Tag Archives: Human Rights

Palestine Solidarity from the Streets to the Statehouse

From my Yom Kippur sermon this past October:

(There) are plenty of Jewish congregations out there: why does the world need another? What do we have that’s unique to offer? As I think about it, this is a critical question for any Jewish community. Do we exist just to exist or for a more transcendent purpose? Does our existence actively seek to repair the world or does it merely serve to use up Jewish community resources? Or worse still, does our communal existence contribute to harm in the world?

I recalled those words last week when I learned that Anshe Emet, a prominent Conservative synagogue in Chicago planned to host a program with invited guest Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli Minister of Defense and one of the primary architects of Israel’s genocide against Gaza – who currently has a warrant out for his arrest issued by the International Criminal Court.

It should go without saying, but I’ll say it out loud: it is appalling and sickening that a prominent synagogue welcomed – and in fact celebrated – a genocidal war criminal in their house of worship. I’m proud to say that a massive protest was organized by a wide coalition of Palestine solidarity groups, including US Palestine Community Network, American Muslims for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace and #IfNotNow to voice a message of outrage, solidarity and collective conscience.

Hundreds of us gathered last night across the street from the synagogue in the freezing cold to express our outrage and mutual solidarity. There were many speakers from our diverse coalition and it was my honor to be among them. Here are my remarks, below:

My name is Brant Rosen; I’m a proud member of Jewish Voice for Peace, the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council, and I’m the founding rabbi of Tzedek Chicago – a proudly anti-Zionist synagogue here inI Chicago with members here and around the world.

In Jewish tradition there is a central concept we call Hillul Hashem. It literally means “desecration of God’s name.” This is at root a deeply moral concept that goes to the heart of what it means to be a human being. When we diminish the humanity of another, we diminish God’s presence in the world – and we commit the worst kind of Hillul Hashem when we commit the crime against genocide against another people.

In October 2023, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s then defense minister, said:

We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.

The Palestinian people know what it means to be robbed of their humanity. They have been deemed a collectively disposable people by Israel for over 100 years. Their very presence is a problem for Israel. We Jews should know all too well what happens when a state robs a people of its essential humanity.

The ICC has put a warrant out for Yoav Gallant’s arrest as a war criminal because he actively dehumanized the Palestinian people in word and in deed. Over 60,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza to date and over 100,000 injured, the majority of whom are women and children. According to one estimate, the ultimate death toll may eventually be nearly 200,000. Whole extended families, entire Palestinian bloodlines have been wiped out completely. Much of Gaza has been literally reduced to a human graveyard, with scores of bodies buried beneath the rubble of destroyed and bulldozed homes. Neighborhoods and regions have been literally wiped off the map.

Gaza’s infrastructure and health care system has been decimated. According to the UN an “intentional and targeted starvation campaign” has led to widespread famine and disease throughout the Gaza strip. Health care workers, humanitarian workers and journalists are being killed, injured and imprisoned in massive numbers. Human rights agencies have documented widespread torture and abuse of prisoners, including sexual abuse, throughout a network of torture camps.

This is dehumanization, this is Hillul Hashem of the worst kind. And to you Yoav Gallant, we say, “We Charge Genocide!” “You are not welcome in our city!”

But Yoav Gallant and the nation he served could not have succeeded if there where not those who normalized this genocide. And that is why we are here tonight. As a rabbi, as a Jew, as a person of conscience, I am morally outraged – I am sickened – that this war criminal is being hosted – and in fact celebrated – at a synagogue, a Jewish house of worship. This is what it has come to.

And here I want to address the members of Anshei Emet and the Jewish community of Chicago. Our community has a profound moral choice to make. What is the Judaism we will affirm? Will we uphold Zionism – and its ideology of Jewish supremacy – or will we stand for the sacred divine image of all people? Will we stand with war criminals or will we stand with those who are deemed to be disposable? Will we stand with the genocidal state of Israel or will we stand with the Palestinian people?

