Eli
Monday, September 26, 2005
A site about the Expulsion from Gush Katif.
A site about Neve Dekalim.
Also I created a homepage for my dikduk program on Geocities.
A site about Neve Dekalim.
Also I created a homepage for my dikduk program on Geocities.
Monday, September 19, 2005
Gush Katif Links
Here are some links about the stuff that I talked about in my previous post. (I've also inserted some of them into the previous post.)
Ir Haemuna
Israel shuts off water, dries Gaza greenhouses
Americans: Gaza refugees in state of emergency
Photos of synagogues in Gush Katif, before the destruction.
Here are some links about the destruction of Gush Katif.
Photos of the synagogues.
A high resolution movie based on photos.
Long - 25MB
Short - 9MB
Send comments to: Shmuel Ben Hamu - yedidyaben@yahoo.fr.
My Home in Gush Katif - a movie based on photos and a Hebrew song.
Friday, September 16, 2005
Back from Gush Katif - 5 Elul 5765
Two weeks ago I was signed up to go by bus (organized by L'maan Achai) to Gush Katif to help take apart greenhouses, but when we found out that the army permits had been cancelled we drove to Netivot to the Ir Haemuna ((Tent) City of Faith) where 30 families from Atzmona are planning to live until they get a permanent place in the Negev. We helped a bit with setting up lighting and air coolers in the tents and chopping away cement where some flooring needed to be laid down. I took some photos. They thanked us for coming but said that they couldn't use any more help so in the late evening we got on the bus to go home, but soon after we started, eight boys from Yeshivat Chorev got off saying that help was needed at Kibutz Mavkiim, near Ashkelon, resetting up greenhouses, so I joined them. We slept on the beach in Ashkelon, next door to a place where about 72 families from Neve Dekalim are staying, and the next morning found out that more help was needed that day just outside the industrial zone of Ashkelon, so we took taxis there and I took some more photos. I then proceeded to lose my camera within five minutes of starting to work there. I had kept it in a very cute leather pouch on my belt, very cute but with hindsight very unsafe. The camera apparently fell out, or I flicked it out unintentionally by the strap. I left the details with the owner of the greenhouse but I haven't heard from her. She told me that recently she had felt that Am Yisrael was disappearing, after all the mistrust that was going on at the Kisufim checkpoint, but now when 200 volunteers showed up in Gush Katif to pack up her plants and 400 showed up in Ashkelon to reconnect them to water she felt that Am Yisrael had returned to her. We were several hundred volunteers unloading trucks of house plants and connecting the plants to water drippers across 20 dunams (five acres) before they died. My job was collecting empty boxes and other discards to keep the place clean and functioning (and keep my eye out for my camera). That night I hitchhiked to a bus and went home. The next day, Wednesday, I took a bus back to Ashkelon then took the local bus # 10 to the end of its route and then walked for 45 minutes in the sun to the industrial zone and then to the greenhouse where I worked some more. There were much fewer people there than on Tuesday. Things were slower. People were pruning plants and building steel tables for moving all the plants to off the floor. Mrs. Balaban, the owner, seemed more subdued and she told me that she had 12 remaining dunams of plants in Gush Katif but someone cut off the water there and the plants were lost; she hadn't seen my camera.
Last week I registered again for the Monday bus (organized by L'maan Achai) to Gush Katif, after a wedding on Sunday night, and this time we got in and headed for Kfar Darom. I ended up with three other people salvaging what had been a tent city for people camping out in Gush Katif before the expulsion. One person took apart the wooden structures and separated the cloth walls and roofs. I folded up the cloths and two high school graduates collected the wood. Meanwhile, across the road, a huge excavator (called a "bagger" in German, and consequently in Hebrew) with a hydraulic hammer
was picking a two story house apart, while a D9 tractor
was making neat piles out of the destruction. The photo isn't mine from there since I didn't have my camera; the photo is from a tractor site on the internet. The D9s couldn't just push the houses down because the house roofs were steel reinforced concrete to protect them from mortar shells.
