NEWS FEATURE: Rabbis’ Human Rights Group Agitates for Peace

c. 2004 Religion News Service SHEIKH SAYID, West Bank _ Towering concrete slabs separate this hilly neighborhood from the rest of Jebel Mukaber, a Palestinian village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The divider meanders down the dusty brown hillside like a menacing beige snake. Israel says the barrier _ part metal fence, part concrete wall […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

SHEIKH SAYID, West Bank _ Towering concrete slabs separate this hilly neighborhood from the rest of Jebel Mukaber, a Palestinian village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The divider meanders down the dusty brown hillside like a menacing beige snake.

Israel says the barrier _ part metal fence, part concrete wall _ is needed to prevent the infiltration of terrorists from Palestinian-ruled areas, and cites the dramatic decrease in the number of terror attacks as proof that it works.


Yet despite the ever-expanding line and a ban on traveling over it, a highly controversial organization of Jewish clerics makes a point of venturing into Palestinian territory to show solidarity. The group calls itself Rabbis for Human Rights.

The Jerusalem-based organization was founded in 1988 “in response to serious abuses of human rights by the Israeli military authorities in the suppression of the intifada,” or Palestinian uprising, according to the group’s Web site (http://www.rhr.israel.net).

During any given week, some of RHR’s 100 members, all of them Israeli rabbis of various denominations, can be spotted at demonstrations against the army’s demolition of Palestinian homes, or at the construction of the security barrier, or at the planting of olive trees in Palestinian fields uprooted by the military.

The group views such protests as a form of civil disobedience. The Israeli government, in contrast, sees them as a dangerous attempt to undermine the rule of law by thwarting the activities of the army and police.

In April 2003, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, RHR’s executive director, was charged with interfering with the police’s “execution of duties” when he stood in front of a bulldozer that ultimately destroyed two Palestinian homes built without Israeli permits. If convicted, he and others could face up to three years in prison.

“What we’re doing is in Israel’s best interest,” said Ascherman during a hot, dusty walking tour of the dividing wall. Ascherman, a Reform rabbi by training, insists that there is no Judaism without justice.

“In Jewish tradition, we have two sets of mitzvot (commandments): ritual commandments between us and God, and commandments dealing with our fellow human beings. You can’t just pursue the ritual commandments and ignore and oppress people and wonder why God isn’t satisfied.”


Israel, Ascherman said, is the “acid test for what we’ve termed Jewish values. To me, real Zionism is working for an Israel that is not only physically strong but morally strong.”

Like other Israelis, the organization’s members have had to grapple with Israel’s moral obligations as a Jewish state at a time when its citizens and Jews abroad are threatened by Palestinian terror groups.

When asked about RHR’s stand on the barrier, Ascherman chooses his words carefully.

“It’s creating a conflict between right and right. We Israelis have a right to self-defense and the government must do what it needs to protect its citizens. At the same time, the Palestinians have a right to their land and access to medical care, which itself can be a matter of life and death.

“If I have a choice between saving a life and the right to land, I choose life, as Judaism prescribes. However, the current route (of the barrier) needlessly takes Palestinian land and causes unnecessary hardship, and that’s why I continue to protest it.”

Some Jews in Israel and abroad charge that RHR champions Palestinian rights over Israeli rights. Rabbi Matt Futterman, a Conservative rabbi who until recently led a synagogue in the coastal town of Ashkelon, quit RHR after a terrorist attack several years ago left some of his congregants badly wounded.

“I was constantly at Sheba Hospital and discovered that while the organization arranges visits to Palestinian victims of Israeli security incidents, it didn’t do the same for Israeli victims of Arab terror,” he said. “I was told there were enough people visiting Jewish victims. I was so upset, I informed them I could no longer be a member.”


David Bedein, an Israeli journalist who has often criticized RHR, said the rabbis’ presence at what he terms “anti-Israel” events “helps legitimize many of the anti-Israel groups the organization works” (with).

“I think people don’t know who we are,” Ascherman countered. “We’re a very respectable mainstream organization. We won the Knesset (Israeli parliament) prize for our contribution to Israeli society in 1993.”

The group, Ascherman said, “works for Jewish human rights. We’ve started a grass-roots empowerment project to help the employed and underemployed. We run a human rights yeshiva. We go to schools and teach about education and human rights. We fight for the rights of foreign workers and against the trafficking of women.”

As proof of its even-handedness, Ascherman said, RHR calls on Palestinian human rights groups “to condemn suicide bombings and the continual murderous attacks on Israeli civilians _ without qualification.”

Its humanitarian fund gives financial assistance to Israeli terror victims and provides food and medicine to needy Palestinians.

The rabbi admitted that “there is always the danger that people will hear our criticisms of Israel and twist our words. But it should never be mistaken that what we do, we do out of love for the people and country of Israel.”


KRE/MO END CHABIN

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!