Now I’d like to address my friends and comrades in the Palestinian community:, please know that are so many of us in the Jewish community who stand in solidarity with you. There is nowhere else we can possibly be at this moment. And there are so many of us who are voicing the alarm, marching in the streets, taking arrest to demand justice for Palestinians

It is not an overstatement to say this: history will remember what we did or did not do in this moment. We are ready, together with you, to call out those who, in our name, are committing the worst kind of Hillul Hashem against you, whether it is in the streets of Rafah and Deir al Balah, the halls of Washington DC or a synagogue in Chicago. And we will not cease until all are free, from the river to the sea!

It’s been a busy week. This past Wednesday, I was in Springfield with friends and comrades to announce new IL state legislation, “The Illinois Human Rights Advocacy Protection Act,” which would repeal our state’s 2015 anti-boycott legislation that punishes advocacy for Palestinian human rights. This unconstitutional and immoral legislation, signed by then Gov. Bruce Rauner, directed the Illinois Investment Policy Board to restrict public funding to companies that use human rights filters that exclude doing business with Israel.

The new legislation, which is being introduced in the IL State House by Palestinian-American representative Abdulnasser Rashid, will “(remove) provisions requiring the Illinois Investment Policy Board to include companies that boycott Israel in its list of restricted companies.” An identical bill will be introduced in the IL Senate as well.

You can watch the entire press conference here. My remarks follow below:

Here in Illinois and around the world, we are at a critical and frightening moment. The US is governed by an administration that openly considers certain populations to be disposable. Whether it is undocumented immigrants, birthright citizens, trans youth or the Palestinian people. Just yesterday, our president announced his intention to depopulate the entire Gaza strip of over 2 million Palestinians and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” This after a previous administration helped to arm Israel in its crushing military assault – one that many reputable human rights organizations have termed a genocide against the Palestinian people.

In Jewish tradition, one of our most central theological tenets, which is repeated over and over, is that God responds to the cries of the oppressed. The Palestinian people have long been crying out to the international community. Over the past sixteen months, their cries have reached a fever pitch. The question before us, that has ever been before us, is how will we respond?

That is the essence of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. It is a call from an oppressed people who are seeking support and solidarity from the international community. It originated in 2005, when a wide coalition of Palestinian civil society organizations made a crie de cour for solidarity and support. They issued a call to the world to use the time-honored nonviolent strategy of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

There are three essential demands of this call, which are all are based in international law: to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, full and equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and to honor the UN mandated Palestinian right of return. Like all boycotts, it allows private citizens, companies and civil society organizations around the world to actively and meaningfully respond to the legitimate and collective cry of the Palestinian people.

It is also a form of free speech. Just like historic Montgomery Bus Boycott, the United Farm Workers Boycott, the boycott of apartheid South Africa before it. When the state of Illinois passed legislation restricting participation in this pro-peace, pro-human rights movement, it actively criminalized free speech. It was immoral and illegal to do so when it was enacted by Governor Rauner in 2015 – and it remains so today. In the current moment, when our country is ruled by a regime that is actively and unabashedly criminalizing free speech, we should see this legislation for what it is. The state of Illinois has no business aiding and abetting in this stripping of our right to free speech. It has no moral standing to stifle and stigmatize the legitimate cry of the oppressed.

In the Jewish community this week we are reading from our Torah, the Exodus story. And the Exodus story makes it very clear: that God responds to the cry of the oppressed and demands their liberation. We also read that this process began with brave people to defy and resist oppression. That is how liberation happens.

We are at just a moment right now. This is truly a which side are you on moment. Will we hearken to the cries of the oppressed, or will suppress their voices – and those who support their call for liberation? We urge the state of Illinois to stand the right side of history.

A Jewish letter of support for the Illinois Human Rights Advocacy Act will soon be made public as well. I’ll make sure to post it when its available.

Remembering the Forgotten on Shabbat Hanukkah

Mahmoud Al-Fasih holds the body of his three-week-old daughter, Sela, before laying her to rest. (Photo: CNN)

I’m sure there are many people who read what I write regularly (or scroll through my social media feeds) and think to themselves, “What a ‘one-note’ rabbi, just going on and on about Gaza. Why doesn’t he write or talk about other things for a change?”

