Those people who oppose boycotting General Gershon Hacohen and think that he should have spoken in the Kfar Etzion debate titled "King David and I" point out that Gershon Hacohen has a lot of worthy deeds under his belt, a grand past in the army; One rabbi even says that Hacohen "prevented blood from being spilled at the time of the Gush Katif expulsion" and that after the deed was done, Hacohen admitted (not in public, but personally to one of the bereaved families) that he participated in a crime. Others say that Hacohen represents a different point of view, and, after all, what is the problem with hearing a different opinion?

If so, I would like to propose that the serial rapist Beni Sela should be invited to be a head speaker in the "Binyan Shalem" convention titled "Family Relationships". Why not? I’m sure Beni Sela has performed some good deeds. I’m sure he loves his parents, and fulfills the commandment of respecting parents. He probably once helped a blind man to cross the street. He may have done his reserve duty in the army and has helped the country in this way.

While raping his victims, he shed tears of identification with them and most important, he prevented bloodshed. He just raped. He did not murder. And when he did rape, he did it gently. So he promises. Until the next rape… but mainly, he represents a different opinion…so why not hear him out?

Sounds like a crazy idea? Excessive? Radical? Too cynical? Why?

They’ll say "Don’t exaggerate. Beni Sela is a real criminal, how can you even compare the two?" And this is where the problem is: The organizers of this debate really do not understand the problem inherent in inviting Hacohen. It is because they do not think of the events of 2005 in Gush Katif as a crime. And the moment the expulsion is not a crime, what’s the problem with inviting Hacohen?

The whole problem with the "Hacohen and the debate" is the very fact that he was invited ­ an invitation that shows us a clinically twisted and sick outlook, in part of the people of our camp. We must try and understand how it is that a large part of our community does not look upon the expulsion of 2005 as a crime? There is no doubt that if the same thing would have happened in France, and the government there would have expelled in force 10,000 Jews from the capital Paris and would give the synagogues there to Muslims in order to turn them to mosques, that all the organizers of this debate, together with the people of Israel would be united in the opinion that this is an anti-Semitic crime, and that we need to boycott and fight against those Europeans.

Why is it that when this is done in Israel, there is no shock? Obviously not in the left; but even close to home the director of the Kfar Etzion Field School Yaron Rozenthal and the head of the Gush Etzion Community Center Eliaz Cohen, do not remember or interpret the expulsion as a crime?

Is the answer to this question the fact that it was done by Jews? Meaning the same act, done by non-Jews is a crime, but done by Jews, inside the "family", is ok?

There are those who explain this as the abused wife syndrome, where a beaten woman tries to appease her husband by hugging him more. The fear of the strong, controlling left, leads to appeasement even if the price is treading on one’s own brothers. Others explain it as the "Stockholm Syndrome". The Stockholm syndrome is a phenomenon where a captive who is held by force by strangers, starts agreeing and empathizing with the ideology and actions of the people holding him. This syndrome comes from the need identify one’s self with the strong and controlling element. We can also say that inviting Yossi Sarid and Gershon Hacohen reminds us of the Christian way of offering the other cheek to whoever spits on you or tries to tread on you. All these descriptions are correct, but they do not adequately address our question. Why? How did this happen?

The problem is not only inviting Hacohen to the biblical debate. The problem is the conduct of part of our camp before, during and after the expulsion; dancing with the soldiers. The cooperation and groveling of certain rabbis and public figures with the perpetrators of the expulsion. Physical and verbal violence of the appeasers against right-wing activists. The pathetic need to be liked by the left. No other sector would behave like this when a threat of expulsion and the destruction of their life’s work were hanging over their head. Not the Charedim, not the secular camp. And certainly not the Druze. So why, why has our camp behaved in such an abnormal way? In this question lies the root of the problem and the root of the answer.

