Tag: umm al-khair

israel · sermon · torah

This is Torah. This is its reward.

levtaylor

Loving others will not make you popular.

Pursuing peace will not make you safe.

Choosing life will not protect you from death.

But, if you do not love others, if you do not seek peace, if you do not choose life, who will you be?

When Moses ascended Sinai, he found God adding flourishes to the Torah’s letters, which only Rabbi Akiva would ever be able to read. Moses asked to see what became of Akiva.

The Holy One showed Moses how the Romans flayed Rabbi Akiva’s skin as they martyred him, then sold his flesh in their marketplace.

Moses threw his hands in the air and demanded: “Is this Torah, and this its reward?”

“Silence,” said God. “Such is My will.”

This is Torah. This is its reward.

Vivian Silver was murdered by Hamas on October 7th.

Vivian Silver founded the Israeli peace organisation, Women Wage Peace. She worked for human rights groups like Btzelem and ALLMEP. She lived on Kibbutz Beeri, near the Gaza border, where she engaged in solidarity work with Bedouins, Gazans, and Palestinian construction workers.

Three days before October 7th, she organised a march of 1500 Israeli and Palestinian women for peace.

On October 7th 2023, terrorists broke into her home and murdered her.

Even as she hid from the militants, she gave an interview to Israeli radio, where she said the very fact that she was under attack showed the need for a peace deal.

A year later, her son, Yonatan Zeigen, eulogised her. He said:

“Being a peace activist is not something to save you from being killed in war. It’s something to prevent a war from happening. And to create a reality where war is not an option.”

Silver’s love of others did not make her popular.

Pursuing peace did not make her safe.

Choosing life did not protect her from death.

But it made her fully human.

This is Torah. This is its reward.

On Monday evening, as my community sat down to listen to poetry in preparation for Tisha B’Av, I received a text to say that a Palestinian peace activist I knew had been murdered.

Awdah Hathaleen was shot in the chest in his home.

Awdah lived in the village of Umm al-Khair in the south Hebron hills. I visited his village twice last year with Rabbis for Human Rights. The second time, I stayed in the bunk beds adjacent to his home. In the morning, he brought breakfast to me and the other solidarity activists.

A delegation of Progressive rabbis met Awdah earlier this year when they went to the West Bank with Yachad.

Awdah was an English teacher. He was born in the south Hebron hills and had known tanks, guns and occupation all his life. He worked with Israelis to protect his home and build a peaceful future.

This did not make him popular. For some Palestinians in neighbouring villages, this meant that he was engaged in normalisation with the Israeli occupier.

Indeed, after the Oscar-winning movie about his village, No Other Land, gained international recognition, the BDS movement called to boycott it, because it showed Israelis and Palestinians working together.

Awdah chose the path of non-violence. Even after his uncle, Haj Suleiman, was crushed by an Israeli police tow truck; yes, even after his elder was cruelly murdered; and yes, even after those who killed his uncle were never brought to justice; after all that, he still chose the peaceful path.

For the settlers who wanted to capture his home and ethnically cleanse his village, his activism made him a target.

He and his family never knew safety.

Awdah wrote for 972 Magazine, a joint Israeli-Palestinian publication, about the struggles of raising his traumatised son in this village under attack. He wrote: “He even knows some of the settlers by name. Sometimes I tell him that they went to jail; I’m lying, but I want to make him feel safe.”

He was lying. Settlers who carry out murders do not go to jail.

The man who murdered Awdah was called Yinon Levi. He was filmed doing it. Still, the only person who has been taken into custody by the Israeli police is Awdah’s cousin, Eid, a fellow non-violent activist.

Yinon Levi was already subject to EU sanctions and recognised internationally as a terrorist. But he is protected by government minister, Ben Gvir, who has dedicated his life to helping settlers get away with murder. Even before the far right coalition took power, plenty of settlers had been able to perpetrate atrocities with impunity.

Loving others did not make Awdah popular.

Pursuing peace did not make him safe.

Choosing life did not protect him from death.

No; you will not be better off if you do the right thing.

But God does not ask us to live lives that are comfortable.

There is no commandment in the Torah that we should be popular.

All of us, regardless of religion, are placed on this earth to be God’s stewards; to uphold God’s most sacred commandments; that we must choose life, pursue peace; seek justice; and love the stranger.