If I could answer, these hypothetical folks, I’d say, yes there are surely many things in the world I could be writing or talking about. But when you live in a time of genocide – particularly one that is being funded by your government and carried out in your name as a Jew – it seems to me that being “one note” is a moral imperative.

All the more so as Israel’s genocide on Gaza is now in its fourteenth month and the rest of the world seems have moved on – treating Israel’s genocide in Gaza as mere background noise. In such a context, it seems to me, bearing witness – i.e., to remember when others have forgotten – is a profoundly sacred act.

Though it is not being widely reported, Israel’s mass killing of Gazans has been increasing dramatically in recent weeks. Earlier this week, it was reported that Israel’s genocide claimed 77 lives in one day. Two days ago, Israel attacked five journalists in a clearly marked news van outside Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat. (One of the journalists, Ayman Al-Jidi, was waiting for his wife to give birth inside the hospital.) It is also being reported that Gazan babies are freezing to death inside their increasingly frigid tent encampments. Truly, in the face of such shameful and shameless genocidal violence, how can we not bear witness?

Remembering Gaza is at the heart of Tzedek Chicago’s new Hanukkah supplement, “Rededicating our Solidarity with Gaza” which highlights a different group of Gazans who have been subjected to grave and deadly harm during the course of the genocide (including journalists and children). Each group is represented here by individuals whose lives and deaths testify to the dignity and humanity of the Palestinian people. We encourage you to read them aloud each night after reciting the Hanukkah blessings bear witness to their stories and sanctify their memories.

Remembrance is also an important theme in this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Miketz. At the very end of last week’s Torah portion, while Joseph was languishing in Egyptian prison, he interpreted the dreams of his cell mates, the chief baker and the royal cupbearer. He told the cupbearer, “Think of me when all is well with you again, and do me the kindness of mentioning me to Pharaoh, so as to free me from this place.” But after the cupbearer is released from prison, we are told, “Yet the chief cupbearer did not think of Joseph; he forgot him.”

At the start of this week’s portion, the cupbearer learns of Pharaoh’s nightmares and tells him, “I must make mention today of my misdeeds.” He then tells Pharaoh about Joseph, the young man in prison who has the gift of dream divination. On the surface, this might be the self-effacing rhetoric of a royal courtier addressing his king. But on a deeper level, his statement could be understood as a kind of confession: admission that he has sinned by allowing the incarcerated to remain forgotten.

Of course, systems of incarceration themselves are inherently sinful inasmuch as they treat humanity as disposable – and too easily forgotten. Whether it is the massive for-profit prison systems, the cages on our border, or the people of Gaza, who have been incarcerated in an open-air prison for over a decade and are now being subjected to genocidal violence at the hands of their captors.

This Hanukkah, let us shine our lights to remind the world of what it would just as soon forget. Let us commit the kind of hope that is rooted in action: toward a world free of prison walls, a world where no one is disposable and the divine image in all is cherished and nurtured and liberated into its full and unfettered potential.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Hanukkah Sameach.

Why I’ll Still be Participating in the Protests at the DNC Next Month

By all accounts, the Democratic Party is closing ranks at lighting speed. As of this writing, Vice-President Harris now has more than enough delegates to clinch the party’s nomination, with a virtual roll-call planned prior to the convention in Chicago next month. The endorsements from powerful Dems continue to roll in, including from virtually all of those who might be considered viable as her potential opponents. Just two days after Biden’s withdrawal from the race, her coronation as the Democrats’ candidate is now all but assured.

