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Politics : Middle East Politics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rrufff who wrote (6460)	5/3/2004 7:23:32 PM
From: Machaon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6945

'How can God take a family?' By MATTHEW GUTMAN jpost.com What children in Gush Katif routinely call "Trance, technopop, Mozart and popcorn," the sometimes symphonic sounds of machine-gun fire, tanks, IDF jets and plain old gunfire, yielded something that even these hardened young soldiers of the settlements could barely cope with: the death of five community members. As the Hatuel family was shot point-blank by Palestinian terrorists on their way to a Likud polling station on Sunday, most of the 250 children of the Atzmona elementary and junior high school for girls were canvassing neighborhoods across Israel. Three of Tali Hatuel's daughters, Hila, 11, Hadar, nine, and Roni, seven, were pupils at the school. Tali was a social worker there. But despite the "get back to business" decree by some of the community's leaders, the pain was hard to shake for most of these schoolchildren, said the school's guidance counselor, Hani Tzadok. "Many of the younger girls know that it is OK for them to cry," she said, "but when they see their mothers weeping it sharpens the pain. It makes them feel as if they are losing their support system." The school has a policy forbidding its pupils to speak with the press. The school brought in a reflexologist, a shiatsu practitioner, rabbis and counselors to help the girls deal with the tragedy. "For some it is massages that soothe them, for others prayer or sports, so we tried to give them the freedom to express the pain in the way that best suits them," said Atzmona's principal, Adina Amitay. Some of the pupils created a memorial for the three slain girls and their younger sister, Merav, two. They wondered who would remember the toddler if they did not create a tribute to her as well. Atzmona is among the more religious of Gush Katif's four schools, and the girls here more than anything encountered crises of faith, an attribute that most Gaza settlers consider their most powerful resource. <font color=red> They cried "How can God take a family? Where is He, when these things happen? Why?" said Tzadok.<font color=black> But some of the younger girls begged for routine and an end of the seemingly endless rehashing of their friends' deaths. The girls old enough to grasp the finality of death just sat and cried. Then they began dismantling hundreds of victory banners and placards. However, faith presents the girls, and their teachers, with a reliable routine, something to fall back on, said Tzadok. "For us the path today was clearly drawn. It was written in the Torah, and so these girls did not have to search too far for what is already ingrained in them: Hashem [God]." Shortly after classes began, Rabbi Dov Lior, a leading settlement rabbi from Kiryat Arba, decreed that the settlers of Gaza say Hallel and Hodaya, prayers and psalms generally reserved for special celebrations. But it seemed that even religion would provide the "little soldier girls" of Atzmona the solace they needed.