Category Archives: Palestine

Confessions of a Peace Process Cynic

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Don’t get me wrong. I’m on board. I’m in there with the American Jews who are reassuring Obama that we’ve got his back. But I have to say it’s all I can do to resist my cynicism when I read about Peace Process, version 5.0. (And for safety’s sake, let me just reiterate my blog’s disclaimer: I’m writing this merely as a snarky private citizen – not on behalf of any organization with which I’m affiliated.)

As I’ve written before, I’m encouraged by Obama and Clinton’s tough talk on the settlements. Nevertheless, I’ve increasingly been wondering if/how the administration would back up their tough words with meaningful action.

Thus I confess to a distinctly familiar sinking sensation when I read this in the NY Times this morning:

As President Obama prepares to head to the Middle East this week, administration officials are debating how to toughen their stance against any expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The measures under discussion — all largely symbolic — include stepping back from America’s near-uniform support for Israel in the United Nations if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel does not agree to a settlement freeze, administration officials said.

Other measures include refraining from the instant Security Council veto of United Nations resolutions that Israel opposes and making use of Mr. Obama’s bully pulpit to criticize the settlements, officials said. Placing conditions on loan guarantees to Israel, as the first President Bush did nearly 20 years ago, is not under discussion, officials said.

Call me cynical, but “symbolic measures” simply aren’t going to cut it. Not when you’re up against the juggernaut that is Israel’s settlement movement. (Read Akiva Eldar’s “Lords of the Land” if you think “juggernaut” is too strong a word.) And certainly not when you are dealing with the most pro-settlement Israeli administration in recent memory. Already several Israeli officials are complaining loudly that the demand for a settlement freeze is “unfair.” (“There are reasonable demands and demands that are not reasonable.” Bibi said today.)

I found it interesting that the NY Times article cited George H. W. Bush and the loan guarantees – now that brought back some memories. Remember the last time an American president tried to tie US aid to Israel’s settlement activity?

For many in the Jewish community, Bush’s presidency could be encapsulated in his offhand quip to reporters in September 1991 during an AIPAC lobbying effort on Capitol Hill in support of the proposed $10 billion loan guarantee to Israel: “I’m one lonely little guy” up against “some powerful political forces” made up of “a thousand lobbyists on the Hill.”

Bush had opposed the loan guarantees as long as Israel continued settlement in the West Bank and Gaza. The president finally agreed to a loan guarantee package in August 1992, requiring as a set-off any funds Israel spent to build housing or infrastructure in the territories. Despite this action, the political damage was done. The loan guarantee controversy later motivated Jewish opposition to President Bush, who received no more than 12% of the Jewish vote in the 1992 election (down from close to 35% in 1988).

More than fifteen years later, you’d still be hard pressed to find anyone in the American Jewish establishment supporting the withholding of aid to Israel under any circumstances. As I’ve written before, this is the “third rail” in the American Jewish community. But trust me on this: it may well be the only diplomatic stick that will get Israel’s attention at the end of the day.

Now is Obama up to that level of political courage? And even more to the point: will the American Jewish community still have his back if/when that time comes?

In Search of Perspective in Bil’in

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Recently read a piece on Ynet describing the experience of IDF soldiers stationed in Bil’in – a Palestinian village which has been the site of a weekly demonstration for the past four years. I was particularly intruiged by the description of one soldier, who described the detail as “more terrifying for us than dealing with terrorists in Gaza inside a tank:”

In Gaza you spot a terrorist, fire a shell, and it’s over. Here you face citizens who hurl a stone or a Molotov cocktail, but your ability to respond is limited. It may appear that we are the ones using force here, but in reality that’s not the case, as we are subject to very difficult restrictions.

I completely understand the perspective of an individual soldier who is ordered to perform a incomprehensibly difficult duty such as this. But I understand that there is also more to understand – so much more. I certainly don’t begrudge the experience of individuals caught up in this bitter struggle. But I believe we do ourselves a huge disservice when we neglect – as this article did – the larger context in which this struggle occurs.

