Israeli Rabbi Defends Palestinians
Hirschfield, Robert
Israeli Rabbi Defends Palestinians By Robert Hirschfield Illustration by Earl Holloway Every hand he shakes on the West Bank enrages someone. Rabbi Arik Ascherman is the executive director of...
...We see that soldiers often do evil things, but we don't see every soldier as evil...
...I feel like there is some kind of inner tug of war going on that neither side is winning...
...Settlers call him vile names and pelt him with rocks...
...I did not arrive at the events which are the subject of this trial with much faith that those interested in carrying out demolitions were even respecting international law," he testified...
...We talk about his work as a human rights activist...
...Ascherman regularly puts his body on the line, interposing himself between Israeli bulldozers and Palestinian homes or between Israeli settlers and Palestinian olive groves...
...I ask him...
...We have 1,200 Lebanese dead, many of them civilians, children...
...In the spring of 2003, Ascherman planted his body outside Palestinian homes slated for demolition in Issawiya and Beit Hanina...
...Robert Hirschfield is a freelancer who writes fior many publications on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict...
...Rabbis for Human Rights has gone to court to challenge this policy...
...He wrote "A Poet Walks the Line," about Naomi Shihab Nye, in the November issue...
...This does not go over well with some activists who are his usual allies...
...It's clear to me we somehow violated the balance between legitimate self-defense and the unwarranted taking of innocent human life...
...Despite the flecks of gray in his reddish beard, words spill from Ascherman in an artless, boyish tumble...
...The occupants, neither terrorists nor suspects, were merely Palestinians unable to obtain legal permits from the Israeli authorities...
...They certainly were not respecting international law or the Torah that I as a rabbi swore to uphold...
...I will not give my usual five-hour speech," he jokes to a synagogue audience...
...Learn to do well...
...I bring up last year's war in Lebanon, and Ascherman, for once, sounds like a hawk inside a dove, a sound heard widely in the Israeli peace camp when the war began...
...He quoted Martin Luther King Jr...
...They said, 'Those are the occupiers!' I understand that," he says...
...They don't regard them as rabbinical issues...
...Is there a big debate among Israeli rabbis over human rights issues...
...As if realizing he's crossed over into dangerous terrain, Ascherman quickly adds: "In our response, there were very serious problems of proportionality...
...He speaks very quickly, as if at any moment he will be silenced...
...Legal permits, according to Ascherman, are usually not given to Palestinians unless they agree to pay bribes or become informers...
...Relieve the oppressed...
...On the home page of his group's website is a quote from Isaiah: "Wash you, make you clean...
...And Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: "In a democracy, a few are guilty-all are responsible...
...The security in the lobby is so tight the building could easily have been transplanted directly from Tel Aviv...
...Seek judgment...
...We were attacked by Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north inside our internationally recognized borders," he says...
...An Israeli who grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, he wears a knitted kipa on his head of unruly black hair...
...But he tries to reason with the settlers, swapping quotations from the Old Testament...
...Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes, cease to do evil...
...I passively resisted not only at the site, but at the police station, so they had to drag me inside, which made them furious," he says...
...When it's an issue of trying to stop a housing demolition, we are definitely opponents," he says...
...But still he persists...
...Also, there was a general trend at the time to crack down on 'the left.'" Ascherman said his piece at the trial...
...These were acts of war, and we were right in going to war...
...The group's mission is to "promote justice and freedom, while campaigning against discrimination and inhumane conduct...
...Israeli soldiers on bulldozers threaten to plow him under...
...It might have been that I did what I did one time too many," he says...
...In this case, one month after the other...
...Then, we expect things from the soldiers...
...But in some cases, we are on the same side, like when we arrange for the army to protect Palestinian olive harvesters from the settlers...
...at his trial: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere...
...Israel has demolished more than 2,500 Palestinian homes and thereby rendered homeless more than 16,000 Palestinians in the last two decades...
...Ascherman was convicted of interfering with a police officer, but the prosecutors agreed to cancel that conviction and ordered Ascherman, without irony, to perform community service...
...He looks at me sadly...
...We speak with them, interact with them...
...A recidivist human shield, he had often been arrested, but never tried...
...He was arrested and convicted a few years ago for his acts of civil disobedience...
...Rabbi Arik Ascherman is the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, which describes itself as "the rabbinic voice of conscience in Israel, giving voice to the Jewish tradition of human rights...
...Imeet up with Rabbi Ascherman in the United Jewish Appeal Federation building in Manhattan early this year...
...They tend to be part of the settler movement...
...They reflect, he says, Israel's general drift to the right since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000...
...The question deflates his energy...
...The vast majority of rabbis don't get involved in such issues," he says...
...The occasion is a three-day conference that Rabbis for Human Rights has organized...
...And he is the near enemy, or almost friend, of the soldiers he encounters on the West Bank...
...He rubs his head slowly when I ask him what led up to his 2004 trial...
...Most of the rabbis who are activists are rabbis on the right...
...Ascherman has said that his mission is to "save the soul of Judaism...
...That is the task this rabbi has assigned himself...
...Certainly not in defense of Palestinians...
...He recalls enraging volunteers with the International Solidarity Movement by shaking a soldier's hand...
Vol. 71 • July 2007 • No. 7