I believe that the state-religious education system has spoiled many in our camp, rabbis and public figures included. This education believes in the ideology that the "State is above all". Many have stretched this ideology to such extremes that in their opinion the government, as the representative of the state, can do whatever it pleases, even crimes against the Jewish people in its land. This radical state-worshipping has ultimately led to bizarre scenes of dancing with the expulsion forces. This extreme ideology prevented the Yesha Council from struggling to save Gush Katif, and instead to mourn and protest pitifully, because the holy State cannot be beaten. This abnormal ideology does not see the expulsion as a crime, which is why there is no problem with inviting the commander of the expulsion Hacohen to speak his piece. This perverted idea spoiled a lot of us and caused a lot of religious people to participate in the expulsion and thus desecrated G-d’s name by giving a hand to the abandonment of parts of our holy Land to the enemy, and by expelling Jews from their land.

Luckily, not all have fallen victim to this radical and dangerous indoctrination that causes its victims to turn to mindless robots who obey every order, without questioning the ethics of the order. More and more people in our camp understand the danger of blind obedience to the government. These are the people who, please G-d, will make sure that another expulsion will not take place.

These are people that understand that the State is not a goal in itself, but a tool to be used for another purpose: returning the Jewish people to its G-d given Land, application of Jewish sovereignty on all of Israel when the day comes and we can restore the Jewish kingdom of old. The same idea is correct when talking about the army. The IDF was created to safeguard the people of Israel in the Land of Israel, and to fight the enemies of Israel. If there are people who take over this country and its army and completely change their purpose, there is no better way to sanctify the name of G-D than to oppose them.

What the radical state-worshippers do not understand is that opposing the expulsion command, would have sanctified, rather than harmed the IDF. Massive civilian disobedience to prevent the expulsion crime would have only preserved the State of Israel in the Land of Israel.

We failed in Gush Katif and the Northern Samaria in the summer of 2005. Since then, we are trying to remedy the problem, in time for the future struggles over Judea and Samaria. The flood of protests to the invitation of Gershon Hacohen to the "King David and I" convention shows that thank G-D, there is a large group of people that understood the lesson taught to us in the 2005 expulsion and will struggle, this time seriously, to save Israel. I am sure that King David, who fought his whole life to conquer and build the Land of Israel, thanks all those activists who prevented a great desecration of G-D’s name in Kfar Etzion.

Dear Friends,

Once again we see that pressure and activism works. Due to the overwhelming protest of residents of Israel and abroad against the participation of Yossi Sarid and Gershon Hacohen in the evening "In the footsteps of King David", the entire event was cancelled.

Sadly, the organizers, instead of sending out an apology for inviting those speakers, sent out a despicable letter denouncing those who protested the participation of Sarid and Hacohen.

Below is the reaction we sent out in response to the cancellation and the link to the Arutz 7 article.

Kol Hakavod to all of you who sent faxes, emails, signed the petition and made phone calls. Each and every one of you added to the struggle that brought upon this important victory in our struggle for the Land of Israel.

As Mazal Hania told us on the phone after we found out that the event was cancelled: "The time has come to make it clear to all that anyone who gave a hand to the uprooting of Jews from the land of Israel cannot be welcomed or honored. That is how, please G-d, we will prevent further expulsions and destructions."

Link to Arutz 7 article: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/127260

With Love of Israel,

Ruth and Nadia Matar
Women in Green
——————————

REACTION BY ACTION COMMITTEES:

The evening in Kfar Etzion was, Baruch Hashem, cancelled.

The organizers of the "Tanach Festival" were taken aback by the flood of calls and faxes from citizens from all over the country, among them our brothers from Gush Katif and Northern Shomron, who demanded to cancel the appearance of Yossi Sarid, one of the spiritual fathers of the expulsion of Jews from Eretz Yisrael and of Gershon Hacohen who actually implemented the expulsion.

The reaction of the Gush Etzion Field School is a superficial reaction that completely ignores the anguish and tragedy of our brothers from Gush Katif and Northern Shomron who have been trampled by arrogant officers like Gershon Hacohen.

