"Pay attention," warned the message received this week by thousands of Gush Katif evacuees, "Due to the security situation in the Gaza Strip, we will be prevented from coming tomorrow to the rally in Kisofim to mark the 17th anniversary of the deportation. The event will take place at the Gush Katif Heritage Center in Nitzan."
17 years after the destruction of Gush Katif, even a rally cannot be held because of the fear of the missiles and terrorism exported on a daily basis from the Gaza Strip.
The irony screams to the sky.
Folly and injustice divide the heart.
No one will bring back the flourishing settlements and wonderful communities, but from the perspective of 17 years of this self-initiated and unnecessary destruction, it is worth at least drawing conclusions.
Tisha B'av today - a day that symbolizes the sad end of the two previous attempts to establish a Jewish state here.
Tradition teaches us to see the disasters that happened on this day in a broad perspective, and to understand that they are made up of several reasons: a lack of appreciation of the enemy's power alongside an inner weakness resulting from the loss of a spiritual path, moral corruption and endless social conflicts.
And here, Tisha B'av and the memory of Gush Katif come together and teach two incredibly topical messages:
The first message is a security one: then yes today, we are facing an enemy determined to destroy the Jewish state.
No word washing will change that.
If we let the interests of the enemy dictate our borders, and if we continue to imagine that he actually seeks peace and tranquility - we simply will not be here.
If we are unable to stop a terrorist in Jenin without paralyzing life in the Gaza Strip - we have made a mistake.
We forgot that even though we established a strong and prosperous country - destruction is a real option, and never resilience.
Fact, it already happened in the ancient Jewish state which was, twice, no less strong and prosperous and a regional power.
The second message is social: the IDF soldiers went through "preparation" for the disengagement, which required them to see the settlers as a bitter and violent enemy. The settlers, for their part, mainly cried, hugged and left their life's work with the nobility of "there will be no fratricidal war". You have to go "to the end" and I respect them, but the majority voted with their feet and taught us a message for generations: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and the common ground must not be broken even when the other side does something intolerable.
"The political struggle should be conducted with a knife between the teeth", a famous political activist told me a few weeks ago;
But the knife too quickly becomes a double-edged sword.
There is a dispute that is too intense, and there is a fire that starts as an ideological fervor, but can get out of control and consume everything in its path.
In the besieged and starving Jerusalem on the eve of the Holocaust, it hardly mattered who was a Pharisee and who was a Sikri, who was a Bibist and who was a Ralivist. Not that the dispute is not important, and not that there is no dispute for heaven's sake - but the shared resilience is more important. We must not forget what the means are and what the goal is, and we must not forget that the enemy Always standing at the gate waiting for gym time.
were we wrong
We will fix it!
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