The Eradication of Memory

First they destroyed the towns, dragging out their residents and bulldozing their buildings and leaving what remained for the Arabs to torch and loot. And then even the memory of Gush Katif is being erased.

Israel's new maps will stop at Ashkelon and will not depict Gush Katif. The tombstones on the graves of the dead soldiers dug up, have been forbidden to state Gush Katif as being too political. It is a typical feature of dictatorships that they are not satisfied with destroying physical opposition but rewriting history to eliminate them. In the Soviet Union those who defected to the West were never mentioned again. They had ceased to exist. So too under the Sharon\Olmert regime Gush Katif has ceased to exist as its refugees have ceased to exist being ignored by the authorities except when it comes time to jail them or their children.

"This is the first time I've had to remove the name of a town from the map of Israel," Chaim Sarbaro, director general of the Center for Israel Maps said.

It will not I suspect be the last. In a propaganda war, memory is as important a form of resistance as physical courage. Let us remember. Let us never forget.