When we got tired we hitchhiked to Neve Dekalim since the army stipulated that we couldn't sleep in Kfar Darom. I davened Maariv in the Magen David shaped Yeshivat Yamit;
there was no Aron Kodesh, Bima, seats, Sidurim, or anything, just some plants and a triangular curtain. We showered and slept in some small dormitory houses of the Yeshiva, and the next morning we davening Shacharit in the Yeshiva with about 50 people, to the sound of smashing glass; the Yeshiva had sold the aluminum door and window frames to a scrap dealer and his workers were smashing out the glass with hammers so that they could get at the aluminum frames. We then headed back to Kfar Darom where we helped take apart the steel structure of a hothouse for romaine lettuce and kohlrabi. My job was collecting small pieces of steel and later making piles of large steel beams for a crane to load on a truck. We then davened Mincha in the Shul in Kfar Darom, no Aron Kodesh, etc., but first I watched from the Shul's roof as two excavators 
tried to tear apart the roof of the Cohens' house across the road. I think that that's the family that had their house specially modified for the children in prosthetics after their school bus was hit by something like a mortar shell somehow launched from a roadside bomb. I think that they finished smashing the houses in Kfar Darom that day or the next day. When we drove back to Neve Dekalim for another night's sleep we found the electricity already out at the Yeshiva so we went to the town hall (municipality?) building and slept there for the night, taking showers in the dormitory of Yeshivat Torat Chaim near by, just past the totally shattered shopping mall, where another volunteer told me he had bought pizza the week before. On Wednesday morning we davened Shacharit with about 20 people in a hallway of the municipality building, and then I went to help salvage what we could from the girls' high school. We took down whiteboards, bulletin boards, loudspeakers, door closers, electric fixtures, etc. We then drove back to Kfar Darom and I worked with three Yeshiva boys on vacation to start taking apart another greenhouse. I went straight home that evening so I didn't see the begining of the destruction of Neve Dekalim which apparently took place on Wednesday and Thursday. As we drove to the Kisufim checkpoint we were side-tracked to a smaller road because the main road was being used to take the bodies out of the Neve Dekalim cemetary. On Thursday I went to the state funeral for transfering the bodies to Har hazeitim in Yerushalayim.
This week on Monday I again went to Gush Katif as part of three buses from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. But first we stopped off at a rest stop by Yad Mordechai (where the honey is from) and there is a tent city there of people from Elei Sinai:
Later as we waited at the Kisufim checkpoint to validate our permits, I took some pictures with my old non-digital camera. This is razorwire that was designed to prevent Jews from getting into Gush Katif during the deportation; some people had apparently decorated it with orange ribbons, I don't know how or exactly when:
This time we were brought to Atzmona where hundreds of volunteers were taking apart greenhouses. My first job was using my Leatherman pliers and wirecutter and a razor to disconnect the roof cloths from each other and from the poles holding them up. This is a photo that I took with my old camera, after we removed all the water pipes and ground cloths and roof and wall cloths from a greenhouse, only the poles and some cables are still standing:
Here is a dying pepper plant in an adjacent area that had apparently been a greenhouse:
As darkness fell, we then collected some still living potted plants together to allow them to be watered and maintain their moisture:
On Monday night, after showering at the huge main water valve of the area, I slept in a greenhouse which was no longer standing by the time I left exhausted on Tuesday evening. On Monday morning after Shacharit and blowing my shofar, I helped Barak, a young man from Bet El take apart a huge unused water valve, using a long pipe mounted on my new ratchet wrench to open the one-inch bolts. Here I am afterwards with the valve laid out in the sand:
I then used my ratchet wrench while standing on a ladder up in the air, to help unscrew bolts from a steel greenhouse structure which we took down and loaded on trucks. After parts of the structure collapsed, I continued to unscrew bolts on the ground. Here you see the inner section where the greenhouse is gone, the two edges where people are figuring out how to take them down, and a section in the background at right where it's still standing. The plants are in the ground/sand, drying out:
Two weeks ago I was signed up to go by bus (organized by L'maan Achai) to Gush Katif to help take apart greenhouses, but when we found out that the army permits had been cancelled we drove to Netivot to the Ir Haemuna ((Tent) City of Faith) where 30 families from Atzmona are planning to live until they get a permanent place in the Negev. We helped a bit with setting up lighting and air coolers in the tents and chopping away cement where some flooring needed to be laid down. I took some photos. They thanked us for coming but said that they couldn't use any more help so in the late evening we got on the bus to go home, but soon after we started, eight boys from Yeshivat Chorev got off saying that help was needed at Kibutz Mavkiim, near Ashkelon, resetting up greenhouses, so I joined them. We slept on the beach in Ashkelon, next door to a place where about 72 families from Neve Dekalim are staying, and the next morning found out that more help was needed that day just outside the industrial zone of Ashkelon, so we took taxis there and I took some more photos. I then proceeded to lose my camera within five minutes of starting to work there. I had kept it in a very cute leather pouch on my belt, very cute but with hindsight very unsafe. The camera apparently fell out, or I flicked it out unintentionally by the strap. I left the details with the owner of the greenhouse but I haven't heard from her. She told me that recently she had felt that Am Yisrael was disappearing, after all the mistrust that was going on at the Kisufim checkpoint, but now when 200 volunteers showed up in Gush Katif to pack up her plants and 400 showed up in Ashkelon to reconnect them to water she felt that Am Yisrael had returned to her. We were several hundred volunteers unloading trucks of house plants and connecting the plants to water drippers across 20 dunams (five acres) before they died. My job was collecting empty boxes and other discards to keep the place clean and functioning (and keep my eye out for my camera). That night I hitchhiked to a bus and went home. The next day, Wednesday, I took a bus back to Ashkelon then took the local bus # 10 to the end of its route and then walked for 45 minutes in the sun to the industrial zone and then to the greenhouse where I worked some more. There were much fewer people there than on Tuesday. Things were slower. People were pruning plants and building steel tables for moving all the plants to off the floor. Mrs. Balaban, the owner, seemed more subdued and she told me that she had 12 remaining dunams of plants in Gush Katif but someone cut off the water there and the plants were lost; she hadn't seen my camera.
Last week I registered again for the Monday bus (organized by L'maan Achai) to Gush Katif, after a wedding on Sunday night, and this time we got in and headed for Kfar Darom. I ended up with three other people salvaging what had been a tent city for people camping out in Gush Katif before the expulsion. One person took apart the wooden structures and separated the cloth walls and roofs. I folded up the cloths and two high school graduates collected the wood. Meanwhile, across the road, a huge excavator (called a "bagger" in German, and consequently in Hebrew) with a hydraulic hammer
was picking a two story house apart, while a D9 tractor
was making neat piles out of the destruction. The photo isn't mine from there since I didn't have my camera; the photo is from a tractor site on the internet. The D9s couldn't just push the houses down because the house roofs were steel reinforced concrete to protect them from mortar shells.When we got tired we hitchhiked to Neve Dekalim since the army stipulated that we couldn't sleep in Kfar Darom. I davened Maariv in the Magen David shaped Yeshivat Yamit;
there was no Aron Kodesh, Bima, seats, Sidurim, or anything, just some plants and a triangular curtain. We showered and slept in some small dormitory houses of the Yeshiva, and the next morning we davening Shacharit in the Yeshiva with about 50 people, to the sound of smashing glass; the Yeshiva had sold the aluminum door and window frames to a scrap dealer and his workers were smashing out the glass with hammers so that they could get at the aluminum frames. We then headed back to Kfar Darom where we helped take apart the steel structure of a hothouse for romaine lettuce and kohlrabi. My job was collecting small pieces of steel and later making piles of large steel beams for a crane to load on a truck. We then davened Mincha in the Shul in Kfar Darom, no Aron Kodesh, etc., but first I watched from the Shul's roof as two excavators 
