Remember & Rebuild!

 In Israel, from today,  January 23rd, 2011,  hundreds of schools across the land will designate a special Gush Katif  Day or week,  by learning about the history and relevance of Gush Katif to the country’s development. Those schools that participate in the voluntary programme do so in cooperation with the “Gush Katif and Northern Shomron Memorial Law” passed in 2008,  and with the approval of the Ministry of Education.  Some 600 schools have already purchased  new Gush Katif educational kits.  These schools predominantly represent the state-affiliated religious system.  Education is the key element in moulding our future and that of our children.  Especially those that inhabit the precious Eretz Yisrael! And,  for those of us who are adults & living in the Diaspora my blog will follow this initiave ... so,  Gush Katif Remembrance Week!!!

Gush Katif (גוש קטיף‎, lit. Harvest Bloc) was a bloc of 17 Jewish Israeli settlements in the southern Gaza strip.  In August 2005,  the Israeli army was ordered to expel 8,600+ residents of Gush Katif.   They were evicted from the area and their homes demolished as part of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan.   This is how Wikipedia describes the Disengagement.  I'm going to describe it a little differently ......

Gush Katif is a strip of land bordering Gaza where 21 Jewish Settlements had turned the desert to bloom .... it boasted some of the highest developed Green House farming projects in Israel, and indeed, in the world.  A 'Breadbasket' of Israel,  today, it is part of the Gaza centre of a Palestinian terrorist hell-hole.  And it is 'Judenrein'.   Israel's government, leaned over backwards to appease the anti-Semite nations of the world who wanted, according to the Road Map Peace Plan, a palestinian State to share Eretz Yisrael , the ONLY Jewish State on the planet,  with Jews  by creating " two viable, secure states living in peace side by side "

In retrospect, the recklessness of that move has become all too apparent, as Gaza has been transformed into a launching pad for rocket attacks against the Jewish state,  leaving southern towns and cities across the Negev,  such as Sderot, in the crosshairs of palestinian terrorists.  The fiasco of Israel’s retreat has led many of those who supported the move to publicly admit the error of their ways.   In November 2007,  former Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer of the Labour Party told an Israeli radio station, “I admit and I confess that I was among those who strongly supported Ariel Sharon (and the withdrawal). Today I say, with my head held high, ‘We erred, we made a very big mistake.’”   Amen to that!! Other senior Israeli military officers, pundits, journalists, and politicians have likewise acknowledged that the Gaza pull-out has proven to be ill-advised. 

 And neither, I might add, can I understand it either.  Indeed, it is still hard to accept that the forcible removal of Gaza’s Jews took place, or to believe that we could have possibly reached such a low point in the history of our nation.  After so many years of struggle and sacrifice,  those once celebrated as pioneers by successive Israeli governments were demonized as obstacles to peace and treated with contempt by much of the Israeli media.  The Israel Defence Forces were deployed against the citizens of their own state,  with the express purpose not of defending the Jewish people but of exiling them from parts of their ancestral patrimony. And withdrawal under fire, once derided as capitulation to terror, suddenly became official government policy. 
  
Israel’s Left was gleeful,  trumpeting the evacuation of Gaza as signaling the end of the dream of  “Greater Israel.”   But I believe they could not have been more mistaken.  For even in the face of uncertainty,  the dream of return lives on.  It might take years or even decades to achieve,  but of one thing we can all be sure .... the Jewish people will eventually bounce back, just as we have throughout our history.  And soon enough, the sand dunes of Gaza will once again most assuredly be  Eretz Israel! 

The initial date selected by the Israeli government for the expulsion from Gush Katif co-incided with the sombre Jewish commemorative Day, the 9th of Av, and had therefore to be postponed ....  On this day, centuries apart in history, both the Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed ~ the last of these, in 30 CE, causing the death of a million Jewish lives!

So, on 18th,  August 2005,  Israel carried out its disengagement initiative,  handing over all of Gaza and part of the West Bank to the palestinians, making it the first country in modern history to give up land acquired in a defensive war.   The forced evacuation of Jewish citizens from Gush Katif by their own government has revealed the great schism between the religious and the secular in Israel.  Israel's (especially leftist) secular ruling and controlling authorities rival the discriminating and brutal treatment of Jews by Jew-hating German authorities under Hitler ~ but this time in their own Land!

This all to please the Muslim appeasing President Hussein Obama & the Jew-hating nations of the world ....

100% of the Gaza Strip was evacuated and handed over to the palestinians.

300 square miles of the West Bank was evacuated.

21 Israeli settlements were uprooted in the Gaza Strip.

4 Israeli settlements were uprooted in the West Bank.

48 graves in the Gush Katif Cemetery, including six graves of area residents murdered by terrorists, were uprooted.

9,000 is the approximate number of Israelis, in 1,800 Israeli families, living in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank.    All of them were moved out as part of the withdrawal.

2,842 homes were destroyed and the rubble removed at Israel's expense

38 synagogues were blown up in the Gaza Strip.

287 public buildings were left for the palestinians.

5,000 school-age children needed to find new schools.

42 daycare centres were closed in the Gaza Strip.

36 kindergartens were closed in the Gaza Strip.

7 elementary schools were closed in the Gaza Strip.

3 high schools were closed in the Gaza Strip.

320 mobile homes, ordered by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, served as temporary housing for settlers, some are still living in them, without promised compensation.

45,000 Israeli soldiers and policemen participated in the Gaza withdrawal.

$1.7 billion was the approximate cost to the Israeli government for the withdrawal initiative.

166 active Israeli farmers were moved out of Gaza.

800 cows, comprising the second largest dairy farm in Israel, were moved out of Gush Katif.

$120 million in flowers and produce exported annually from Gush Katif were lost.

1 zoo, the "Katifari," that housed hundreds of animals was moved.

10,000 people employed in agriculture and related industries in Gush Katif, including 5,000 Palestinians, were made unemployed.

60% of Israel's cherry tomato exports came from the Gaza Strip. Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza extinguished this economic resource.

3.5 million square metres (almost 1,000 acres) of greenhouses were abandoned in Gaza & subsequently destroyed by 'palestinians'.

70% of Israel's organic produce was produced in Gaza. This is another economic resource lost.

60% of the herbs exported from Israel came from Gush Katif.

15% of Israel's agricultural exports originated in Gaza ~ more exports that lost following Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.

$360,000 was the approximate average compensation amount Israel expected to pay to relocate each family.

$870 million was the approximate cost for Israel to facilitate the resettlement of former West Bank and Gaza residents elsewhere in the country.

$500 million is the amount of money Israel’s security establishment spent in order to relocate Israel Defence Forces bases outside the Gaza Strip and build new border crossing facilities.

After the withdrawal 430,000 West Bank palestinians were able to move freely within and between palestinian controlled areas.

0 Israelis, dead or alive, remain in Gaza.

1.2 million Arabs will remain full and legal citizens of Israel.   All Israeli citizens  ~ Christians, Muslims, and Jews ~ have freedom of speech, religion, press, and the right to vote.

1.3 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, many of them in palestinian Authority-controlled refugee camps, are living under Sharia law imposed by their own leaders.

820,000 JEWISH refugees, FORCED to flee without their belongings from ARAB countries between 1947 and 1949,  still have no compensation for their losses from Arab governments.

650,000 Arab refugees who left Israel between 1947 and 1949 still need Palestinian leaders who will end terrorism and the culture of hate.