A Week To Go For The Human Chain
Preparations for a giant human chain - close to 100,000 people, over the course of a 90-kilometer (55 miles) stretch from Gaza to Jerusalem - are at their height. The Yesha Council and the Gush Katif communities are preparing the event, to be held next Sunday afternoon at 5 PM, as a show of the nation's strong grassroots opposition to a withdrawal/expulsion from Gaza and the northern Shomron.
Chain organizers explain that it will manifest strength, unity, wide public support, and "bonding to our eternity and to our roots." Similar human chains have had great influence in various other struggles throughout the world, they say, and recent history has shown that the public has more weight in their countries' political decisions than in the past.
Participants can sign up at "www.katif.net/chain" (in Hebrew), or at various local headquarters around the country. Special orange Gush Katif Chain shirts are being sold (20 shekels each), and a photograph of a "practice" chain can be seen at "www.katif.net/bigpic.php?id=1257".
The Chabad-Lubavitch Hassidic sector is planning to take an active role in the chain. Rabbi Yehuda Yaroslavsky, head of the Young Chabad organization, announced last week that all "for whom the words of the [Lubavitcher] Rebbe are dear" must take part in the human chain from Gush Katif to the Western Wall. Katif.net announced today that it had received an email from the Chabad House in Tokyo, declaring its intention to hold a parallel human chain event at the same time around the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo. The Chabad organizers wish to thus show their solidarity with Gush Katif all the way from Japan.
This morning, no fewer than four Kassam rockets were fired from northern Gaza towards the western Negev, causing no damage, and terrorists fired an anti-tank shell towards a position in N'vei Dekalim as well. On Friday afternoon, the Jewish community of Morag in southern Gush Katif received two mortar shells, with no damage.
Preparations for a giant human chain - close to 100,000 people, over the course of a 90-kilometer (55 miles) stretch from Gaza to Jerusalem - are at their height. The Yesha Council and the Gush Katif communities are preparing the event, to be held next Sunday afternoon at 5 PM, as a show of the nation's strong grassroots opposition to a withdrawal/expulsion from Gaza and the northern Shomron.
Chain organizers explain that it will manifest strength, unity, wide public support, and "bonding to our eternity and to our roots." Similar human chains have had great influence in various other struggles throughout the world, they say, and recent history has shown that the public has more weight in their countries' political decisions than in the past.
Participants can sign up at "www.katif.net/chain" (in Hebrew), or at various local headquarters around the country. Special orange Gush Katif Chain shirts are being sold (20 shekels each), and a photograph of a "practice" chain can be seen at "www.katif.net/bigpic.php?id=1257".
The Chabad-Lubavitch Hassidic sector is planning to take an active role in the chain. Rabbi Yehuda Yaroslavsky, head of the Young Chabad organization, announced last week that all "for whom the words of the [Lubavitcher] Rebbe are dear" must take part in the human chain from Gush Katif to the Western Wall. Katif.net announced today that it had received an email from the Chabad House in Tokyo, declaring its intention to hold a parallel human chain event at the same time around the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo. The Chabad organizers wish to thus show their solidarity with Gush Katif all the way from Japan.
This morning, no fewer than four Kassam rockets were fired from northern Gaza towards the western Negev, causing no damage, and terrorists fired an anti-tank shell towards a position in N'vei Dekalim as well. On Friday afternoon, the Jewish community of Morag in southern Gush Katif received two mortar shells, with no damage.