The scene could have been taken from the theater of the absurd. A senior IDF officer was facing the camera, reacting bitterly to Israeli demonstrators calling him and his soldiers "Nazis." "How can you call us Nazis?" he asked, filled with rage. "We are only carrying out orders! Without sentiments!"

I have given much thought to these words. Obviously this officer knows only that the Nazis killed Jews. He does not know that for an entire generation, the words "We only carried out orders!" have been imprinted on the Jewish consciousness as the slogan of the German war criminals. And the word "without sentiments" only makes it worse.

But the question is: What caused the demonstrators, respectable folks, professors among them, to burst out with such an extreme and objectionable expression?

Every day we hear of the demolition of "illegally built" Palestinian homes. At most, there are merely a few words in a newspaper. Words. But when seen with one's own eyes, it is horrifying.

One of the most serious curses in the Arab culture is, "May your house be destroyed." Because a house is not merely a structure of stones and walls. A house is the symbol of man's dignity and of a family's security.

A house is passed on from one generation to the next. The destruction of a house is not just a dry administrative act. It is an act which rocks the very foundations of human life. I suspect that even many liberal Israelis, who do not give the matter much thought, do not perceive the heinousness of this daily act.

It is shocking to watch a bulldozer moving towards a wall and taking the first bite, then the second and the third, like an evil prehistoric monster, until the wall collapses and the roof comes crashing down in a cloud of dust. To hear the wailing of the men and women being dragged out in front of the children, to see their broken belongings scattered on the ground. Are the soldiers' hearts so hardened that they can "do the job", as the saying goes, "without sentiments"?

When those shocked Israeli demonstratos witnessed the demolition in the refugee camp of Anatah, and heard the soldiers saying that "they were only following orders," the outburst occurred. One of the demonstrators, the erstwhile Chief Rabbi of Strasbourg, was present when the soldiers opened live fire and wounded a Palestinian youth in his back (he lost a kidney). Unsurprisingly, the event did not merit a single word in the Israeli press that day or the following day.

The demolition policy currently being implemented by the occupation authorities carries the seed of the next calamity. A child whose house was demolished in front of his terrified eyes becomes a walking time bomb. The entire Palestinian community which lives with this reality every day knows that the "peace process" is nothing but a fairy tale, and in reality the war rages on throughout the territory.

Virtually every new Palestinian house in Jerusalem is built "without a permit," since virtually no new permits are issued to Palestinians. (The very few Palestinians who do obtain permits are regarded as collaborators.) The Netanyahu-Olmert-Suissa bunch want to reduce the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem and force its residents to move elsewhere. The situation is absurd: Because the blue I.D. cards of East Jerusalem residents who have moved out of the overcrowded Arab parts of the city are now being confiscated, a mass flow back into the city has begun. A Palestinians pays for a amall apartment in the Old City more than an Israeli for a luxury apartment in Rehavia. Contractors find it lucrative to build and rent. And so the feverish pace of Palestinian construction is reaching its peak. As the Bible said (Exodus 1, 12): "Bur the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew."

Even before the bulldozer moves out of the area after a demolition, the task of rebuilding begins with the family and neighbors. The laborers returning from their day jobs in Israel proper join in the effort. In a matter of days a new house has replaced the demolished one, with the family ensconced in it. This process repeats itself again and again. So far, the Palestinian side is winning. The number of "illegal" homes is growing.

Outside of the annexed area of Jerusalem, demolition takes place throughout Area "C", which Netanyahu and his partners (among them some of the leaders of the Labor Party) want to annex to Israel as well. The intention is to carry out a "transfer", known by the rest of the world as "ethnic cleansing," so that the territory can be acquired by Israel free of any Arab people.

Human-rights activists from all over the world have send letters of protest to Netanyahu. His officials respond with a standard line that contains no truth whatsoever: It is just a matter of administrative routine, Jewish homes are demolished in the same manner, and assorted other lies that would fool only a simpleton. But the number of simpletons is steadily shrinking.

Once we used to sing: "We have come to the land to build and to be built." Now we can sing: "We have come to the land to destroy and to be destroyed."