The reaction of the Gush Etzion Field School completely distorts the image and character of King David.

We are convinced that King David would never have agreed to the expulsion of Jews from Eretz Yisrael and to the handing over of our Biblical Homeland to the enemy. At the contrary: King David only conquered and built the Land.

It is good that the evening "In the footsteps of King David" was cancelled, for King David would have been shocked and horrified to hear that among the speakers appeared a man who calls for the expulsion of Jews from Erets Israel (Yossi Sarid) and another one who actually committed the crime (Gershon Hacohen).

May it be that we will not need to protest such events in the future.

The Action Committees Efrat-Gush Etzion-Kiryat Arba-Hevron

For details: Nadia Matar 050-5500834 Yehudit Katzover 02-9961292

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Dear Friends,

Thousands of Jews from all over the country and even from abroad participated last night in the Women in Green’s 14th Annual Tisha B’Av march around the Walls of the Old City. Men, women, youth and children, religious and non-religious, young and old, new olim, old olim and natives - all united in their unconditional love and loyalty to the Land of Israel and Jerusalem.

Rabbi Israel Ariel, head of the Temple Institute, MK Prof Arieh Eldad, Attn Elyakim Haetzni, Dudu Elharar, Ezra Yachin and Nadia Matar headed the march and then spoke at the Lion’s Gate.

For a short taste of this very special and moving evening, please click on the following link and enjoy Gemma Blech’s pictures http://picasaweb.google.com/gemmablech/9thAv2008TishaBAv5768

For a two-minute video clip by arutz 7 http://www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/178363

Below is a translation of Nadia Matar’s speech at the Lion’s Gate.

As you can imagine, preparing such a mass walk takes lots of preparation and organization. Women in Green would like to especially thank our dear and loyal Woman in Green friend and partner Anita Finkelstein who worked tirelessly, day and night, and without whom this event could not have succeeded.

May we please G-d soon merit the coming of the Geula (Redemption) and next year, instead of having to walk beneath the Temple Mount, have the great honor of walking up to the Temple Mount with tens of thousands of Jews to be part of the building of the Third Temple.

Ruth and Nadia Matar
Women in Green

————————————————————-

AND WHAT IF THE PEOPLE HAD REACTED DIFFERENTLY?
by Nadia Matar

On Tisha B’Av it was decreed that the people of Israel will not enter the Land of Israel because of the sin of the spies. Ten of the spies slandered the Land of Israel and the response of the people was:

"And the entire congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night." Said Rabba, said Rabbi Yochanan: That day was Tisha B’Av. And G-D said: "They cried a needless crying, and I will set crying and lamentation for generations.

This is the place to ask: what would have happened if the people had reacted differently? Imagine this scenario: Ten spies (who, as we know, were much respected, leaders and rabbis of the people) slander the Land of Israel. Calev and Joshua protest: "Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it." The people join the two and reject the words of the ten spies. The entire Jewish history would look different, with no doubt for the better.

In other words, a key message of Tisha B’Av and of the sin of the spies is that the power to make history, to guide history, is in the hands of the people. G-D is telling us: Instead of crying, you should have supported Calev and Joshua, in spite of them being minority, and together oppose the slandering leaders and rabbis! Do not blame the weak leaders. You, the people, needed to know where to stand and who to support.

G-D decreed this punishment of lamentation for generations because of the people’s reaction. Because of that defeatist response, the people were punished for generations upon generations. We cannot follow politicians, rabbis and leaders blindly, because some of them also slander the Land. How sad that these things are so actual!

In the desert the people said they can’t even enter the Land. Today, the slanderers say we must give up parts of the Land. Not only the political left. To our disgrace, these days this slander is heard from rabbis and public figures that are supposed to be our leaders. How are we supposed to complain against the left, if these voices are heard in our camp?

This is unbelievable! Three years after the destruction of Gush Katif and Northern Samaria we hear that the same leaders who planned the disgrace of Kfar-Maimon, now want to continue with the destruction of Migron. Sorry, that we’d agree to the "copying" of Migron to a new location. They always know how to find gentle and delicate words for horror and destruction. Then they called it "disengagement", now ­ "copying".

