When I blogged about the former Gush Katif residents, a guy called Avi Abelow got in touch and told me about a film he produced about the days leading to the disengagement. It’s called Home Game, and it’s one of the greatest documentaries I have ever witnessed.

I couldn’t see how anything I watched on the topic of the disengagement could be more heartbreaking, more gut-wrenching, than the news footage of the evacuations: Jews dragging Jews from their homes. Home Game out-wrenches even that. Not that it’s really about wrenching, it’s about education. Because precious few people on this planet know – or even care about – the truth of the settlers and what happened to them in the summer of 2005.

Thank heavens, then, for Home Game which goes to the heart of the matter and tells the truth with a knockout punch. It follows Gush Katif teenagers as they face up to the reality of losing their home, while trying to continue – and to win – the annual basketball tournament. This is the human side of the story laid bare for all to see. To say that it’s an emotional experience wouldn’t begin to do justice to the sheer power of it all.

The disengagement happened in 2005. Here we are three years on, and what good has come of it? The Palestinians did not – surprise, surprise – respond in kind to Israel’s gesture. On the contrary, they simply moved their weapons forward and bombarded southern Israel with Qassam rockets. (These are terrifying, destructive weapons and not – as the ghastly Jon Snow* once shamefully claimed on Channel 4 News – “pretty pathetic things”.)

As for the former residents of Gush Katif, the majority of them are still in temporary accommodation and continue to suffer financial hardship and extreme emotional pain after being ripped from their houses by their own government. So many in the world are either unaware of their plight, or are actively hostile to them after being fed a wildly distorted picture of the settlers. But the truth is out there, as they say. You could visit http://www.netzach.org.il/Default_en.aspx and http://www.jobkatif.org.il/index_e.php if you want to learn more.

Meanwhile, Ariel Sharon, who controversially ordered the disengagement, remains in a coma in hospital. Although I opposed his disengagement plans, I still admire him for his lifetime of service to Israel, which is why Julie and I co-dedicated Not In My Name to him. (The other dedicatee was Benjamin Netanyahu.) All the same, I can understand the at-times blood-curdling anger some of the Gush Katif residents felt towards him, as seen in Home Game.

Congratulations, a huge pat on the back, and maximum respect to Avi and everyone else involved in making Home Game, for showing it like it is. I recommend you watch it, or organise a showing. This link will take you to the website for the show, where you can watch the trailer, read more about it, organise a showing or donate to the initiative.

And good luck to the former Gush Katif residents as they rebuild their lives.

* Jon Snow is often a disgrace. When he reported on the Mumbai massacre, he described the killers as “practitioners”, rather than what they are – Islamic terrorists. (cf the BBC which refuses to describe suicide bombers who blow up school buses full of kids as ‘terrorists’, preferring to use the term ‘militants’, as if they are 21st century Derek Hattons.) Snow also, astonishingly, reported that the Mumbai terrorists showed a “wanton disregard for race or creed” when the exact opposite was the case. They deliberately and carefully targeted Jews, Americans and Britons.

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