Deporting Jews from Gaza

Ilia Sokolinski, Boston, MA

 

It is not a secret that Sharon’s Disengagement plan is a bad one. After all, it took Sharon a long time to convince US that it makes any sense to withdraw under terrorist fire and to turn Gaza over to Hamas and Fatah’s Al-Aksa Brigades.

A few weeks ago Shin Bet head Avi Dichter told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that after Israel’s pullout from Gaza West Bank will turn into Gaza and southern Israel will turn into south Lebanon (Jerusalem Post of January 4th, 2004).

Furthermore, during recent Knesset Interior Committee hearings Home Front Command official, Col. Uzi Buchbinder told the committee that after disengagement 46 communities within 7 km of the Gaza Strip will be at risk of from infiltration and rocket attacks. Kassam rockets would be able to hit the southern outskirts of Ashkelon, where there are strategic power stations of Rottenberg and Katza that provide over 23 percent of the country's electrical supply. According to Ashkelon Mayor Roni Mehatzri 5,000 to 10,000 residents will be in danger from Kassam hits. Mordechai Yogev from the National Security Forum predicted that Kassam rockets could also strike Afula, Beit She'an, Pardes Hanna and Hadera (Jerusalem Post of January 11th, 2004).

However, these security threats, as grave as they are, are not the worst consequences of the disengagement. Most people don’t seem to realize the full re-precautions of the Sharon’s plan for all Jews in Israel and even the world. Deportation of 8000 Jews from their homes tells the world that Jews are a group of people that can be deported. Jews even agree to deport themselves if needed.

Remember, when Israel’s Security Fence had to be rerouted because it interfered with lives of several thousand “Palestinian” Arabs? Imagine what outcry of “International Community” would have occurred if Israel decided to move these Arabs deeper into PA controlled territory (providing them with financial compensation, of course). Israel would have been accused of War Crimes and Ethnic Cleansing and so on.

But Jews? Deporting Jews from their homes where they lived for 30 years and where Jewish communities existed for centuries? That is not Ethnic Cleansing. In fact it is not a big deal at all. You see, Jews are movable. They are used to being expelled from the places that they live. They have been expelled from various countries dozens if not hundreds of times.

So if Jews could be deported from Gaza, they could also be deported from Haifa, from Tel-Aviv/Jaffo, from Jerusalem and from any other town in Israel.

The main and in fact the only argument for the Disengagement that I saw is that “there is no future for 8000 Jews in Gaza among 1.2 million Arabs”. But by the same logic there is no future for 5 million Jews of Israel among 350 million Arabs around them. So perhaps, we should deport all Jews from Israel – this will certainly solve a lot of problems in the Middle East and save a lot of money for the US taxpayers too. After all, saving money on “security for Gaza settlers” is another argument for the Disengagement that is often used.

We can place all those Israeli Jews on Long Island, in New Jersey, or on Madagascar for example. In fact this is exactly what some of the pro-Palestinian activists in US and Europe are advocating for.