New Year's Eve 5766 – Our faith is strong

By Moti Sender

It has now been a month-and-a-half since that terrible day when IDF soldiers came to our doors in wonderful Gush Katif where we lived happily for twenty-seven years and raised a great family (three generations living at Gush Katif), expelled us from our homes and destroyed everything we had left behind.

So many prayers, so many entreaties, tears, hopes, attempts, but the order from above prevailed, the order to go through with the crime of expulsion that has been hovering above us for the past year-and-a-half. Yesterday it destroyed a charming and beautiful part of our homeland and today, after it “succeeded” so completely and without any noticeable protest, it hovers over other areas of our land; it is with a heavy heart that we foresee it destroying other towns and villages in the heart of our homeland, God forbid, a prospect that makes the personal pain of the evicted exiles of Gush Katif more poignant.

We have been refugees now for a month-and-a-half and we still cannot assimilate what we have gone through. We left behind us a proud history of pioneering enterprise that will certainly be long taught in the schools in history and civic classes, as an object lesson for a country that did not know what it was destroying; and more than that, we left behind our own wonderful Gush Katif that we and our comrades had built up with our own hands.

Our heart breaks whenever our memory is jogged; every hint and story about Gush Katif brings an ocean of tears to our eyes; the coming holidays and the uncertainty of our future increase our pain. From owners of estates we have become homeless, from families that give and receive guests we have become families that receive and are themselves guests; before we were happy families, and now we are sad and worried. From a single block of twenty-one unified settlements we have become bits and pieces, each community located somewhere else in Israel with no idea of what the future may hold; communities are splitting up and deciding to move to various places around the country; small children whose whole world was their home and their friends now find themselves without a protective home, without their usual friends and without their classmates, who are now attending schools in different places around the country.

“All believe that He is a God of faith, who examines and peruses what is concealed and hidden”

Today, just a few hours before the beginning of the New Year of 5766 we know that it is only through faith that we shall overcome this terrible crisis; only through faith will we be able to build new houses and communities; only through faith can we survive and heal our wounds; because only through faith can we continue to live our lives, for the sake of our children and our families.

In these moments we know that the people of Gush Katif were the true heroes. Every single inhabitant of Gush Katif deserves a medal of honor for their steadfastness and hold on the land in the various communities of Gush Katif, for their inexplicable ability to withstand all the terrorism threats, six-thousand mortar bombs and Qassam rockets, tens of thousands of shooting incidents, thousands of explosive charges that went off on the roadsides and countless intelligence warnings and road shut-downs day and night, for their ability to send their children to schools and kindergartens, for the children’s heroism in getting up every morning and going to school, for the leadership shown by our youth who worked tirelessly to encourage their parents and families so that they would not cave in.

In the last days of Gush Katif we all prayed for a miracle that would stave off the disaster. Unfortunately the miracle did not happen. I heard that Rabbi Yaakov Ariel, Chief Rabbi of the city of Ramat Gan, said a few days before the expulsion that the miracle had already happened: the miracle was that all the people of Gush Katif remained in their homes until the very last days, with their green flourishing gardens; they stayed in their towns until the very last moment and did not fear; this was the great miracle.

Today, six weeks after the most significant and terrible event that happened to the Jewish people in recent times, I have confidence in them, in my friends from my own village and from all the other communities of Gush Katif; only with people like them can we continue to raise our heads high and continue the wonderful project that our government destroyed without thinking. I am convinced that with the wonderful youth of my own town and of the other communities of Gush Katif we can make other deserts bloom, build new flourishing towns and communities. I have confidence in the children of all the towns of Gush Katif who were full partners in our worries and pains and experienced with us the expulsion and destruction and did not want to run away but insisted on staying with us and hold out a loving hand so that we could rehabilitate ourselves and recuperate from our painful injuries. I am confidence that due to the merit of our three Patriarchs and the merit of all the wonderful parents of Gush Katif who brought their children there in its first days (and who are now grandparents) to build houses in the middle of nowhere, who encouraged the families not to run away under terrorist attacks, who gave the children the strength to continue building in Gush Katif and living there until the very last moment despite the doubts and the fears, who helped families that had to cope with financial difficulties.

