I just returned from the Nitzan cemetery where we had the Gush Katif ceremony for those who fell on Kiddush Hashem as soldiers and by terror.

Four of the names of the fallen read were from my own Netzer Hazani community and each name read individually of the too long list read of all those that fell , whom we all knew well from our Gush Katif communities penetrated my heart deeply with a terrible pain .

My neighbor Bryna ,whose soldier son was reinterred in the Nitzan cemetery spoke with great pain and said " Please Hakadosh Baruch Hu give the dead of Gush Katif menucha nechona, an appropriate place of rest, because we, the living, have not yet found one for ourselves."

Still , I am now busy preparing our Seudat Hodaya ,Thanksgiving dinner ,where we as a family will express together this 60 th birthday of the State of Israel, after returning from the special Independence Day thanksgiving prayers---- sincerely thanking G-d for all that we do have in our dear Land of Israel..

In 1969 my husband Stuart and I decided we wanted to come on Aliya to Israel, not only because it was the biblical Land of Israel.

G-d's Holy land was now also the declared State of Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people.

The Bible and even the UN declared Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people---so we wanted to be there!

My parents were refugees from Germany, my grandparents from Poland etc. We didn't want to be refugees. We wanted to live in the State of Israel the homeland of the Jewish people .The ceremonies in which our children completed their IDF training courses were at least as moving as their kindergarten Chanukah ceremonies—where we were convinced that our little geniuses were truly descendents of the valiant soldiers of the tiny fledgling Royal Forces of G-d, the Maccabies.

In 2005 we were forced to leave our home, farm and lifetime of 29 yrs. (we celebrated the State of Israel's thirtieth birthday in Gush Katif) by the thousands of young men of our own beloved IDF who were sent to do this by the Members of the Knesset of the State of Israel.

I wasn't sure that very terrible day whether we still had a State of Israel, nor was I sure that it was still our Reishit tzmichat geulateinu—the beginning of the redemption of our people.

Beyond that, all our lifetime was now a pile of rubble. I, my extended family and my lifetime friends were all homeless in my Homeland perpetrated by my Homeland.

That day, and still today, I was shocked that these representatives of our beloved State did not have the moral fiber to stand up and say proudly and clearly that it is immoral to throw 10 thousand people out of their home and certainly when all know the terror will continue and intensify and no one knows where we are to go.

I wanted so much that my grandchildren would continue believing in the State of Israel, in the beginning of the flourishing of our redemption.

Our communities were fortunate to manage to salvage the spirit and values out of the rubble of our towns.

We hope we will be enabled to build anew so that these values and spirit might blossom anew. Those who do not see importance in this spirit and those values have emptied the State of Israel of the moral strength that the values provide.

G-d willing we will all, you and I, together, continue to fill the State of Israel with the true values of Zion that were significant in first building the State of Israel