Open letter to Chief Rabbi Mirvis
Marge Berer, like many of us, was outraged at Rabbi Mirvis’s high-handed dismissal of he ICJ ruling on the Gaza genocide.
She wrote this open letter to the Chief Rabbi describing not only current events in Gaza but also Israel’s long history of transgressions of international law.
She sent this letter to the Guardian who declined to publish it; neither, unsurprisingly, has Rabbi Mirvis responded.
MC
Dear Rabbi Mirvis
I feel compelled to write to you to say that I believe you are wrong when you say that the International Court of Justice’s assessment of Israel’s decimation of Gaza is a “disingenuous misappropriation of the term genocide”. Genocide is not a crime that has only happened once, or only to European Jews in the 20th century. It has happened to many other peoples in this world and in more than one century, and it is happening to the entire population of Gaza now, with thousands of West Bank Palestinians increasingly detained, tortured and threatened too.
Judaism teaches that justice and human rights are incumbent upon Jewish people. The most important human right is the right to life. The Israeli government is violating the most important principles of Judaism in its treatment of Palestinians. You should be taking responsibility to condemn that.
It is misplaced self-importance and a huge injustice to others to consider that we are the only people in history who have been slaughtered unjustly in large numbers. And although it is very hard indeed to swallow that Jews are capable of and are committing genocide only a few generations after the Holocaust, when, among all the peoples of the world, we should know better, it is also long past due time to face the fact that Jews can be fascists and mass murderers – just like everyone else. And face the fact that every state in the United Nations must abide by international law and not commit well-defined crimes against humanity or genocide ever. Never again means not against or by anyone.
Israel is not a religious group. They chose to become a State and must therefore abide by the international laws incumbent on every State, including human rights law and humanitarian law. Millions of Palestinians were living on the land that covers all of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank for centuries. They were and are the indigenous people of Palestine and have at least as much right – if not far more right – to have an independent State there.
Israel has continuously broken international law and violated the rights of Palestinians since it first became a state in 1948, and long before that, pushing huge numbers of Palestinians and Bedouins off their land, taking over or destroying their homes, shops, farms, and whole villages, putting up walls and jails to imprison them, forbidding them to move freely around their own country, forcing them into becoming refugees in adjacent countries, denying them citizenship and killing them by the tens of thousands for eight decades now. It is long past time for Israel to own up to all these atrocities, which the whole Western world has allowed to happen out of racism and guilt for not stopping the Nazi genocide sooner. But that guilt does not excuse Israel for genocidal crimes for one second, let alone for telling bald-faced lies, such as accusing others of crimes without providing any evidence, and denouncing UN staff who are risking their own lives every minute to save the lives of others whom Israel is assassinating, 70% of them children and women.
Many countries across the world have committed atrocities and crimes against humanity. Many have also created the United Nations to try and bring countries together to work for the common good and to build peace and ensure justice. The International Court of Justice has taken a huge step forward in its ruling against Israel. South Africa, in memory of Nelson Mandela, should be thanked profusely for taking this case to them. The rest of the countries of the world, and especially the United States and too many European countries, must ensure that the ruling is now complied with, preferably immediately or at most within one month, or be held seriously complicit. The near-100% majority of the Court’s members, 15-2 or 16-1 on all six counts, shows just how strongly held the support for their ruling was among them. Now – it needs to happen.
Yours sincerely
Marge Berer
Thank you so much for your eloquent words. It is so important that we find the voice to speak truth to power even while they turn a deaf ear.
Perhaps JVL should also compose a letter to the rabb mirvis and have all our signatures attached also send to the telegraph! The mail and the mirror…. See if one of them might
Print if.
Powerful and excellent letter, Marge. You speak for very many of us not as eloquent as you. Thank you.
It’s a disgrace there has been no acknowledgment from the Chief Rabbi.
Marge, your “human to human”, faith-filled appeal to Rabbi Mirvis deserved a far better response than you’ve yet had. In time it may come.
On what grounds did the abominable The Grauniad refuse to publish this letter?
The Guardian is never there when you need it!
The key section in this wonderful letter is the passage that says:
‘It is misplaced self-importance and a huge injustice to others to consider that we are the only people in history who have been slaughtered unjustly in large numbers. And although it is very hard indeed to swallow that Jews are capable of and are committing genocide only a few generations after the Holocaust, when, among all the peoples of the world, we should know better, it is also long past due time to face the fact that Jews can be fascists and mass murderers – just like everyone else. ‘
Racism is not a biological inheritance it is a product of society. Any group is capable of being genocidiers and mass murderers. Israelis are not exempt and when we see some of the tik tok videos Israeli youth are producing which parody Palestinian suffering in a vile racist way this truth is self evident.