Because of all this, and thanks to their merit, we shall rise, live in hope and pass on to our children the heritage of their fathers.

Source: katif.net

Words of Farewell in the Synagogue of Ganei Tal One Hour before the Expulsion

August 17, 2005

By: Shoshi Slutsky

“Even if our mouths were filled with song as the sea, our tongues filled with joy as its many waves, our lips filled with praise as the wide sky, our eyes bright as the sun and the moon, our hands spread like an eagle’s wings and our feet as light as gazelles, we would not be able to thank you enough, our God and God of our fathers”.

We thank Thee for the opportunity to have lived in this wonderful place for twenty-seven enchanting years of creation, and of love toward this good earth that reciprocated by giving us bountiful crops and helped us prosper.

We cannot thank Thee enough for the spiritual strength you have given us over the years, which we used to build an outstanding community that helped us cope with tragedy and celebrate our joys, inside the synagogue and in its courtyard.

We cannot thank Thee enough for the wonderful children that grew up in the dunes to become paragons of faith and spiritual strength; they will be able to lead the next generation very differently, in the spirit of Jewish and human ethics.

We cannot thank Thee enough for all the good Thou hast done for us in this place and for the many miracles Thou hast shown us. For many years Ganei-Tal will remain for us a model for future development.

We have all had a very difficult morning and now, my dear Ganei-Tal, we must bid you farewell and say goodbye to all this beauty and grace that accompanied us for so many years.

The Kotsker Rabbi said: “Inside the dark cloud are the nourishing raindrops”. We are now under a very dark cloud, but we are leaving as a special community with our heads held high. We fought for you, Ganei-Tal, and for Gush Katif as a whole; no one will take away from us the power engendered by that struggle.

We shall build you and you shall rise again, Ganei-Tal.



 

GUSH KATIF WILL RISE AGAIN - My Last Letter From Gush Katif - by Rachel Saperstein

August 16, 2005

I am crying. Tears stream down as I write this letter to you.

We are packing. Tonight we will receive our eviction letter. The soldiers will knock at our door and we will answer the door…  Tomorrow we will be put on to buses and brought… who knows where.

Our friends who have been living with us are packing up my home. I am so grateful they are here and doing this awful work. I don’t care if my things are clean or folded carefully. They are just thrown into cardboard boxes provided by the army, each marked with our name and a blue sticker. An ugly red shipping container will probably be put on our front lawn today, the visible sign that we are leaving.

Residents were called to the town hall for an emergency meeting this morning. Our mayor, Lior Kalfa, gave us our instructions. Rabbi Yigal Kaminetzky praised the large crowd of people who did not leave. Eighty percent of Neve Dekalim residents are here today. We are the people who have held out to the end under the most difficult conditions. War weary after five years of bombardment and a year of extreme psychological pressure, we are still here.

Ariel Sharon has won the battle but he lost the war. He has lost the people of Israel. He has crushed the soul of our soldiers.

Gush Katif will rise again, at another time and in another place. We were a source of inspiration, of greatness, a fight well fought, a fight for the right to be a Jew in a Jewish land.

Gush Katif will rise and the Sharon government will be remembered with contempt by the people.

And so this chapter is over.

The communities of Gush Katif

Bedolah בדולח (lit. Crystal)
Bene Atzmon בני עצמון
Gadid גדיד (lit. picking of palm tree fruits)
Gan Or גן אור (lit. Garden of light)
Ganei Tal גני טל (lit. Gardens of dew)
K'far Yam כפר ים (lit. Village of sea)
Kerem Atzmona כרם עצמונה
Morag מורג (lit. Harvest scythe)
Neve Dekalim נוה דקלים (lit. Palm tree Oasis)
Netzer Hazani נצר חזני
Pe'at Sade פאת שדה (lit. the edge of the field)
Katif קטיף (lit. harvest, picking of flowers)
Rafiah Yam רפיח ים
Shirat ha-Yam שירת הים (lit. Singing of the Sea)
Selav שליו
Tel Katifa תל קטיפא