tried to tear apart the roof of the Cohens' house across the road. I think that that's the family that had their house specially modified for the children in prosthetics after their school bus was hit by something like a mortar shell somehow launched from a roadside bomb. I think that they finished smashing the houses in Kfar Darom that day or the next day. When we drove back to Neve Dekalim for another night's sleep we found the electricity already out at the Yeshiva so we went to the town hall (municipality?) building and slept there for the night, taking showers in the dormitory of Yeshivat Torat Chaim near by, just past the totally shattered shopping mall, where another volunteer told me he had bought pizza the week before. On Wednesday morning we davened Shacharit with about 20 people in a hallway of the municipality building, and then I went to help salvage what we could from the girls' high school. We took down whiteboards, bulletin boards, loudspeakers, door closers, electric fixtures, etc. We then drove back to Kfar Darom and I worked with three Yeshiva boys on vacation to start taking apart another greenhouse. I went straight home that evening so I didn't see the begining of the destruction of Neve Dekalim which apparently took place on Wednesday and Thursday. As we drove to the Kisufim checkpoint we were side-tracked to a smaller road because the main road was being used to take the bodies out of the Neve Dekalim cemetary. On Thursday I went to the state funeral for transfering the bodies to Har hazeitim in Yerushalayim.
This week on Monday I again went to Gush Katif as part of three buses from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. But first we stopped off at a rest stop by Yad Mordechai (where the honey is from) and there is a tent city there of people from Elei Sinai:
Later as we waited at the Kisufim checkpoint to validate our permits, I took some pictures with my old non-digital camera. This is razorwire that was designed to prevent Jews from getting into Gush Katif during the deportation; some people had apparently decorated it with orange ribbons, I don't know how or exactly when:
This time we were brought to Atzmona where hundreds of volunteers were taking apart greenhouses. My first job was using my Leatherman pliers and wirecutter and a razor to disconnect the roof cloths from each other and from the poles holding them up. This is a photo that I took with my old camera, after we removed all the water pipes and ground cloths and roof and wall cloths from a greenhouse, only the poles and some cables are still standing:
Here is a dying pepper plant in an adjacent area that had apparently been a greenhouse:
As darkness fell, we then collected some still living potted plants together to allow them to be watered and maintain their moisture:
On Monday night, after showering at the huge main water valve of the area, I slept in a greenhouse which was no longer standing by the time I left exhausted on Tuesday evening. On Monday morning after Shacharit and blowing my shofar, I helped Barak, a young man from Bet El take apart a huge unused water valve, using a long pipe mounted on my new ratchet wrench to open the one-inch bolts. Here I am afterwards with the valve laid out in the sand:
I then used my ratchet wrench while standing on a ladder up in the air, to help unscrew bolts from a steel greenhouse structure which we took down and loaded on trucks. After parts of the structure collapsed, I continued to unscrew bolts on the ground. Here you see the inner section where the greenhouse is gone, the two edges where people are figuring out how to take them down, and a section in the background at right where it's still standing. The plants are in the ground/sand, drying out:
At the end there was so much rushing that the steel was getting ruined and I didn't feel like risking my life hanging around collapsing structures just to save some scrap steel, so I decided to go home. I wanted to save some plants for myself so I asked the manager where I could buy some. He said "You can buy some in a store; if you want any from here just take them for free". So I took six sad abandoned pretty looking plants, four for myself and two for people who had asked me for plants if I have a chance. Other people took home trees and large plants but I wasn't interested. Here's the luggage area of the bus that I took home:
After I got on the bus, an army ambulance came in; someone had gotten hit in the head by a steel beam as they were bringing down a section of one of the green houses.
And here is a view of a home and garden in Atzmona - from the bus as we drove out: 
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