Some context: the Bil’in demonstration was born in response to Israel’s placement of its separation barrier in such a way that it now separates 60% of the village from its farming land – land that Israel is using to expand its settlement of Modi’in Illit, which lies immediately to the west.

In 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the government to reroute the barrier, which it called “highly prejudicial” to the villagers of Bil’in. Though Israel’s Defense Ministry has said it will abide by the ruling, the fence has yet to be moved. Just last month, the state submitted a new proposal to the Court to redraw the route of the barrier. According this plan, however, only 700 of the original 1,700 dunams of farmland will be returned to the villagers of Bil’in.

The Bil’in demonstration is a non-violent direction action that began in January 2005 and has taken place every Friday since then (see clip above). Though Bil’in is a local initiative, it is an integral part of the larger Palestinian non-violence movement- a significant socio-political phenomenon that is chronically under reported by the Western media. Indeed, it is important to note that Palestinian non-violent action vastly predates Bil’in – this is a movement that coalesced in large part during the years of the First Intifada. (I highly recommend Mary Elizabeth King’s excellent book, “A Quiet Revolution” for more on this important history.)

It has been well reported that the Bil’in demonstrations have witnessed tragedy in recent months. Four Palestinians, including two children, have been killed in the area since last summer and dozens have been injured. Last month Bassem Abu Rahmeh, a Palestinian demonstrator, was killed by a tear gas canister that sliced through his chest. A month earlier, an American demonstrator named Tristan Anderson was critically injured in a similar demonstration in the nearby village of Ni’ilin.

As the YNet article attests, some Palestinian demonstrators have indeed become increasingly violent. In a sense, we are witnessing the classic spiral. As any student of non-violent activism knows, it is difficult to contain the frustration that invariably sets in when an action settles in for the long haul – particularly when there is so little progress along the way. This recent article from the Guardian illuminates the challenges the Bil’in protesters face in this regard – including the generational split in the villagers’ attitudes toward non-violence:

The Bil’in demonstration was always intended to be non-violent, although on Friday, as is often the case, there were half a dozen younger, angrier men lobbing stones at the soldiers with slingshots. The Israeli military, for its part, fires teargas, stun grenades, rubber-coated bullets and sometimes live ammunition at the crowd.

There have long been Palestinian advocates of non-violence, but they were drowned out by the militancy of the second intifada, the uprising that began in late 2000 and erupted into waves of appalling suicide bombings.

Eyad Burnat, 36, has spent long hours in discussions with the young men of Bil’in, a small village of fewer than 2,000, convincing them of the merits of “civil grassroots resistance”.

“Of course it gets more difficult when someone is killed,” said Burnat, who heads the demonstration. “But we’ve faced these problems in the past. We’ve had more than 60 people arrested and still they go back to non-violence. We’ve made a strategic decision.”

Some, like the moderate Palestinian MP Mustafa Barghouti, hope this might be the start of a broader movement throughout Palestinian society. “It is a spark that is spreading,” he said in Bil’in. “It gives an alternative to the useless negotiations and to those who say only violence can help.”

But it is not so much that all the young men of the village are converted to the peaceful cause, rather that they respect and follow their elders. “I personally don’t believe in non-violent resistance,” said Nayef al-Khatib, 21, an accountancy student. “They’ve taken our land by force so we should take it back from them by force.”

As always, perspective is everything. The Ynet article did a fine job of documenting the perspective of scared, frustrated young soldiers who find themselves in an impossible position. But there there are other equally valid and compelling perspectives we cannot ignore: the perspective of the farmers whose access to their own lands and livelihood have been taken from them; the perspective of villagers seeking justice in an inherently unjust situation; the perspective of non-violent activists trying to rise about the frustration and rage that inevitably surface during the course of their struggle.