Unfortunately this open letter is wasted on a settler-trained rabbi who praised the march of the flags in Jerusalem where the main chant is ‘death to the Arabs’. Mirvis is an intellectual lightweight who knows nothing of substance. His assertion that Zionism and Judaism are one and the same demonstrates his abysmal ignorance of Jewish history
As I have had numerous occasions to say, I couldn’t have put it better myself. If it weren’t quite so long, I would be embroidering that onto one of my ‘Cruelty Cushions’. Could somebody in power please listen now?
“……it is also long past due time to face the fact that Jews can be fascists and mass murderers – just like everyone else. And face the fact that every state in the United Nations must abide by international law and not commit well-defined crimes against humanity or genocide ever. Never again means not against or by anyone.”
Here! Here!
Unlikely I’d write to rabbi Mirvis but the thought briefly flashed across my mind, if I did, what would I want him to hear? Surely this: “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire”, but I’d emphasise the earlier section of the same exposition, “[a]nyone who destroys a [single] life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed an entire world.”
But I don’t really know what it means so I had a look and what I found was worryingly disconcerting. ‘mi yodeya’ elaborates http://tinyurl.com/3dpf9n7h
He first quotes the text in an English translation from Sanhedrin 4:5, but then highlights a discrepancy with the original Hebrew somewhat tentatively writes, ‘[i]t seems to me that the English omits a stipulation within the famous sentences that the life saved be *Jewish*.’
All Hebrew versions seem to contain the word, although some put it in brackets, the blogger states, and then asks why all the English translations leave it out. Since the original idea depends on the notion of Adam’s creation (a single life) as founder of all humanity, how would it make sense to limit the idea of saving life to Jews only?
So, Rebbe, here’s a question for you. According to Halacha, when we want to avoid collateral damage in war, must we save only Jewish civilians, or may we also save non-Jewish ones too? If unfortunately we have to kill some civilians to accomplish our war aims, is that alright, as long as we don’t kill any Jewish ones more than is necessary to prevent their capture as awkward hostages? You might consider a drasha, Rebbe?
A brave letter, Marge Berer, and it is a great pity that the Chief Rabbi did not respond with the same courage, but took the coward’s way out and ignored it. Shame on The Guardian for doing the same, pretending that voices like yours don’t exist. They do, and their numbers are growing daily. Thank you for speaking for so many whose voices go unheard in this sick world, where truth is punished and liars are rewarded.
Thank you Marge Berer for your letterto the Rabbi Mirvis
It was written in an unimaginably restrained manner I have seen statements from other Rabbis eg Rabbi Feldman and Rabbi Weiss of USA which conradict Rabbi Mirvis’s position. Also one from the Rabbi for IDF which absolves IDF soldiersfrom the restraint put upon them to avoid sex with non Jews and encouraging them to rape Palestinians to aid their (i.e. Soldiers) morale.
I seem to remember reading a report of Rabbi Mirvis being in the company of a crowd of Israelis shouting: “Kill the Arabs”. Have I got it wrong? Was the event misreported?
Thank you for your heartfelt and beautifully expressed letter. I was moved to read it and I’m continually grateful for the brave clarity of those whose writing appears in JVL on this agonising subject, it helps me to feel the solidarity of others who bear witness, like you, to the suffering and injustice.
Superb letter. Thank you Marge, and shame on the Guardian.
Brilliant. Needs to be more widely available. So disappointing but not surprising that Guardian wouldn’t publish.
It’s hard to even imagine but trust me the world has changed irrevocably, Jews committing Genocide makes you normal, just like the rest of us, makes Israel just another Pariah state, makes their supporters liable and accountable, we should be thanking you
Written in the spirit of Mel Brooks and after watching Blazing Saddles last night
This Chief Rabbi is observably a Conservative Friends of Israel Strictly Zionist establishment politician, above all else, with observably minimal morality.
His ‘Christian’ counterpart, the Archbishop of Cant, is, not so coincidentally, also a Conservative Friends of Israel Strictly Zionist establishment politician, above all else, with observably minimal morality. The Arch-hypocrite is also representative only of a minority of his religion. The Archbishop of Cant is actually a political appointee and was chosen by establishment politicians.
The two quasi-religious representatives of the British political establishment have been active in manipulating the present choice of Two Tory Parties with near identical failed policies throughout, denying us a democratic choice and putting our country into bad positions across a range of major problems.
