The Heartbreaking End of Jewish Gaza
From home to rubble, this is the story of a girl who lost everything when the State of Israel decided to unilaterally withdraw all 9,000 Jews living in Gaza in 2005.
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This is a guest essay written by Ruchama Feuerman, author of “In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist.” It also appeared in the newsletter, “The Judean People's Front.”
In October 2004, the Knesset (Israeli parliament) endorsed a plan in which 67 Israeli parliament members supported and 45 opposed the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and evacuation of its roughly 9,000 Jewish inhabitants from the area called Gush Katif.
The plan’s supporters argued that ceding the territory to the Palestinians which they would then govern was the best way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Too many soldiers had died defending those Jewish settlements, they insisted. It was safer and better to leave.
After all, hadn’t Israel withdrawn from the Sinai in 1983, and even though Israel had vacated a landmass far larger than its own country, until this day there had been no war with Egypt. Land for peace was worth it.
Its negaters protested that Jews had been living in Gaza since 145 BCE — as numerous archeological findings attested. It had long been a center of Jewish learning (a Gazan Yeshiva is mentioned in the Talmud) up until 1929, when the British Empire took control and prohibited Jews from living there.
They also argued that the very presence of Jewish settlements created a buffer and made Israel’s borders safer. Unilaterally withdrawing, with no peace agreement, something Israel had never done before, would prove disastrous, they said.
The evacuation plan was set for August 17, 2005. To say this plan tore Israeli society in two would be an understatement. As the date neared, the whole country held its breath. Pundits predicted the end of Israel. Massive nationwide protests erupted and Right-wing leaders called for civil disobedience.
In July of 2005, a month before the evacuation date, 130,000 people, many dressed in orange — the official color of protest — formed a human chain that extended from Gaza to Jerusalem, in protest against the evacuation.
The members of the Gush Katif settlement were given a choice to either leave voluntarily and receive a compensatory government package, or be forcibly evicted and get nothing. This too divided neighbor from neighbor during the final countdown.
Einat gazes at her younger sister fiddling with the CD player, trying to find the right song to match the mood of the day. As if the right background music while your house is getting destroyed will make all the difference!
She stares out the window, many of the greenhouses bare and stripped so that you can’t even tell bug-free lettuce ever grew there, but no, she won’t think about that. Her eyes fall on the boy soldiers and girl soldiers dressed in black, like they’re bit players in some horror movie. If she squints her eyes, they look like black teeth. Or maybe, she tilts her head, more like a weird moving black wall. Hard to believe many of these soldiers are eighteen, like herself.
Her father over in the study is bent over a Talmud. She’s used to seeing Abba (father in Hebrew) with a spade, or pruning shears, or dealing with shipments of plastic bags. He rarely studies Torah and isn’t much a scholar, although he’s the best cantor in all of Neve Dekalim (a Jewish neighborhood in Gaza).
And Ima (mother in Hebrew), the brains of the family, is saying Psalms, not writing one of her usual sharp letters to the editor of Ha’aretz that never gets printed.
So today everything is upside down.
“I hate them,” she hears her sister Meirav say, her face pressed against the window. “Trying to scare us like that with their black uniforms. Pathetic.”
Einat lets out a short laugh. As if their uniforms are the worst of their crimes. Anyway, she won’t waste her fury on the soldiers. Actually, she doesn’t think the uniforms are pathetic, but a brilliant move. The familiar khaki-colored army uniforms are gone. The soldier — the one who normally is their own son, brother or sister, their protector — has now been replaced, turned into the Other.
She feels like an Other herself. Her bags are packed, unlike everyone else in her family. That one act separates her from them. There is no way she’s going to leave her clothes, photo albums, books, and jewelry behind to be destroyed by the claw machine! Is her family nuts? No, the whole community is! Even if she understands why they act this way.
The Prime Minister had given them a choice, if you could call it that. Those who leave Neve Dekalim beforehand will be compensated — with jobs, to make up for their destroyed livelihoods. With a place to live, extra cash. Sure. Only idiots believe that.
And those who wait for the last day will have everything they own destroyed by the bulldozers and the claw. But at least, the die-hards tell themselves, they will have their self-respect and the company of their friends and neighbors. For months, that’s all the neighbors talk about as they eye which family is packing, going, and which family is staying.