As for us Jews, I only hope we can go beyond our narrow perspective of Palestinians as nothing more than violent terrorists who want nothing more than to wipe Jews off the face of the map. Is that a step we might be willing to take?

“Now the Hard Work Starts…”

Rabbis Remembering the Nakba

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“These I remember and I pour out my soul…”

Last Thursday night I welcomed 14 people – 9 Jews and 5 Palestinians – into my home for what turned out to be a powerful and sacred experience. The timing of our gathering was significant. May 14, 1948, the date of the State of Israel was declared, is a joyful milestone for Israel and Jews around the world. For the collective memory of the Palestinian people, however, this date represents their displacement and dispossession – an event they refer to collectively as the Nakba (“catastrophe.”)

The gathering in my home was one of four events that took place throughout the country on Thursday evening sponsored by “Rabbis Remembering the Nakba” – a new ad hoc group of rabbis and rabbinical students who seek to create a Jewish context for remembering this tragic event. Even more crucially, we believe it is critical that the Jewish community find a way to honestly face the painful truth of this event – and in particular, of Israel’s role in it.

In the words of a statement that was read at each gathering:

Our gathering tonight, “Rabbis Remembering the Nakba” is part of a series of programs occurring simultaneously around the country. It was originated by an ad-hoc group of American rabbis who desire to seriously reflect upon the meaning of Israel’s Independence Day. We are united in our common conviction that we cannot view Yom Ha’atzmaut – or what is for Palestinians the Nakba – as an occasion for celebration. Guided by the values of Jewish tradition, we believe that this day is more appropriately an occasion for zikaron (memory), cheshbon nefesh (“soul searching”) and teshuvah (“repentance.”)

These spiritual values compel us to acknowledge the following: that Israel’s founding is inextricably bound up with the dispossession of hundreds of thousands indigenous inhabitants of the land, that a moment so many Jews consider to be the occasion of national liberation is the occasion of tragedy and exile for another people, and that the violence begun in 1948 continues to this day. This is the truth of our common history – it cannot be denied, ignored or wished away.

Jewish tradition teaches that peace and reconciliation can only be achieved after a process of repentance. And we can only repent after an honest accounting of our responsibility in the wronging of others. While it is true that none of the Jews present tonight were actively involved in the dispossession of Palestinians from their homes in 1948, it is also true that if we deny or remain silent about the truth of these events, past and present, we remain complicit in this crime. In the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “In a free society some are guilty, but all are responsible.”

Our gatherings this evening bring together Jews and Palestinians in this act of remembrance. This coming together is an essential, courageous choice. To choose to face this painful past together is to begin to give shape to a vision of the future where refugees go home, when the occupation is ended, when walls are torn down and where reconciliation is underway.

In addition to the event I hosted in Chicago, “Rabbis Remember the Nakba” gatherings were held simultaneously in Berkeley (led by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb), New York (Rabbinical Student Alissa Wise), and Philadelphia (Rabbi Linda Holtzman). Though each event was organized separately and involved the additional participation of various local peace and justice groups, each gathering was linked by a few important common factors: each was led by a rabbi or rabbinical student, each involved the participation of both Jews and Palestinians, and each incorporated aspects of Jewish ritual in their ceremonies.

At the Chicago gathering, the guiding value of our ritual was zikaron – remembrance. As part of our ceremony, we bore witness by reading the history of the eight Palestinian villages that were destroyed on May 14, 1948. (In all, over 400 villages were depopulated of their inhabitants over the course of that year.) In addition to learning about the events that transpired on the Nakba, we also learned about the history, culture, and communal life of each village. (Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi’s exhaustive and highly recommended work, “All That Remains” was an essential resource for our ceremony.) After hearing the history and fate of each village, a memorial candle was lit and we recited the following line from the Yom Kippur liturgy together: “These I remember and I pour out my soul.”

