Category Archives: UN

“All Who are Hungry Come and Eat:” A Report from a Passover Action at the Gaza Border

Cross-posted with The Nation

In 2017, I spent several days in Gaza as a staff person for the American Friends Service Committee. Although I took away many powerful and vivid memories from that trip, some of the most indelible involved the delicious food that was continuously served to us by our Gazan hosts. Gazans are famously proud of their cuisine, and rightfully so, as it provides them with a palpable connection to Palestinian history and life outside that small 140 square mile strip – to communities in Palestine that their ancestors used to live. As journalist Laila El-Haddad has observed, Gazan food is “a sort of treasure map to a largely invisible, or invisibilized, world of Palestinian history going back well before the 1948 Nakba.”

During the course of our visit, Ali, a member of the AFSC Gaza staff, mentioned more than once that Gazan knafeh (a traditional Arabic dessert) was by far the best in Palestine. When our staff group gathered at a restaurant in Gaza City for our final meal, Ali was chagrined to learn that there was no more knafeh left in the kitchen. Determined, Ali got up, ran down the street to another restaurant, and returned with a huge round plate of the sticky, golden pastry for our table. It was indeed more delicious than any knafeh I have eaten before or since.

I’ve recalled that sweet memory often over the past seven years. When I think of it now, however, I find its sweetness has curdled into horror. As far back as December, human rights agencies determined that Israel “was using starvation as a weapon of war.” According to the World Food Program, Gaza’s food system was on the brink of collapse and the population was facing a “high risk of famine.”

This past March, the mainstream media published shocking, heartbreaking pictures of Yazan Kafarneh, a 10 year old Gazan boy reduced to skin and bones from starvation. To date, it has been estimated that 28 children have died of malnutrition and starvation in northern Gaza. By all accounts, starvation in Gaza has now reached “catastrophic” proportions. Knowing about the Gazan people’s deep pride in their food culture, I’m experiencing deep heartbreak as I read reports that Palestinians in Gaza are now forced to eat grass just to survive.

As a congregational rabbi, I’ve spoken with many people have told me that they are not sure how – or even if – they will celebrate Passover this year. With the genocide and forced starvation of the people of Gaza deepening with no end in sight, they say, it just feels beyond challenging to celebrate a festival of Jewish liberation. To make the moral dissonance even more dissonant, many in the Jewish communal establishment are framing Passover by focusing exclusively on the Israeli hostages in Gaza and call for their liberation from Hamas, with nary a mention of the 35,000 Gazans who have been destroyed in the process through Israel’s genocidal of vengeance.

More than once I’ve been asked, “How can I partake of this festive meal while Israel has been starving Palestinians in the name of the Jewish people?” How can I read about Pharaoh’s oppression of Israelite children when I’ve just read the latest death count of Palestinian children dying increasingly things from forced starvation?

As a political-spiritual response to this unprecedented Passover moment, Rabbis for Ceasefire mobilized and began to organize as action at the Gaza border, to literally bring food supplies with us and demand to that Israel allow us to pass through the Erez Crossing, motivated by Passover’s central imperative, “All who are hungry come and eat!” Our action would include 10 American rabbis, writer/essayist Ayelet Waldman and 30 other Israeli activists – including Israeli rabbis – who have been tirelessly protesting both at the Gaza border and organizing protect presence for West Bank communities targeted by settler violence.

Our action was originally planned for the week leading up to Passover; but when Iran’s missile attack caused the country to go on alert and airlines cancelled their flights to Israel, we almost had to cancel our action. As we read the news, Israel’s escalating hostilities with Iran took front and center The US and the West were rearming Israel and focusing on the threat from Iran – even as Israel continuingly maintained its policy of starvation and bombardment of Gaza. Most alarming were the reports that an Israeli agreement to retaliate lightly against Iran would give them leeway to move ahead with a potentially disastrous ground invasion of Rafah. We bought plane tickets for the next week, determined to make a collective Passover statement that felt more critical than ever.

During our action, we gathered at a preplanned meet-up location, with a truck filled with half a ton of flour. We each shouldered backs of rice and, carrying banners and flags, march in the direction of the Erez Crossing. The Israeli police quickly drove up to intercept us. During that initial stand-off, several of us offered statements. I began with an opening prayer, an adaptation of the “Magid” section of the Passover Haggadah:

“This is the bread of affliction, the bread and food systemically, cruelly denied the people of Gaza. Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are oppressed be liberated this Pesach. Now we are here – tomorrow let there be bread for Gaza. Now we are here – next year may there be liberation from the river to the sea!”

Other speakers included Israeli Rabbi Avi Dabush of Rabbis for Human Rights, a resident and survivor of a kibbutz that was attacked on October 7 and Noam Shuster-Eliassi, a well-known Israeli activist, writer and comedian. When our program was over, we pushed forward toward the border. When the soldiers violently attempted to break us up, several of us sat down in the road. During the course of the protest seven of our group: four Americans and three Israelis were arrested.

All of the arrested were fully prepared for this eventuality – the Israelis were in fact veterans at protest-arrests and had previously briefed us on protocol. They were taken to two dentention centers and interrogated for eight to nine hours. The American were told, perversely, that they were being held for “attempting to bring food into Gaza.” All the arrested were released that evening; thankfully the food we attempted to bring into Gaza was not confiscated; as we have previously planned, it was donated to the community of Masafer Yatta – an area in the South Hebron Hills were almost 3,000 residents are resisting the daily threat of demolitions, evictions and dispossession.

While we are satisfied with the attention our action has received, we have no illusions about the current moment in Gaza. Nearly 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza currently face mass starvation and encroaching famine, these words have resonated with unbearably profound force during Passover this year. Hundreds of trucks filled with humanitarian goods have been sitting idle on roads leading into the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt, blocked from entering Gaza by a draconian inspection process that severely limits the number of trucks that can pass through. Inside Gaza, the Israeli has been attacking efforts aid efforts with tragic results. According to the UN, the Israeli military has killed 196 relief workers; soldiers have also shot and killed hundreds of Gazans who venture out to seek food.

Amidst it all, the one agency that has the capacity and infrastructure to effectively distribute relief to the people of Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), has been defunded by the Biden administration. This past January, the Israeli government leveled the still-unsubstantiated claim that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in Hamas’ October 7 attacks in Israel. Though UNRWA immediately fired the employees in question and launched an investigation, the US immediately withdrew their financial support of the agency, which was founded in 1949 to provide support to the hundreds of thousands of refugees created by the establishment of the state of Israel.

In its spending bill this past March, the US government extended its defunding of UNRWA for a year. Though the agency reports it has sufficient funds to operate until the end of May, its ability to operate in Gaza has already been gutted. Last month, Israel announced it would no longer approve UNRWA food convoys to the north of Gaza, where famine is the most. According to its report this month, the agency noted that “a total of 420 trucks food trucks were denied or impeded by Israeli authorities (during the month of March) …Gaza is on the brink of famine, with 1.1 million people—half of its population—experiencing catastrophic food insecurity due to the intense conflict and severe restrictions on humanitarian access.”

Most ominously, Israel continues to amplify its threats to invade Rafah, which would almost certainly result in massive human tragedy and the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. And yet, in the wake our action on the border, I continue to hold out hope. It is clear to me that our border-protest was part of something much larger: the dramatic rise in student resistance on college campuses throughout the US and unprecedented popular Palestine solidarity increasing around the world. For me, this moment expresses the core meaning of Passover powerfully than I have every experienced in my lifetime: in every generation, the cry of the oppressed demands to be heard.