What a way to live, Einat thinks.
She wants to shake them. What’s wrong with everybody? Children rely on parents to show them the way, be sensible, and all these years she let herself be guided by her parents. Wise, good, hard-working people, everyone says, and it’s true. Her father came up with the smartest idea how to market the bug-free lettuce overseas. And when Einat was suffering from a strange rash that no doctor could cure, it was Ima who spent hours Googling every night until she found the right treatment.
But for the first time in Einat’s 18 years, she sees she can’t rely on them. It’s like her parents jumped off a high diving board and only halfway down checked if there was water in the pool. Do they have to be so honorable and stay till the bitter end and walk away with nothing at all?
So her bags are packed. At least she should salvage something from this whole mess. She has even secretly packed a suitcase with Ima’s bread machine, the silver menorah, wedding albums, the nebulizer for her brother’s asthma, and some of the better pieces of jewelry.
If Ima knew, she might get angry, but later, Einat knows she’ll thank her. Not now, but later, after the claw comes and everything is demolished. Her mother’s precious computer, too.
“You will see, you will see, how much good there will be, next year…” Her sister listens to a few bars and then switches to another song.
Ugh, Meirav and her fantasies. She has always been that way, writing her little poems about the flowers of Israel and soldiers who find God in a rainbow. Actually, some of the poems aren’t bad. But today, Einat has no patience for dreamers or poets.
Through the open window, Einat can see the star-shaped synagogue — so cool, so retro. Her friends gather there in their garish orange T-shirts with slogans like “Disengagement is Suicide,” and “Never Again to Deportation.” They are praying, like it’s Yom Kippur or something. Calling out in that open-souled way. A last fling of lamentations.
Part of her longs to join them, to be part of the group. But no — she shakes her head — it feels too phony. She isn’t an idealist like them. Her faith is tainted by practicality.
Einat looks out the window. The black wall of soldiers has moved closer. Is that smoke she sees in the distance? She hears muffled sounds coming from the study. It’s her father moaning — or worse, crying? She can’t stand to be close to her parents right now, to hear Ima’s rants, her finger jabbing the air as she makes her points — as if anyone cares — and Abba all uncomposed, his beard disheveled, the tabs of his collar twisted this way and that. Like a kid, she thinks in disgust. A kid!
The anger she has been sitting on for all these months rises up in her throat like undigested clumps of food. Her foolish, misguided, naïve family with their foolish ideologies, more precious to them than … than, she doesn’t know what. She grew up on this ideology — it was their duty, their religious duty to create little villages, settlements, in the midst of Arab villages, and in this way ensure a Jewish presence that could not easily be dislodged — no matter what peace deal the Israeli government might broker.
“Facts on the ground!” Rabbi Even-Cheyn declared from the pulpit, Shabbat after Shabbat. “A Jewish town is a physical fact, a reality that cannot be changed! Only in this way, building communities in the midst of the Arabs, can we reclaim our ancient land!”
Not only that, the rabbi explained, but this land in the middle of Gaza is a strategic asset to Israel, and holding onto it is a way to protect Sderot, Ashkelon, and many parts of Israel from Arab attack.
“You are the front line soldiers in this battle!” he told them, backed up by plentiful Torah sources and a flowing beard and sincere brown eyes that made him look like a prophet of Israel. And when she listened, she felt a quiet pride and imbued with purpose, like Atlas, holding up the world.
The other day Einat went to the hothouses where Abba and Imma had built up their bug-free lettuce business. The place was totally dismantled. Empty. Thirty years of work gone down the tubes. Hundreds of livelihoods swallowed up, just like that. She kept circling the place, searching for something, a memento maybe.
Finally, who should she bump into but Rabbi Even-Cheyn. He walked over, to try to give some inspiration, she could tell by that look in his eyes. She tried to turn away but he called out, “Einat, chazak v’amatz! Be strong — for all the Jewish nation. We can’t let our spirit die.”
She stared at him, as if to say: What are you talking about? She wanted to yell: “You let us down! You fed us slogans! Facts on the ground, facts on the ground! That’s all I ever heard from you! You said a Jewish government would never kick out Jews from their own homes! Yes, it happened once, in 1983, for the sake of peace with Egypt. But never again! Here we will stay, you said!”
