookings Institution Saban Forum  this weekend. Watch here.    If the two had connected then perhaps the funds might have been available for an independent production of The Curse of Hadrian that might have closely followed Tasfrir’s message. That and the Israeli satellite TV channel broadcasting the Emet about The Land Of Israel.