This Passover, I also hold out hope from my own memory of meals in Gaza back in 2017. To be sure, AFSC’s Gaza staff has suffered terribly during this genocidal onslaught – and I’m sure the restaurants and neighborhoods where we enjoyed such delicious meals with our Gazan friends are no more. But I will never forget the tastes of the food that were so graciously served, as well as the communities in Palestine that they represent. And I am more convinced than ever that Israel cannot, try as it may, starve, bomb, or shoot away the Palestinian people’s love for their culture that is so deeply, fragrantly rooted in their homeland: In the words of El-Haddad:

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what I would go back to, and what I would find, if I returned to Gaza. Most of the landmarks have been destroyed. Gone too are many of the people I cherished. But … it feels like I am the torchbearer now, the family’s keeper of treasured recipes. Like Um Hani (Leila’s aunt, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike), I will cook and I will teach, connecting the next generation of Palestinians to our homeland.

On Gaza, Genocide and International Holocaust Remembrance Day

(Photo by Axel Koester/Los Angeles Daily News)

It’s safe to day that International Holocaust Remembrance Day will arrive tomorrow at a deeply fraught moment for the Jewish community. Just today, we’ve received the news that the International Court of Justice, ruling on a case brought by South Africa, has ordered Israel to take action to “prevent acts of genocide” in Gaza. And later today, a federal court in California will hear a case brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Palestinian human rights organizations, Palestinians in Gaza and Palestinian Americans accusing Biden and other senior US leaders of being complicit in genocide.

In short, International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2024 is arriving just as Israel and the US government are literally being judged on the world stage for an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.

As we contemplate the monumental nature of this moment, it’s instructive to consider the history of International Holocaust Remembrance Day itself. This annual commemoration was created by the UN in 2005, to take place annually on January 27: the day Auschwitz was liberated by allied forces. In its resolution establishing the day, the UN General Assembly made it clear that this observance would not merely be about commemorating the past; it pointedly urged member states “to develop educational programs that will inculcate future generations with the lessons of the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide.”

The GA also made it explicit that this remembrance would not be limited to the European Jewry alone, but should also extend to “countless members of other minorities” who were murdered en masse by the Nazi regime. As then Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon pointedly commented during the 2015 commemoration, “More than a million inmates, primarily Jews, were brutally and systematically killed in the place where the Nazis introduced the monstrous concept of ‘industrialized murder.’ Among the other victims were non-Jewish Poles, political prisoners, Soviet prisoners of war, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, disabled persons and Jehovah’s witnesses.”

In other words, International Holocaust Remembrance Day was purposely established to universalize the memory and the lessons of the Holocaust.

There is of course, another Holocaust memorial day widely observed by the world Jewish community – namely, Yom Hashoah. In contrast, to International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoah is not universal in nature – it is a day set apart by the Jewish community to mourn their own in a Jewish context, as part of the Jewish festival calendar. While it is altogether appropriate for the Jewish people to honor the memories of our ancestors in such a way, it’s worth noting the history of this particular day as well.

Yom Hashoah was officially founded by an act of Israeli parliament in 1951, immediately following the founding of the state itself. It was purposefully established on Jewish date of the 27 Nisan (April/May) to begin a week of commemoration leading into Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day), concluding with Yom Ha’atzmaut (Independence Day). In this way, Yom Hashoah served to promote the Zionist historical mythology that viewed the establishment of the state of Israel as a “rebirth,” arising out of the ashes of the Holocaust, through the brave sacrifice made by the soldiers who fought in the War of Independence.

Like many Jews growing up in America, I simply accepted Yom Hashoah as an organic part of the rhythm of the Jewish year, observed annually in synagogue services and communal commemorations. I was never taught that it was first and foremost an Israeli national holiday. And of course, I was never taught that the state of Israel was founded in the wake of the Holocaust was established through the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their homes.

While there should most certainly be a communal Jewish day of memorial for the six million, it’s worth questioning the prominent status afforded Yom Hashoah by world Jewry. This is, after all, a day that serves to reinforce the view that the Israel’s founding was a “redemptive” moment for the Jewish people following the tragic cataclysm of the Holocaust – utterly ignoring the reality that the state of Israel was established through the dispossession of another people. I strongly believe we should consider an entirely different Jewish frame for commemorating the Holocaust; in the meantime, however, we should have no illusions about the real agenda behind Yom Hashoah and the problematic narrative it seeks to support.

It might well be said that in this terrifying current moment, the very real implications of this Zionist mythology are being directly challenged by the universal message of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It’s actually quite staggering to consider: as the world prepares to observe this day, compelling legal proceedings are formally accusing Israel of (and the US of abetting) genocide. Even more sobering: it arrives amidst an increasingly damning verdict in the court of public opinion in which, according to a recent poll, “more than one in three Americans believe Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians.”

I realize how painful – even unthinkable – it will be for many Jews to lift up the lessons of International Holocaust Remembrance Day to suggest Israel that is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. But as I suggested in my sermon this past Yom Kippur, we must find the courage to say out loud the words that must be spoken. If this particular day is truly is to be a day for us to apply the “lessons of the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide,” it is all the more critical for us to speak out and name a genocide that is literally unfolding before us in real time. No matter how uncomfortable or painful the prospect.

In this regard, I’m immensely proud to be part of a Jewish community that has the courage to say these words out loud. In a just released public letter to President Biden, the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council is demanding that he “honor the word and spirit of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day by using (his) office to bring a ceasefire to this tragic violence — and to stop blocking efforts toward building a truly just peace for all who live between the river and the sea.”

An excerpt:

We hold the traumatic history of our people with care and sensitivity — and know how painful it is for Jews to grasp that a Jewish state could possibly commit a genocide. Nevertheless, we must agree with increasing numbers of scholars and international rights experts who have determined that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute, in the words of Prof. Raz Segal, “a textbook case of genocide.”

We support and uplift South Africa’s recent application to the International Court of Justice claiming Israel is in breach of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. And now, Palestinian human rights organizations, together with Palestinians in the US and Gaza, are bringing a case against your administration for failure to prevent, and complicity in, the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide against them, their families, and the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza. We stand in support of their action as well.

According to a core teaching of Jewish spiritual tradition, humanity was created in the image of God. That means that each and every human being is of infinite value. The UN 1948 Convention on Genocide was created to uphold this very idea. The Torah also teaches that there will always be moments when we must make a critical moral choice. As Deuteronomy 30:19 says, “I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life.” President Biden, you have chosen death. Instead of using your considerable power to prevent or end this genocide, you have directly abetted it with weapons, funds and diplomatic cover.

On this day of remembrance in 2021, you noted that, “The Holocaust was no accident of history.” As you stated, “It occurred because too many governments cold-bloodedly adopted and implemented hate-fueled laws, policies, and practices to vilify and dehumanize entire groups of people, and too many individuals stood by silently. Silence is complicity.”

President Biden, what is happening right now in Gaza is no accident of history — and your complicity has been anything but silent. We call upon you to be true to your word and end US complicity in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.

This International Holocaust Remembrance Day, let us find the courage to speak the words that must be spoken. This International Holocaust Remembrance Day, let us find the courage to speak the words that must be spoken: Ceasefire now. Never again, for anyone. No more genocide.

Reenacting Pharoah’s Genocidal Decree in Gaza

The introduction to the book of Exodus, which we begin reading this Shabbat, has never resonated so deeply or so powerfully for me as it does this very moment.

We’re all familiar with the events that spark the Exodus narrative: a new Pharoah arises over Mitzrayim who does not know or remember Joseph. Alarmed that the Israelite minority is growing, he oppresses them with forced labor – but the more he oppresses them, the more the Israelites increase in number.

