By Stan Goodenough
Oct 19, 2005
He believes that Jews and Christians standing together against the unrelenting international effort to take Israel?s land away from her are Israel?s best hope.
Moshe Saperstein lost one arm and part of his face when a Katyusha rocket exploded alongside him during the Yom Kippur War. Years later, he lost two fingers off his remaining hand, and had to have a bullet dug out of his leg after Arab killers fired on his car while he was driving home. His daughter, meanwhile, was traveling on a Jerusalem bus when an Arab passenger blew himself up in 1997. Tamar Saperstein survived but lost some of her hearing in the blast. During a period of five years, 6,000 rockets and mortars were fired at their town ? a bombardment virtually every night.
Although they could have left at any time to live in the United States, far away from Arab hatred and violence, Moshe and his wife Rachel never did. Their pain and the ever present danger left them unshaken in their belief that Israel had been given to their nation by God, Who wanted them to live in and settle this ancient Jewish land.
Speaking to a gathering of Christians who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles with the International Christian Zionist Center, the Saperstein?s Tuesday described how, through it all, they had remained steadfast in their devotion to and faith in the Almighty.
And then, they had been betrayed.
Against all expectation and belief, their own government, soldiers and police had forcefully driven them from the homes, industries and communities they had built, then demolished the vacated properties and surrendered all their land to the Arabs.
Hundreds of young Jewish soldier boys and girls who the government had ?turned into robots? came to ensure their eviction. Unwilling to look in the eyes of the grandparents they were robbing, they carried out their tasks like automatons, seeing the Sapersteins and thousands of others onto the buses that took them away from the homes they had been ready to die to live in.
The masses of foreign journalists who had come to report on the ?disengagement? lost all interest in its victims the moment the action had been carried out.
Today the Sapersteins and many like them are of no consequence to the world. Focus has shifted elsewhere and the people of Gush Katif are all but forgotten.
Instead of enjoying the fruits they had given so many of their years for ? life in their villa and garden, with the Mediterranean Sea on their doorstep and their hothouses earning them a living and contributing to their nation?s economy ? the couple is ensconced in a tiny Jerusalem hotel room, homeless and without the wherewithal to buy warm clothes for the approaching winter.
The Sharon government had not kept its promise to financially compensate the Sapersteins or any of the thousands of other Jews expelled from Gaza and northern Samaria.
After Rachel had shared the bulk of the couple?s story, Moshe told the listening audience he believed the only hope for Israel was that Bible-believing Jews and Bible-believing Christians would join forces to resist the unrelenting efforts to remove the Jews from their land and their land from the Jews.
It was this common belief in ?the Word of God? that was Israel?s hope, Moshe believed.
From the response the couple received, this conviction was shared by those in attendance. Increasing numbers of Christians worldwide are coming to realize that they have a common future destiny with the people of Israel.
Around 7,000 Christians are in Jerusalem at various venues this week to show their solidarity with the people of the Jewish state.