Contrasting Protests

This morning I stood riveted in front of the TV in my office as forces made their way into the shul in the largest settelment in Gaza, Nevei Dekalim. There, hundreds had gathered to resist their evacuation. I stood there for over half an hour as co-workers were walking by and couldn’t walk away. No matter what your views are in respect to the ‘disengagement’, this was extremely difficult and moving.

What was most remarkable to me was the restraint being practices by both the settlers, and even more so, the army. While there have been a few hotheads, on the whole, this has been a passive operation.

In the Nevei Dekalim operation, after unsuccessfully negotiating for the settlers to come out on their own, troops gave a 10-minute warning before coming in. The settlers were sitting, arms linked and singing while they held onto each other, trying to resist the pull of the soldiers.

Mixed with the crowd were leaders (wearing vests on that said “rav”- I assume this means “rabbi”) that were making sure that those resisting did so peacefully. Anytime someone started acting up, they made sure a stop was put to it.

Some settlers had tefillin on (not sure why) and these “ravs” tried to make sure that they were removed before the person was carried off. In fact, at one point I noticed the soldiers first taking the time to make sure that the tefillin on the head was secure and centered before dragging him off.

Another thing I noticed was that while there were a few people throwing some water and empty water bottles at the soldiers, at one point the soldiers stopped pulling people out and distributed more water to the settlers; knowing full well that those same bottles may be thrown at them.

All in all, the soldiers were extremely sensitive and handled themselves with discipline.

Then, later in the morning came the images from Kfar Darom and totally wiped out the positive images of Nevei Dekalim. Up the roof of the shul there were hooligans who barricaded themselves there and threw paint, oil, sand, bottles and some even say, acid, at the soldiers trying to get on the roof. This behavior is unacceptable and shameful and those are going to be the images the world sees.

They should have stayed home.