Pharoah then attempts to stem the Israelite birth rate directly by ordering the Hebrew midwives Shifra and Puah to kill every newborn boy. When they defy his order, Pharoah orders that every newborn boy be cast into the Nile. Commentators differ on why Pharoah made this very specific decree. Some say that in his paranoia, he believed the boys would eventually grow up to be soldiers and take up arms against his people. Other say his soothsayers predicted the birth of Moses. Still others say Pharoah believed that the Israelite women would intermarry and assimilate into the majority culture.

Whatever the reason, it is striking to note that Exodus’ liberation narrative begins with Pharoah’s efforts to head off the Israelite birth rate. As I’ve noted before, there are powerful parallels between this narrative and the state of Israel’s regard of the Palestinian people as a “demographic threat” to their Jewish majority. But in the midst of Israel’s genocidal assault on the people of Gaza, I’m finding that these verses now resonate with a brutal – and almost unbearable – urgency.

On November 3, less than a month into Israel’s military bombardment of Gaza, UNICEF, the World Health Organization and other NGOs reported that “Women, children and newborns in Gaza are disproportionately bearing the burden of the escalation of hostilities in the occupied Palestinian territory, both as casualties and in reduced access to health services.” More recently, the UN estimated that “around 50,000 pregnant women are currently living in Gaza, with more than 180 births taking place every day amid the ‘decimation’ of its healthcare system.”

The most devastating details on the impact of this onslaught on Gazan mothers can be read in the South African government’s application to the International Court of Justice, formally accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. I strongly recommend reading this document in its entirety. Though South Africa’s claim was cynically dismissed by the White House as “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever,” its 84 page report is painstakingly researched, citing 574 independent sources. Though it is often near-unbearable to read, I believe it is an immensely important document and deserves the widest possible readership.

Here is a sample of the report’s findings on impact of Israel’s genocidal violence on pregnant women and newborn babies. Please be warned: the following quote it includes very graphic descriptions of traumatic violence inflicted on women and children.

Pregnant women and children –– including newborn babies –– are also particularly impacted by displacement, lack of access to food and water, shelter, clothes, hygiene and sanitation, and lack of access to health services. These effects are severe and significant. An estimated 5,500 of approximately 52,000 pregnant Palestinian women in Gaza giving birth each month are doing so in unsafe conditions, often with no clean water, much less medical assistance, “in shelters, in their homes, in the streets amid rubble, or in overwhelmed healthcare facilities, where sanitation is worsening, and the risk of infection and medical complications is on the rise”. Where they are able to get to a functioning hospital, pregnant women are having to undergo caesarean sections without anaesthetic.

Given the lack of access to critical medical supplies, including blood, doctors are being compelled to perform ordinarily unnecessary hysterectomies on young women in an attempt to save their lives, leaving them unable to have more children. Indeed, the Minister of Health for the State of Palestine, Dr May al-Kaileh, confirms that the only option facing Palestinian women in Gaza who ‘bleed out’ after giving birth is to undergo a hysterectomy in order for their lives to be saved. The lack of available drugs, such as the anti-D injection –– given to Rhesus negative women on the birth of a Rhesus positive baby –– also seriously impacts the possibility of future healthy pregnancies for affected women.

Premature births have reportedly increased by between 25-30 per cent, as stressed and traumatised pregnant women face a myriad of challenges, including being compelled to walk long distances in search of safety, attempting to escape from bombs and being crowded into shelters in often squalid conditions. Particularly in northern Gaza, cases of placenta abruption –– a serious condition that occurs to pregnant women during childbirth which is potentially life-threatening to both mother and baby –– have more than doubled.

An ever-increasing number of Palestinian babies in Gaza are reportedly dying from entirely preventable causes, brought about by Israel’s actions: newborns up to three months old are dying of diarrhea, hypothermia, and other preventable causes. Without essential equipment and medical support, premature and underweight babies have little to no chance of survival. Palestinian newborn babies have died due to the lack of fuel to supply hospital generators; others have been found decomposing in their hospital cots, medical staff taking care of them having been forced by Israel to evacuate.

On 3 November 2023, the World Health Organisation warned that “[m]aternal deaths are expected to increase given the lack of access to adequate care”, with deadly consequences on reproductive health, including a rise in stress-induced miscarriages, stillbirths and premature births. The impact will necessarily be long lasting and severe for Palestinians in Gaza as a group. By 22 November 2023 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences, has expressly warned that:

“[T]he reproductive violence inflicted by Israel on Palestinian women, newborn babies, infants, and children could be qualified as… acts of genocide under Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide … including “imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group”. She stressed that “States must prevent and punish such acts in accordance with their responsibilities under the Genocide Convention.”
(Sections 96-100)

If there could be any doubt as to the question of intentionality behind these barbaric measures, the section immediately following these findings includes exhaustive quotes by Israeli politicians and military leaders that make their genocidal intentions all too clear. Most chillingly, it offers this quote from 95-year old Israeli army reservist Ezra Yachin — a veteran of the Deir Yassin massacre during the 1948 Nakba — who was called up for reserve duty to “boost morale” amongst Israeli troops ahead of the ground invasion: Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live. . . Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them. (Section 102)

In this week’s Torah portion, the cry of the oppressed Israelites rises up to God, who hears and hearkens to their pain. This year, there can be no more critical question posed by our Torah portion: will God hearken to the collective cry of the people of Gaza?

The answer, as ever, is up to us all.

The Radical Audaciousness of a Ceasefire in Gaza Now

As of this writing, Israel has killed over 7,000 Palestinians in Gaza – almost 3,000 of whom are children. (According to Defense for Children International – Palestine, almost 1,000 children are reported missing under the rubble of destroyed buildings.) Israel has cut off all food, water and power to the Gaza Strip. Gazans will soon run out of fuel to run their generators – their last link to medical treatment and drinkable water.

Israel clearly has no intention to end their onslaught any time soon; in fact, they are making their intentions all too clear. Prime Minister Netanyahu: “We will turn Gaza into an island of ruins.” Israeli army spokesman, Daniel Hagari: “We are dropping hundreds of tons of bombs on Gaza. The focus is on destruction, not accuracy.” President Herzog: “It is an entire nation who are responsible. This rhetoric about civilians being involved is absolutely untrue…We will fight until we break their backs.”

I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say we are currently facing the greatest moral reckoning of our time. A genocidal onslaught in unfolding before us in real time – countenanced by the international community and enabled by the US government. There can be no more pressing, urgent need at this moment than an immediate ceasefire to this unspeakable violence.

On the face of it, a ceasefire would seem to be the most morally obvious and straightforward course of action – but alas, the simple suggestion that Israel cease its carnage is tantamount to a radical – even extreme – idea at the moment. The Biden administration has made its staunch opposition to a ceasefire abundantly clear. When asked about the human toll, White House spokesperson John Kirby commented, “It is ugly and it’s going to be messy, and innocent civilians are going to be hurt.” When Biden himself was asked a similar question, he answered that he “has no confidence in the numbers that the Palestinians are using.”

Ceasefire is the last thing on Biden’s mind at the moment. Quite the contrary: he’s asking Congress for $14.3 billion in supplemental military aid to enable Israel’s war effort. The only sign of moral leadership in Washington: the “Ceasefire Now” resolution introduced last week by Rep. Cori Bush, which actually asserts currently audacious suggestion that “all human life is precious.” As Bush put it, “We can’t bomb our way to peace, equality, and freedom. With thousands of lives lost and millions more at stake, we need a ceasefire now.” (The number of endorsers currently stands at 18 members of congress. Click here to urge your representative to sign it – or to thank them for doing so.)

