Why Gush Katif Still Matters

BS”D

Opinion piece by: Moshe Dann

The expulsion of 10,000 Jews from their homes five years ago was not a localized event in the Gaza Strip and Northern Shomron. It was a national implosion, a national disgrace. It caused enormous physical, psychological, social, cultural, military and strategic damage to the entire nation – and it still does. Like an ecological disaster, its foulness still seeps through our foundations, and continues to poison us.

Undermined by enforcing a political agenda, the entire political system, the media and judicial institutions refused to act responsibly. Basic civil and human rights of Jews were abandoned. Those responsible for welfare and proper compensation misled and lied; led by SELA, the Disengagement Authority, our country was in denial.

Our own political leaders, along with many spiritual leaders – those for whom we voted, in whom we trusted – failed to organize and prevent this catastrophe. Ministers who disagreed were fired; public debate was suppressed.

The Knesset was impotent and negligent; they did not insist on proper procedures, to which all citizens are entitled; and no one was held accountable.

Our IDF, in which we and our children serve, in which we believed, were brainwashed and turned into zombies; those who refused to participate were heavily punished — a misuse of the IDF which was illegal and immoral.

The media protected Arik Sharon and those who planned, organized and carried out the pernicious plan because they agreed with his agenda. The perpetrators were even honored and promoted. Military and strategic advisers who disagreed with Sharon remained silent in order to keep their positions.

We believed that those we elected, and the institutions of government were fair and honest. We were wrong.

The expulsion and destruction of 25 Jewish communities is a symbol of national betrayal. The same toxic thinking led to the removal of Jewish communities from Sinai in 1982 and the Oslo Accords, which brought PLO terrorists to power and caused the slaughter of thousands of Jews, as well as the wounding of tens of thousands more. The product of corruption, deception, greed and arrogance, Disengagement is an example of cruel indifference and the abuse of power. We are still stuck there.

The Disengagement left a deep wound that will not heal, not only because lives and homes were destroyed, but because it was immoral, unjust and irrational. The knife of perfidy is still in our spiritual guts; it is an ongoing trauma of our neshama – not just the people who suffered physically and mentally, but a national deception. The Disengagement, Hamas and Hezbollah remind us, symbolizes not pride and victory, but our shame and defeat.

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From Glezele Vayne