If All Rabbis Were Like Arik Ascherman, Middle East Peace Would Be Attainable

By Pat McDonnell Twair

Viewers of CNN news probably are familiar with Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the tall, thin bearded man who places himself before Israeli bulldozers on their way to demolish Palestinian homes or olive groves. There he stands—until Israeli soldiers drag him away.

The American-born, Harvard-educated idealist explains that he had an epiphany during the sixth and seventh months of the current intifada. It was then that he graduated from protesting the war against civilians to performing acts of resistance, such as defying bulldozers and trying to refill ditches blockading Palestinian villages.

“I’ve moved to a different space,” he said recently in Los Angeles, which he visited as part of a nationwide American tour. “I am trying to get through to the average Israeli, to make him understand the wholesale war that is being waged against the non-combatant Palestinian population.”

In 1998, Rabbi Ascherman became executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR), an organization including 90 ordained Israeli rabbis and rabbinical students. They joined forces in 1988 in an attempt to counteract the indifference of much of Israel’s religious leadership and citizenry to their state’s abuse of the Palestinian people.

Ascherman stressed that RHR works for the human rights of Jews, Palestinians and foreign workers alike. It has condemned both Israelis and Palestinians, he explained, but contends that it is Israel who holds most of the power.

“The work I do isn’t fun,” stated the dedicated humanitarian, speaking to a small audience at the Workmen’s Circle in Los Angeles on May 9. “As a rabbi and a Zionist, it’s not a great pleasure to work in the deepest, darkest secrets of Israeli society that most would rather think do not exist.”

Rabbi Ascherman first locked horns with Israel’s Catch-22 mentality in his attempt to preserve the house of Saleem Shawarmah. The modest house has come to symbolize Israel’s policy to make it nearly impossible for Palestinians to receive legal building permits. Then, when they are forced to construct a house without a permit, their homes are demolished for having been built illegally.

Shawarmah built his house in 1996 in the West Bank village of Anata.

“Anata is the biblical Anatot, home of Jeremiah the Prophet,” Rabbi Ascherman noted. “I wonder what he would have to say about all this if he were here today.”

The house was demolished in July of 1998, rebuilt, and demolished again in August 1998. In the summer of 1999, the house again was rebuilt and dedicated.

“Israel lives in a bubble in which it claims every action is carried out according to law,” Rabbi Ascherman said. “It is important to step back and look at the big picture—that no Palestinian is getting a permit—and then step forward and recognize the absurdity of the micro view that questions the legality of the decision.”

When it questioned the reason for the demolition of the Shawarmah house, RHR was told that the family had no permit to build on agricultural land, that the house was on a slope with a steep incline, or was too close to a strategic road.

“When all these excuses resulted in bad public relations, the government floated a trial balloon that two co-owners of the land had failed to sign a permit to build,” the rabbi continued. “We replied, ‘Fine, tell us who the two co-owners are and we will get their signatures.’ The civil administration stated it couldn’t release this information, then it claimed it had lost the file. Finally, we signed up everyone in the village and we never found these two co-owners.

“Thirty days ago,” the rabbi told his audience, “the Israelis bulldozed Saleem’s home again. I was arrested for trying to prevent the demolition. I believe his house was targeted because it has become a symbol of the struggle against house demolitions.

“Micro or macro,” he pointed out, “the political decision is not to let Palestinians live in Area C.”

Area C, Rabbi Ascherman explained, is West Bank land under total Israeli control; still-to-be-negotiated Area B is under Palestinian civilian and Israeli military jurisdiction; and Area A is Palestinian-controlled land.

Nonetheless, he said, he believes RHR’s efforts have helped the Palestinians, and that house demolitions diminished drastically since the organization, as a member of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, became involved in 1998. He qualified this, however, by noting that, three months after the onset of the al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000, the Israeli army and civil administration resumed demolishing Palestinian homes.

Since Ariel Sharon came to power in March, the rabbi added, there have been three days of massive demolitions, and more have been ordered.

All Jewish Israelis, he said, were angry when, in October, Israeli Arabs protested in sympathy with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. “There was anger when Israelis had to turn on the radio to learn what roads were safe inside the Green Line,” Ascherman recalled.

“Yes, the Palestinian protests inside Israel were violent, but there was no use of arms,” he specified. “High unemployment was a major factor in the demonstrations. Testimony at the commission of inquiry has highlighted excessive use of force and the fact that some of the demonstrations were taking place peacefully inside villages. Twelve of the 13 Israeli Arabs were killed in an area under the command of Alec Ron,” the rabbi noted, “whom the Palestinians identified as racist.”

The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has released a report documenting that, across the Green Line, Palestinians only took up firing arms after Israeli security forces shot to kill rock-throwing youngsters. This report, he stressed, revealed that, in some cases, Israelis were firing in self-defense, but that in many others, excessive force over and beyond military regulations was exercised. According to B’Tselem, ambulances, medics and humanitarian workers dispersing medicine and food were targeted by Israeli soldiers and prevented from carrying out their emergency work. Photos provided by the Israeli army to back up allegations that Palestinian ambulances were running guns were not of ambulances at all.

