Another important post from Jewish Current Issues, with photos that will tear your heart out, if you're human.
And, believe it or not, he's quoting an essay by one of my least favorite writers, Ari Shavit. It's typical Shavit -- pompous, condescending, theatrical -- and to a certain extent right on.
The hard-heartedness of the intellectual and legal elites in the face of the catastrophe that befell the residents of Gush Katif will not be forgotten. It will seep into the groundwater of our shared lives and pollute it. The Gush Katif residents were not fanatics; they were not the fascist enemy; they were believers, unfortunate but good-hearted, who devoted themselves with all their might to a false ideal. They were residents of development towns and moshavim who gave their hearts to a belated and useless Zionist enterprise. They had the right to have the intellectual and legal elites listen to them and offer compassion and justice.
Gush Katif was a world of its own - a world of work and faith, of patriotic innocence and communal warmth; a world that touches the heart, that was established in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, as this world is being buried in the sand, Israel must sit shiva for it. For if the entire public does not know how to mourn the death of Gush Katif, its death will poison our lives.
I agree (except for the wrong-place-wrong-time nonsense). But I'd rather read Rick's commentary than Shavit any day. Speaking of which, here's another JCI post-mortem on the 'disengagement, with a different focus.
