Full of hope: Marmelstein
צילום: דניאל ממן
Please God, kill the plan
Tears of pain, joy, mark emotional week for Gush Katif residents
This year’s Memorial Day ceremony here in Gush Katif was even more difficult than usual. It started out as a touching ceremony, with photos of our murder victims and soldiers who fell defending this country. They also showed a movie by Gidon Rivlin, who was murdered in Morag.
- Video: Ranana Marmelstein talks about Independence Day in Gaza
When I see pictures like this, on one hand it makes me sad to think it all might come to an end. On the other hand, it gives me strength -strength to carry on and to fight for the things I believe in, to do everything I can to prevent it from ever ending.
I actually thought I’d run out of tears, that nothing could make me cry anymore… until we had got to the cemetery, in which Rina Hilberg (mother of navy officer Yohanan Hilberg, killed off the coast of Lebanon in 1997) read a particularly disturbing passage in honor of her son. Of course, we live a disturbing existence…
Then came Independence Day, and I thought, “okay,enough crying, now it’s a holiday.” But when the ceremony started and the torches lit, when the kindergarten children sang the prayer for the State of Israel, I once again felt the tears coming. Please, God, let the disengagement plan fall apart! Under no circumstances will we not be here again next year! We must stay here. We simply must.
This year, we kids decided we would light one of the ceremonial torches. We called it the Torch of the Next Generation of Gush (Katif)”, a torch that will never be extinguished.
We felt duty bound to strengthen our parents—however hard this has all been for us, it has been 1000 times harder for them. So we wrote something straight from the heart, and performed it under the Israeli flag—with an orange ribbon, of course:
Dear Parents – even if it is sometimes difficult, and seems like all is lost, please know we stand here and salute you, and believe with perfect faith that we will continue to live here, and that we will win…
Between the blue skies of heaven and the green fields
Babies are being born
Because with faith we’ll persevere
We’ll build and build Ganei Tal
This was the last line of my part of the skit we performed in (the settlement of) Ganei Tal. I looked out, and saw everyone crying – mothers, fathers, boys and girls.
But for once, the tears were not tears of sadness, but of pride. Pride they’ve educated us in the ways they so strongly believe in, pride that they’ve created a generation to continue their work, that (with God’s help) will continue to live here for many years.
Singing Hatikva at the end of the ceremony broke my heart. When the anthem speaks about being “a free people, in our land…,” it means we should live throughout the land, because it belongs to us.
To be free - having the army defend us instead of our enemies, having a country that won’t expel me from my own house. This is real freedom.
At least the rest of the song is optimistic – “we have never lost our hope….” And my hope is not gone, it still beats in my heart and in everyone’s heart here. This hope will lead us to victory.
In the morning the visitors started coming. I really salute them - week after week they come to Gush Katif, from all over the country. I most enjoyed seeing people visit the greenhouses.
To watch Jews walking around, buying things, just being here. Fantastic.
