By Sanford Goodkin

Gaza is a tragedy or a beginning of a transformation. Often, for Jews, beginnings have started after tragedies, including the re-birth of Israel. We were destined to be remnants, according to Torah, severely punished for various transgressions, but always some survivors, to sit shiva, I guess. Ironically we seem to thrive after a period of assimilation, when we forget why we chose God and God chose us. This Gaza epic is particularly painful.

When we see photos of Jews stoning Israeli police and soldiers, we have to wonder why we’d sympathize with the settlers. We know that you have to be slightly insane to want to move to Gaza, a hostile strip of ugliness even when next to water. We know that it is teaming with Arab refugees, made semi-permanent as a political force, so that they could be a bunion on the toe of society. Existing in filthy high-density so that they would gain the sympathy of good people, as well as the UN and church groups, they have become an embarrassing occupation for Jews everywhere.

The settlers believed that greater Israel must be populated before God would expand Israel’s boundaries, but then God never had to concern Himself with the UN. God is not against Arabs since He created them out of Abraham’s passion, despite Sarah’s anger and jealousy. Patriarch’s were not above concubines, except in the physical sense. Torah always has reminded us of how human our patriarchs were, for that was also fashioned by the Creator. My problem is with settlers who may know about greater Israel, but know nothing about the ethics and teachings of our Fathers, for Judaism is about behavior rather than pronouncements.

The media, which have roasted Sharon and Israel—especially the so called liberal media like the N Y Times and the L A Times—as well as the right wing U-T of San Diego, which never has a kind word about Israel, except when it is to praise George W. Bush, to whom Israel is the beginning of the great Rapture of the born againers. We love liberty as Passover celebrates. No one loves it more than immigrants out of tyranny, like my Dad and both sets of Grandparents, from Russia. There was no ambiguity to these immigrants who felt the deprivation of tyranny and saw the Statue of Liberty as their savior.

After the Holocaust, many of the remnant fled to the inhospitable desert to fund and find their Promised land, First denied entry by the Arabs and the British, and ironically created by the hostile United Nations with USSR backing, they were immediately attacked by surrounding Arab armies, who have remained dedicated to driving the Jews into the sea, once and for all. Only the American presidents kept faith with us, regardless of their varied reasons. Thereby, this miracle of the desert has prospered through adversity that only those pursued by the devil are able to comprehend.

So Gaza is the beginning of our latest adventure, where we behaved like humans as our soldiers and police wept at what they were forced to do. Mixed with the tears, was the spittle and scorn heaped upon them by the settlers, who cared little about the imagery of Jews spiting on Jews, as they shouted that terrible word, “Nazis," at their fellow Jews. That was truly a travesty that Jews must never use against Jews, for when there was no modern Israel-just suffering Jews-the Nazis caused a wonderful country to be re-created, hopefully to pursue the tenets of Judaism, which are justice and liberty.