Yes, in the current political moment, simply calling for a ceasefire is considered to be a radically dangerous act. Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer lambasted the 18 signers, referring to them as “a very small group of extremists.” UN General Secretary António Guterres was subjected to similar treatment: after he recently called for a ceasefire, Israel’s envoy Gilad Erdan, demanded that he resign immediately, saying, “His comments … constitute a justification for terrorism and murder. It’s sad that a person with such views is the head of an organization that arose after the Holocaust.”

This is what it has come to.

I’m profoundly sorry to say that things are no better in the Jewish community. While it’s not a surprise that the Jewish communal establishment is offering its full-throated support to Israel’s military actions, The response from liberal Jewish organizations, sadly, has been no different. J Street, for instance, has warned Democrats who don’t sponsor a “We Stand with Israel” bill that they will lose the group’s endorsement come reelection time. The rabbinical organization T’ruah has also resisted calls for a ceasefire, issuing instead a tepid call for Israel to “follow the laws of armed conflict to avoid harm to civilians” and a “humanitarian corridor” to be opened so that “critical supplies” can enter Gaza.

For its part, the venerable Boston Workers’ Circle dared to sign on to a call for a ceasefire and promptly found itself facing expulsion from the Boston Jewish Community Relations Council. The organization choose to quit the group voluntarily, stating, “Rather than engage in the lengthy and arduous process to be formally expelled, we are turning our attention to focusing on building a future of peace and justice for all.”

According to the Torah, we must not stand idly by while the blood of our neighbor is being shed. And yet here we are. The world is allowing – if not actively enabling – the mass carnage Israel is inflicting on the people of Gaza. Please do what you can: contact President Biden, tell Congress, write to the press. Hit the streets. Shout it to the world:

Ceasefire now!

Israel’s Annexation is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

photo: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images

The day of Israel’s annexation of major West Bank settlement blocs has now come and gone. But while it didn’t actually happen, it’s not quite time to breathe a sigh of relief. The Israeli government has made it clear that annexation plans are continuing apace and has now moved the deadline to later this month.

There’s so much to say about Israel’s plans to extend its sovereignty over major portions of the West Bank. For my part, I anticipated the response of the American Jewish communal establishment with particularly morbid fascination. How would these organizations, hardwired to defend Israel’s actions at all costs, possibly respond to what most would consider to be a patently immoral and undemocratic political move? As it would turn out, their contortions were truly something to behold.

The American Jewish Committee, true to form, doubled down unapologetically. In an article for the Times of Israel, AJC’s Chief Policy and Political Affairs Officer openly stated that when annexation came to pass, “we will make the strongest possible case for a decision reached by an elected Israeli government and supported by Israel’s (and anyone’s) most powerful partner, the United States.” In its FAQ sheet, the Jewish Federations of North America attempted to explain the nuanced differences between “annexation” and “applied sovereignty.” And the Anti-Defamation League, in a leaked internal memo, tellingly agonized over how they might “find a way to defend Israel from criticism without alienating other civil rights organizations, elected officials of color, and Black Lives Matter activists and supporters.”

In the end, the tortured moral/political posturings of these Jewish establishment institutions didn’t really surprise me all that much. They are who they are. But it was much more troubling to read the responses of the “liberal” institutions of the American Jewish community, who continue to enable Israel’s institutional oppression of Palestinians by trotting out their increasingly meaningless talking points of “Jewish and democratic” and “two-state solution” while consistently expressing little to no concern for the well-being of Palestinians themselves.

The Union for Reform Judaism began its statement by announcing its bona fides as “a proud Zionist movement.” It went on to express concern that annexation would “create significant diplomatic risks for Israel, jeopardize Israel’s security, jeopardize North American strategic interests,” and “repudiate the two-state solution.” In a particularly delicate turn of phrase, the URJ mentioned its potential “deleterious impact on the Palestinian people.” Even here, however, the issue was not Palestinian human rights per se, but Israel’s “moral standing,” which depended on “its commitment to ensuring that Palestinians do not live as second-class citizens.”

Another statement, signed by the ten members of the “Progressive Israel Network” (a coalition that includes J Street, the New Israel Fund, Truah, Americans for Peace Now, and my denomination, Reconstructing Judaism) pointed out that annexation would be counter to international law, endanger the well-being of the Palestinian Authority and harm the US-Israel relationship. Carefully avoiding use of the word “apartheid,” the statement expressed concern that annexation “would enact an institutionalized, formal system of discrimination between two ethnic-national populations, both living in the same territory, with each governed by a separate set of laws.”

I’ll confess that when I first heard of the unity government’s plans for annexation, I had a glancing thought that we’d finally arrived at a “moment of truth” for the American Jewish community. I immediately thought better of it, of course. As a former liberal Zionist myself, I’m very familiar with the “window is closing on the two-state solution” trope. It’s a desperate and hollow ploy, designed to avoid facing (or distract attention away from) the hard truth that one-state apartheid has been the reality in Israel/Palestine now for decades. Palestinian activist/scholar Yousef Munayyer put it well in a recent post for +972mag: “Contrary to the popular narrative, annexation will not kill the two-state solution — you cannot kill something that has long been dead. Rather, annexation is dragging and displaying the two-state solution’s corpse before the world.”

So here’s the thing: for years I’ve harbored the assumption that one day the time would come when these liberal Zionists organizations would finally say enough is enough. There is no way Israel can possibly be “Jewish and democratic.” The two state solution is a pipe dream that will only enable further oppression on the ground. The only answer is to give up on the notion of Jewish political nation statehood and advocate for full equality for all who live between the river and the sea.

But no more. I cannot honestly imagine any political event in Israel that would cause these so-called “progressive” Jewish institutions to ever cross this rubicon. Does anyone honestly believe the URJ, who defines itself as a “proud Zionist movement” will ever advocate for one democratic state of all its citizens in Israel/Palestine? Can we truly envision J Street or Americans for Peace Now, organizations that stake their very existence on a “Jewish and democratic” state of Israel, pulling their support for a Jewish state because it has finally become too undemocratic for them?

I have no doubt that when Israel does finally announce its formal annexation, these organizations will move the goalposts yet further down the road. They will studiously avoid use of the word apartheid while implying it could still happen if Israel does not change its ways. It will continue its warnings that Israel’s democracy is under threat, even as its institutional oppression of Palestinians continues to remain so tragically obvious for the world to see.

Consider this: while these organizations agonized over the issue of annexation, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) released a report that revealed the Israeli military had demolished at least 70 Palestinian buildings in the West Bank during the first two weeks of June, displacing 90 Palestinians. This represented a 250% increase over the weekly average of home demolitions since the beginning of 2020. It was also reported that the during this period the Israeli military forced 20 Palestinian households in East Jerusalem to knock down their own newly-built homes themselves.

This, to put it plainly, is annexation. Annexation is an institutional process by which Israel dispossesses Palestinians so that it can maintain a demographic advantage on land it has long sought to control. Annexation is not a line to be crossed by the Israeli government sometime down the road. It has been happening since 1948 and it is happening right now. And it will continue to happen until the racist system that enables it is finally dismantled.

I know this sounds harsh – perhaps terrifyingly unthinkable – to many in the American Jewish community. But in this powerful political moment, it should be clearer than ever that equity, justice and rights for all people will only happen when we honestly reckon with the legacy of institutional racism. So yes, let’s protest annexation. But let us also commit to fundamentally changing the structures that have been enabling it for far too long.

When Secular Israelis Claim “God Gave This Land to Us”

(photo: AP video)

Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, created something of viral sensation last week when, during a speech in the Security Council, he dramatically brandished a Bible and declared “This is the deed to our land.”

