The greatest tragedy of the present situation in Israel is that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is attempting to completely crush the democratic process. For good reason has he been nicknamed "the Bulldozer".

He was elected on a platform completely contrary to the policies he is presently trying to enforce on the Israeli public. Without any prior warning or justification, Sharon is now advising us that we must follow him in what he previously told us would be suicidal behavior, namely to retreat from our land in the face of terror and war. Hamas, Hezbollah and Arafat are openly fighting for the spoils of Sharon's anticipated perfidy - that is who will get the fruits of the labor of the Jews in the communities from which they are to be forcibly expelled. And all this in the face of Egypt merrily winking at the terrorists' continued massive smuggling of weapons from Egypt to Gaza.

The national consensus - and that included Sharon himself, as well as the commanders of the army, the police and the intelligence services - was that there must be no retreat until the war has been won.

And now Sharon has announced that he has decided it is best for the country to abandon 8,500 Jews from Gaza and northern Shomron. No reason given. Just in true dictatorial fashion, Sharon says he knows what's best for Israel.

But Sharon is trying to do all this without a mandate! It is erroneous to think that the Israeli people overwhelmingly voted for him personally in the last election. It must be understood that the Israeli system is different from the American system, in which we vote directly for the president. In Israel, the vote is for the party. And the leader of the party that receives the most votes becomes prime minister, if he can successfully put together a coalition within a given amount of time. The Likud Party won the last election overwhelmingly with a platform of "No to a Palestinian State" and "No Concessions to the Arab Enemy".

Sharon's Unilateral Disengagement Plan has been soundly rejected by his own Likud Party.

* On May 3, 2004, the entire Likud membership voted against Sharon's Disengagement Plan with a 19.5% majority; a humiliating defeat for the Prime Minister.

* On August 19, 2004, the Likud Convention voted against Sharon's plan to bring the Labor Party into his Government, to bolster his reduced majority in the Knesset. This additional defeat was by a wide margin.

* As recently as Tuesday, September 21, 2004, the majority of the next Likud Convention attendees enthusiastically and loudly booed Ariel Sharon when he said, "The Disengagement Plan that has been decided upon by the government has commenced and is underway, and the plan will be carried out exactly according to the timetable decided on by the government."

Sharon's statement that the Disengagement Plan has been decided upon by the government is an outright, and it may be assumed, deliberate, misrepresentation. Yes, the cabinet has given its approval, but only after Sharon fired those of his ministers who had announced that they planned to vote against the Plan. Sharon then appointed such ministers who could be counted on to be his yes-men.

Please note, furthermore, that the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) of 120 members has not yet been given the opportunity to vote on Sharon's Disengagement Plan.

Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Education Minister Limor Livnat and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom have now called for a national referendum on this vital issue. But officials from the Prime Minister's Office recently declared brazenly on Israeli television's Channel 2 that a national referendum is no longer under consideration, "because the Government might lose."

This is supposed to be Israeli democracy in action?

How does the Sharon Government explain their fear that a growing majority might not vote for the Disengagement Plan in a national referendum? Of course, they blame the "inciters"; i.e., Israelis who disagree with the plan to forcibly drag 8,500 Jews out of their homes. And the Israeli leftist media is enthusiastically helping the Sharon government in this endeavor.

It is extraordinary how the Israeli Left , with a few exceptions, passionately hated Ariel Sharon as long as he was in the forefront of building Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Now that he is intent to expel the Jews from the very communities he helped build, an equally passionate love affair has developed between Sharon and his erstwhile leftist detractors.

Nadia Matar, co-chair of Women in Green, has apparently been chosen and designated as the chief "inciter". In fact, Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra says that Nadia is a threat to internal security, and ordered the police to bring her in for questioning, even before Yom Kippur. In addition, Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra wants Attorney General Mazuz to investigate if Nadia is guilty of criminal incitement.

What is Nadia's "crime"? Nadia Matar had the "audacity" to send to Jonathan Bassi, the man appointed by Ariel Sharon to be head of the Evacuation Agency, a response to his draft letter to the Gush Katif residents, who are to be deported from their homes, together with a letter written by the Judenrat (Jewish Council) to the Jews of Berlin in Germany in 1942.

Nadia noted that the 1942 documents ended with an emotional plea by the Berlin Jewish leadership to behave calmly and thus ease the process of deportation. Nadia further accused Bassi that he is a modern-day version of the Judenrat and is, in fact, much worse. During the Holocaust, the deportation of Jews was forced upon community leaders by the Nazis; whereas, Bassi's decision to head the Evacuation Agency was purely voluntary. Bassi, as Nadia correctly points out, was under no threat to his life or limb when he assumed his position as head of Sharon's Evacuation Authority.

Many public figures and media pundits protested the use of the Holocaust comparison.

Avner Shalev, head of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, on Monday last lambasted comparisons made by Matar between Israel's plan to dismantle Jewish settlements in Gaza and events of the Holocaust as "a distortion of history and the cheapening of the Shoah." He further stated that "the use of the Holocaust to advance political positions is irresponsible, disrespectful and distorts historical facts."

But in 1998, Avner Shalev apparently felt differently. He lobbied for the idea that Yasser Arafat should be allowed to visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, but said that he understood that official visits from dignitaries were determined only by the Foreign Ministry. Was his desire to invite the murderer Arafat to Yad Vashem not political?

On the contrary, shouldn't we learn from the Holocaust never again to allow ourselves to be expelled from our homes and again be evacuated and powerless to resist, as the German Jews were in 1942?

Nadia and I are both, in a sense, Holocaust survivors. Members of both our families were murdered by the Nazis. Should we not learn lessons from what happened? It is not enough to visit Holocaust museums all over the world (even Germany has such a museum), to sorrowfully study what many of us believe was a one-time terrible and tragic occurrence.

The Holocaust was not a one-time event. The Jews over the ages have suffered various Holocausts and Expulsions. Examples are the Spanish Inquisition and Expulsion, the Crusaders murdering all the Jews on their way to the Holy Land, and the many countries where Jews were murdered and expelled, even though in some cases subsequently readmitted. More recently, the Muslim countries violently expelled virtually all of their once blossoming Jewish communities.

Only with the fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy of the Jewish return to our Promised Land have we been able to feel some safety.

However, if Ariel Sharon succeeds in the forced deportation and ethnic cleansing of the 8,500 Jews now living in Biblical Gaza and northern Samaria, many countries, in order to appease their rapidly growing Muslim population, may well do what Ariel Sharon plans to do to his own people.

With G-d's help, we must defeat Sharon's evil Unilateral Disengagement Plan which is really just a plan of forced deportation and ethnic cleansing of Israeli Jewry.