As someone who used to make his home in Neve Dekalim, in Gaza, Rabbi Yigal Kirshenzaft has a unique emotional response to Gaza terrorists' rocket attacks on southern Israel. “I sit in a caravan that is falling apart, in Nitzan... and hear the shriek of the rockets fired at Ashdod,” he told the hareidi-religious news outlet Kikar Hashabat. “From the home I was expelled from, they fire on Ashdod and Kiryat Malachi.”
The attacks, often launched from former Jewish towns, were predicted by the Jews of Gush Katif prior to the expulsion, Rabbi Kirshenzaft recalled. “They said we were a burden on the rest of the state. The results speak for themselves. But until today nobody has stood up and said the truth – 'We were mistaken, we sinned,'” he said.
He called on the hareidi community to repent for failing to assist the Jews of Gush Katif in their struggle against the Disengagement. “I don't want to stand as an accuser against Jews, G-d forbid, but when rockets fell Friday and hit a synagogue exactly six years after flames seized the synagogues of Neve Dekalim, I think that as believing Jews, someone needs to act according to the spirit of, 'We will search out our ways, and we will return,'” he said.