He then continued:

From the book of Genesis; to the Jewish exodus from Egypt; to receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai; to the gates of Canaan; and to the realization of God’s covenant in the Holy Land of Israel; the Bible paints a consistent picture. The entire history of our people, and our connection to Eretz Yisrael, begins right here.

Danon’s use of an ancient religious text as justification for the State of Israel’s right to the land was likely an astonishing moment for many. What on earth was a secular Israeli doing lecturing the UN on “God’s covenant in the Holy Land of Israel?” For those familiar with Zionist pedagogy however, his comments were neither unusual nor unprecedented.

When I heard about Danon’s Biblical tutorial, I immediately recalled a famous story about a 1937 meeting between David Ben-Gurion and Lord Peel, who was then heading the British Royal Peel Commission of Inquiry into the potential partition of Mandate Palestine. According to the story, Lord Peel asked Ben-Gurion where he was born and Ben-Gurion replied that he was from Plonsk, Poland. Lord Peel responded that the Arab leaders with whom he had met were all born in Palestine and most of the Jewish leaders were from Eastern Europe. Peel noted that the Arab people had a kushan (Ottoman land deed) that entitled them to the land – and asked Ben-Gurion if he also had a document that proved the land belonged to him.

At that point, Ben-Gurion became aware of the Bible upon which he had just sworn as a commission witness. He grabbed it, held it up and exclaimed, “Here is your kushan. It is the world’s most highly respected book and I believe that you British regard it with much respect too. We must have this land!”

This phenomenon – that of otherwise secular Israeli Jews proclaiming “God gave this land to us” – is not particularly uncommon. It is actually rooted in the unique form of nationalist ideology that gave rise the state of Israel. If we are to grasp this mentality properly then, we must first understand the early ideological trends that motivated Israel’s original settlers and eventual founders.

Many scholars have pointed out that Zionists – particularly those from Russia and Poland – were markedly influenced by the ideas of European Romantic nationalism (also known as “ethnic nationalism,” “organic nationalism” or “integral nationalism”) an intellectual movement that spread across Europe in the mid-19th century. The early seeds of this ideology were planted in the ideas of Rousseau, Hegel and particularly the German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder, who posited that “each nation is separate, distinguished by climate, education, custom, tradition, and heredity.”

These ideas were a powerful part of the ideological fabric of 19th century Europe from which Zionism emerged. In his book “The Founding Myths of Israel,” Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell notes that “Herder’s thinking had tremendous importance in Eastern Europe” during the 19th century and that these ideas were formative for important Labor Zionists such as A.D. Gordon, Berl Katznelson and David Ben-Gurion. Sternhell’s work compellingly demonstrates how otherwise secular socialists could espouse an ideology that articulated a deeply spiritual – and at times almost mystical connection of the Jewish people to land, history, language and ritual:

A cultural-organic conception of the nation necessarily included religion, which it saw as an inseparable part of national identity. This was the case in Eastern Europe, but also in Western Europe, in France and Spain. French integral nationalism was no less Catholic than Polish nationalism, and religion played the same role in it as it did in Poland or Romania. It was a focus of unity and identity, over and beyond social divisions. In integral nationalism religion had a social function, unconnected with its metaphysical content. Generally, it was a religion without God; in order to fulfill its function as a unifying force, religion required only external symbols, not inner content (p. 56, emphasis mine.)

In other words, the settlers and eventual founders of the Jewish state instrumentalized religion, emphasizing its social function to unify the people under one national identity. Indeed, the idea of a “religion without God” can be clearly discerned in the words of many pivotal Zionists. Thus Gordon, the father of Labor Zionism, could in one breath excoriate traditional Judaism with incredible vehemence while claiming that “the greatness of nationalism is its cosmic dimension” (p. 62). Sternhell also describes the venerable Labor Zionist figure, Berl Katznelson, as “a kind of secular rabbi whose strength lay in a direct contact with a sect of believers” (p. 135).

As my anecdote above demonstrates, Ben-Gurion’s world view was also deeply motivated by this mindset. Decades after lifting a Bible before Lord Peel, Ben-Gurion famously convened a study group of archeologists, academics and military officers to read and discuss the Biblical book of Joshua. It was well known that Joshua, which describes the Israelite conquest of Canaan in vivid detail, was Ben-Gurion’s favorite book of the Bible. In keeping with the ways of Romantic nationalists, he considered the Bible to be the Jewish people’s “national epic,” connecting them to a glorious ancient past as well as the a justification for their contemporary settlement of the land.

As American scholar Rachel Haverlock has noted:

Similar to other national movements, Zionism appealed to the glories of an ancient past and brought biblical words and phrases into spoken Hebrew. The Hebrew Bible served as a linguistic source and literary template in the prestate Yishuv and early decades of the State of Israel…

Ben-Gurion saw the biblical war narrative as constituting an ideal basis for a unifying myth of national identity. Not only could modern Israelis relate to the processes of conquest and settlement, but through the prism of Joshua they could also understand them as reenactments of the biblical past (“The Joshua Generation: Conquest and the Promised Land ” p. 309.)

The use of the Bible as national epic was not the exclusive provenance of Labor Zionists. Zeev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism (the ideology of the present-day Likud party) wrote the 1927 novel, “Samson the Nazirite,” which portrays Samson as a Jewish national hero. Though Jabotinsky was a passionate opponent of Labor Zionism, he and his socialist Zionist compatriots clearly shared a deep attachment to the trappings of Romantic nationalism.

Since the founding of the state (when the Bible was invoked in its Declaration of Independence), these romantic mythic narratives have since exerted an indelible hold over Israeli socio-political culture. Well before Danon’s UN pronouncement one could choose from a myriad of examples. To offer but one more: Netanyahu’s 2015 speech before Congress, in which invoked the Biblical book of Esther to drive home the “threat” of present day Iran to the state of Israel. (“Today the Jewish people face another attempt by yet another Persian potentate to destroy us.”)

With the political ascendency of the settler movement, it might be said that the Romantic nationalism Israel’s of socialist founders has found common cause with religious Zionists who use the Bible to make unabashedly fundamentalist claims on the land. Thus, an extreme nationalist Israeli politician like Ayelet Shaked can be accurately described as “a secular woman from left-leaning Tel Aviv (who has) become the most successful spokesperson for the religious-nationalist party and the settlement movement it strongly supports.” In a sense, we might say that the trajectory of contemporary Zionism has hopelessly conflated secular nationalism and religious ideology into one Biblically-based claim to historic Palestine.

In the end, however, whether it is used by Labor Zionists, Revisionist Zionists or right wing West Bank settlers, the use of the Bible as the “Jewish people’s deed of sale” to the land of Israel represents a radical break with Jewish history, throughout which Jews regarded this text as a religious – not a political – document. It is also a profoundly fraught enterprise, particularly when you consider that the Zionist national epic includes God’s command in the book of Joshua for the Israelites to take the land by force and dispossess its Canaanite residents.

In an era that is currently witnessing the rise of romantic/ethnic (read “white”) nationalism throughout the world once more, it is critical that nations honestly assess what it is that truly binds them together. Is it one people’s “organic right” to a particular land or a commitment to the individual rights of all who dwell upon it?

Overcoming Isolation in Gaza: A Report Back

Gaza City, 10/8/17. The Bakr children were killed on this beach by Israeli military forces on 7/16/14.

I’ve been writing a great deal on this blog about Gaza for over ten years but until this past week, I haven’t had the opportunity to visit in person. I’m enormously grateful for the opportunity to experience Gaza as a real living, breathing community and I’m returning home all the more committed to the movement to free Gaza from Israel’s crushing blockade – now eleven years underway with no end in sight.

