It's been a long time since I blogged anything, and I hope this posting with be worth your while.
Allow me to share something personal with you. Ever since the destruction of Gush Katif in 2005, I have been harboring a deep pain. The images of Jews being forcibly dragged out of their homes - homes that they had lived in for 3 generations - is seared into my memory. The knowledge that this trauma was inflicted by other Jews makes the thought almost too painful to bear. And if this is what I feel - I who was safe and snug in my little home in Beit Shemesh - I cannot even begin to imagine what kind of pain is still in the hearts of the innocent people who were themselves expelled, betrayed and hung out to dry by their own nation.
Six years later, we have seen how the "Disengagement" plan, conceived in iniquity, legalized by duplicity, and executed with cold indifference, has backfired on us all. I confess I don't know what the official statistics are, but given the fact that we are now absorbing continual rocket attacks from the ruins of Gush Katif, and that our standing in world opinion is far, far worse than it was prior to the expulsion, it's hard to believe that there is more than a tiny core of delusional, hard-core post-Zionists who still think it was a good idea.
OK, so now we've learned it was a bad idea, pragmatically speaking. But frankly, that's not enough. We screwed up - badly - and the people of Gush Katif paid the biggest price. And all we have done for them done to date by way of acknowledgement, effectively, has just been to say, "Oops... Um... well, that didn't work out so well... So sorry about that - and... um... good luck with the rest of your lives!" And we've merrily trotted off and started looking for fresh new ways to appease world opinion and try satisfy an enemy who will be happy with nothing less than our complete destruction.
Here's Repentance 101: Yom Kippur does not atone for sins between man and man, until the transgressor apologizes to the person he wronged and appeases him. In these 6 years, we have done nothing of the sort for the Jews of Gush Katif. If we have not achieved their forgiveness, how can we expect that Hashem will forgive us? If we want G-d to forgive us for this terrible injustice that we perpetrated on our fellow Jews, and if we want to be able to pray for Him to relate to us with mercy - we had better be prepared to do teshuva for the cruelty we perpetrated on our brethren.
To this end, I have prepared the text of a collective, national apology. Every one of us, to some extent, is responsible for what happened, as I have attempted to express in the text, and every Jew with a heart, anywhere in the world, should sign on, to say sorry. I want 1 million signatures on this apology, and I believe this is attainable.
So, I ask you, please:
Allow me to share something personal with you. Ever since the destruction of Gush Katif in 2005, I have been harboring a deep pain. The images of Jews being forcibly dragged out of their homes - homes that they had lived in for 3 generations - is seared into my memory. The knowledge that this trauma was inflicted by other Jews makes the thought almost too painful to bear. And if this is what I feel - I who was safe and snug in my little home in Beit Shemesh - I cannot even begin to imagine what kind of pain is still in the hearts of the innocent people who were themselves expelled, betrayed and hung out to dry by their own nation.
Six years later, we have seen how the "Disengagement" plan, conceived in iniquity, legalized by duplicity, and executed with cold indifference, has backfired on us all. I confess I don't know what the official statistics are, but given the fact that we are now absorbing continual rocket attacks from the ruins of Gush Katif, and that our standing in world opinion is far, far worse than it was prior to the expulsion, it's hard to believe that there is more than a tiny core of delusional, hard-core post-Zionists who still think it was a good idea.
OK, so now we've learned it was a bad idea, pragmatically speaking. But frankly, that's not enough. We screwed up - badly - and the people of Gush Katif paid the biggest price. And all we have done for them done to date by way of acknowledgement, effectively, has just been to say, "Oops... Um... well, that didn't work out so well... So sorry about that - and... um... good luck with the rest of your lives!" And we've merrily trotted off and started looking for fresh new ways to appease world opinion and try satisfy an enemy who will be happy with nothing less than our complete destruction.
To this end, I have prepared the text of a collective, national apology. Every one of us, to some extent, is responsible for what happened, as I have attempted to express in the text, and every Jew with a heart, anywhere in the world, should sign on, to say sorry. I want 1 million signatures on this apology, and I believe this is attainable.
So, I ask you, please:
- Sign the petition here. (Non-Hebrew speakers, please see the annotated screen shot here for what you need to fill in and click!)
- Spread the word. Use Facebook, Twitter, your own blog, email, SMS, whatever. For this to be a meaningful exercise, every Jew in the world, Right or Left, religious or not, needs to be able to say sorry to someone they wronged.
Thank you for your help! And in the merit of our national contrition, and hopefully the forgiveness of those we have wronged, may Hashem show mercy and forgiveness to us, and bring our final Redemption.
bit.ly/sorrygk