Let us not think for one moment that Migron is a domestic dispute concerning only the Jews of Judea and Samaria. The struggle against the State of Israel by our Arab and European enemies is now focusing in Judea and Samaria. What happens in Judea and Samaria will influence the entire country. Migron is supposed to be the beginning of a domino effect that will bring down all Jewish communities to allow the creation of an Arab state that will be a danger to the whole country, from Eilat to Metulah.

Now the historical choice is in our hands. How will we, the people respond to the slander against the Land of Israel in the Migron case? Will we repeat the mistake our forefathers made in the desert?

Will we whine and wail, or will we correct the sin of the spies and join those leaders and rabbis, even if they are a minority, that proudly declare, in the spirit of Joshua and Calev, that the entire Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel, and we will not agree to give up one piece of it!

In Kfar Maimon, we sinned. We cried, we whined instead of breaking down the fences despite those weak leaders. If the fences were pulled down ­ Gush Katif would exist today. We can blame the organizers of this disgrace ­ but the main blame is with the people, that like a blind flock stayed obedient and did not rise up.

And now it is the duty of the people to fix the sin of the spies once and for all.

The correction must focus on a few levels concerning the struggle for the Land of Israel.

The sin and its punishment related to our attitude to the Land of Israel. Correcting this will come with our loyalty to the Land of Israel.

How will we do this?

The first and most basic thing to do ­ which is obvious ­ is keeping the existing communities. Every place where Jews are sitting, every place  under Israeli control ­ Migron, Beit El, Shevut Ami, Shdema, Alon Shevut or Ariel ­ we do not give away or "Copy" to new locations. On the contrary, we only make these places bigger. Build, expand. This must be stated plainly and clearly.

And if anyone tries touching Migron or tries giving away Shdema to the Arab enemy for the purpose of building an Arab neighborhood next to Har Choma ­ we will fight for these places like a lioness would fight for her cubs.

But this is not enough. What about all the desolate places between every settlement? Hundreds of thousands of square meters in the Land of Israel, mountains of Judea and Samaria that are waiting to be settled? Every day they are slowly taken over by the Arab enemy. The last few months a European organization by the name OXFAM has been donating hundreds of tractors to the Arabs, and they have been taking over whole areas in Judea and Samaria, with the clear purpose of taking all our land and turning the existing settlements to small isolated islands in a sea of hostile Arabs. Of course the authorities have not done a thing, even though these lands are State Land. ­ So what? Are we going to let them take control of our land? No! It is our duty to fix the sin of the spies and if our leaders will not do this than apparently we must do it ourselves.

But this also is not enough. There is another thing we must do for the struggle over the Land of Israel. We  read about it in Parashat Mas’ei ­ G-D tells us: "And you shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and dwell in it ­ for I have given you the land to possess it… But if you will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those whom you allow to remain of them shall be as thorns in your eyes, and stings in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein you dwell. Moreover it shall come to pass, that I shall do to you, as I thought to do to them."

"And you shall dispossess the land" ­ Rashi tells us ­ And you will "drive out" the inhabitants of the land. In other words, a condition for our continued existence on this land is the expulsion of the Arab enemy. If we will not do so ­ they will be thorns in our eyes. Stings in our sides. They will even use their tractors to kill us.

We cannot ignore this subject any longer. Today we surround the Temple Mount like a bride that circles around her groom ­ The people of Israel and the Land of Israel are like a married couple. And like a married couple, it is impossible for us to be willing to share out spouse with someone else. We cannot share this land with another nation. If we do not have the power to push the Arab enemy out now ­ At least we can do all we can to make them feel uncomfortable amongst us. Let them understand they are not wanted; we do not need to give them a living. The return to Jewish labor is part of repairing the sin of the spies, and a condition to settling the whole land.

