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Recently I attended a presentation on the effects of the Gaza invasion on Israel’s future.
It was given by a well-known rabbi from Israel at a synagogue near Annapolis, Maryland. The rabbi who spoke is the founder of a wonderful organization called “Rabbis for Human Rights” which does excellent work in the occupied territories. They defend against further Palestinian land seizures and the destruction of Palestinian-owned olive groves and orchards by militant Israeli settlers in the Occupied West Bank.

I was not sure what to expect. The presentation was entitled “The Implications of Gaza”.
The audience of about eighty people was composed of mainly members of the congregation, as there were very few outsiders like me in attendance.

I listened intently to the rabbi’s expose of the reasons for the Israeli invasion and its so-called moral justification. Knowing of the work of his organization in Palestine, I held out some hope that it would be a candid and honest recounting of the immorality of what the Israeli government had done. I expected to hear accounts of the brutality of the invasion and the wanton Israeli destruction of homes, schools and even a U.N. food distribution center, and the murder of over 1400 Palestinians, the majority of whom were non-combatant civilians who had no place to take safe refuge from the indiscriminate Israeli military’s shooting and bombing. The rabbi mentioned none of those details.
I was sorely disappointed indeed.

This articulate and intelligent man, with intimate knowledge of the daily humiliation and harassment that has become routine for Palestinians under occupation, proceeded to offer a white-washing justification. His rationale was that Israelis acted in an ethical way. The asymmetry of the number of deaths on each side was dismissed because of what the rabbi called the balance of the threat posed to neighboring Israeli towns who suffered under the th... [Read More]