This month of August marks the Sixth Anniversary of the Giving of Gush Katif to our Arab enemy in the vain hope of some mythical 'Peace'. Six years on that Aspiration lies trampled, the pain of those torn from Gush Katif remains real. I meant to feature this Anniversary earlier in the month ~ right after Tisha B'Av ~ but I got distracted in a way I didn't expect by the Beck business. I want to recall this Anniversary on this last day of August!
Then came, on this day, yet another banishment, in ways much more painful. In 2005 (it was scheduled on Tisha B'Av, but actually took place the next day), Jews were brutally evicted from their residences, businesses and properties of Gush Katif. Many were third generation citizens. You would think a Jewish government would know something about significant Jewish dates. Yet they chose Tisha B'Av to do their dirty work. Jews of Gush Katif were told Tisha B'Av was the final day, by which time they were required to abandon their birthrights.
The Five calamities the Mishna lists that befell on Tisha B'Av are .....
The decree to forbid entry to the Holy land for the generation of the desert;
The First and Second Temples were destroyed ~ Our Beit Ha'Mikdash
The city of Beitar was captured;
And, Jerusalem was smashed to rubble after the destruction.
For generations other unfortunate events occurred on Tisha B'Av, the harshest of them being the expulsion from Spain. On August 2, 1492, King Ferdinand of Spain proclaimed that no Jewish foot may remain on Spanish soil.
Then came the expulsion from Gush Katif. It's one thing when Goyim oppress Jews. Jewish law tells us "Esav hates Yaakov", so we can somewhat understand the cruelty committed. But how can we begin to fathom cruelty when a Jew commits such atrocity to another Jew? Can we compare an eviction of Jews perpetrated by Goyim in a Goy nation to one where a Jewish government in a Jewish country does the same to its own people?
Gush Katif (גוש קטיף, lit. Harvest Bloc) was a bloc of 17 "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 differently ......
Gush Katif is a strip of land bordering Gaza where 21 Jewish communities 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' !!!
0 Israelis, dead or alive, remain in Gaza. The Orchards & thriving farmland has been Razed. Nothing Remained!
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 " This has been shown to be falsity & a farce. The Arab plan of gaining Eretz Yisrael in "Pieces" remains intact!!
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.’” Amein 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 birthright. And withdrawal under fire, once derided as capitulation to terror, suddenly became official government policy.
So, on 18th, August 2005, Israel carried out its "disengagement initiative", handing over all of Gaza and part of the West Bank to the Arab enemy ~ poor palestinians ~ making the tiny Jewish State 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 rival the discriminating and brutal treatment of Jews by Jew-hating German authorities under Hitler ~ but this time in their own Land. Ha'Shems Land .... Not ours to Give away at all!
The Anti - Semitic world 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 the dream of return rightly 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 Yisrael! B'Zereth Ha'Shem!!
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