Jerusalem, January 10, 2002

Rabbis for Human Rights have a pending libel action against our organization and Nadia Matar, for a statement made by us, following the Arab murder of Dov Dribben on his Maon farm, which claimed that Arik Ascherman and Rabbis For Human Rights incited the Arabs to the murder of Dov Dribben. A recent ruling by a Shalom Court Judge claimed that there was no issue of fact and granted the plaintiffs summary judgment, despite the fact that Chief Justice Barak had previously stated there were issues of fact and that there should be a full trial. (There is a pending leave to appeal from the decision of the Shalom Court Judge.) In this context the following article is extremely pertinent to understand the nature of the Rabbis for Human Rights and their leader Arik Ascherman.

Rabbis for Jewish Life
Avraham Feder
("Jerusalem Post" - op. ed.)
Thursday, January 10, 2002

At first look, who would deny the importance of an organization which advertises itself as a traditional Jewish voice for "social justice, equality, and humanity." David Forman's recent tribute (December 28) to the activities of such an organization with the ambitious if somewhat pretentious name of "Rabbis for Human Rights," gives the impression that we are now truly blessed with a new prophetic illumination for our difficult times.

We all need to take a second look, however, at what Forman and his RHR are selling. Initially and fundamentally, Forman and the Rabbis for Human Rights have not acknowledged that we are at war. They might then note that the US Constitution, Article III Section 3:1 states: "Treason against the US shall consist in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort..."

Members of the RHR attempt to break down barriers put up by the Israel Defense Forces to defend against terrorists; they give money to replant olive trees cut down by the IDF, which are again defending Israeli citizens against terrorists. RHR's spokesman, participating in the anti-Semitic "lynching" of Jews and Judaism at Durban, characterized Israel publicly as an apartheid state.

These are acts which give aid and comfort to our enemies - clear and simple! Among our group of protesters against the activities of the RHR are those who have served in the army and/or who have sons and daughters and other close relatives who serve and have served. Forman's charge on this score - that "virtually all of them have never been in the army here" - therefore, is not only cheap but incorrect. Besides, serving in a nation's army doesn't immunize one to moral and political error; nor does it legitimate religious arrogance. For Forman to characterize alternative portrayals of Judaism as "chauvinistic... in which a national ego is projected onto God" is prejudicial, demagogic, and utterly wrong-headed.

There are Israeli Jews out there who consider themselves religious and at the same time are not ashamed of being patriotic, which, in a time of war, especially means focussing principally if not exclusively on the welfare and well-being of Jews.

There is indeed a Jewish tradition which speaks of a "prophetic vision of social justice." Moreover, the classical prophets were hyper-critical of their own people when they had to be. But there is never any doubt as to their Zionist passion and love for the Jewish people. There may be universalistic dimensions to their message, but their immediate concern is emphatically particularistic. They may dream of mending the world, but their abiding concern is for the security and welfare of the Children of Israel.

We know that we must never surrender the task of seeking and applying standards of justice in the world. But we also know that we are living in a world inhabited by wolves where the justice we seek to apply must always be justice conditioned by circumstances. And the circumstances in which we Jews and Israelis find ourselves is still a life-or-death post-Holocaust struggle against enemies who, in their words to their people and in their daily acts of terror, underscore their relentless pursuit of our destruction.

Rabbis for Human Rights has a manifesto which lists its "principles of faith" based appropriately on quotations from biblical and rabbinic literature. What is clear from the priorities given in their activities, however, is that their cardinal principle of faith is an abstract Kantian definition of ethics divorced from the real world. Implicit in their definition of "human rights" is a blind commitment to certain abstract articulations of the rights of man which may have inspired a variety of liberal revolutions in the Western world. They may have even helped in the emancipation of Jews-as-individuals in the Western world. Indeed, theoretically, Jews as individuals were to be given rights like other people; but practically speaking, Jews as members of the Jewish nation were to be given no rights. It is clear that members of RHR have not yet awakened to the reality brought home in apocalyptic terms by the Holocaust: that any system of human rights is morally flawed and politically bankrupt if it does not allow for the Jewish people to exercise its national human rights to be a sovereign nation in its own land and to build a society in that land which is recognized and secure.

The claim that RHR has "never taken a stance on the political situation in the territories" is coy and misleading. Forman's phrase "marauding settlers" is a picturesque summary of an ideology which is plainly hostile to Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria. Finally, in Israel and all over the Jewish world there are a host of organizations which, in their programs of education, social service, and political activism implicitly and explicitly teach and actualize the Jewish tradition of human rights. The RHR would do well to change its name along with some of its agenda. Let it be a more modest name and a more unequivocally Jewish agenda.

(The writer is rabbi of Moreshet Yisrael, Jerusalem.)

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