All she muttered now was, “Chazak v’amatz,” and got out of there fast.
Well, today, the Never is happening.
Einat peers out the window at a boy who is two years older than her, crawling on the road, clawing at the dust, moaning like a woman in labor. She knows that boy. Doron. In fact, one summer she had a crush on him. But look at him now, like an animal. How’s that for a fact on the ground? She snorts softly.
Meirav takes out her tiny book of psalms and begins to pray, her lips moving tautly, quickly. Einat can hear Ima in the study on the phone, “My computer’s not working. You don’t understand, I have to send this email to the Prime Minister!”
The intensity in her mother’s voice makes Einat cringe. She can’t help wondering: How will Ima leave the house when the soldiers come for her — with dignity, or screaming, refusing to budge, each one holding a limb?
When she closes her eyes and sees that image, her palms prickle with dread. Einat’s Torah teacher, Ms. Shemer, says a religious woman should never draw attention to herself. Ms. Shemer who travels in from Bnei Brak1 to teach is the picture of self-containment and refinement in her short, black side-parted wig.
Abba suddenly barges from the room, his big-knitted yarmulke2 sloping to one side. “I’ll be back,” he calls to the girls as he exits their home. Einat sees him stride toward the soldiers, his speckled beard fluttering. What’s he going to say to those soldiers that will change their minds? Her parents are dreamers. Dreamers! And now Ima has leapt up and is joining Abba outside.
Einat turns away — she can’t bear to watch them make jokes of themselves — and goes to the kitchen. She pours herself some orange juice, their last carton. She sees the sandwich maker next to the toaster. Meirav begged Ima to buy it, but they rarely use it. No loss there.
Her eyes drift toward the silhouette she drew of her father years ago, a pretty good likeness, considering she has no artistic ability. It always touched her that her parents hung it up for all these years. If it had been her child, it wouldn’t have lasted more than a week. Clutter. But now the thought that her silly artwork will be destroyed by the claw makes her stomach bend in two.
She stares at the clock that makes funny bird sounds on the hour, at the terra cotta colored backsplash that Abba set behind the sink with his own hands, doing the caulking and all. She can already picture the claw coming, can hear the horrible growling sound of stone giving way, the slow caving in of walls, dishes flying, the oven turning to metal pulp, the leather easy chair collapsing like mud, bricks flinging everywhere. The whole world is collapsing.
She feels a tightness in her chest. It’s hard to breathe, as if the claw has already done its work, filled her home with ash and smoke. Can a house disappear just like that? She lets out a groan. “All gone,” she mumbles.
Meirav lifts her head from her psalms. “Stop it!” she implores, her wispy hair falling into her eyes. “Rabbi Even Cheyn says, a person should have faith even as he feels the sword on his neck.”
Einat says nothing, just shakes her head. Who can she even talk to? Nobody’s left. How come she’s the only smart one? If she’d been the head of this whole Gush Katif movement, she would’ve focused on different things. She would’ve tried to get the public on their side. Made a school for journalists who were proudly Jewish, not like the lefties who controlled the media and made you think settlers were vermin and the root of all Israel’s troubles.
Instead, her foolish leaders focused on land, land, land. Stupid facts on the ground. When they should’ve paid attention to people’s minds and hearts, how to reach them. A movie with some famous actor could’ve done it. But whenever she suggested that, people just laughed at her.
Well, they won’t laugh much when she decides to leave, Einat thinks. And then she straightens and rubs her eyes. Leave? But where will she go to? She and her friends are all signed up for National Service. She’d been hoping to get assigned to a school in some poor development town up North. But suddenly the idea of being together with all her friends who think just like her — or the way she used to— makes her gag. Forget it.
No way will she join them. Her bags are packed. She doesn’t know where those bags will take her, though.
Meirav is now fiddling with the radio and lands on a Kotel3 classic. “…there are men with hearts of stone,” it plays, “…there are stones with hearts of men.”
”You know what?” Einat flings out, “I’m going to Bnos Devorah seminary in the fall.”
