Whilst watching the heartbreaking scenes of the synagogue evacuations in the Jewish villages of Gaza, I am constantly reminded of Fiddler on the Roof. The inhabitants were trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking their necks, or having their necks broken for them. Why did they stay there if it was so dangerous? Well, they stayed because it was their home.
What do they leave? Nothing much. Only Gaza, and a seaport for terrorists to bring in better weapons and an enclave of safe terrorist bases closer to Israel’s cities. Intimate, obstinate Kfar Darom, Gaza, where they knew everyone they met. Soon they will be strangers in a strange new place, searching for an old familiar face.
They belong in Gaza, tumble-down, work-a-day Gaza.
Dear little villages, little towns of theirs.
And with apologies for some minor editing to update the age old Jewish struggle for a place to live:
Officer: Your people must leave all the villages. The entire district must be emptied! I have an order here!
Papa (sadly): And you, you who have known us all your life, you’d carry out their order?
Officer (innocently): I’ve nothing to do with it! Don’t you understand? I wish you wouldn’t say this to me!
Papa: I understand, suppose we refuse to go, you will force us out?
Man I: We will defend ourselves.
Man II: We won’t move!
Man III: We will stay in our homes!
Man IV: We will keep our land!
People: Fight!!!!!!
Officer: Against our border police? Our army? I wouldn’t advise that
Papa: I have some advice for you. Get off my land; this is still my home, my land. Get off my land!
Man V: A piece of paper and get them out. Let’s get together with the people of Neve Dekalim. Maybe they have a plan. We should defend ourselves!
People: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!
Papa: Very good. That way the whole world will be blind and toothless.
Motel: Rabbi, we’ve been waiting for the Messiah all our lives. Wouldn’t this be a good time for him to come?
Rabbi: We will have to wait for him someplace else. Meanwhile, let’s start packing.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Gazan democracy
“Gaza Strip” as a term only received its political validity as a discrete entity in the 1949 Armstice Agreement between Egypt and Israel, and the area was retained under Egyptian authority at that time. The Gaza Strip has no distinguishing geographical features from the land around it. It exists solely from 1948 when the Egyptian Army attacked Israel and chose to advance along the coast, through a region which had been largely settled by Arabs. Those settlers identified themselves as Arabs and not as Palestinians, which was actually a term generally used for the Jewish inhabitants of the area in that era.
Gaza has never been part of a Palestinian state, although Gaza City has been settled by Philistines, Avites, Judeans, Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Hasmoneans, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks and Marmelukes. It was also conquered by Alexander the Great and Napolean but until this month, had never been part of a Palestinian country. The area in which Jews had lived from the time of the Simon the Maccabee in the second century B.C., until 1948 will be free of Jews. The Jewish presence of Gaza had already been reduced to the village of Kfar Darom after the Arab pogroms of 1929 in Gaza City. In June 1948, the inhabitants of Kfar Darom, in spite of being heavily outnumbered, held out against a month long siege by the Egyptian Army before retreating in June 1948. Egypt had authority over the region until 1967 and used the Gaza Strip as a staging post for sponsored terrorist attacks during those 19 years.
The actions of 2005 mean that archeological discoveries such as that of the exquisite mosaic floor of a 6th century synagogue on the Gaza sea shore will be gone forever.
In 1967 every conceivable piece of land in the Gaza Strip was under cultivation and 267 square kilometers of the 362 square kilometers (73.76%) was being used for this purpose, with the remaining land being urban areas and that deemed infertile. The Jews who returned to Gaza had to create farms, quite literally,upon sand dunes, and seek beneath the dunes for any semblance of fertile earth. Media reports that the farms were on prime agricultural land is fiction. The returning Jews in 1967 built their farms solely upon uninhabited crown lands in a region in which Jews had lived until the area was made Judenrein in 1948 by Egypt. Those who rebuilt Kfar Darom after 1967, are again being forced from their homes, jobs and lives, and history will repeat itself with the Gaza Strip continuing to be a leader in terrorism. Therefore, the 2005 expulsion of Jews can only be described as land being given away, for whatever reason, not as being returned.