For the past ten days, I’ve been attending strategic planning meetings with staff colleagues of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) to sharpen our vision for our Israel/Palestine programs in the US, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. We began with three days of meetings in Ramallah – with our Gazan staff members joining us via Skype. Following these meetings, six of us spent two days in Gaza, hosted by the two full-time members of the Gaza staff: Ali Abdel Bari and Firas Ramlawi.

AFSC Israel/Palestine staff meeting in Ramallah (with Ali and Firas joining us from Gaza via Skype).

It’s extremely rare for Americans to receive permission from Israel to enter Gaza through the Erez Crossing. Permits are generally issued only for journalists and staff people of registered international NGOs. Though I was technically allowed to enter Gaza as an AFSC staff member, I wasn’t 100% sure it would really happen until the moment I was actually waved through the crossing by the solider at Passport Control in Erez.

Quakers have a long history in Israel/Palestine – dating back to before the founding of the state of Israel. The Ramallah Friends School for Girls was founded in 1889, and their School for Boys in 1901. The two schools subsequently merged into one; now well into the 21st century Ramallah Friends remains a important and venerable Palestinian educational institution. (The former head of the school Joyce Aljouny, was recently appointed AFSC’s General Secretary.)

AFSC has a particularly significant connection to Gaza. In 1949, immediately following Israel’s founding and the start of the Palestinian refugee crisis, the organization was asked by the UN to organize relief efforts for refugees in the Gaza Strip. Their efforts continued until the United Nations Relief Works Agency started its operations there a year later. Since that time, AFSC has retained its programmatic presence throughout the Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Up until relatively recently, AFSC’s Palestine youth program focused largely on Public Achievement, seeking to strengthen the civic ties of youth to their communities. Our current program, Palestinian Youth Together for Change (PYTC) is a more ambitious project, working to combat Palestinian geographical, social and cultural fragmentation in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. It’s difficult to overestimate the devastating impact of this fragmentation – particularly on Palestinian youth who are growing up with increasing separation from one another. This isolation is most keenly felt of course, by the youth of Gaza who are literally imprisoned by Israel inside a small 140 square mile strip of land.

When we met the Gazan youth who participated in the PYTC program, they spoke powerfully about their experiences growing up with a strong sense of Palestinian identity while isolated from their peers in Israel and the West Bank. This particularly hit home for me when I heard one young woman speak of entering into Israel through the Erez Crossing for the first time to travel to the West Bank for meetings with her fellow participants. She was eighteen years old and had never seen an Israeli Jew in person in her life. Up until that time, she said, she had only seen them as “helicopters, planes and bombs.” Needless to say, this contrasted dramatically from the experience of her West Bank peers, who encountered Israeli soldiers as a very real, everyday presence in the streets and at checkpoints.

With current participants of AFSC’s Palestinian Youth Together for Change program.

It’s also important to bear in mind that this isolation is not a “humanitarian” issue that can be fully addressed by greater NGO and civil society investment. Rather it is the result of very real and very intentional policies promulgated by Israel to purposefully divide and weaken Palestinian society. By the same token, the PYTC program is not a merely a youth service project – it’s ultimate goal is to strengthen Palestinian identity in order to counter the brutal and unjust occupation of their people. In this regard this program is connected in important ways to AFSC programs in the US that promote “co-resistance:” initiatives that support the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, advocate for Palestinian children held by Israel in military detention and educate the public about the devastating costs of the Gaza blockade.

There’s so much more I could write about my experiences in Gaza. As I prepare now to head back to the States, I’m struggling to give voice the myriad of emotions that are flooding through me. At the moment, I’m thinking particularly of Ali and Firas, our Gaza staff members, who were not only gracious and wonderful hosts (although they were entirely that); but also talented and visionary organizers who teach us a great deal about how to do this work effectively in the most extreme of circumstances.

Even under the brutality of Israel’s blockade, we could not help but be struck by the beauty of this place and the dignity of its people and culture (which includes, I hasten to add, the deliciousness of its cuisine). As it happened, our visit occurred immediately after the beginning of reconciliation talks between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, brokered by the Egyptian government. Most of the Gazans we spoke to expressed a guarded sense of hope that it might result in some easement of the blockade – particularly in regards to freedom of movement, drinkable water and electrical service. Of course this optimism occurs within a constant context of isolation and vulnerability. The next Israeli military assault is altogether possible at any moment – and every Gazan must contend with this horrible reality every moment of every day.

Left to right: AFSC staff Jennifer Bing, Lucy Duncan, Erin Polley, Brant Rosen, Mati Gomis-Perez, Aura Kanegis and Firas Ramlawi. Kneeling: Ali Abdel Bari

I’ve posted below some additional pictures (and one video clip) of memorable moments from our visit. My staff colleagues will be writing more about these moments and I will be sure to share their posts here. For now, I’ll end on a note of gratitude: to AFSC for giving me the opportunity to participate in this sacred work; to our gracious hosts in East Jerusalem, Ramallah and Gaza; and to my US staff colleagues who are true travel companions in more ways than one.

I took the picture at the top of this post during our final hours in Gaza. As we debriefed on a beautiful morning over coffee at a seaside cafe, three young boys who likely should have been in madrassa came down to the beach to hang out and have fun together. The loveliness of the moment was both very real and very illusory. There was no mistaking the beauty of the place and people with whom we were sharing this moment. At the same time, however, we were aware that we were in the affluent tourist part of town and that we were privileged enough to soon be leaving Gaza to travel without restriction. We were also well aware that not far from the place these boys were standing, Ismail Mohammed Bakr (9), Zakaria Ahed Bakr (10), Ahed Atef Bakr (10) and Mohamed Ramez Bakr (11) were murdered by Israeli naval fire while they played soccer on the beach on July 16, 2014.

There can be no illusions where Gaza is concerned. As I leave for home, I’m more convinced than ever that we are all complicit in this cruelty – and that we are the ones who must end it.

The almost mile-long corridor between the Erez Crossing in Israel and the entrance into Gaza.

Our meeting with the Gazan Fishermen’s Union. Ali translates the presentations of Zakaria Bakr – chair of the union and uncle of the murdered Bakr boys (Center), and Amjad Shrafi, President of the union (Right). Below: video from our morning excursion with Gazan fishermen:

At the Rafah crossing, on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.

Why I Support the Palestinian Right of Return

(Photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activeststills.org)

If there’s one thing that virtually all Zionists can agree upon, from the political right to left and everywhere in between, it is their abject unwillingness to accept the Palestinian right of return.

There is an almost visceral quality to this rejection, which is invariably presented as an existential necessity, rather than a political argument. Read here, for instance, the comments of the relatively moderate Israeli journalist Yossi Klein Halevi:

The right of return is a euphemism for the destruction of Israel through demographic assault: Overwhelmed with bitter Palestinian refugees raised on hatred, the Jewish state would implode.

Amos Oz, poet laureate of the Israeli peace movement, used identical rhetoric in a 2013 NY Times interview:

The right of return is a euphemism for the liquidation of Israel. Even for a dove like myself this is out of the question.

Since Palestinian civil society issued its call for Boycott, Divest and Sanctions, which includes the goal of “respecting, protecting and promoting” the Palestinian right of return, many now claim that supporting BDS – a nonviolent call for equality, freedom and human rights – is itself tantamount to calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. The progressive American Jewish commentator Peter Beinart has written versions of this position repeatedly over the years:

(BDS) calls not only for boycotting all Israeli products and ending the occupation of the West Bank but also demands the right of millions of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes — an agenda that, if fulfilled, could dismantle Israel as a Jewish state.