On the whole I would describe our evening as a modest first effort that nonetheless contained some profound and indelible moments. By incredible coincidence, one of the Palestinian participants, Shafic Budron, mentioned that his wife’s family was from al-Bassa – one of the eight villages we commemorated in our ceremony. (Al-Bassa was a large village in Acre District, near the northwest coast of Palestine.)

As we read about al-Bassa’s fate during the Nakba, we learned this tragic account relayed by Palestinian eyewitnesses: after occupying the village, Haganah forces lined up some of the townspeople outside a church, shot them, and ordered others to bury the bodies. Shafic said he has heard numerous stories about al-Bassa from his mother-in-law over the year, including her traumatic recounting of the massacre on May 14. He added that his mother-in-law now has Alzheimer’s and has lost most of her adult memory – her only remaining memories are of her childhood village.

After our ritual, other Palestinian participants spoke at length about the stories of their own families. One man told us about the experiences of his mother, who was a survivor of an infamous massacre in the village of Deir Yassin, outside Jerusalem. Our gathering also included a Christian Palestinian from the north of the country, who experienced the Nakba personally. Another Palestinian participant told us about his father who was saved by a Jewish friend during the Irgun’s attack on Jaffa.

In the end, the Palestinian participants were quite obviously moved that they were given this opportunity to have this conversation with Jews, as part of a ceremony convened by a rabbi. To put it mildly, it was obviously something quite unprecedented in their experience. For the Jewish participants, there were a myriad of complex and powerful emotions. I’m personally still trying to sort through them all.

Whatever cognitive dissonance I might feel over this issue, I truly believe that this kind of reckoning is utterly essential for us as Jews. When it comes to the Nakba, most of us tend to respond through denial, avoidance, or dismissive rationalization (“that’s just how nations are made – what can you do?”) The reason seems fairly clear: to face the painful truths of this history means to admit that our people – a people who has been the victim of dispossession and dehumanization for centuries – has now become the perpetrator. And if we do indeed manage to face these truths, where does that leave the Zionist narrative that has been so deeply cherished by so many of us for so long?

I don’t know where we will go from here, but everyone present agreed that this was the tentative beginning of something enormously important. Our humble gathering resonated with a myriad of implications that ranged from the personal to the political. But by the end of the evening, it was clear that whatever happens next, Jews and Palestinians must do it together.

PS: Just learned that Yisrael Beiteinu, the party of Avigdor Lieberman, seeks to make it illegal for Arabs in Israel to commemorate the Nakba. This is what it has now come to: memory is not only denied, it is now deemed against the law…

Why I Didn’t Celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut

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nakhba

I’ve decided not to celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut today. I don’t think I can celebrate this holiday any more.

That doesn’t mean I’m not acknowledging the anniversary of Israel’s independence – only that I can no longer view this milestone as a day for unabashed celebration. I’ve come to believe that for me, Yom Ha’atzmaut is more appropriately observed as an occasion for reckoning and honest soul searching.

As a Jew, as someone who has identified with Israel for his entire life, it is profoundly painful to me to admit the honest truth of this day: that Israel’s founding is inextricably bound up with its dispossession of the indigenous inhabitants of the land. In the end, Yom Ha’atzmaut and what the Palestinian people refer to as the Nakba are two inseparable sides of the same coin. And I simply cannot separate these two realities any more.

I wonder: if we Jews are ready to honestly face down this “dual reality” how can we possibly view this day as a day of unmitigated celebration? But we do – and not only in Israel. Indeed, there is no greater civil Jewish holiday in the American Jewish community than Yom Ha’atzmaut. It has become the day we pull out all the stops – the go-to day upon which Jewish Federations throughout the country hold their major communal Jewish parades, celebrations and gatherings.

I wonder: how must it feel to be a Palestinian watching the Jewish community celebrate this day year after year on the anniversary that is the living embodiment of their collective tragedy?

