We are horrified and alarmed by the escalation of violence on the Gaza-Israel border.
Last night, a Palestinian man working inside of Israel was killed — and two Israeli women seriously injured — after a rocket fired from Gaza hit a home in Ashkelon. Hundreds of additional rockets have been fired by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the past day, injuring several Israelis, some critically.
Meanwhile, at least three Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes, on top of seven killed in an undercover Israel Defense Forces operation inside Gaza the previous day. The Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets were in retaliation for this botched operation, in which one Israeli soldier was killed and another moderately wounded.
In last week’s Torah portion, the matriarch Rebecca, pregnant with twins, is overcome with the pain and strife caused by the struggling children within her. Despairing of a solution, she asks “Why do I exist?” (Genesis 25:22) Later, when Esau threatens to kill Jacob for taking his blessing through trickery, she laments, “Let me not be bereaved of both of you in one day!” (Genesis 27:45)
Her wail reflects her understanding that fighting can only lead to more fighting and to compounded tragedy, rather than laying the path for co-existence between the future fathers of two nations. Like Rebecca, we are filled pain at the prospect of even more deaths, which will not lead us any closer to peace or to relief for the people of Gaza or southern Israel.
T’ruah condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. Targeted attacks on civilians, such as these, are a clear violation of international human rights law. We call on the Israeli government, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad to restore the ceasefire and stop the escalating violence.
We call on Israel to exercise restraint. Escalation of violence will neither keep Israelis safer nor solve the long-term humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where Palestinian civilians continue to suffer in large part as a result of the ongoing blockade of Gaza, which itself is a major human rights violation. Rather than resort to a familiar cycle of violence, Israel’s leadership must pursue every avenue to end the violence and to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
We mourn the human losses on both sides and call on both sides to do everything within their power to prevent a war that would solve nothing and result in more tragic losses for both Israelis and Palestinians.
In the long term, only a long-term peace agreement and an end to occupation will end the on-again, off-again violence in Gaza and in southern Israel. Such violence leads to unbearable suffering for residents of Gaza, Israelis living near the border, and the soldiers deployed deep into Gaza. In the short term, Israel must play an active role in ameliorating the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and in ending the cycle of violence.
T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights mobilizes a network of more than 2,000 rabbis and cantors from all streams of Judaism that, together with the Jewish community, act on the Jewish imperative to respect and advance the human rights of all people. Grounded in Torah and our Jewish historical experience and guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we call upon Jews to assert Jewish values by raising our voices and taking concrete steps to protect and expand human rights in North America, Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territories.
To learn more or to speak with T’ruah Executive Director Rabbi Jill Jacobs, contact Julie Wiener at jwiener@truah.org or (212) 845-5201.