Conveniently lost amidst all the rhetoric, however, is the fact that the right of return is a legitimately claimed right that is enshrined in international law. And therein lies the crux of the matter. Beinart’s point actually makes it very clear: the choice we ultimately face is one between a Jewish state vs. international law, justice and human rights for all.

“The Old will Die and the Young will Forget”

Between November 1947 and October 1948, 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forcibly expelled from their homes by Jewish militias, an event Israel refers to as the War of Independence and Palestinians call collectively the Nakba (“catastrophe”). In December of 1948, as Palestinian refugees languished in camps waiting to return to their homes, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 194 by a majority of 34 countries, including the United States.

Article 11 of the resolution stated:

Refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity.

The government of the newly declared state of Israel, however, refused to allow dislocated Palestinians to return to their homes. Over 400 villages were completely destroyed, many of which had new Jewish settlements built upon them. In towns and cities, new Jewish immigrants moved into empty Palestinian houses that had been appropriated by Israel. And to this day, “the earliest practical date” for the return of Palestinians to their homes remains unrealized.

According to the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights, there are currently 7.9 million Palestinian refugees worldwide – the largest refugee population in the world. Yet almost 70 years later, the Palestinian people continue to hold their right of return as sacrosanct – as both a collective dream and as an inalienable right. At the same time, virtually all Israelis and Israel advocates have dismissed the right of return as a pipe dream – a political non-starter that will never come to pass.

“The old will die and the young will forget.” This quote is often attributed David Ben-Gurion, who reportedly made it while commenting on the future of Palestinian refugees. While there is no documentary evidence that Ben-Gurion actually uttered these words, it is clear that the prediction has not come to pass. Quite the contrary: the children and grandchildren of the 1948 refugees have not forgotten. If anything, the right of return has become an increasingly indelible aspect of Palestinian culture, famously represented by the original keys to homes in Palestine which are passed down from one family generation to the next.

As for me, I can state openly and unabashedly that I support the Palestinian people’s right of return. I believe it is their inalienable right – not a “euphemism” or cynical political ploy that can be wished, threatened or rationalized away. And I do believe that there will never be a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians until Israel honestly faces the injustices it has perpetrated against the Palestinian people and honors the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.

“The Jewish Character of the State”

To those who claim that the return of refugees would “imperil the Jewish character of the state of Israel,” I would respond that there is a serious problem when the character of a country is dependent upon the denial of basic human rights to an entire people. When we speak of the “Jewish character of the state,” we should be clear on what we actually mean: a form of ethnic nationalism that necessarily privileges Jews over non-Jews.

In order to maintain this national character, Israel has created a system that allows any Jew in the world to become an immediate citizen of the Jewish state upon arrival – while millions of people who actually lived in the land (or have ancestors who did) are unable to set literally foot there for no other reason than they are not Jews. The bottom line: the Palestinian right of return raises the prospect of one democratic state of all its citizens – which for Israelis and Israel advocates means “the dismantling of the Jewish state.”

The real reason so many Zionists treat the Palestinian right of return as a non-starter is that it shines a bright light on the inner paradoxes of Zionism itself. Israel’s identity as a Jewish state has always been dependent upon its ability to maintain a demographic majority of Jews in the land. This ipso facto presents the presence of non-Jews in the land as a problem to be dealt with. While this problem appeared to be “solved” following the Nakba, seven decades later it remains as intractable as ever.

Liberal Zionists have attempted to resolve this problem by advocating a peace process that would result in a negotiated settlement for a two state solution. These negotiations have failed for many reasons, not least of which has been Israel’s continued settlement of the West Bank. Another critical reason has been Israel’s adamant refusal to even consider the Palestinian right of return during negotiations. Their consistent treatment of this right as a non-starter doomed the various iterations of the peace process over the years. For as many have pointed out, the right of return is not a right that can be negotiated collectively – it belongs to each and every individual Palestinian refugee.

“They Would Throw Us Into the Sea”

Many Zionists articulate the fear that a return of refugees would existentially endanger the Jews of Israel. Upon their return, the argument goes, “Palestinian refugees raised on hatred” would undoubtedly throw the Jews into the sea.

This is a patently racist argument that essentializes Palestinians as incorrigibly violent. In the end, we cannot honestly discuss Palestinian violence against Israel without recognizing the context of the daily violence in which Palestinians have been living for almost seven decades. Palestinian violence is not a product of their upbringing – it is a response to Israel’s violent expulsion of their families from their homes and the violence of brutal, ongoing oppression.

I have no doubt that there will be those who will respond to me by saying it’s all well and good for me to preach to Israelis that they must live side by side with Palestinians from the comfort and safety of my home in the United States, when it is the Israelis who will have to live with the consequences. It’s a fair question – and in good Jewish fashion I’ll answer it with another question: what will ensure the long term safety of both peoples: the continuance of an oppressive status quo that will only guarantee a future of violence or a process of authentic reparation and repatriation as well as mutually agreed upon guarantees of security for Israelis and Palestinians?

Obviously we are a long way from an “honestly negotiated settlement.” But before we even get to the practical considerations of how the Palestinian right of return might be implemented, that right must first be acknowledged and honored on its own merits. We cannot yet say how this right will be practically realized – this can only come through mutual agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. But in the meantime, the Palestinian right of return cannot be summarily dismissed by shrugging our shoulders and assuming “all nations are created this way.”

What would it look like in a practical sense? The general parameters are actually fairly straightforward: those who choose to remain in the Palestinian diaspora would remain. Those who choose to return would be repatriated to their homes. Where not possible, there would be a negotiated settlement with those individual refugee families or with a collective body they each agree represents them.

Over the past few years, the organizations Zochrot and Badil have done valuable work envisioning ways that the Palestinian right of return might be implemented. As they note in their preliminary report:

(This) project builds on the deep respect in international law for the right of return,1 and its widespread affirmation as the only acceptable durable solution, and starts to address how refugees will return to properties and homes from which they were forcibly displaced, and how such a return can be implemented in a practical, fair, and efficient manner that protects the legitimate interests of all stakeholders involved.

I wish all Jews could read this report, even those who might not be ready to go to such places as yet. For myself, I find it to be extremely liberating to participate in this kind of visioning. Once we grasp that the inner paradox that a Jewish state can only be achieved by violating the rights of another people, we may well come to understand that the right of return does not mean the “dismantling of the Jewish state” – rather, it leads us to a place where are free to envision a future of equity, justice, return and reconciliation.

“Exchange of Populations”

Many who reject the Palestinian right of return make a kind of “tit for tat” argument between the Palestinian refugees in 1948 and the 856,000 Jews of Arab countries who were either expelled, immigrated or brought to Israel around the same time. It is not uncommon for Israel advocates to equate the two, and claim that the events of 1948 resulted in an “exchange of populations.”

It’s a spurious argument on several levels. In the first place, while the actions of the governments of Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco and Syria cannot be excused for their violence against their Jewish populations, Jews from Arab countries (or Mizrahi Jews) did not become refugees – they were absorbed into Israel and became citizens, fulfilling the state’s demographic need for a Jewish majority. Palestinians experienced the exact opposite: in 1948 they were forced from their homes and turned into refugees.

Moreover, the two expulsions did not occur at the same time. The Jews from Iraq and other Arab countries occurred after the Nakba and both occurred under very different circumstances. There is absolutely no documentary evidence to prove Israeli leadership intended an “exchange of populations” when they made the decision to prevent expelled Palestinians from returning to their homes.