Perhaps caving into terrorism would be worth it if any semblance of peace will ensue. With the terrorist hordes claiming the Israeli retreat to be a victory akin to the removal of Israeli forces from Lebanon, does anyone of sound mind truly believe that this will reduce terrorism? Has the British government opened up a seaport in the UK for Islamic fundamentalists to bring in weapons so that they can shorten their supply lines and follow up on the 7/7 and 21/7 attacks? President Bush stated that the US cannot withdraw from Iraq because this will give terrorism a victory. Nonetheless, the US and UK are actively supportid Israel’s retreat which will provide an anti-democratic enclave of safe terrorist bases closer to Israel’s population centres. Personally, it appears to me that there are areas which are much more resonant with Jewish history around Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus and Bethlehem, and more worthy of residence than Gaza. Yet this retreat will only encourage terrorism and make it easier for Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad to launch their ongoing attacks.
The Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank has continued to explode, and it does so quite literally in the midst of Israeli population. We will hear of many more Palestinian explosions due to the Israeli retreat.
This withdrawal could be morally defensible if it was conducted in line with acknowledged norms of democracy. However, Ariel Sharon’s government was elected on the basis it would not retreat before terrorism’s onslaught. There was an outcry when Dalton McGuinty of the Ontario Liberal Party imposed a tax of several hundred dollars on his first day in office after promising not to do so in his manifesto, so how much worse must it feel when homes, neighbourhoods and livelihoods are to be destroyed by a government which was elected on a diametrically opposed policy. The Labour party was routed in the last election in Israel, largely because it proposed a retreat from Gaza.
Ariel Sharon held a referendum on “disengagement” within his own party. After promising to abide by the decision, he ignored it when his own will was defeated. He fired ministers from his cabinet in order to win a vote which he would otherwise have lost. He ditched coalition partners and joined with the ideologically imcompatible Labour party, and which the electorate had chosen to throw out of office, for this one process of expulsion to be implemented via the Knesset. For good measure, in recent weeks, a number of those who have openly disagreed with this plan have been denied freedom of speech by a judiciary which has been politicized. There is no good reason for holding children in prison because their views may not correlate to that of the sitting judge. This has not been a democratic decision, and this is not democracy in action.
Personally, it would appear to me that there are areas that are much more resonant with Jewish history around Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus and Bethlehem and worthy of residence than Gaza. Sadly, this expulsion of Jews from their homes, because they are Jews, has not been taken, or enforced, democratically. If the polls are correct, then a decision which was the opposite upon which the government was elected, would have been made by the electorate. I have no doubt that this would have been respected by the vast majority of those Jews in Gaza, and can see no reason why a vote did not take place.
Sadly, this expulsion of Jews from their homes, because they are Jews, has not been taken, or enforced, democratically. If the polls are correct, then the expulsion decision would have been made by the electorate. However, the expulsion is contrary to the basis upon which the Israeli government was elected, I have no doubt that a referendum would have been respected by the vast majority of those Jews in Gaza, and can see no reason why a vote did not take place.
Gaza has never been part of a Palestinian state, although Gaza City has been settled by Philistines, Avites, Judeans, Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Hasmoneans, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks and Marmelukes. It was also conquered by Alexander the Great and Napolean but until this month, had never been part of a Palestinian country. The area in which Jews had lived from the time of the Simon the Maccabee in the second century B.C., until 1948 will be free of Jews. The Jewish presence of Gaza had already been reduced to the village of Kfar Darom after the Arab pogroms of 1929 in Gaza City. In June 1948, the inhabitants of Kfar Darom, in spite of being heavily outnumbered, held out against a month long siege by the Egyptian Army before retreating in June 1948. Egypt had authority over the region until 1967 and used the Gaza Strip as a staging post for sponsored terrorist attacks during those 19 years.
