August 19, 2005
Leaving Gaza

In the early 1980's, Amos Oz's "In the Land of Israel" warned of the growing suspicions of decent people outside the country who had begun to ask whether Jews really wanted only a "strip of land for sanctuary, a homeland, independence, peace and security, as they claimed originally, or are they really cheating, and is their real goal to reconstruct some nationalistic-religious fantasy?"

As such fantasies indeed bent Israel into an occupier and expansionist promoter of 450,000 settlers, many people justifiably found their support and affection for Israel under intolerable political and ethical strains.

But this week has begun a pullback - not only from other people's land, but from decades of moral and political decline. Let us hope that the Gaza withdrawal is a beginning and not an end in itself, so that it can also be the beginning of Israel's path back toward the freedom that initially and rightfully had won it the warm friendship of so many supportive and hopeful people and nations around the world.

James Adler
Cambridge, MA