It was three years ago this Tish'a b'Av that the units of the Israel Police and the IDF destroyed 21 Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip and four in northern Samaria, in what the Israel government called hehitnatkút m'áza – the "disengagement" from Gaza. A total of 10,000 citizens were driven from their homes, and today the majority of them still live in temporary housing, where they are internal refugees, scorned by the government that had lured them to military bases in the Gaza Strip, promised them homes in Gaza, and then, after two decades, destroyed their lives.

Because I lived in Israel at the time, I did not notice how this was covered by the international media. I only knew that this was a tragedy in the making, an act that was a sin against the people who lived in Gaza and northern Samaria, and a sin against the G-d of Israel, and that ultimately the punishment for this would be heavy.

I was right on all counts.

The flight from Gaza was looked upon by the Arabs living there as a signal to begin the bombardment of the kibbutzim near Gaza that had stood against the Gush Qatif residents, as well as the villages, cities and towns in "Green Line" Israel that are near the Gaza strip.

The failure of the government to use bunker busters to destroy homes and hospitals in Gaza when the Arabs started to bombard Green Line Israel, taught the Arabs that the government in Israel was composed of irresolute fools and gutless cowards who, unlike the Arab guerrillas and terrorists, did not have the guts to do more than send "signals" to the Arab enemy.

It gave a clear signal to the HizbAllah, and its Iranian sponsors in the north, that Israel would not really fight if attacked. They did attack, and although our soldiers fought with the bravery of lions, their commanders and the leaders of the country proved themselves to be like bananas, yellow on the outside and squishy on the inside. And the "government," the civilian administrators in the northern third of the country, ran away from the rocket bombardment like so many rats into a sewer.

Is it Divine punishment that the man who had orchestrated this tragedy wound up completely paralyzed by a stroke, artificially kept alive to satisfy the ambitions of his successors – and presently rots like a tomato? It was the lives of tomato growers he destroyed, amongst others. Is it Divine punishment that the nation that pressured Israel to kick out its own citizens from their homes, would see ten times as many of its own citizens kicked out of their homes, in a storm that effectively destroyed New Orleans at almost the same time? I leave the reader to ponder this, but in my mind there is no doubt that Divine justice is being handed out.