Zinar spoke with Israel National Radio’s Eli Stutz and Yishai Fleisher Tuesday.
The former assistant to Netzarim’s mayor said he recently went back to his beloved town, located in central Gaza, to see everything had been turned to rubble. “All the houses have been destroyed, except for the synagogue,” Zinar said.
Asked by Stutz and Fleisher how he was handing the expulsion emotionally, Zinar said, without a hint of sarcasm: “Aside from seeing our entire lives destroyed and our homes and jobs taken away, we are doing alright.”
“The Jewish people cannot afford to sink into despair and we will therefore move forward,” Zinar added. “People get sad and upset, but the spirit is high and we remain one community and are ready for our next mission.”
Less than a month after being thrown out of their homes by the very State of Israel that sent them to live in the much-attacked central Gaza region, the residents of Netzarim are serious about continuing their community’s legacy on the front line elsewhere.
“Netzarim is not the houses, not the soil, not the farming – even though those were holy things – each and every brick in our town was about sanctifying G-d’s name,” Zinar said. “Netzarim is about the spirit. Netzarim is beyond any boundaries. It is about the devotion Jews have had throughout history to their tradition, to their homeland and to their nation.”
The residents are currently living in trailer homes on the campus of the College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel, where they will remain until after the Sukkot festival.
“Right now our community is working very hard looking for our next mission,” Zinar said. “It may focus on education and ‘face-to-face’ work, or it could be developing parts of the country. We will certainly be ready to face another challenge and we will take it upon ourselves – we will not simply melt into Israel.”
Zinar says he has received many requests from towns across Israel to come and build a neighborhood there to positively influence the rest of the town.
“People come here to Ariel to provide us with emotional support, and find that they gain support from us,” zinar said. “We tell them that we must move forward. Maybe we needed the Disengagement Plan to wake us up and let us know there has been a major deterioration in education in our country.”