I fully understand the euphoria of this moment. With Biden as the Democratic candidate, the prospect of another Trump presidency was becoming more terrifyingly real by the day. But make no mistake, Biden’s downfall was not the product of one horrible debate. On this point, I am in total agreement with Palestinian-American community organizer Linda Sarsour, who recently posted on her Facebook page:

They will never admit this but Joe Biden became a political liability for the Democratic Party on Gaza. Period. The media won’t say this. The pundits will talk around it and the party will say it’s not the case as not to offend their pro-Israel donors – but they knew that they could not win states like Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin and they had lost big chunks of important constituencies like young people, Arab and Muslim voters, and many progressives. The fact that anyone thinks we are going to believe that one dismal debate performance was the reason they pushed Biden out is just ludicrous.

Absolutely. While the doubts over his age may have motivated his donors to abandon him in the end, Biden was fatally weakened as a candidate by his unabashed support for Israeli genocide – and the solidarity movement that held him to account. As was reported as far back as January, “It’s not just the major prime-time rallies that are now attracting the anti-Gaza war crowd’s wrath. Everywhere Biden goes he is being dogged, whether it is outside the church he attends near his home in Delaware or along the route of his presidential motorcade.”

Many are noting that Harris has been marginally better on the issue of Palestine/Israel than Biden. Last December, it was reported that she was pushing the Biden administration to “to show more concern publicly for the humanitarian damage in Gaza.” During a speech in Selma last March she called for a temporary ceasefire, adding that “too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.” In the same speech, she spoke empathetically about Gazans seeking aid who “were met with gunfire and chaos.”

At the same time, we should have no illusions about Harris’ record of unconditional support for Israel. During a speech at the 2017 AIPAC conference, she offered the requisite oath of fealty, ““Let me be clear about what I believe. I stand with Israel because of our shared values, which are so fundamental to the founding of both our nations.” And during her 2019 Presidential campaign, she was praised by the lobbying group Democratic Majority for Israel for running to the right of Obama on the Iran deal. Indeed, despite her softer tone, Harris has been in lockstep with the Biden administration – indeed with, the entire Democratic Party leadership – on this issue.

For the past several months I’ve been actively involved in the Palestine solidarity movement holding the Biden administration to account for enabling and support Israel’s genocidal violence in Gaza. Along with scores of others, I’ve made plans to participate in the protests planned at the Democratic National Convention next month. Even with Kamala Harris now leading the ticket, I have no intention of changing those plans.

Those of us who are part of this movement have not forgotten the essential reason for our organizing: we are living in a time of genocide – one that is being aided and abetted by a Democratic government. Whether it is Biden or Harris at the top of the ticket, nothing has changed in this regard. Moreover, conventions are the place where party policy and platforms are decided. Those of us who have been holding our government to account all year have a solemn responsibility to continue to do so: to demand that the governing party enact an arms embargo on the Israeli government and to establish a foreign policy centered in human rights.

Though news of Gaza has been swept off the front pages, Israel’s carnage against the Palestinian people has continued with impunity. It was reported today that “at least 84 Palestinians were killed over the past day in (Khan Yunis), with more than 300 others wounded. Medical staff at the Nasser Medical Complex report they are completely overwhelmed and have been forced to treat patients on hospital floors.” Yesterday, the World Health Organization revealed there is now a high risk of the polio virus spreading across Gaza – and beyond its borders – due to the dire health and sanitation situation there. The Israeli military has just announced that it will start offering the polio vaccine to its soldiers though there are not enough vaccines – or the distribution capacity – to reach the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza.

In other words, now is not the time to let up. In the words of Linda Sarsour, “no matter what, our work doesn’t change.” Or as Waleed Shahid of the Uncommitted Movement has correctly said:

We are making clear that we think that Biden and the White House’s disastrous policy on Gaza makes it harder for them to defeat Trump. In fact, having a campaign based on democracy, having a campaign fighting far-right authoritarianism, while sending bombs to one of the world’s biggest far-right authoritarians in Netanyahu, who is now visiting Washington, DC, makes a mockery of that party’s claim to be fighting on the right side of history, fighting on the behalf of democracy. And we want to see that party change course.

That’s why, no matter who is heading the ticket, I plan to be on the front lines with my friends and comrades when the DNC comes to town next month.

