As the 20-year anniversary of the disengagement from Gaza approaches, Israeli religious actor Chagay Lober published a post on social media entitled “You don’t make the same mistake twice.”

Lober, a former resident of the Gush, is now a bereaved father—his son Elisha Yehonatan, H’yd, was killed in battle in Gaza in December 2023, leaving behind a pregnant wife and baby.

Lober wrote, “A picture that will forever remain in my head from those days in Ganei Tal in Gush Katif. My wife is surrounded by people dressed in black, telling the soldiers evacuating her: ‘We will be forced to return here with the blood of slain soldiers.'”

“She didn’t know and couldn’t have guessed that the sweet boy next to her, who was then six years old, would be killed a kilometer away in Khan Younis in battle, and she would have to pay the price herself for the folly of the disengagement.”

“Now, after 20 years, I and many others are not looking for culprits and are willing to believe that those who supported it were completely and sincerely sure that the removal of Jews, for the benefit of cruel enemies, would bring peace and life, and you truly thought that destroying flourishing yishuvim would bring security, and you believed that peace will finally come only if we give them an area free of Jews.

“And I, and many others, are willing to try to forget the disturbing past for the sake of the future. The acts of the media that picked a side and painted the settlers as evil and violent, the signs at the demonstrations at kibbutzim that called for the destruction of their brothers in the nearby yishuvim, the ‘experts’ who arrogantly promised peace, security, and the Singapore of the Middle East.

“”But on the condition that those who voted then for the terrible disengagement, especially the prime minister, do not repeat that terrible mistake. And they not show, as they did then, fatigue and defeat. And they not explain the surrender with false morality. And they won’t demand to stop and surrender in the middle of the war. And they won’t help establish another terror state for terrorists. And they won’t say, ‘There is no choice; we must have political solutions.’

“Because the second time there will be no forgiveness. And what was a mistake becomes a choice. And this time we will not forgive the abandonment.”

It should be noted that then-Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu voted for the disengagement while it was still in the planning stages, but when the final vote came up in the cabinet, he resigned from the government and voted against it. He explained his votes later as a delaying tactic in order to carry out a series of  ‘revolutionary’ economic reforms.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)