Walking among the tens of thousands of Israeli protesters at Moshav Kfar Maimon this week was like being witness to a miracle. There in the scorching summer heat were thousands upon thousands of families with children of all ages, young men and women and elderly people, living under siege and in conditions that would make an infantryman cringe.

And yet, there was no complaining. There was no shouting. There was no pushing. There was no garbage on the ground. There was no stench of any kind. What one saw in the protesters' faces and heard in each and every statement and conversation was dignity, determination, integrity, faith and a form of earthy, plainspoken and unabashed patriotism and concern for the greater good that has become an artifact of a barely remembered past for many Israelis.

In witnessing this – when just outside were 20,000 soldiers and policemen, laying concertina wire along the fence penning these people in as if they were terrorists, and standing arms locked in row upon row, poised to pounce at them at the slightest provocation – it was, indeed, hard to shake off the sense that one was watching a miracle happen.

The tens of thousands of law-abiding citizens – estimates of their actual numbers run between 30,000 and 60,000 – were exercising their democratic right to protest the government's plan to expel 10,000 Israelis from Gaza and northern Samaria and destroy the communities they built from sand next month. The protesters oppose this plan for moral reasons. It is simply obscene, they say, to carry out these expulsions. These people are set to be thrown out of their homes and their farms just because they are Jews. Israel receives nothing in return. These people's homes will be either destroyed or turned over to the same Palestinian terrorist forces that have been attacking them continuously for the past five years. Their hothouses and livestock are set to be turned over to the Palestinians as well.

The plan's proponents argue that the expulsion of 10,000 Jews from their farms and communities in the Land of Israel is necessary to maintain Israel as a democratic, Jewish society. Yet, what these opponents of the expulsion plan experienced, in their efforts to even voice their opposition, is that in insisting on carrying out this plan – which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was reelected overwhelmingly in 2003 by promising to oppose – the government is trampling and endangering both Israel's democratic form of government and its character as a Jewish state.

On Sunday evening, the day before the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip's solidarity march from Netivot to Gush Katif was set to begin, the police denied the council a permit. In so doing, the police unabashedly denied these people their democratic right to protest the policies of their government. The police's justification was the announced plan to walk to Gush Katif – on the third day of the protest. The denial of the permit to demonstrate meant that everything about the protest plan was deemed illegal. Citizens conducting demonstrations in Netivot, Kfar Maimon and Kibbutz Re'im, the first three planned stops on the march – all of which are well within the sacrosanct 1949 armistice lines – was deemed an illegal activity.

Then Monday, when the council ignored this draconian announcement, the police breached the constitutional rights of tens of thousands of Israelis by intercepting privately owned buses throughout the country – from the Golan Heights to Tel Aviv to Eilat – and prevented their law-abiding passengers and drivers from exercising their right to travel freely in the State of Israel. In both of these actions, the police – with full backing from the Prime Minister's Office, the State Attorney's Office and the leftist local media – took actions that undermined Israeli democracy and its foundations as a state ruled by law and not the police.

On the roads to Netivot on Monday and on the roads to Kfar Maimon on Tuesday and Wednesday, the police set up roadblocks to inspect cars. Cars with orange banners of solidarity with the residents set for expulsion, and cars whose passengers were identifiably religious, were pulled over and not allowed to pass. Rather than turn around and go home, the passengers said nothing of this obviously unlawful, discriminatory humiliation. They simply got out of their cars and, pushing their baby carriages and strollers, walked for kilometers under the desert sun to reach Kfar Maimon on foot. In so treating these citizens, the police clearly signaled that they view religious Jews as a threat. So much for leaving Gaza and northern Samaria in order to ensure Israel's future as a Jewish, democratic state.

AS ONE walked along the crowded road and the lawns of Kfar Maimon, one was struck by the ubiquity of the television cameras. Nearly all major news organizations in the Western world were present. In the past, when the council brought up to a quarter of a million people out to protest land giveaways, the mass demonstrations in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv received barely any attention. And here were Fox and Sky News, CNN and the BBC competing with Israel's television channels for the best place to park their satellite dishes.

The reason for this is clear: The world press has bought into the demonized image of the Jewish residents of Gaza, Judea and Samaria that has been largely propagated by the Israeli Left and the Israeli media. The "settlers" are viewed as violent, extremist, money-grubbing religious fanatics who threaten the foundations of Israel and block any chance for peace between Israel and its neighbors. In other words, under normal circumstances, protests by the settlers are considered unworthy of media attention. But this time, the media swallowed the bait set by the council leaders who insisted that they would march to Gush Katif. Everyone came to film the blood that would be let when the protesters clashed with the Israeli army and the police.

But once they were there, far away from their air-conditioned offices and apartments in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, they had to send in the pictures of what they saw. And what they saw was the truth they have been insistently denying for the past 30 years. Namely, that these Israelis have nothing in common with their demonized image. Here were tens of thousands of peaceful protesters singing and dancing and studying together. Here they were, handing fruit and drinks to the soldiers and policemen sent to stand against them and, rather than fighting with them, they prayed with them. For the first time, perhaps ever, both the general public in Israel and the world were able to receive undistorted images of these people on their television screens. Continued...