Thank G-D, since the destruction of Gush Katif and the North of Samaria a new generations has grown that is bent on fixing this sin. The wonderful youth that marches and builds proudly on all hills of Judea and Samaria are the followers of the Calev and Joshua spirit. Lovers of the Land of Israel, adults and teenagers, that took initiative and are struggling for our right to the Temple Mount, Shdema, Chomesh and many more, are fixing the sin of the spies. Calev and Yehoshua were only two. Today we have thank G-d thousands. Our challenge is to turn those thousands into tens and hundreds of thousands. We can do it!

From here we are sending wishes and blessings of strength to our brothers in Migron. The responsibility of the faith of the Land of Israel lies on your shoulders. Continue to stick to your uncompromising position and everyone will join you. Do not fear the pressures that will be imposed on you by all the slanderers.  The eyes of the people are raised to you. Do not let the slandering leaders do something that will cause lamentation for generations.

On Shabbat we read in Devarim: "Behold, the Lord thy G-D has set the land before thee: go up and possess it, as the Lord G-D of thy fathers has said to thee; fear not, nor be discouraged". "Go up and possess it" says G-D. (in Hebrew it reads "resh"). If we listen to this command, and add to the word ‘resh" a divine dimension, meaning the letters of G-D’s name…then the Land of Israel will be a "yerusha", a inheritance. If we do not do this, than the "resh" will be turned into "gerush", meaning expulsion. The decision is in our hands.

May G-D grant us the power to decide to follow in Calev and Joshua’s footsteps. Not to fear to inherit the land. Then we will please G-d return to every place in Israel. We will speedily rebuild Gush Katif and Northern Samaria. We will march to the Temple Mount and rebuild the temple, and see the Geula (Redemption) in our days, amen.

=============================================
Women For Israel’s Tomorrow  (Women in Green)
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A left-wing kibbutz member, who had never seen a Yesha settlement until the day she came to destroy it, asks forgiveness of the people she expelled. "Three years without a home is much too long," she says.

The soldier publicized her story, and request for forgiveness, in an interview with Yedidya Meir on the Kol Chai radio station.  She had been an active member of a left-wing youth movement in her kibbutz, never having met a "settler" (Jewish resident of Judea, Samaria and Gaza), or been inside a Jewish town there, in her life.

After enlisting in the army, Maayan - as she is known during the interview - and her fellow soldiers were given the tasks of packing up the nursery school in Bdolach, a community of some 40 families, between N’vei Dekalim and Atzmona, and expelling the residents of Kfar Darom in northern Gush Katif. She did not even understand at the time why her "victims" should be upset at her.  Excerpts from her story:
"It began when we were sent to Bdolach to help pack up the nursery school. I was simply amazed to see the entire nursery still there, with all the toys and all the games as usual, despite the fact that they were supposed to be evicted three days later.  Nobody had packed.  While we were packing, a woman came and yelled at us, ‘Go away, don’t pack, who gave you permission?!’ I wanted to talk to her and ask her why she was angry at me.

"Suddenly, she asked me, ‘Do you know what they are planning to do with us, or where they’re planning to take us?’  I didn’t have the answer, but I was sure that someone else did. I told her, ‘I’ll make sure that someone will take care of you. The State certainly has a place for you to live.’ I was sure that if this turned out not to be true, we as an ideological movement and as citizens would organize to protest such a thing.

"Three years is not a short time, and things should have straightened out already. But year after year we see that this is not the case. I’m very ashamed to look these people in the eyes. I am ashamed that I represented the values of the State, while the State forgot these values."

Later, apparently the same day, Maayan’s army unit was taken to another town-to-be-destroyed, Kfar Darom:
"We entered Kfar Darom.  This was the first time I was in Gush Katif. I saw that it looked just like a Kibbutz - large lawns, very nice one-floor houses.  I had always thought that ’settlers’ meant caravans and poverty, but suddenly I saw how beautiful the place was.