Another important difference: while the right of return is almost universally cherished by all Palestinians, there is no equivalent call for return from Mizrahi Jews. If anything, the lion’s share of Mizrahi protest has been directed toward discriminatory treatment at the hands of Israel’s Askenazic elite and its erasure of their Arab cultural identity. Throughout the years, in fact there have been a number of Arab Jewish movements of solidarity with Palestinian Arabs, from the Israeli Black Panthers of the 1960s and 70s to the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition that formed in the 1990s, to the current efforts of Mizrahi activists who are seeking to join the Arab Joint List party in the Knesset.

Ironically enough, it was recently reported that the calls to define Mizrahi Jews as “refugees,” have now been taken up by the Israeli government, presumably in order to somehow politically equate them with Palestinian refugees. By so doing, however, this cynical maneuver actually contradicts a central Zionist dictum: that all Jews are welcome and to become citizens of the Jewish state. It’s also profoundly insulting to Mizrahi Jews themselves, as scholar Zachary Smith explains:

Mizrahi Jews came sometimes of their own free will and sometimes not of their own free will—a clear distinction in a complex history of Jewish immigration to Israel.

Mizrahim were, for the most part, individual agents and actors making decisions about Zionism and Israel. Denying them this Zionist impulse does not just hurt Mizrahi collective identity by portraying them as helpless. It also hurts Israel, because refugees, as is apparent in the Palestinian case, demand to return home.

No, history cannot be turned back, but Israelis and Palestinians can go forward together. The repatriation of refugees is not a pipe dream – it is a very real and practical concept for which we have ample historical precedent. The real question is not whether or not return is possible. It is rather: does Israel have the political and moral will to own the injustice it inflicted (and continues to inflict) on the Palestinian people and accept their inherent right to return to their homes?

As for me, I believe this acceptance is the necessary first step toward a truly just peace in Israel/Palestine.

Sharon’s Legacy: Survival at All Costs

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From Vice President Joe Biden’s remarks at the funeral of Ariel Sharon today:

Like all historic leaders, Prime Minister Sharon was a complex man about whom, as you’ve already heard from his colleagues, who engendered strong opinions from everyone. But like all historic leaders, all real leaders, he had a North Star that guided him — a North Star from which he never, in my observation, never deviated. His North Star was the survival of the State of Israel and the Jewish people, wherever they resided.

In talking about his spiritual attachment to the land of Israel back in an interview in the late ‘90s, he said, and I quote, “Before and above all else, I am a Jew…”

As a Jew – and as a human being of conscience – I submit that this myopic obsession with Jewish physical survival “before and above all else” has led the Jewish people down a very dark road indeed. In so many ways, Ariel Sharon represents the embodiment of this obsession – and I for one recoil at the suggestion that he might in any way be held up as a Jewish exemplar.

As the tributes of world leaders continue to roll in, please consider the life’s work of a man Joe Biden quite mistakenly claimed is “loved by the Jewish people:”

– In the early 1950s, as a young major in the Israeli army, Sharon led the infamous Unit 101, which carried out numerous cross-border “pre-emptive” and “retaliatory” attacks into the West Bank, deliberately killing and wounding Palestinian civilians. In the most notorious incident involving Unit 101, between October 14 and 16, 1953, soldiers under Sharon’s command massacred 69 Palestinian civilians, most of them women and children, in the West Bank town of Qibya. Sharon’s orders included “total destruction of the village and maximum harm to the villagers, again forcing them to flee.”

– On October 29, 1956, Israel attacked Egypt, part of an invasion in conjunction with Britain and France. During the resulting hostilities, soldiers under Sharon’s command committed a series of massacres of POWs, including more than 100 civilians. In one incident, Israeli soldiers shot and killed 49 Egyptian prisoners of war, including civilians, after binding their hands and forcing them into a quarry. In another, 56 Egyptian civilians were murdered while sheltering in the back of a truck. In a third incident, some 50 Egyptian civilian workers were murdered by Israeli soldiers near the town of Ras Sudar.

– Following Israel’s surprise attack against Egypt in June 1967, which resulted in Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Egyptian Sinai peninsula, and Syrian Golan Heights, Ariel Sharon, by now a general responsible for Israel’s southern command, was tasked with “pacifying” Gaza. In his efforts to crush resistance, Sharon ordered his soldiers to execute without trial any Palestinians suspected of involvement in the resistance, resulting in the killing of more than 1000 Palestinians.

– On June 6, 1982, Israel launched a massive invasion of Lebanon, masterminded by then-Defense Minister Sharon. Between June and September, the Israeli army killed between 18,000 and 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, bombarding and laying siege to the western half of the capital of Beirut.

– On September 16, 1982, under Sharon’s direction, Israeli soldiers surrounded the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and sent in about 150 of their local Christian Phalangist militia allies, even though the long and bloody history between Palestinians and Phalangists in Lebanon was well known to the Israelis. Over the next three days, between 800 and 3500 Palestinian refugees and Lebanese, mostly women, children, and the elderly, were butchered by the Phalangists, who sexually assaulted, tortured and mutilated many of their victims, in one of the worst atrocities in the modern history of the Middle East.

For more details on these facts – and other aspects of Sharon’s legacy that were likely not recounted at his funeral today, click here.

NGO Report: Palestinian Children Kept in Outdoor Cages

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Ramle Prison (photo: Nir Keidar)

Earlier this week, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) published a report that claimed children suspected of minor crimes were subjected to a variety of human rights abuses, including threats and acts of sexual violence and “public caging”, in which minors were held for extended periods of time in outdoor cages.

According to a group of public defenders making an official visit to Ramle prison, children were caged outside and exposed to severely cold weather during Israel’s recent winter storm. In a statement to the Israel Prison Service (IPS), the lawyers reported that “they spent several hours in the freezing cold and rain, until the transport arrived to take them to court around 6:00 am.” The statement said that the practice had been going on for months, a fact “verified during other official visits and not denied by IPS.”

I read a number of news reports on the incident, and was particularly struck by this one from the Jerusalem Post (pay particular attention to the second paragraph):

The practice of placing the children in outdoor cages was halted when Justice Minister Tzipi Livni learned of it and immediately telephoned Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, telling him to end the practice…

It was unclear who within the Prisons Service initiated the practice, why it was initiated or who decided to continue it despite the adverse weather conditions, but the service responded that since it had received criticism the situation had been improved.

Livni’s attempts at fig-leaf PR notwithstanding, the issue of child detention issue far transcends this one particularly horrifying revelation. Last March, I reported on a UNICEF report that concluded the ill-treatment of Palestinian minors held within the Israeli military detention system is “widespread, systematic and institutionalized.” The 22 page report carefully examined the Israeli military court system for holding Palestinian children and found evidence of “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.”

A Huffington Post feature on the report noted:

In a step-by-step analysis of the procedure from arrest to trial, the report said the common experience of many children was being “aggressively awakened in the middle of the night by many armed soldiers and being forcibly brought to an interrogation centre tied and blindfolded, sleep deprived and in a state of extreme fear.”

Many were subjected to ill-treatment during the journey, with some suffering physical or verbal abuse, being painfully restrained or forced to lie on the floor of a vehicle for a transfer process of between one hour and one day.

In some cases, they suffered prolonged exposure to the elements and a lack of water, food or access to a toilet.

During my recent visit to the West Bank, our delegation spoke with Gerard Horton (formerly of Defence of Children International – Palestine and currently founder/director of Military Court Watch), who described for us this process in shocking detail. Much of what he had to tell us can be found in his article on the subject here.

As a Jew and a human being of conscience, I am sickened by Israel’s practice of child detention. Please join me in contacting Tzipi Livni (zlivni@knesset.gov.il) to tell her you agree – to let her know this is not a problem that cannot be solved with one face-saving phone call.

Shalom Rav

A Blog by Rabbi Brant Rosen