Forever etched in our memory: Photos from the evacuation of Amona
Two young men comforting one another as its time to leave their homes, a woman protectively holding onto Torah scrolls, and a mother whose baby helped revive her after she passed out. These are the images we'll remember from the evacuation.
Torah scrolls wrapped in a prayer shawl, held close and protected fiercely: That is the sight that caught the eye of Odaya Van Luan, a resident of Ofra who came to Amona on Wednesday. She memorialized the moment with her camera, and the photo—which was shared far and wide on social media—became one of the symbols of the painful evacuation.
The woman in the photo is Na'ama Ben-Hemo, an Ofra resident herself, who arrived in Amona on Wednesday to offer her support to her friends and family in the nearby Amona outpost.
"It was an empowering moment," Ben-Hemo recounted. "When we got down the Amona mountain, I called my father and asked him what was the right thing to do with the Torah scrolls. He told me to come to the Ofra synagogue. There, we placed the Torah scrolls in the ark with the help of the town's rabbi, Avi Gisar. The rabbi was choking with tears as blessed over the scrolls for a long time. They will remain there until they could be moved to a permanent place."
"I saw a lot of difficult and painful sights yesterday," the photographer, Odaya, told Yedioth Ahronoth. "Beloved friends who lost a home they built with their own hands. A last coffee at Sara's, a warm embrace to Manya, to Rikki, to Yael and to the wonderful youth who came to give us strength and sang with all of their souls on a cold floor with a warm heart."
"The photo of Na'ama coming out (of the synagogue) with the Torah scrolls really caught my eye. This is a photo of a proud Jewish woman, who reminds me that faith and the Torah give us strength and tie us to each other and to this land. Amona 2017, in our hearts forever," she added.
With kid gloves
There were quite a few difficult moments during the evacuation, but one unusual sight drew a lot of attention from the police officers, bringing with it quite a lot of tears.
A woman who was being evacuated with her young children—including a two-month-old baby who was still breastfeeding—resisted police efforts to move her, leaving them no choice but to carry her bodily away.
Suddenly, she lost consciousness and fell to the ground as Border Police officers were carrying her young, frightened children.
One policewoman wrapped the baby carefully with blankets to protect him from the harsh cold, and placed him on top of his passed out mother.
When the mother felt her baby near, she regained consciousness and later evacuated on a gurney.
Evident despair
Some 30 girls, 10th-12th grade students in a girls' high school, crammed into an old caravan at the entrance to the outpost to support a young woman who lived there.
"You're expelling Jews from the home that G-d has given us," they cried out as dozens of police officers surrounded the caravan to prevent additional girls from joining them.
Some two hours after the beginning of the evacuation operation, the police officers decided to start forcibly removing the teenage girls, who refused to leave willingly.
"You're traitors. You listen to the government and not to G-d who gave us this land," the girls called out at the policewomen who removed them from the caravan.
The evacuation of the caravan took hours and continued well into the afternoon.
A goodbye hug
Many of Amona's residents stood hugging one another, with tears in their eyes, comforting one another after being evacuated from their homes.
The young men in the photo were not the only ones who had a hard time believing it was time to leave.
So were newlyweds Adar and Rivka Lapair, who got married five months ago and were trying to convince the police officers not to evacuate them from their new home in Amona.
Adar, a Kfir Brigade soldier, has been living in Amona over the past few months after marrying Rivka, the daughter of the veteran Nizri family, who was born and raised in the outpost.
The two built their new home with their own hands, investing a lot in it, and it was hard for them to say goodbye.
"Have you no shame to evacuate me from my home?" Adar told the police officers with sadness and anger, as he clutched his combat soldier's ID.