"We got to the houses of the families, and then it became very, very hard. The pain that was there, we also felt.  We waited for a long time outside the houses, watching from the side as the officers went in and tried to talk with the families. There was one family that decided to leave on its own, but they had an 11-year-old boy who refused.  He just yelled and cried and sobbed.

"At one point, his father and brother said they refused to let any soldiers come into their house, and that they would take the boy out by themselves. When they took him out, he simply cried and screamed and kicked. I could see that this was no show. He was doing this in his father’s arms.  He cried and asked, ‘Why are you doing this? How can you leave the house?! Why are you listening to them?!’

"It was a traumatic experience. My [girl]friends started to cry, for the first time. One of them next to me said, ‘You’ll hear these cries of his as you’re giving birth.’  It was truly jolting. The cries of that boy are with me every day.  They really are."

Maayan has another story about a family of immigrants from Ethiopia:
"There was an Ethiopian family that we moved out; it really broke my heart. I remember that there, even I cried.  The father kept on giving his little daughter candies to give to us - the people who came to take them out - just so she wouldn’t be afraid of us. He asked to speak with all of us, and explained that ever since he arrived from Ethiopia by foot in Operation Solomon [in 1991], he has been wandering in Israel among different caravan neighborhoods, and only here, in Kfar Darom, did he finally succeed in building his house. He asked us not to take him out forcefully, as he wanted to go out by himself. He took his little daughter in his hands, and his suitcase, and when he reached the door, he just broke down in tears and crying, held on to the doorpost and simply refused to part.  Where is he today? Did he ever recover from what we did to him? Did he end up wandering again among caravans? I don’t know. But that moment was shocking. It it something that you remember every day, something you get up with in the morning. If you ignore it and leave it aside, everything is fine - but when you really think about it and the pictures return, it is shocking. It’s alive and kicking and painful and burning."

Maayan said that she and her friends did not advertise their experiences during the expulsion:
"People don’t talk about what happened then. It’s like this thing that people don’t talk about that period. We came home, related some things that happened, but even with our parents and friends - it’s something that no one wants to talk about. No one who was there is proud of it. It was something very difficult for everyone.

"I hope the families and residents will forgive me, first of all as a private individual who did this terrible thing, and also as a citizen of this country. I hope they forgive me as a soldier, because I carried out a mission in the name of the country and its legislative branch, because of my belief in the country’s values. But I feel that that as a country, I betrayed them.  I betrayed them as an individual and as a country, and I hope that they forgive me.

"I hear much talks about additional evacuations [of Jewish towns and people] and various concessions. It seems to me that everyone can see what is happening in the place that we evacuated. I remember that the chairman of my youth movement spoke to us during a seminar in preparation for the Disengagement, and said, ‘We are not happy at their misfortune; we want to do something good.  If it turns out to be not good, we will be strong enough to admit that we failed.’  Well, I never heard that he asked forgiveness.  But if we have to be strong enough to admit that we failed, then I feel that this move was a failure. It was a wrong move."

Maayan wrote an open letter of apology to the residents of Gush Katif, noting, "How could I, a little girl who never built a thing in her life, have dared to come and destory with my own hands entire lives of people who built up so much with such hard work?"  She explained:
"It took me a long time to reach the point where I feel I have to say I’m sorry without trying to look for explanations.  As far as I’m concerned, there is no explanation for what happened in Gush Katif, and I simply regret it very much. I’m not getting into an ideological argument… But from my emotional experience, I feel that I was part of a terrible injustice that was done to these people - an injustice that, looking backwards, was not necessary, in my opinion, and with no real [positive] results, only negative ones."

"I’m coming out with my story," Maayan said, "because I want to ask true fogiveness from the families, and to strengthen them. But I hope that other soldiers will also follow me and will do the same. I know that no one can say, ‘We did a beautiful job in the Disengagement,’ because everyone was broken from it."