I can’t yet say what specific form my new observance of Yom Ha’atzmaut will take. I only know that it can’t be divorced from the Palestinian reality – or from the Palestinian people themselves. Many of us in the co-existence community speak of “dual narratives” – and how critical it is for each side to be open to hearing the other’s “story.” I think this pedagogy is important as far as it goes, but I now believe that it’s not nearly enough. It’s not enough for us to be open to the narrative of the Nakba and all it represents for Palestinians. In the end, we must also be willing to own our role in this narrative. Until we do this, it seems to me, the very concept of coexistence will be nothing but a hollow cliche.

Toward a new understanding of Yom Ha’atzmaut, I commend to you this article by Amaya Galili which was published today in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot. Galili is affiliated with Zochrot – the courageous Israeli org that works tirelessly to raise their fellow citizens’ awareness about the Nakba.

An excerpt:

The Israeli collective memory emphasizes the Jewish-national history of the country, and mostly denies its Palestinian past. We, as a society and as individuals, are unwilling to accept responsibility for the injustice done to the Palestinians, which allows us to continue living here. But who decided that’s the only way we can live here? The society we’re creating is saturated with violence and racism. Is this the society in which we want to live? What good does it do to avoid responsibility? What does that prevent us from doing?

Learning about the nakba gives me back a central part of my being, one that has been erased from Israeli identity, from our surroundings, from Israeli education and memory. Learning about the nakba allows me to live here with open eyes, and develop a different set of future relationships in the country, a future of mutual recognition and reconciliation between all those connected to this place.

Accepting responsibility for the nakba and its ongoing consequences obligates me to ask hard questions about the establishment of Israeli society, particularly about how we live today. I want to accept responsibility, to correct this reality, to change it. Not say, “There’s no choice. This is how we’ve survived for 61 years, and that’s how we’ll keep surviving.” It’s not enough for me just to “survive.” I want to live in a society that is aware of its past, and uses it to build a future that can include all the inhabitants of the country and all its refugees.

Click here to read the article in the original Hebrew. Click below to read the entire English version. (Heartfelt thanks to my friend Mark Braverman for sending it along.)

Continue reading →

Is BDS anti-Semitism?

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boycott1 For many Jews, no three letters seem to conjure up rage and fury as effectively as “BDS.” Still, I have a strong suspicion that we’ll be hearing them bandied about increasingly in the coming months.

Since the Gaza war, the movement for global Boycott/ Divestment/ Sanctions against Israel seems to have gained new momentum. Among its prominent new supporters is economic journalist/activist Naomi Klein, who made a passionate call for BDS at the peak of the crisis:

Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for “the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions” and draws a clear parallel with the anti-apartheid struggle. “The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves.… This international backing must stop.”

Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can’t go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren’t good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity.

Count longtime peace activist Rabbi Arthur Waskow is one of those who “still can’t go there.” The current issue of “In These Times” contains a fascinating debate between Klein and Waskow on the merits of BDS. For his part, Waskow opposes it primarily for tactical reasons:

(The) BDS approach is not the way to bring about the change that is absolutely necessary. The most important, and probably the only effective, change that can be brought about is a serious change in the behavior of the U.S. government. That means we need to engage in serious organizing within the United States…Boycotts and divestment are not going to do it. I understand that they express a kind of personal purity—”not with my money you don’t”— but they won’t change U.S. policy, which is exactly what needs to be changed.

Klein and Waskow’s conversation is edifying as far as it goes, but to my mind it doesn’t address the main concern over BDS articulated by so many American Jews: namely that given all of the odious regimes throughout the world, the unique singling out of Israel for sanction is an expression of flat-out anti-Semitism. This point of view was well summed up by Thomas Friedman in the NY Times back in 2002, at a time when student movements were increasingly pressuring universities to divest from Israel:

How is it that Egypt imprisons the leading democracy advocate in the Arab world, after a phony trial, and not a single student group in America calls for divestiture from Egypt? (I’m not calling for it, but the silence is telling.) How is it that Syria occupies Lebanon for 25 years, chokes the life out of its democracy, and not a single student group calls for divestiture from Syria? How is it that Saudi Arabia denies its women the most basic human rights, and bans any other religion from being practiced publicly on its soil, and not a single student group calls for divestiture from Saudi Arabia?

Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction — out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East — is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest.

For his part, Alan Dershowitz expressed a similar critique in response to recent reports (later retracted) that Hampshire College was divesting from six companies that profit from Israel’s occupation:

The divestment campaign applies to Israel and Israel alone. Hampshire will continue to deal with companies that supply Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Belarus and other brutal dictatorships around the world that routinely murder civilians, torture and imprison dissenters, deny educational opportunities to women, imprison gays and repress speech. Indeed many of those who support divestiture against Israel actively support these repressive regimes. This divestment campaign has absolutely nothing to do with human rights. It is motivated purely by hatred for the Jewish state.

Klein is absolutely right when she writes of BDS that “many of us can’t go there.” The reasons for this are complex and painful – and Friedman and Dershowitz do a compelling job of spelling out just how deeply painful and divisive they are. I must admit I have serious hesitation in taking on an issue that pushes so many of my own Jewish fear-buttons. (I’m not unmindful of the tragic historic spectres that boycotts against Jews and Jewish institutions conjure up for us.) Still and all, I can’t help but wonder that by dismissing BDS as simple, abject hatred of Jews and Israel, we are misunderstanding the essential of the point of this movement. Even more fundamentally, I wonder if our rejection of BDS simply papers over our inability to face the more troubling aspects of the Jewish state.

I’ll start here: in a way, Dershowitz is correct when he writes that BDS has “nothing to do with human rights.” This particular movement did not in fact arise out of the international community’s concern over human rights in Israel/Palestine: it was founded in 2005 by a coalition of Palestinian groups who sought to fight for self-determination through nonviolent direct action. It arose out of their frustration over Israel’s continued refusal to comply with international law on any number of critical issues – and the oppressive manner in which Israel has occupied and ruled over Palestinians. In other words, it is absolutely true that BDS is not an international human rights campaign. It is, rather, a liberation campaign waged by the Palestinian people – one for which they are seeking international support.

Yes, there are many oppressive nations around the world – and if a call came from indigenous, grassroots movements in these nations calling for international support of BDS, I’d say we most of us would seriously consider lending them our support. To use a partial list of nations mentioned by Friedman-Dershowitz, if any constituencies of the oppressed in Egypt, Syria, Saudia Arabia, Libya, Zimbabwe or Belarus called for nonviolent global boycott/divestment/sanction campaigns to force change in their countries’ policies, yes, I think we might well agree that they would be worthy of our backing. However, the absence of such movements does not necessarily negate the justice of the Palestinians’ current campaign. And it doesn’t seem to me that support of their call automatically constitutes hatred of Israel or Jews.

What I think Friedman-Dershowitz – and so many of us – fail to grasp is this: even as we recoil from nations that “choke the life out of their democracies” and “routinely murder civilians, torture and imprison dissenters, deny educational opportunities to women, imprison gays and repress speech,” the only way we can help truly address this kind of oppression is to support the ones who struggle for rights within these countries themselves – it is not for us Westerners to determine what is best for them. (And I particularly fear that when we frame this as a fight for “democracy,” as Friedman does, this is really just a code for “imposing Western influence” – but perhaps that is a discussion for another day.)

The bottom line? While I believe there are undoubtedly those out there who will support BDS out of hatred pure and simple, I think it is just too easy to dismiss this movement as ipso facto anti-Semitism. Beyond the fears articulated by Friedman, Dershowitz and so many others like them, I think there’s an even deeper fear for many of us in the Jewish community: the prospect of facing the honest truth of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.

