Rabbis for Human Rights under assault in israel
JVL Introduction
Rabbis for Human Rights describes itself as “the rabbinic voice of conscience in Israel, giving voice to the Jewish tradition of human rights”.
It has just been evicted by the municipality of Jerusalem from the synagogue which has housed it for many years.
Why? Because it is a human right organisation, opposing the occupation.
This is the latest in an ongoing series of harassments: investigated – and exonerated – by the tax authorities; hounded systematically by the IDF on the West Bank; two American supporters banned from Israel for ten years.
Now this.
The Jerusalem YMCA has offered it alternative accommodation which it has gratefully accepted; it is now appealing for funds to furnish and support it.
Visit its website and donate to further its work.
Friends
About a month ago, we were told to leave our offices at once.
For years our home was the Mevakshei Derech Synagogue in Jerusalem. A synagogue. Then Shai Glick, a right wing activist branded by Israel’s own Ombudsman for Judges as a “serial complainant who doesn’t verify facts” told the city that a human rights organization had no business working out of a house of prayer built on municipal land. The Deputy Mayor agreed. Before we had finished carrying out the boxes, the eviction was already being celebrated in the Israeli press.
I want to be honest with you about the year this eviction closes:
We have been accused in fake news reports; An MK (Likud) filed a complaint that triggered a tax authority investigation, which examined us closely and cleared us completely; The military restricted our presence in the West Bank so persistently that we petitioned the Supreme Court, which ruled that those orders were being used improperly; Two American Jewish women who stood with our communities were banned from entering Israel for ten years, and we are still fighting that in court; Our staff are tracked; Our staff are threatened. What began as isolated incidents now arrive in a deluge.
You could read a year like that as a warning. We read it as proof.
The pressure has grown because our work threatens those who push for war and conflict. The Palestinian communities who were meant to be pushed off their land quietly are not being pushed quietly, because we are standing beside them, and because you are standing behind us. Every complaint, every ban, every eviction notice is an admission that our presence changes what those in power think they can do unnoticed. They are not spending this much effort on an organization that fails.
We are not retreating. We are moving.
The Jerusalem YMCA has opened its doors to us, and there is no home we would rather rebuild in. The YMCA hosted our International Human Rights Day conference. It was the base for this year’s Interfaith March for Human Rights and Peace, when Jews, Muslims, and Christians walked Jerusalem together. It has partnered with us to carry food into West Bank communities under threat. Its convictions are ours: faith that acts, dignity that refuses the lines drawn to divide people. Being pushed out of one building has landed us inside a partnership that makes us stronger.
V’asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham. (Exodus 25:8) Make Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them. A room does not become holy because of its walls. It becomes holy because of what people do inside it. The phone calls before dawn. The drives to villages facing demolition. The choice, made again every morning, to show up.
The move, the higher rent, and the refurbishment have left us with roughly 120,000 NIS (~$40k/£30K) in costs we did not plan for, arriving in a year that already asked a great deal of us.
We are turning to the people who have carried this work with us this far. Help us furnish the room we work from. Your gift buys the desks, the chairs, and the resources that let our team pick up the phone at dawn and answer the next family that calls.
With gratitude, and with resolve,
Anton Goodman
Rabbis for Human Rights
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