Many of the soldiers were warned beforehand that they would feel this way, but most did not listen. Click here for details. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/88607

The Ethiopian Family

The weekly B’Sheva newspaper found the Ethiopian family from Kfar Darom described above, living in the temporary site in Shomeriya.  The father, Avraham Simon, was asked to comment on the soldier’s request for forgiveness, and said:  "We’re not yet in our permanent homes; we have not yet reached our ‘rest and inheritance.’ To come and say to us ‘we’re sorry’ without doing something to repair what they did, has no meaning.  The soldiers who feel bad about what they do have to tell their commanders in that well-oiled machine that they will not take part in another expulsion, and they must go the people they threw out of their homes and see what they can do for them, and they must educate their future children not to take part in something like this."

This is not an issue of an individual soldier, Avraham said, "but rather a national correction that must be made. The Nation of Israel has to know that if someone destroyed an area in the Land of Israel, it doesn’t get solved just by saying ’sorry.’ When it comes to the destruction of the Land of Israel, there is no forgiveness!"

 

A left-wing kibbutz member, who had never seen a Yesha settlement until the day she came to destroy it, asks forgiveness of the people she expelled. "Three years without a home is much too long," she says.

The soldier publicized her story, and request for forgiveness, in an interview with Yedidya Meir on the Kol Chai radio station.  She had been an active member of a left-wing youth movement in her kibbutz, never having met a "settler" (Jewish resident of Judea, Samaria and Gaza), or been inside a Jewish town there, in her life.

After enlisting in the army, Maayan - as she is known during the interview - and her fellow soldiers were given the tasks of packing up the nursery school in Bdolach, a community of some 40 families, between N’vei Dekalim and Atzmona, and expelling the residents of Kfar Darom in northern Gush Katif. She did not even understand at the time why her "victims" should be upset at her.  Excerpts from her story:
"It began when we were sent to Bdolach to help pack up the nursery school. I was simply amazed to see the entire nursery still there, with all the toys and all the games as usual, despite the fact that they were supposed to be evicted three days later.  Nobody had packed.  While we were packing, a woman came and yelled at us, ‘Go away, don’t pack, who gave you permission?!’ I wanted to talk to her and ask her why she was angry at me.

"Suddenly, she asked me, ‘Do you know what they are planning to do with us, or where they’re planning to take us?’  I didn’t have the answer, but I was sure that someone else did. I told her, ‘I’ll make sure that someone will take care of you. The State certainly has a place for you to live.’ I was sure that if this turned out not to be true, we as an ideological movement and as citizens would organize to protest such a thing.

"Three years is not a short time, and things should have straightened out already. But year after year we see that this is not the case. I’m very ashamed to look these people in the eyes. I am ashamed that I represented the values of the State, while the State forgot these values."

Later, apparently the same day, Maayan’s army unit was taken to another town-to-be-destroyed, Kfar Darom:
"We entered Kfar Darom.  This was the first time I was in Gush Katif. I saw that it looked just like a Kibbutz - large lawns, very nice one-floor houses.  I had always thought that ’settlers’ meant caravans and poverty, but suddenly I saw how beautiful the place was.

"We got to the houses of the families, and then it became very, very hard. The pain that was there, we also felt.  We waited for a long time outside the houses, watching from the side as the officers went in and tried to talk with the families. There was one family that decided to leave on its own, but they had an 11-year-old boy who refused.  He just yelled and cried and sobbed.

"At one point, his father and brother said they refused to let any soldiers come into their house, and that they would take the boy out by themselves. When they took him out, he simply cried and screamed and kicked. I could see that this was no show. He was doing this in his father’s arms.  He cried and asked, ‘Why are you doing this? How can you leave the house?! Why are you listening to them?!’

"It was a traumatic experience. My [girl]friends started to cry, for the first time. One of them next to me said, ‘You’ll hear these cries of his as you’re giving birth.’  It was truly jolting. The cries of that boy are with me every day.  They really are."

