An old adage holds that in a democracy, people get the government they deserve. But if there is one thing that last week's events demonstrated conclusively, it is that Israelis do not deserve this government. Nothing could be more alien to the cynicism, cowardice and callousness displayed by our ministers than the courage, compassion and decency displayed by tens of thousands of ordinary citizens last week.

Governmental cynicism hit new heights with Justice Minister Tzipi Livni's article in Haaretz last Wednesday and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's press conference later that day. Both used these platforms to urge evicted Gaza settlers to direct their anger at the government rather than at the evacuation forces. And theoretically, of course, they are correct. But what both failed to mention (along with our sycophantic media, which labeled these appeals "statesmanlike") is that ordinary soldiers and policemen bore the brunt of the settlers' pain and anger mainly because they were the first government representatives that most evicted residents had ever seen.

Neither Sharon, Livni, nor any other pro-disengagement minister with the laudable exception of Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz considered it necessary at any time during the past year to meet personally with the settlers, listen to their pain and explain the rationale for disengagement. Nor did any minister see fit to be present during the eviction itself to look the consequences of their decision in the face. Instead, they chose the coward's route, leaving tens of thousands of young men and women in uniform to face the grief and rage in their stead and then added insult to injury by blaming the settlers for the inevitable result of this choice.

The contrast with the behavior of the army and police could not be starker. Maj.-Gen. Dan Harel, head of the IDF's Southern Command, and Maj.-Gen. Uri Bar-Lev, head of the police's Southern District, both understood that it was wrong to ask their subordinates to face something they were unwilling to face themselves. Thus they, along with many other senior army and police officers, personally knocked on settlers' doors, absorbed the residents' angry accusations and helped to carry unwilling evacuees from their houses.

EVEN MORE remarkable was the behavior of those tens of thousands of subordinates ordinary Israelis from all walks of life. Faced with the job of forcibly evicting fellow citizens from their homes, the normal human response would be to steel oneself against the unpleasantness by viewing them as adversaries, obstacles to the mission's accomplishment, and therefore to become angry at those who made the task more difficult.

Yet not only did police and soldiers resist this temptation almost without exception, refusing to respond to even the most outrageous insults and remaining carefully gentle when physically evicting those who refused to leave voluntarily, but many even demonstrated active empathy, weeping openly as they carried out their orders and giving the settlers hugs of sympathy and support.

The behavior of the vast majority of evicted settlers was also awe-inspiring. Though the media preferred to focus on the handful of hooligans who hurled eggs, paint balloons and cries of "Nazi," the majority set a standard of love for their fellow citizens that would be hard to equal. How many people, faced with the loss of their homes, their jobs and their entire communities, could nevertheless offer cold drinks to those who came to evict them, as Atzmona residents did on Sunday? How many people, in such a situation, could nevertheless view their evictors as brothers rather than enemies, and therefore exchange hugs with them?

In a backhanded way, even the hooligans were credits to their communities. Not that their behavior was excusable: It was both morally wrong the soldiers were indeed not to blame for the disengagement, nor is the pullout in any way comparable to the Holocaust and tactically stupid. The settlers will need mainstream Israelis at their side in future battles, and as one Netzer Hazani resident counseled a teenager who wanted to throw tomatoes, the soldiers "won't want to be like someone who threw tomatoes at them."

Nevertheless, in a world where millions of people consider the demolition of individual Palestinian houses to be sufficient justification for a suicide bombing, it is surely noteworthy that, faced with the wholesale destruction of 21 entire communities, even the hooligans among Gaza's Jews largely confined themselves to hurling verbal insults and nonlethal weapons such as eggs and paint. No Jewish terrorists emerged from the Gaza settlements.

Finally, the religious Zionist public deserves credit for refusing to disengage from the state despite being subjected to a hysterical and vicious double standard.

Leading leftists have repeatedly urged soldiers to refuse to serve in the territories and at least 635 (according to Courage to Refuse) have answered this call, yet no one has ever suggested barring leftists from officers' courses. But when leading rabbis urged soldiers to refuse to participate in the disengagement, politicians, journalists and even senior army officers instantly asserted that religious Zionists can no longer be trusted never mind the lack of evidence; we all "know" that they obey their rabbis blindly and should henceforth be barred from becoming officers. Yet instead of rejecting the society that was so quick to reject them, most religious soldiers consulted their consciences and concluded that despite rabbinic urgings, their own opposition to the disengagement and the horror of evicting people from their homes, the rift that mass refusal could create in Israeli society was the greater evil. As a result, only 72 soldiers refused orders prior to the pullout and five during the evacuation itself less than one-eighth the level of leftist refusal.

Looking at our government is often enough to make one despair of Israel. But if so many ordinary Israelis could respond to the horrendous challenges of last week with such courage, compassion and devotion, then despite all our faults, we must be doing something right.