Another Tack: Sacrificial phoenix

[Colorado Blue]

Another way to look at the withdrawal, must reading I think, and explanatory of the regret and mixed emotions many Israelis feel about the withdrawal.

This puts a human and historical perspective on the settlement issues. Regardless of what "side" you're on, these stories should add to the understanding.

***

Yad Mordechai, Nitzanim, Kfar Etzion and Kfar Darom share much in common. All were lost to invading Arab forces during the vicious existential war imposed on the newborn Jewish state in 1948. All were eventually won back, all resettled and reclaimed from the utter ruin to which unbridled hate reduced them.

The first to fall, and perhaps the most emotively remembered, was Kfar Etzion on the Jerusalem-Hebron road. Its area was purchased by Jews in 1927, but the small settlement founded there was devastated in the 1929 murderous Arab pogroms, which also eradicated Hebron's ancient Jewish community. The settlement was resurrected in 1932 and named Kfar Etzion for the orange grower who owned the holding. It was redestroyed in the bloody Arab insurgency of 1936. The JNF restored it in 1943, when it became a religious (Hapoel Hamizrahi) kibbutz.

Kfar Etzion was defeated on May 14 - the day Israel declared its independence. Its captured defenders were cold-bloodedly massacred.

Next in the tragic chronology came Yad Mordechai, bordering the edge of today's Gaza Strip and named after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising's heroic leader. The Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz straddled the strategic invasion route by which the Egyptian army strove to penetrate all the way to Tel Aviv. It was, therefore, pounded with the full might and ferocity of the Egyptian army.

snip

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&c