Maayan has another story about a family of immigrants from Ethiopia:
"There was an Ethiopian family that we moved out; it really broke my heart. I remember that there, even I cried.  The father kept on giving his little daughter candies to give to us - the people who came to take them out - just so she wouldn’t be afraid of us. He asked to speak with all of us, and explained that ever since he arrived from Ethiopia by foot in Operation Solomon [in 1991], he has been wandering in Israel among different caravan neighborhoods, and only here, in Kfar Darom, did he finally succeed in building his house. He asked us not to take him out forcefully, as he wanted to go out by himself. He took his little daughter in his hands, and his suitcase, and when he reached the door, he just broke down in tears and crying, held on to the doorpost and simply refused to part.  Where is he today? Did he ever recover from what we did to him? Did he end up wandering again among caravans? I don’t know. But that moment was shocking. It it something that you remember every day, something you get up with in the morning. If you ignore it and leave it aside, everything is fine - but when you really think about it and the pictures return, it is shocking. It’s alive and kicking and painful and burning."

Maayan said that she and her friends did not advertise their experiences during the expulsion:
"People don’t talk about what happened then. It’s like this thing that people don’t talk about that period. We came home, related some things that happened, but even with our parents and friends - it’s something that no one wants to talk about. No one who was there is proud of it. It was something very difficult for everyone.

"I hope the families and residents will forgive me, first of all as a private individual who did this terrible thing, and also as a citizen of this country. I hope they forgive me as a soldier, because I carried out a mission in the name of the country and its legislative branch, because of my belief in the country’s values. But I feel that that as a country, I betrayed them.  I betrayed them as an individual and as a country, and I hope that they forgive me.

"I hear much talks about additional evacuations [of Jewish towns and people] and various concessions. It seems to me that everyone can see what is happening in the place that we evacuated. I remember that the chairman of my youth movement spoke to us during a seminar in preparation for the Disengagement, and said, ‘We are not happy at their misfortune; we want to do something good.  If it turns out to be not good, we will be strong enough to admit that we failed.’  Well, I never heard that he asked forgiveness.  But if we have to be strong enough to admit that we failed, then I feel that this move was a failure. It was a wrong move."

Maayan wrote an open letter of apology to the residents of Gush Katif, noting, "How could I, a little girl who never built a thing in her life, have dared to come and destory with my own hands entire lives of people who built up so much with such hard work?"  She explained:
"It took me a long time to reach the point where I feel I have to say I’m sorry without trying to look for explanations.  As far as I’m concerned, there is no explanation for what happened in Gush Katif, and I simply regret it very much. I’m not getting into an ideological argument… But from my emotional experience, I feel that I was part of a terrible injustice that was done to these people - an injustice that, looking backwards, was not necessary, in my opinion, and with no real [positive] results, only negative ones."

"I’m coming out with my story," Maayan said, "because I want to ask true fogiveness from the families, and to strengthen them. But I hope that other soldiers will also follow me and will do the same. I know that no one can say, ‘We did a beautiful job in the Disengagement,’ because everyone was broken from it."

Many of the soldiers were warned beforehand that they would feel this way, but most did not listen. Click here for details. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/88607

The Ethiopian Family

The weekly B’Sheva newspaper found the Ethiopian family from Kfar Darom described above, living in the temporary site in Shomeriya.  The father, Avraham Simon, was asked to comment on the soldier’s request for forgiveness, and said:  "We’re not yet in our permanent homes; we have not yet reached our ‘rest and inheritance.’ To come and say to us ‘we’re sorry’ without doing something to repair what they did, has no meaning.  The soldiers who feel bad about what they do have to tell their commanders in that well-oiled machine that they will not take part in another expulsion, and they must go the people they threw out of their homes and see what they can do for them, and they must educate their future children not to take part in something like this."

This is not an issue of an individual soldier, Avraham said, "but rather a national correction that must be made. The Nation of Israel has to know that if someone destroyed an area in the Land of Israel, it doesn’t get solved just by saying ’sorry.’ When it comes to the destruction of the Land of Israel, there is no forgiveness!"