Imagine What it Would be Like to Live Under the Threat of Your Community Being Destroyed

Imagine that you live in Israel, which has suffered 25,500 known terror attacks just since 2000, including 6000 mortars that have fallen just on your small section of Gush Katif, and instead of attacking the Arab enemy, the government attacks you.

Imagine that your teenage children are arrested for handing out orange ribbons on street corners and when you see the police choking them and bashing them with brass knuckles and you come to their aid, you, too are arrested and charged with harming the police officers who arrested you.

Imagine that you and your friends come to Kfar Maimon to peacefully protest and the government sends 20,000 soldiers and police (the same number President Bush sent to invade Iraq) to encircle the area with barbed wire, creating a virtual prison camp.

Imagine that it is August 1, 2005 and you are to be evicted from your home on August 15 and you have no idea where to go.

Imagine that you’ve been told that you will be allowed to take enough possessions out of your home to fill two small containers and that the rest must be left behind.

Imagine that you live in a beautiful, eight-room home of your dreams with five bathrooms and that you will, at best, be given a cramped caravan which leaks in the winter rains and is sweltering in the summer.

Imagine trying to decide between your piano and your washing machine, between your books and the beds, between your sofa and your dining room table, between your clothing and your photo albums.

Imagine that you discuss with your neighbors whether you will lock yourself in your home and make the arresting officers bash the door down (in which case you will forfeit all government compensation), or walk silently to the bus which will take you to a detention center, or be dragged out of your home as a way of passively protesting.

Imagine that you discuss with your spouse whether the children should have to see you being dragged out of the only home they have ever known or if it is better to have them sent away.

Imagine that your son/husband/neighbor is an army officer or policeman and it is their duty to drag you to the waiting buses.

Imagine that the Israeli press ignores your plight, except to refer to you and your neighbors as fanatical hooligans who have stolen the land you live on.

Imagine that you have lived in a community for 10, 20, 30 years, have been productive and independent, and that you will soon be unemployed, a burden on the state, a humiliated and broken welfare recipient.

Imagine that you walk around your precious community, knowing that your home, synagogue, mikvah, community center, schools and health centers will be soon be bulldozed into oblivion.

Imagine having to go from a home with a huge backyard, filled with flowers and fruit trees to some cramped apartment in a strange city.

Imagine having to leave your children and grandchildren, who could easily run next door to visit you and whom you will now see only rarely.

Imagine that the government is spending US$7 billion dollars to deport you and your neighbors, forfeiting the $2 billion a year earned by the Gush Katif population and that the money for this expulsion plan was taken by slashing pensions for the elderly, closing schools and hospitals, reducing health services, reducing the sick and the handicapped to begging, sending 37,000 abused children back to abusive homes since there is no money to keep them in state dormitories, canceling summer programs for children — and then you are blamed for all this pain.

Imagine that well known rabbis, teachers and community leaders suddenly disappear and that you are told that they are being held in prison indefinitely and being treated in a most brutal manner.

Imagine 14-year-old children arrested and sent to solitary confinement for having insulted a police officer.

Imagine that the government declares war on Judaism, closing down radio stations that used to disseminate inspiring words of Torah, religious councils, and cutting off support to religious schools and institutions, threatening rabbis who disagree with government policy and firing government workers who protest.

Imagine that even before the 25 communities of Gush Katif are destroyed, the “Peace Now” Organization hands over a list of 120 Jewish settlements in the Shomron to the Israeli Supreme Court, to be destroyed, claiming that the land was stolen from the Palestinians (as if there ever was such a people).

Imagine that Hamas has already announced that there will be massive parades throughout Gush Katif celebrating their victory over the Jewish people.

Imagine that the whole world will watch as terrorists take over these communities.