MetroWest sends $15,000 to help absorb Gaza evacuees.
Stewart Ain - Staff Writer

Concerned that 250 families evacuated from the Gaza Strip to the newly established community of Nitzan do not have the social support needed to successfully handle the trauma of the move, the United Jewish Community of MetroWest in northern New Jersey last week sent them $15,000 to help ease their absorption. The donation is believed to be the first of its kind by a diaspora Jewish community.

"We wanted to move quickly to show that diaspora Jews also care, not just the Israeli government," said Max Kleinman, MetroWest's executive vice president.

He said many of the families arrived ill prepared for what they would face.

"Many hoped it [the evacuation] would never take place," Kleinman said, adding that as a result they did not take the time to plan their lives after the withdrawal.

He said the allocation was made last Wednesday evening after he received an urgent phone call earlier in the day from Amir Shacham, his agency's director of Israel operations. Shacham told The Jewish Week that he went to Nitzan to see for himself how the displaced residents of Gaza who had left before the forced evacuation were faring. Some had already been there for two weeks.

Shacham said he found that the Matnasim Association (the Israeli Association of Jewish Community Centers) was setting up a branch office in one or two mobile homes in Nitzan in an attempt to "establish the basic social services for this brand new community [who residents] had a lot of traumatic experiences and who came from very different backgrounds. Some are religious, others are secular. And so with this ingathering of exiles, it is difficult to make one unified community for the next two years [until permanent housing is built for them]."

He said he found there "a lot of kids and a lot of youth and there were issues of where to send them to school, will there be youth activities and day care centers and kindergartens and after school activities and family activities and counseling and even post-traumatic counseling because they went through a difficult, tough time. These are people who signed a contract with the evacuation authority to leave on time … and they needed support."

He described the scene in Nitzan as one of "chaos" and said he told the people at MetroWest that the need there was "urgent."

The donation from his federation will be used to hire three former employees of a community center in the Gaza Strip who many of the people know and who worked with them in the past.

"That will provide some continuity for these people," said Shacham, who added that one would work as a coordinator of after school activities, the second would be a youth director, and the third would serve as an administrator.

The allocation will pay their salaries for three months, after which Shacham said that either the government would pay their salaries or additional contributions would be solicited. They are to start work Sept. 1.

Shacham said the Matnasim Association had reached out to other Jewish federations in the United States for financial support. A spokesman for the United Jewish Communities had no comment when asked if his organization would help provide assistance. And a spokeswoman for UJA-Federation of New York said simply: "What the Israelis are doing with their own community is up to them. We're not involved."

In the meantime, the settlement division of the World Zionist Organization is standing by, waiting for orders from the Israeli government to start creating agricultural communities in the Negev and the Galilee for the evacuated settlers, according to Michael Jankelowitz of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

"The majority of people who left the Gaza Strip have not made up their minds what they want to do and so they have not come up with any requests [for permanent housing]," he said. "None of the settlers while they were in Gaza made any plans, and only now are they coming up with ideas. … Just in the last week the reality dawned on these people. They didn't think [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon would go ahead, and the people did not take up any offers."

The settlement division will create communities for those who wish to pursue an agricultural lifestyle, and Jankelowitz said many of the former Gaza residents may wish to go back to it.

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