Willow Tree

A Minute Meant Life

The classroom was empty. The children who should have been there, sitting at their seats, eager or bored, prepared or anxious for the day's lessons are lucky to be alive; their prayers had taken a minute longer than normal and as a result they were in a different room, safe from the rocket that fell.

Prayer and G-d I believe saved these children's lives; which is quite possibly why you didn't see it in the press. Or perhaps it was because it didn't fit in with the "disengagement will lead to peace" theme promoted by the main media.

Or, well you can come up with the reasons.

I would have liked to see it given some attention.
I would have liked to hear from the people involved; teacher/principal/parents/children. What did they have to say? What would they do now for a school? How will it affect this last (possibly) month of learning?

But I doubt that we will see any of it.
I only knew about it was from this link.

To be fair to Dan Halutz, the whole of his response to the question referred to was this:
(from an interview in the Jerusalem post...a very long interview.)
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Did our withdrawal from Gaza strengthen Hamas?

We need to decide which parameters to check that question against. Hamas would have won even if we had not left Gaza. The main parameter is that there have not been any Israelis killed since we left Gaza. This is not [necessarily] the main consideration but this is a fact. Since we left there have only two Bedouin kids killed after picking up a mortar shell.

Before we left Gaza there were some 30 civilians and soldiers killed a year. Now there are more Kassams fired than when we were in Gaza - less now than in the beginning, but more than when we there. We do not have responsibility over Gaza and our freedom of operation there has increased and we know how to use more resources for a longer time against the Palestinians. We also have wider international tolerance. One example of our freedom of operation is artillery fire, which was not used when we were in the Gaza Strip. We also did not allow sonic booms since this would have affected the [civilian] Israelis and soldiers there.

Now for what it is worth, I disagree with Halutz. I feel the criterion, or parameters for deciding whether or not the Gaza withdrawl was worthwhile and successful was whether or not it increased the peace. To that question, I would answer a decided NO. To me judging the withdrawl's success on number of death.s is somewhat like judging a drunk driving program by fatalaties and not the increase or decrdase of drunk drivers. The lack of fatalaties has been in some cases due to miracles as stated above, but also the lack of skill, which very well may increase. Those who have read my blog regularly know that I was, and still am, against the uprooting of Jews from their homeland. In the case of the vicitims of Gush Katif, they were uprooted AND lost their livelihoods, in many cases their possessions, were not, in many cases given any help in moving or compensation (if they didn't own a home for instances) have not been given real support, have suffered emotionally, financially and in many other ways supposedly because such actions would lead to peace.

Admit the "disengagement" was a failure. That is the very least the government can do.

Posted by Rachel Ann at June 3, 2006 07:28 PM | TrackBack