UNHOLY EXODUS, DAVID BLUMENFELD

photos and text ©David Blumenfeld

11:30PM: Yitzhak Cohen, 43, (right) listens as the soldiers agree to give him until 5:30 the following afternoon to pack up their possessions and leave Gush Katif.

8:00AM: As Yehonadav, 9 (right), sleeps in his bedroom, Malka(middle) weeps as she tries to comfort Sraya, 15 their final morning in Gush Katif.

5:11PM: Bnayaoo Cohen wears "Tephilin" (Black prayer phylactories) has he prays on top of his roof before being evacuated from his home. "I couldn't put on my tephilin this morning to pray, but now I must."

5:31PM: Yitzhak Cohen (center) tears his shirt as he says the Prayer for the Dead before leaving his home in Gush Katif after 22 years. Soldiers from his son's Golani Unit who came to help the family pack, weep.

5:50PM: With his arm around his brother Bnayaoo, 19 (2nd to left), and Sraya, 15 (middle) walk toward the gate of Neve Dekalim. His shirt, a split star of David, symbolizes the great rift in Israeli society regarding the disengagment from Gaza.



Unholy Exodus: The Cohen Family Bid Farewell to Gush Katif

It is 5:11PM on August 17, 2005 and 19 year-old Bnayaoo Cohen is praying for a miracle. As he recites Minha, the afternoon prayers, on top of his red-roofed home in Neve Dekalim he tearfully watches as his neighbors and friends leave their homes. In less then an hour, he too will be forced to leave the place where he was born and grew up and where his family has lived for the past 22 years – Gush Katif.

I arrived in Gush Katif 10 days earlier, along with hundreds, if not thousands of other journalists, in order to document the historic evacuation of Jews from Gaza.

Overwhelmed by the drama of this event, I decided the best way to cover it was by concentrating on one particular family. After all, this was a human story. Whether one is right wing or left wing - agrees or disagree with “the settlements,” these were real people and families that were being forced to leave their homes. Yitzhak Cohen and his family graciously agreed to allow me to document the last 24 hours of their life in Gush Katif. From the moment the soldiers arrived to deliver their eviction notice, to driving their car out of the gates of Neve Dekalim for the last time, this was one of the most emotional stories I have ever covered.

As a photojournalist, it was frustrating at times – while tires where burning outside, I sat with the family drinking coffee, waiting for those telling moments. However, when these intimate moments did arrive for me to photograph, I felt I was capturing the real story here.

I remember driving through Neve Dekalim 6 months ago with a writer from Newsweek. Looking at the homes, synagogues, shops and buildings we said to each other, is this disengagement really possible? We could not envision it. Yet now it was actually happening.

The days leading up to the “Disengagement” was a mix of dance and song, tears and prayer - as the youth, many of whom snuck in illegally, set up tent cities in the various settlements. One journalist I know nicknamed the event “Gush-stock,” a play on “Woodstock” as this will surely be a time marked in the hearts and minds of the Israeli psyche for many years to come. Whether it too is the end of an era is yet to be seen.

c David Blumenfeld
SEND EMAIL TO DAVID BLUMENFELD
blumenfeld.com