Last Wednesday, shortly after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to build hundreds of new homes throughout the occupied territories, I watched a performance of "Carmen" at the foot of Masada. Occasionally my glance wandered from the tortured lover, Don Jose, to the top of the mountain that has become synonymous with love of Israel and God - a story of defeat and cruel destruction.

The boastful response of the prime minister's men to international criticism of the move ("It's an automatic reaction" ) echoed in my ears as I listened to Georges Bizet's immortal work. I recalled with disgust the speech of Elazar ben Yair, leader of the Sicarii zealots, before the besieged Jews on Masada. "Wherefore, consider how God hath convinced us that our hopes were in vain, by bringing such distress upon us in the desperate state we are now in, and which is beyond all our expectations; for the nature of this fortress which was in itself unconquerable, hath not proved a means of our deliverance; and even while we have still great abundance of food, and a great quantity of arms, and other necessaries more than we want, we are openly deprived by God himself of all hope of deliverance ..." (Josephus Flavius, "The Wars of the Jews," VII 8.6, translated by William Whiston ).

Josephus (Yosef ben Matityahu ), who recorded the suicide speech, related that the Sicarii engaged in the theft of land, among other pursuits, through the use of force and threats of murder. Nor did the hilltop youth of the Second Temple era show mercy to Jews who did not follow their zealous and violent ways. According to Josephus, zealots from Masada slaughtered 700 women and children after looting their homes. The remains of the victims were later discovered in a mass grave on the site. Like the outpost and Gush Katif settlers who barricaded themselves in the synagogues, the 1st century C.E. zealots and real-estate enthusiasts believed until nearly the last moment that no power in the world could withstand their faith.

The Jewish establishment distanced itself from and even denounced the zealots for their provocation of the Roman leaders and their crimes against their own people. (Both the Jerusalem Talmud and the Tosefta prohibit the purchase of land bought by the Sicarii.)

But today the main difference between the modern zealots and the establishment is stylistic only: While the Jewish land pirates propose colliding head-on with anyone who stands in their path of conquering the entire country - the government proposes ways that create a detour around law and justice, which bypass peace and the court system. They raise a hue and cry over the plan to move five buildings from the stolen plots on which they were built. Netanyahu suggests detaching the buildings from their foundations and transporting them, and the cabinet responds with hundreds of building lots that were taken from their owners on false pretexts ("military needs" ). Religiously sanctioned crooks terrorize our elected representatives, protected by moral and legal immunity from prosecution.

The 21st-century Sicarii do not conceal their repugnance of the rules of the democracy game. Their long arms reach every Jew who dares challenge their actions: a Holocaust-survivor professor, peace activists, a bilingual school and a left-wing Knesset member. They do not refrain from attacking Israeli soldiers who permit them to shoot at Palestinian farmers. The establishment denounces "lawbreakers," of course. But the prime minister and the foreign minister are among the leaders of those who incite against human rights organizations (Avigdor Lieberman: "They are accessories to terror" ), against the media (Netanyahu: "The New York Times and Haaretz are our main opponents" ) and against the rule of law (Interior Minister Eli Yishai: "It's a mistake to demolish the homes" - or, the learned explanation: "There are thousands more homes that were built on private land" ).

In his farewell speech, Elazar ben Yair said: "... that fire which was driven upon our enemies did not of its own accord turn back upon the wall which we had built," and he goes on to explain: "... this was the effect of God's anger against us for our manifold sins, which we have been guilty of in a most insolent and extravagant manner with regard to our own countrymen."

Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Shaul Mofaz and their coalition colleagues, all of them partners in the crime of the settlements and of the failure to obtain peace, sin extravagantly against their own countrymen.

At the end of "Carmen," Don Jose stabs his lover in the heart for rejecting his advances. Don Netanyahu loves the Land of Israel so much that he stabs the State of Israel in the heart on its behalf. Or in the words of Ben Yair, "Let us go out of the world, together with our children and our wives, in a state of freedom."