The actions of 2005 mean that archeological discoveries such as that of the exquisite mosaic floor of a 6th century synagogue on the Gaza sea shore will be gone forever.
In 1967 every conceivable piece of land in the Gaza Strip was under cultivation and 267 square kilometers of the 362 square kilometers (73.76%) was being used for this purpose, with the remaining land being urban areas and that deemed infertile. The Jews who returned to Gaza had to create farms, quite literally,upon sand dunes, and seek beneath the dunes for any semblance of fertile earth. Media reports that the farms were on prime agricultural land is fiction. The returning Jews in 1967 built their farms solely upon uninhabited crown lands in a region in which Jews had lived until the area was made Judenrein in 1948 by Egypt. Those who rebuilt Kfar Darom after 1967, are again being forced from their homes, jobs and lives, and history will repeat itself with the Gaza Strip continuing to be a leader in terrorism. Therefore, the 2005 expulsion of Jews can only be described as land being given away, for whatever reason, not as being returned.
Perhaps caving into terrorism would be worth it if any semblance of peace will ensue. With the terrorist hordes claiming the Israeli retreat to be a victory akin to the removal of Israeli forces from Lebanon, does anyone of sound mind truly believe that this will reduce terrorism? Has the British government opened up a seaport in the UK for Islamic fundamentalists to bring in weapons so that they can shorten their supply lines and follow up on the 7/7 and 21/7 attacks? President Bush stated that the US cannot withdraw from Iraq because this will give terrorism a victory. Nonetheless, the US and UK are actively supportid Israel’s retreat which will provide an anti-democratic enclave of safe terrorist bases closer to Israel’s population centres. Personally, it appears to me that there are areas which are much more resonant with Jewish history around Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus and Bethlehem, and more worthy of residence than Gaza. Yet this retreat will only encourage terrorism and make it easier for Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad to launch their ongoing attacks.
The Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank has continued to explode, and it does so quite literally in the midst of Israeli population. We will hear of many more Palestinian explosions due to the Israeli retreat.
This withdrawal could be morally defensible if it was conducted in line with acknowledged norms of democracy. However, Ariel Sharon’s government was elected on the basis it would not retreat before terrorism’s onslaught. There was an outcry when Dalton McGuinty of the Ontario Liberal Party imposed a tax of several hundred dollars on his first day in office after promising not to do so in his manifesto, so how much worse must it feel when homes, neighbourhoods and livelihoods are to be destroyed by a government which was elected on a diametrically opposed policy. The Labour party was routed in the last election in Israel, largely because it proposed a retreat from Gaza.
Ariel Sharon held a referendum on “disengagement” within his own party. After promising to abide by the decision, he ignored it when his own will was defeated. He fired ministers from his cabinet in order to win a vote which he would otherwise have lost. He ditched coalition partners and joined with the ideologically imcompatible Labour party, and which the electorate had chosen to throw out of office, for this one process of expulsion to be implemented via the Knesset. For good measure, in recent weeks, a number of those who have openly disagreed with this plan have been denied freedom of speech by a judiciary which has been politicized. There is no good reason for holding children in prison because their views may not correlate to that of the sitting judge. This has not been a democratic decision, and this is not democracy in action.
Personally, it would appear to me that there are areas that are much more resonant with Jewish history around Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus and Bethlehem and worthy of residence than Gaza. Sadly, this expulsion of Jews from their homes, because they are Jews, has not been taken, or enforced, democratically. If the polls are correct, then a decision which was the opposite upon which the government was elected, would have been made by the electorate. I have no doubt that this would have been respected by the vast majority of those Jews in Gaza, and can see no reason why a vote did not take place.
Sadly, this expulsion of Jews from their homes, because they are Jews, has not been taken, or enforced, democratically. If the polls are correct, then the expulsion decision would have been made by the electorate. However, the expulsion is contrary to the basis upon which the Israeli government was elected, I have no doubt that a referendum would have been respected by the vast majority of those Jews in Gaza, and can see no reason why a vote did not take place.
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