Last night, I attended an interfaith vigil in Evanston in commemoration of "Operation Not By Might, Nor By Power." Following our ceremony, I read these words:
Last year, as Israel’s bombs were falling over Gaza, I attempted to organize a group of rabbis to craft a statement of outrage and moral protest. As we were finishing the document, I was contacted one by one by rabbis who reluctantly informed me that they could not attach their names to the statement. The hard reality had set in: their jobs would be in serious jeopardy if if they publicly supported a statement such as this.
This is what happens in the American Jewish community. Whenever rabbis and other Jews of conscience seek to speak their truth about Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, there is inevitably fear that leads to collective silencing. It is not an overstatement to say that I was devastated when we could not go public with our statement.
Although we could not publish these words, I’d like to read them tonight, as we commemorate the one year anniversary of the assault on Gaza. Please know that they represent the deep conscience of many good rabbis around our country. I offer them with the hope and conviction that we will soon find our collective voice on Israel/Palestine.
You haven’t heard the last from us:
“As American rabbis and rabbinical students from various parts of the Jewish world, we express our sorrow and outrage over Israel's latest military operation in Gaza. Judaism teaches that all human beings are created in the image of God and that one who takes a single life destroys an entire world. We condemn the firing of missiles from Gaza that forced so many Israelis to live in fear and we mourn the loss of life that resulted from these attacks. However, we are devastated by Israel's disproportionate use of force, killing more than 1,300 people, including over 450 children. In the wake of such overwhelming civilian carnage, we can only ask, in the words of the Talmud, "How do we know that our blood is redder than the blood of our fellow?"
Jewish tradition also teaches that "when an arrow leaves the hand of a warrior he cannot take it back." From this we learn that violence unleashes a myriad of consequences that we cannot control or reverse. We cannot begin to fathom the depths of trauma this action has caused for those living in Gaza and the grief for scores of individuals, families and loved ones around the world. Moreover we can only imagine the growing fury it has inspired in Gazans, Palestinians and the greater Arab world and the serious damage it has inflicted upon prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
In the wake of the recent cease-fire the task before the new American administration is all the more daunting – and all the more critical. We urge our new President to turn back the policies of previous administrations – policies which have given Israel a blank check to take numerous measures that we believe are counter to the cause of peace, including the expropriation of Palestinian lands, destruction of Palestinians homes and businesses and the widespread building of settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, to name but a few. We sincerely hope the Obama administration will find the courage to insist that the Israeli government end these actions and be prepared to withhold military aid as necessary.
As Jewish spiritual leaders, we believe the pursuit of peace and justice to be our most sacrosanct value. We reject the vision of this conflict as an "Us vs. Them" zero sum game. We urge all who seek an end to this tragic conflict to commit themselves to peace, reconciliation and restorative justice. We call for a political solution that ends the occupation, addresses the needs of Palestinian refugees and constructs a positive future by and for Israelis and Palestinians in the holy land.”
