The value of apology
As the 10th anniversary of the Gaza disengagement approaches, the media in Israel has naturally started looking back on that event.
As the 10th anniversary of the Gaza disengagement approaches, the media in Israel has naturally started looking back on that event.
Current statistics suggests that, even though France is depicted as less than empathetic to the Jewish community, the Jewish population there has actually grown.
Barry Frydlender greets a reporter at his apartment in southern Tel Aviv with gentility and reticence. In his spacious living room, a sofa set rests on old, cracked, Arab-style tiles that block a studio nook containing a computer set-up. A window overlooks the Tel Aviv beach promenade, where the 52-year-old Israeli photographer meets friends every morning. All around his living space are slices of Israeli life in the form of mural-sized photographs pinned up on the walls.
The sight of men in uniform dragging religious Jews away provokes a visceral reaction in any Jew: nausea, cramps, tears. It evokes the images of the Holocaust, no matter how dissimilar the situation may be.
Los Angeles photographer Naomi Solomon capped off her informal summer presentation series \”Settlers: A Photographic Journey of the Life and Disengagement of the Jews Living in Gaza\” at Nessah Synagogue in Beverly Hills last week, drawing more than 150 people.
Last year at the Israel Independence Day Festival in Woodley Park, anti-disengagement activist Shifra Hastings of Los Angeles was clad all over in orange, the color of protest, right down to her painted fingernails.
In May of 1998, a wealthy Israeli-born businessman called our offices and suggested I go to the Peninsula Hotel to interview his friend, Ariel Sharon. I said no.
The disengagement or expulsion has ended. But is this also the end of religious Zionism? Are there lessons we can and must learn that may enable us to emerge stronger from this most difficult period?
The first lesson we learned is that we are indeed one nation. There was no real violence, and there was even majestic fortitude and an exaltation of spirit displayed by many Gush Katif settlers and leaders.
On the other side of the barricades, only a small number of soldiers refused to carry out military evacuation orders, despite the charge to do so from major rabbinic voices; the soldiers and police behaved with incredible sensitivity and restraint.
It was heart wrenching but uplifting, a period in which I was both tear-filled and pride-filled to be an Israeli Jew.
For visitors to Israel this summer, the disengagement from the Gaza Strip proved hard to ignore.
\”Everybody\’s orange,\” said Rebecca Kaminski, from Berlin, with a laugh, referring to the color adopted by the anti-disengagement activists. \”I\’m on the blue side, I guess.\”
Sitting on the beach in Netanya, the 22-year-old was working on her already impressive tan with a group of girlfriends, all students at a six-week summer ulpan, or Hebrew-language immersion course, in Kibbutz Mishmar Hasharon.
They have not been deterred from visiting Israel during its exit from the Gaza settlements and parts of the West Bank.
The question on the Palestinian street now is who will successfully claim credit for expelling Israel from Gaza and northern Samaria – Hamas, an organization that carries out terrorist attacks, or Fatah, the official Palestinian ruling party?
Whatever the answer turns out to be, one thing is certain. Both factions are presenting Israel\’s withdrawal of settlers and troops from Gaza and the northern West Bank as a Palestinian military victory.