READ THIS AND WEEP. . . . . "Imagine" by Dr. Miriam Adahan
Imagine that you [are an Israeli citizen and] live in Israel, which has suffered
25,500 known terror attacks just since 2000, including
6000 rockets just on your small section of Gush Katif,
and instead of attacking the Arab enemy, the [Israeli] government attacks you [and your family].
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 this outrage and that 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
this atrocity.
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 $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 were sent back to abusive homes since there was
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, closing down religious
councils, cutting off support for 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, that the [left-wing Israeli]
"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, thinking that Jews are the stupidest idiots in the world.
A NOTE FROM ARCHIVIST DAN MARTIN:
Links above have been added by myself and point to information provided by WikiPedia,
the Web Encyclopedia. You are urged to seek additional reference material
on this complex and perplexing subject.
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