Ode to Gaza

I cannot begin to express my sorrow. That Jews could do this to Jews in the Land of Israel...how can this be? Perhaps we do not deserve to posses the Land yet. Maybe we are not ready to claim our inheritance and are doomed to be scattered among the nations for another millenium. I don’t know.

The galut grows more stifling every time I see a Jew being torn crying from his home or synagogue by the police, who are deporting them away because they are Jews - and only because they are Jews. Oh, such a horrific sight.

What is the purpose for such a thing? Jews have committed no crimes in Gaza, have not been making trouble or harming anybody. They have prospered against all odds in fact. They converted a “cursed desert” into rich citrus farmland. Have made beautiful suburbs and wonderful communities with their own sweat and love of the Land.

Is it all about the money? Are 9,000 Jews being deported into DP camps because Sharon wants to save some sheckles? If so, this is no reason. Jews are a dollar figure to him? The Land of Israel is nothing but a commodity to be bought and sold according to the market values? A terrible thought, but the Sharon Casino plan stinks of opportunism at the expense of Jewish lives.

Security? Please. Every credible military analyst concurs that this only weakens Israel’s ability to patrol the Gaza strip and prevent it from becoming a terrorist launching pad and islamic weapons dump.

Has there ever been a time in history when a nation was victorious in war, reclaims the land that is its rightful ancestral home, and then later expels its own citizens which had come to settle it and returns the land to the enemy as a “good will gesture”? This is madness.

I feel each Jewish soul as it gets ripped out of their home and off of their Land. They earned the right to be there. They were success stories, who paid the price under fire to make it work because they wanted to live as Jews in the Land of Israel.

Now, though, we see that the Land is not sacred to Sharon’s Israel, that Jews can be thrown out like disposable cameras or contact lenses. With each Jew being evicted, with each grave being unearthed, with every home that is razed, I feel the Jewish collective soul being crushed piece by piece.

I know we do not often understand why God works in His ways, but my deepest prayers are that these people being expelled will not have settled the Land in vain, and we will somehow see them return to Gaza soon and in their lifetimes.

-MZ