Rabbi Isaac Jeret, president of the Brandeis-Bardin Institute (BBI), and members of Adat Israel in Naples, Fla. headed out to a Naples beach to observe Tashlich on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. Everyone stared in shock before the service began.
Sharon hopes to create sufficient motivation among settlers to evacuate their homes willingly in exchange for generous compensation packages, avoiding violent confrontations like those in Yamit.
Ten years ago, if the Palestinians had been told that Ariel Sharon, father of the Israeli settlement movement, would be offering a near-complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, most probably would have rejoiced at the prospect.
However, when the Israeli prime minister dropped that political bombshell last week by signaling that he intended to uproot almost every Israeli settlement in the Gaza Strip — something the Arabs have demanded for years — Palestinians greeted the announcement with a mixture of caution and skepticism.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei welcomed the idea, saying, \”In our view, every evacuation of a settlement is welcome.\”
Although I was there, I can\’t tell you much about the events of Sept. 11, 2001, that you don\’t already know. After all, you had CNN; I only had my two eyes and the prescription lenses I thankfully remembered to grab as I fled the apartment. Yes, I watched from a few blocks away as the towers fell, but without the benefit of a zoom lens or slow motion video (thank God for that — there was nothing that I saw I wished to see again or in greater detail).
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