Turning to the failed Camp David peace talks, Rabbi Ascherman noted that “the average Israeli says [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Barak offered more to the Palestinians than any other Israeli leader.” Although Barak had “moved the peace negotiations forward by light-years,” Ascherman added, “before too many crocodile tears are wept, look at how the Palestinians perceive this.

“We had warned for a long time that the Palestinians had tuned out on negotiations between the leaders because actions speak louder than words,” he continued. “Parallel to the negotiations, the Palestinians were victims of a quiet war of settlement expansion, tree uprootings, unfair water allocations, and withholding the freedom of movement. They didn’t perceive this as a peace process. This quiet war against the Palestinians is something for which we Israelis must accept responsibility.”

Israeli Media Blackout

Ascherman decried the Israeli media’s near-blackout on the work of RHR and other Israeli peace organizations. Allowing that the situation has improved slightly, he lamented the scant coverage of what is happening to Palestinians during their intifada.

“Every hour, Israelis hear about Palestinian attacks,” he said, “but they don’t know the rest of the story—the targeting of medics and health workers, the uproooting of 30,000 olive trees, the humiliations, blockades and excessive force against unarmed protesters.

“When I talk to Israeli reporters,” he said, “they ask if my source is Palestinian or the army. When Palestinians are automatically discounted as a legitimate source…something is wrong.”

At the onset of the current intifada, Ascherman said, one of RHR’s first important efforts was to help Palestinians prevented by the siege from leaving their villages to harvest their olives. “When we were there,” he recalled, “the army protected us from the settlers and the media showed up.”

Israel is mowing down Palestinian olive trees, the rabbi said. The systematic destruction of a staple of the Palestinian economy—its olive trees, some of which are hundreds of years old—Ascherman finds particularly egregious. RHR is seeking international donations to support families whose trees have been uprooted. In addition to replanting saplings, RHR is trying to support families who will suffer economic losses for six to 10 years, until new trees bear fruit. Palestinians estimate this loss at $75 per tree per year. In addition, RHR is selling olive oil for families who can’t sell their oil because they are forbidden from transporting goods into Israel or across borders.

The residents of Deir Istia appealed to the Israeli high court against a plan to destroy 1,500 olive trees. The army wanted to remove the trees after an Israeli woman was seriously injured by stones thrown from an olive grove.

“We won, and only 10 trees were cut down,” Ascherman said. “What is really going on,” he acknowledged, “is wholesale pressure against the Palestinian people.”

“I’m not saying the Palestinians are angels,” the rabbi added, “but Israel is the dominant power, it holds all the cards. As a rabbi, it is my duty to talk to Jews about injustice. In the year 2001, we have the scientific technology to disperse crowds, even riots, without using lethal force.

“The assaults on Palestinian civilians have been so massive that it has forced me to move to another level,” he said. “The bottom line is I have a two-year-old daughter and I want to be able to say the right thing in a few years when she asks, ‘Daddy, what were you doing when the Palestinians were being assaulted?’”

Rabbi Ascherman is married to Rabbi Einat Ramon, the first Israeli-born woman to be ordained as a rabbi. They hold the distinction of being Israel’s only rabbinic couple.

Despite death threats from right-wing extremists who charge RHR with harming Israel’s best interests, Ascherman says his efforts to break down Palestinian stereotypes are in Israel’s long-term interests.

“It’s almost like déja vu when I call on families living in tents or caves and the parents waken their children to introduce them to us,” Rabbi Ascherman related. “Even though these are humiliated people whose homes have been destroyed, they tell their children they want them to meet religious Jews who are helping them.”

During the question-and-answer period, the rabbi was asked if the Conservative and Reform Jewish movements have been active in RHR.

“They tend to concentrate on their struggle for recognition in Israel,” he relied, “and don’t want to get involved as movements.” He pointed out, however, that RHR is the only Israeli rabbinical organization comprising Reform, Orthodox, Conservative, Renewal and Reconstructionist rabbis and students. Many Conservative and Reform rabbis, he added, become involved as individuals.

When asked about the right of return for Palestinian refugees, Rabbi Ascherman was silent for a good half a minute before responding that his personal belief is in one secular democratic state in which everyone has the right of return.

“I believe that in the long term, we need a world without borders or nation states as we know them today,” he explained. “However, I don’t believe it will work to do this in Israel/Palestine alone, or that such a solution is workable in the short term.”

He qualified this by stating that there are only a handful of Israelis willing to consider this premise, because “this can only be done when a state is no longer necessary to guarantee the physical and cultural safety of Jews in our historic homeland.”

Information about RHR and its activities is available on its Web site, http://www.rhr.israel.net

Pat McDonnell Twair is a free-lance writer based in Los Angeles.