In the "crime and punishment" part of The International Campaign to Save the Nation and the Land - associated with an offshoot of the Chabad movement - the sin is "the crime of the disengagement" and the "expulsion" of 10,000 people from their homes. The punishment takes various guises: removal from office, resignation, illness, a commission of inquiry or a criminal conviction. The campaign called "There is Justice and a Judge," which the organization embarked on recently, asserts that everyone who was a partner to the "crime of expulsion" or did not act to prevent it has received or will receive his punishment from heaven.

"This is a curse," many in the religious public are now convinced. As the list of the supposed "disengagement victims" grows, so does the number of people who believe in the existence of this curse. A public opinion survey commissioned by the Campaign from Professor Yitzhak Katz and the Maagar Mochot Research and Interdisciplinary Consulting Institute has indicated that one out of every four religious and ultra-Orthodox people in Israel believes former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's illness is a punishment from heaven in the wake of the disengagement plan.

A million copies of 'curse victims'

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The list of the "curse victims" was complied by the heads of the campaign, Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe and his colleague from the United States, Rabbi Yekutiel Tapp, and has been distributed in more than 1 million copies in synagogues throughout the country. The list begins with Sharon, who sank into a coma after a cerebral hemorrhage. It continues with his son, Omri, and former justice minister and Kadima MK Haim Ramon, both of whom have been convicted of crimes. Next in line is President Moshe Katsav, who is on leave of absence.

In addition there is the head of the Sela Disengagement Administration, Yonatan Basi, who has had to leave his home at Kibbutz Sde Eliahu and move to a "caravilla" at Kibbutz Ma'aleh Gilboa. There is also the chair of the Knesset's foreign relations and defense committee, Kadima MK Tzachi Hanegbi, who is facing trial in the political appointments affair. And there is the "disengagement chief of staff," Dan Halutz, who resigned from his position in the wake of the Lebanon war, and Police Commissioner Moshe Karadi, who submitted his resignation from the police after the Zeiler report.

Is Olmert next?

The campaign people have no doubt that next on line is Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Sharon's right-hand man in the disengagement, who in the meantime has shelved his convergence plan.

Despite the relative unimportance of the International Campaign to Save the Nation and the Land - even within the Chabad movement there is no consensus regarding it - many in the ultra-Orthodox and religious sectors are making a connection between the series of blows that have landed on "the disengagement heroes" and their involvement in the decision-making and implementation of the evacuation.

"There Is Justice and There is a Judge" is falling on attentive ears in the religious public because in general people of faith who observe religious strictures believe that nothing is random in the world and that everything is directed by the Creator of the Universe. This faith leads many to accept or at least not to reject the possibility that is suggested by the campaign.

However, within the religious and ultra-Orthodox public, there are those who are shocked and angered by the campaign. The argument against its leaders concerns the "pretension" that it is possible to know the accounts of the Holy One, Blessed be He. Two major questions arise in light of this pretension: First of all, if the Holy One, Blessed be He, is so angry at the "expellers," why didn't He prevent the expulsion from the outset? Secondly, it isn't only the "expellers" who are suffering, but also some of the "expelled" - to this very day.

Even former Gush Katif spokesman Eran Sternberg, who was one of the prominent figures in the struggle against the evacuation, says that "it is forbidden to manage the account books of the Holy One, Blessed be He. The fall of the 'disengagement heroes' is not miraculous, but neither is it random," says Sternberg. "It is simply the natural result of the disengagement process. A person who in his folly jumps off the top of a building crashes not as a punishment but because of the laws of physics. This is how Sharon toppled himself with the arrogance that characterized him both in the disengagement and in the way he thought he was omnipotent and able at the age of 77 to run a country after a stroke."

According to Sternberg, Israel Defense Forces officers who at the time claimed that "the orange people are worrying us more than Hezbollah" were not "punished" in Lebanon but rather caused the defeat in a natural way. "Even with Katsav it's natural," he notes. "The lines of similarity between the insensitivity and the depredation in the expulsion and the deeds of which he is suspected simply cry out."