For so many painful reasons, it is just so hard for us to see Israel as an oppressor – to admit that despite all of the vulnerability we feel as Jews, the power dynamic is dramatically, overwhelmingly weighted in Israel’s favor. Though a movement like BDS might feel on a visceral level like just one more example of the world piling on the Jews and Israel, we need to be open to the possibility that it might more accurately be described as the product of a weaker, dispossessed, disempowered people doing what it must to resist oppression.

I have to say it feels like I’m going out on a serious limb by writing these words. I’m only raising these issues, as always, in the hope of starting a wider discussion in the Jewish community. Somehow, I feel that it is only by facing the stuff we prefer not to have to face that we might begin to find a way out of the this painful reality.

As always, I welcome your thoughts and reactions…

E1: End of the Two State Solution?

Gaza: Soldiers Are Speaking Out

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Once permission has been given to the destroyer to do harm, it does not discriminate between the guilty and the innocent. (Mechilta, Bo)

Today the NY Times reported on an issue that has gripped the Israeli press and public for some time now:

In the two months since Israel ended its military assault on Gaza…testimony is emerging from within the ranks of soldiers and officers alleging a permissive attitude toward the killing of civilians and reckless destruction of property…On Thursday, the military’s chief advocate general ordered an investigation into a soldier’s account of a sniper killing a woman and her two children who walked too close to a designated no-go area by mistake, and another account of a sharpshooter who killed an elderly woman who came within 100 yards of a commandeered house.

In reading these accounts, I’m especially struck by the powerfully defensive reaction of many within Israel – insisting that these were either isolated incidents or that they were simply untrue. Witness Defense Minister Barak’s recent statement on Israel radio:

The Israeli Army is the most moral in the world, and I know what I’m talking about because I know what took place in the former Yugoslavia, in Iraq.

I don’t know if Israel’s army is the “most moral” in the world. I’m not sure if I even know what that means. I don’t know what we really expect when we train young men and women to kill, give them the most sophisticated killing instruments on earth, then demonize their enemies before sending them off to battle.

Israel has long claimed its army follows the military war ethic of Tohar Haneshek (“Purity of Arms”). Whether or not this was ever true, there is seems to be growing evidence that in the heat of battle (or if you prefer, the “fog of war”), the difference between “legal killing” and “war crimes” becomes increasingly fuzzy to those who wield the weapons. And I’m fairly sure that this is the case whether or not the soldiers in question happen to be Jewish.

Even more disturbing are the reports from Israeli soldiers that the Israeli rabbinate is urging them to view this conflict as nothing less than a holy war. Richard Silverstein, blogging over at Tikun Olam, has translated some of the Hebrew press accounts, uncovering this jaw-dropping testimony from a commander named Ran:

The military rabbis sent us lots of material and in these articles the message was clear: we are the nation of Israel. We arrived by a miracle in Israel. God returned us to the Land (of Israel). Now we must battle to remove the non-Jews who disturb us in our conquest of the Holy Land. That was the main message. And the sense of many of the soldiers in this operation was that it was a religious war. From my perspective as a commander, I tried to talk about politics and various strains within Palestinian society. That not everyone in Gaza was Hamas and not every resident wants to conquer us. I wanted to explain to them that this war was not about Kiddush Hashem (sanctifying the name of God), but about stopping Qassam fire.

Expect more horrifying news in the coming weeks…

A Peace Veteran Bears Witness

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kathykelly This past Wednesday, JRC’s Peace Dialogue sponored a visit by longtime peace activist and nonviolence practitioner Kathy Kelly, who traveled to Gaza during the recent war.

If you’ve never heard of Kathy Kelly, you should read her bio because she’s someone you need to know about. This recent article will give some idea of the territory she covered in her presentation.

As she’s has been walking the walk for decades, I was surprised (and somewhat appalled) when she told us that this was the first time she had ever been invited to speak to a specifically Jewish audience. I hope and trust it won’t be the last. Through word and deed, I believe this inspiring peace veteran has a great deal to teach us.

Shalom Rav

A Blog by Rabbi Brant Rosen