Crossing the Yarden

By Yarden Frankl

Got Tears?

A little less than two years ago, they built a new playground in Neve Daniel.

Any warm afternoon, you can hear the laughter of children playing on the brightly colored swings and slides. It sits next to a Bet Knesset, so that the young kids can play while their parents are just inside on Shabbat morning.

Most of the kids don’t know where this playground came from, and it doesn’t really concern them. They love it because they know they can have fun and play safely there.

A plaque at the entrance explains that the playground used to be in Gush Katif, in a Jewish community that was destroyed by the government of Israel two years ago.

Tisha B'Av, the ninth day of the month of Av, is a day set aside for Jews around the world to remember destruction and to grieve.

Two years ago, we arrived joyously at our new home in Israel.

Two years ago, thousands of Israelis were expelled crying from their homes in Gaza and the Shomron.

I remember listening to a former resident of Gush Katif speaking about the day the Army came. About a dozen Israeli Air Force officers arrived at her home where she had gathered with her married children and grandchildren. They presented an eviction notice and told her that she and her family would have to leave within two hours. She pleaded with them to listen to her story. She knew that they had no choice, she and her family would have to go. But she wanted them to hear what she had to say first.

The tough soldiers wore poker faces as she explained how they had come to Gaza because that’s where the Israeli government told them pioneers were needed. She told them how the local Arabs had welcomed them and laughed at their attempts to grow carrots in the sand dunes. She then explained how grateful many of the Arabs became when they gained employment in their hothouses because they actually did grow carrots in the sand.

Yet it seemed to have no impact. The soldiers were there on a mission. They could not let their emotions show. Finally, her daughter grabbed an officer and dragged him into her parent’s bedroom. She closed the door and said to him “Look at the beds where my parents slept for 35 years. My father who served proudly in the IDF. My mother who came here and raised a family. As children we played around this neighborhood that is now encircled by bulldozers. No one can see you now, tell me you know what you are doing is wrong.” The soldier didn’t say anything, but the tears streaming down his face gave him away.

One by one, she took these tough Israeli soldiers into the bedroom and repeated her words. One by one they broke down and cried because they knew that to throw an innocent person out of their home is wrong. Yet, they did no more than cry.

Today, all the dire predictions have come true. It is not the ravings of the right-wing that point to the tragedy that disengagement became. The former communities used to have schools, synagogues, and playgrounds. Now, they are nothing but rubble, the launching ground of rockets of terror aimed at even more Jewish communities.

The world’s leading experts in mathematics gave a Nobel prize to Israeli professor Robert Aumann for his development of a model for predicting the outcome to various events. He predicted that the outcome to disengagement would be simple: more terror. Look into the eyes of a child from Sderot. Aumann was right.

And what of the former inhabitants of these communities? Unemployment is still rampant, marriages have ended, teen drug use is high. The leaky “temporary” homes have only stopped leaking because it has stopped raining.

Yet Tisha B'Av does not end in mourning. The end of the day is uplifting. We acknowledge tragedy but know that we have not been abandoned. No matter how bleak things can look, we know that a better day is right round the corner.

Let’s get up from the floor after Tisha B'Av and think about the former residents of Gush Katif and the current ones of Sderot. Let’s teach our children about the kids who used to play on those slides and swings. And let us rededicate ourselves to fixing what is broken in this wonderful nation that has so much potential.

Shabbat Shalom from our Blessed Nation

© 2007 Yarden Frankl