Meirav squints at her. “What are you talking about? Where’s that?”
“It’s in Bnei Brak,” she clarifies. Where Ms. Shemer her Torah teacher lives.
Meirav’s eyes go round with shock. “You’re kidding, right? A black hat place? For haredim4?”
Yeah, she was kidding, but now suddenly it doesn’t seem so crazy. She has seen the children who live over in Bnei Brak, boys with their swinging side curls, children who aren’t complicated by the outside world, by politics, by foreign music. She has seen the girls her age who dress with a modesty of a different era, girls who strike her as complete.
Einat shakes her head. “Our whole life, it’s over.” Her hand cuts sideways through the air, chopping all their slogans and ideology in half, and another chop — into quarters. “Obsolete,” she says harshly.
“Hah, hah, sure,” Meirav scoffs. “You’d last a week with the black hatters, the dossim. No, a day.”
Einat shrugs. Her kid sister still thinks the world begins and ends with Gush Katif.
“Or who knows,” Einat continues, playing with the curtain, something Ima always forbade because it gets smudged so easily, but now, who cares? “Maybe I’ll go to journalism school.”
But of course there won’t be money for such things. Or for anything. Overnight they’ll be beggars. Even the ones who left early and took the government compensation package.
Meirav merely flicks off the radio, no longer paying attention. “Brother, this song is too sad!” She saunters off into her bedroom.
Is that a sound of a luggage getting dragged out of her sister’s closet, Einat wonders, just as she hears a woman’s high-pitched scream from outside.
The scream rises above all the noise and tumult. It is pitched so high, so powerfully loud, the entire village must hear its raw anguish. Einat swallows. A split second later she recognizes the voice.
Ima. Einat’s hands and throat go cold. It’s Ima, for sure. The shock of her mother’s cry propels her toward the front door. “Ima! I’m coming!” — the thought shoots through her brain as she flings open the screen door and runs outside. She cranes her neck, looks past the claw machine waiting to begin its horrible work, past the old petting zoo evacuated three weeks ago, although here and there a left-behind rabbit scuttles past and a forlorn goat.
What will happen to them, she frets. Teenage boys crouch on a roof with buckets of red paint — as if they could stand up against an entire army! Smoke rises from one of the houses. Crowds of people stream past, the ones in orange, and always, always, the soldiers in black, but where is Ima, where oh where is her Ima?
Her breathing comes in fits and starts. She runs toward the claw, and right there beyond the empty greenhouses she spots — yes! — her mother’s straw hat and her blue peasant skirt. A crowd of girl soldiers surround her. One holds out a bottle of water toward her mother. Ima’s hat is askew, her face blotchy and distorted with fury, her head is bobbing up and down, her arms are moving like a windmill, and she looks like … like a clown!
Ima is screaming: “You stole our cucumbers, our parsley, our dill! You cut off our feet.” She shakes both arms wildly.
Einat covers her mouth. Is that Ima, truly? Her mouth goes dry as smoke. A shudder starts in her shoulders and travels down her arms and palms. So silly, so sad. Ridiculous, roars through her. She ducks behind a mailbox, crouches there, hidden — and then — hurry, fast, before anyone sees — she turns back, runs the other way, fast, faster, her shoes scuffing against each other in her speed to get away from that horrible spectacle.
Silly and sad, silly and sad. The words repeat like the banging of a shovel against her head. Her chest is hurting so much, each breath pokes her like glass. She keeps running, but her lungs are closing and it’s so so hard to breathe, until finally the earth rises and she trips and falls to the ground near a palm tree, and there she rubs her knees and whimpers, Ima.
A city in Israel largely made up of ultra-Orthodox Jews
Yiddish for a small, brimless cap traditionally worn by Jewish men to show respect and reverence for God, often worn during prayer or religious events; also known in Hebrew as a kippah
The Western Wall, an ancient retaining wall of the built-up hill known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount of Jerusalem
Hebrew for ultra-Orthodox Jews
Heartbreaking. All the more so because of its prescience. A horrible idea that foreshadowed, enabled a massacre.
Thank you for bringing it heartrendingly alive. I didn’t know more than ‘Israel left Gaza in 2005’. And in that moment 10/7 was planned.