By Rachel Saperstein
August 6, 2005
Two weeks before the threatened expulsion the township of Gush Katif is filling up. Schoolrooms are homes to families and every empty building is used to house the visitors. Teenagers sleep on the grassy lawns in the center of town. The supermarket shelves are emptied as quickly as they are filled. Bread and dairy products remain plentiful but canned goods and paper and cleaning products are in short supply.
The synagogues are packed. Congregants wept as we blessed the new month of Av, the month of evil decrees. Psalms and Torah study sessions are held almost hourly in all our synagogues. Rabbi Chaim Eisen and his wife, friends from Jerusalem, have moved into our home. Every weekday evening and Shabbat afternoon Rabbi Eisen gives lectures in our home crowded with listeners and participants in the discussions.
And the families here are suffering. There are those who decided they must leave. We said goodbye to an elderly couple, Holocaust survivors, who found the pressure too terrible to bear. A friend working outside has left because she found it impossible to exit and return every day. There are those who need stability and cannot function with uncertainty. "The expulsion is inevitable" said a close friend packing to leave, "and we don't want our children to witness the cruelty of the soldiers and police or to be marched at gunpoint to waiting buses. We want to remember Gush Katif as it was."
Others say "I can't pack. My children won't permit it. They cannot believe that the miracle they have worked and prayed for will not happen."
There are those, like myself, who have sent out minimal furniture and household utensils to start a new home in smaller quarters if need be. My husband opposes this. We argue often. He refuses to pack any of his treasured possessions, even the compact discs collected over many years. "I know that you are the practical one," he says. "But to pack is to surrender, and I refuse to throw in the towel." Most people here are like my husband.
Some Gush Katif women describe bouts of intense crying. Their homes, their nests, are to be dismantled, friends and neighbors separated.
Rabbis come to comfort us and raise our spirits and remind us of our bravery and courage.
Moshe Feiglin, of the 'Jewish Leadership' faction in the Likud, begs us not to evict ourselves. He firmly believes, like my husband, that we will not be expelled.
Earlier this week we watched tens of thousands stream into the town of Sderot for a rally on our behalf, like the Kfar Maimon rally a week ago. However, this time their clear intention was to march directly to Gush Katif. Leaders spoke, politicians spoke, rabbis spoke. Instead of
marching to Gush Katif the crowd was directed to Ofakim, then sent home. It's as if the Yesha Council had thrown in the towel.
To my fellow Jews? Move, move towards Gush Katif. Do not let Gush Katif fall. Do not throw in the towel. If your leaders let Gush Katif fall, Yehuda and Shomron will fall. All of Israel will fall. We need you by the thousands. Get here.
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