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May 11, 2001
Mideast message mixed
Intifada is wrong, but Israel is worse, says rabbi.
PAT JOHNSON REPORTER
Starting the intifada was a strategic mistake on the part of the
Palestinians, says a rabbi who is at the forefront of battling the
demolition of Palestinian homes. However, international observers
who are confused about why the peace negotiations collapsed do not
understand what was happening on the ground in the Middle East,
said Rabbi Arik Ascherman.
Ascherman, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, was in
Vancouver last week as part of a three-week fund-raising visit to
North America. His group includes rabbis from the Reform, Orthodox,
Conservative and Reconstructionist movements, and claims to be the
only rabbinic association in Israel to have that cross-section.
On May 3, he spoke to a Beth Israel Lunch and Learn event and to
a meeting at the Peretz Centre sponsored by Jews for a Just Peace.
Though he condemned violence on both sides and said the Palestinians
should have stuck with the struggle to find peace and common ground,
Ascherman said that what North American audiences don't understand
is the daily humiliations perpetrated on Palestinians by the Israeli
state and its military.
Since the Oslo peace process began six years ago, Ascherman said
600 Palestinian homes have been demolished. There have also been
expansions of settlements, uprootings of trees and strict rationing
of water resources to Palestinian villages while Israeli settlements
have swimming pools and green lawns, he said.
Ascherman himself has been arrested for attempting to remove roadblocks
to Palestinian villages. His group is involved in a legal challenge
against the Israeli government over the issue of house demolitions.
He has close relations with Salim Shawamreh, who visited Vancouver
this spring to talk about the destruction of his home. After Shawamreh's
house was rebuilt by volunteers including Ascherman, the government
razed it again last month.
"This home has become a symbol around the world, so it was important
for them to destroy it," said Ascherman.
Interestingly, he said, when Shawamreh's house was being rebuilt,
it provided an opportunity for social interaction among people who
might never have met otherwise. The Jews who came to help the reconstruction
defied the preconceptions of Arab youngsters in that, as Ascherman
put it, "not every Israeli comes with guns to destroy our homes."
On a grander scale, the Jewish-Arab volunteer team was filmed by
Dubai television and broadcast across the Arab world. You can't
buy that kind of PR, said Ascherman.
The rabbi points fingers at both sides, but said the balance is
tipped in Israel's favor because of its military superiority. "Violence
by all sides is wrong, but we can't talk about symmetry because
Israel holds the cards," he said.
Rabbis for Human Rights uses Torah interpretations and tikkun olam
(repairing the world) to guide their work, but Ascherman said they
do not consider their view as the sole correct interpretation.
"I think that the real Zionism today is creating an Israel that
lives up to our highest Jewish values," he said.^
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