Chief Rabbi Mirvis is from the same ‘pea-pod’ as his predecessor, Jonathan Sacks.
I’ve attempted several time to have this story published in the press without success but that’s not too surprising. The ‘Thought for the Day’ referred to is an example of CoE sycophancy towards a Chief Rabbi and his thoughts.
I heard on the Today Programme (18/12/2020) the “Thought for the Day” delivered by Bishop James Jones, in appreciation of the late Lord Sacks. It had relevance to the occupation of Palestine.
The bit in question is repeated below. The full original is still (was at the time of writing) available on the BBC Today website.
Bishop Jones: “Some years ago I spent time listening to young people’s dreams and dreads about the future. It made me re-think my own attitude to the environment. What did Jesus have to say about the earth? What were the Jewish and Muslim ethics of Creation?
I went to see the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. When I ventured that Jews might begin with Genesis he stopped me.
‘No, James. That’s a very Christian way of reading the Bible on this subject!’
‘No’, he repeated, ‘we start in Deuteronomy with God’s instruction to Moses that as they entered the Promised Land they were never to destroy a fruit bearing tree.’ Long before anyone knew the science of climate change there was a religious intuition that trees were central to our ecology.
Just as I was leaving this ‘masterclass’ he posed a question. ‘Do you know what the three most extraordinary words of Jesus were?’ Here was the Chief Rabbi putting a Christian bishop on the spot about Jesus, and I didn’t know the answer.
He raised his eyebrows, ‘But I say’. Apparently there’s no evidence from that period of a rabbi saying as Jesus did, ‘You’ve heard it said, but I say …’. ”
Quite extraordinary. Had “God’s instruction to Moses” stood the test of time, today thousands of “fruit bearing trees”, along with the olive tree farmers, their homes, their lives, Palestine infrastructure and freedom would not have been destroyed, or continue to be destroyed.
I found the unconscious irony revealed on the part of Lord Sacks, as related by Bishop James Jones, and the Bishop’s failure to recognise and question it, truly staggering.
Genocide also befell huge numbers of Indigenous peoples in the Americas, the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda, and the Midianites (according to the Old Testament Book of Numbers 31:17-18) who were allegedly slaughtered, except for the female children, who were enslaved by the armies of Moses.
I, as many others will, applaud you for what you have bravely written.
Sadly, I don’t think that Netanyahu can be stopped or brought to his senses; like Putin, he has the bloodlust of a coward and a loser who doesn’t care who or what goes down with him. And those, the US and the UK, have confirmed Netanyahu in his genocidal vengeance.
The Chief Rabbi Has Always Been a Servant of Empire
Pro-Israel, pro-empire. by Joseph Finlay 5 February 2024
https://novaramedia.com/2024/02/05/the-chief-rabbi-has-always-been-a-servant-of-empire/
Sorry but for the record we owe the Russians everything, 27 million died defeating the Nazis
Many thanks to all of you for your supportive responses to my letter to Chief Rabbi Mirvis. I have to say I’m very glad I knew nothing about him before I wrote it. There are no polite words for what I felt about his attempt at ownership of “our genocide”. BTW I didn’t expect a reply from him. What I’d really like to know is whether he ever even saw the letter. I shared the letter here because I think we need to be writing far more to the perpetrators and high level supporters of the genocide as well as for each other. I can give you Biden’s web address at the White House if you like… And Keir Starmer’s too!!
Dear Marge Berer,
Thankyou for sharing your letter & everything you’ve said vibrates the horror, outrage & sadness I feel everyday for the Palestinians & the innocent people caught up in this GENOCIDE.
All the Torah quoting by the illegal settlers & their utter atrocious murders of farmers & Bedouins is beyond belief! This one act that quoting words from the Torah & Talmud gives permission to steal property & murder babies, children their parents is the very thing ALL Rabbis should condemn!
Yet Mirvis like Welby are political agents & have abused their religions & taken on the mantles of RIGHTEOUSNESS & HYPOCRISY!
Christianity, Islam, Judaism is made up of good & horrible people even the sanctimonious Bhuddists have shown their hypocrisy & the Mayamar people.
As for the Guardian it has lost its way like most media who bend towards right wing politics & the media moguls who own it all. There are still a handful of sincere & genuine journalists but only a handful sadly!
I have shared your letter several times gladly because truth MUST be spread Thankyou my dear lady for trying to get it published, perhaps sharing it would make it public.