Don’t Normalize the Political Violence in Gaza

Israel killed at least 90 people in Al-Mawasi in several airstrikes on an area the military had designated as a “safe zone.” Here a child reacts as bodies are salvaged from the site on July 13.
Omar AshtawyAPA images

Warning: this post contains descriptions of extreme violence.

On Saturday, while the world was riveted to the news about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Israel unleashed airstrikes on Al-Mawasi in Central Gaza – in an area previously designated as a “humanitarian safe zone.” Gazan health officials reported that approximately 90 people were killed and at least 300 injured in this attack. Eyewitness testimonies attested to unspeakable carnage. According to 16 year old Gazan Shaima Farwameh:

A leg hit me, and I saw dismembered bodies a few meters away. I saw a young child screaming. He lost his lower limbs and was crawling on his hands and screaming. The bombs didn’t stop, and suddenly the boy disappeared. I saw how he vanished before me while we ran and lowered our eyes to the ground, unable to do anything but run…What a life we live in these tents that we have to see the dismembered bodies of our siblings and families fly over our heads.

Yesterday, Israel bombed Southern and Central Gaza once again, killing more than 60 Palestinians. Among the targets was a UN school in Nuseirat where families were sheltering. Other strikes in Khan Younis and Rafah killed 12 people, according to medical officials and AP journalists. According to AP, “footage showed the school’s yard covered in rubble and twisted metal from a structure that was hit. Workers carried bodies wrapped in blankets, as women and children watched from the classrooms where they have been living.”

Given the reality of such hideous violence, it was difficult to ignore the irony in the rhetoric following the attempted assassination attempt last Saturday. For me, the most egregious example occurred when Biden said, In his speech to the nation, “There is no place in America for this kind of violence or for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions. We can’t allow this violence to be normalized” (emphasis mine).

This statement is truly breathtaking in its hypocrisy. The genocidal violence Israel has been unleashing on Gazans for the past ten months has long been been normalized for most, save the Palestinian people and their allies. Even as the death toll has now reached nearly 40,000. Even as a new report in the British medical journal Lancet estimates that the actual death toll in Gaza could eventually reach 186,000 or even higher — roughly 8% of Gaza’s population.

It truly takes a special kind of moral gall for Biden to say “we can’t allow violence to be normalized” when it is his very administration that is unconditionally providing Israel with the very bombs that have killing and maiming Gazans on a daily basis. In terms of sheer numbers, President Biden is enabling the deadliest political violence in the world at this very moment.

There has been a chorus of condemnation of “political violence” from across the political spectrum over the past several days. As I’ve listened to the robotic sameness of these responses, it’s occurred to me that they are all unified over one common assumption: political violence is worthy of condemnation when Americans kill other Americans for political purposes – but when the US government commits or enables political violence around the world, it amounts to mere background noise.

Of course, the US itself was created by means of political violence – through the genocide of indigenous inhabitants and the stolen labor of black slaves. This country engages in political violence every day through deadly systems of mass incarceration and policing. And of course, the US has historically expanded its imperial power and influence throughout the world by fomenting the political violence of regime change. MLK famously made this point in his speech A Time to Break Silence when he excoriated “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.”

So please don’t stop raising your voice about Gaza. Please don’t allow this political violence be normalized. Please heed the words of my friend and colleague Jehad Abusalim (who comes from Deir Al-Balah in Gaza):

This is annihilation. There are no words left to capture the horror. Gaza is being obliterated—people are being murdered, starved, and displaced for months on end. Repeating these words feels like a hollow echo and a useless endeavor. But we have no choice but to persevere and keep pushing for an end to the genocide, for accountability, for justice, for healing, for rebuilding, and for liberation. We on the outside have no excuse. As long as Gaza’s defenders, doctors, nurses, first responders, and volunteers keep working and pushing, we have no choice but to keep working and pushing. Gaza needs your activism, your courage, your dedication, your boycott, your presence on the streets, and your donations now more than ever. This is a battle for hope, and hope is the last thing we’ve got. Let’s not let them take it away from us.

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.

Shalom Rav

A Blog by Rabbi Brant Rosen