We are dismayed by the escalation of violence on the Gaza-Israel border, and call on both Israel and Hamas to take every possible step to avoid a new war.
There is no justification of attacks on civilians, including the mortars that Islamic Jihad launched at southern Israel this morning, one of which hit the yard of a kindergarten. Such actions constitute a violation of human rights and endanger Israeli civilians living near the Gaza border.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response, threatening escalation, will neither keep Israelis safer nor solve the long-term humanitarian crisis in Gaza. 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.
In Deuteronomy 20:10, the Torah says, “When you approach a town to attack it, you shall offer it terms of peace.” Commenting on this passage, the Vilna Gaon, an 18th-century scholar considered the leading commentator of his generation, noted that peace “is the greatest thing in the world,” and that, in attacking a town, one should not “starve it out or make its people die of thirst or disease.”
We call on Israel to pursue talks to negotiate a cessation of violence, as Hamas has proposed; to make every effort to refrain from using live fire on demonstrators during Palestinian protests planned around the June 5 anniversary of the Six Day War; and to ease restrictions that have contributed to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The Hamas government shares significant blame for the situation in Gaza, as a result of its repression, corruption, terrorism, and continued violent rejection of the existence of Israel. So does Egypt, which has largely closed its border with Gaza. However, Israel, which continues to control Gaza’s borders, air space, and population registry more than a decade after the official disengagement, maintains the greatest responsibility for the humanitarian crisis there, and has the greatest power to ease it.
In the long term, only a peace agreement will end the on-again, off-again violence on the Gaza border, which endangers residents of Gaza, along with Israelis living near the border, and the soldiers sent to protect this border. In the short term, Israel must play an active role in ameliorating the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and in breaking the cycle of violence.
We encourage Israel to deploy all of the creativity of the start-up nation to ameliorating this crisis, refraining from escalating violence at the border, and ultimately working toward a two-state solution that will keep both Israelis and Palestinians safe.
Media Contact
Julie Wiener, T’ruah Communications Director
jwiener@truah.org; 917-655-4586
About T’ruah
T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, brings together rabbis and cantors from all streams of Judaism, together with all members of the Jewish community, to 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.