This is Torah. This is its reward.

This sacred work comes with no promises. But who else would you want to be?

It is a charge often laid against woolly moralists like me that we do not really get how militants like Hamas think; that we just cannot understand the mentality of the settlers.

That is true. I do not want to think like them. I do not want to become like them.

Who will we be if we let our hearts become warped and set our minds to cruelty?

Loving others will not make you popular. But it will make you loving. And pursuing peace will make you peaceful. And seeking justice will make you just. And that is what your God asks of you.

We are approaching Tisha B’Av, when we recall every catastrophe that befell our people. If you believe that peace is possible and that these assaults on basic humanity are wrong, you can add another disaster to the roster. On Monday, Awdah was murdered.

Yes, a Muslim murdered by a Jew is a tragedy for us all.

A man who was committed to non-violence was shot in the chest by a settler, leaving behind 3 children. He was 31.

Do not give in to cynicism or try to calculate what you might gain for kindness. This world has no guarantees. And we know nothing about the hereafter.

You do what is right because it is right. Because if you do not, who will you be?

This is Torah. This is its reward.

May God have mercy on us all.

diary · israel

The dawn will come

levtaylor

My soul looks to God as a nightguard watches for the morning. – Psalm 130:6

I used to think the night guard was watching for the dawn with eagerness, excitement, and trepidation.

I just did a night shift watching out for army vans and settlers in the village of Umm al-Khair.

Now I know that the night guard simply greets the dawn with a weary sigh.

The last time I was here, we came to see the ruins of their destroyed homes. After we left, settlers and military shot at them.

In the short time since, the settlers have ramped up their aggression. They come in large, fanatical groups to terrorise the neighbourhood.

Night is a time when they feel most at risk. They also now have the added fear that the army, which is now entirely comprised of military reservists from the Hebron settlements, will come and carry out late night arrests.

So the locals stay awake, watching. They say they cannot sleep anyway. If they shut their eyes, fear is waiting in the dark.

The Talmud teaches that there is a state that is neither asleep nor awake. A rabbinic colleague once compared this to breastfeeding a newborn in the night. Now I know another version of this non-sleep. Fear.

I could not sleep either. We were supposed to sleep in shifts of a few hours. I lay down for about four hours.

A local boy stayed up with us to practise his English through the night. He wants to go to university. He hopes he will have passed his exams, but he’s worried, because he was distracted during the maths test, as his house had just been bulldozed.

We watched for every vehicle, every sign of activity, praying that the night would be “boring.”

When dawn broke, the children flooded into the playground where we had been camping out. I spun them round on the merry-go-round and pushed them on the swings.

A five-year-old came up with a cheeky grin and wanted to tell one of the international activists something. She took out an app on her phone that translated for hi.: “Gaza is my family, they are being bombed by Israel.”

In the light of day, I could see the human impact of the occupation. Kids – normal, sweet kids – who already know they are under siege.

Destroyed homes. Murals on walls professing the village’s resilience. Women cooking breakfast and men pouring cups of tea for activists who stayed the night.

Dawn will come to this sacred scrubland.

I know that morning will one day come, after decades upon decades of occupation and war.

But daybreak will not be the moment when all is set right. It will simply be when we take stock of what happened in the night.

In the daylight, we will see all the bodies of repeated catastrophes and finally be able to mourn them.

When dawn comes, we will see all that has been destroyed, and we will realise how much work has to be done to heal and repair.

I will wait for morning to come to Palestine-Israel just like the night guard waits for the first rays of daylight: restlessly, anxiously, hoping there will be enough remaining to begin the processes of reconciliation and rebuilding.

Dawn will surely come, but that will only be the beginning.

Wait, O Israel, for God, for God holds love and redemption. It is God who will redeem Israel from all their sins. – Psalm 130:7-8

diary · israel

We need you here

levtaylor

Last night, Eid Alhad’lin spoke on Zoom to Rabbis for Human Rights from Masafer Yatta, and explained what was happening to his village.

The settlers have cut off water and electricity, demolished homes, and shot people.

I met them last week. Their leader gave a talk to European diplomats in Arabic, then a younger man explained the situation in English. An elderly woman clutched her cane and talked to the women about the sexual harassment she has experienced from settlers.

Not long after we left, the settlers shot them, apparently as reprisal for talking to internationals. The problem, however, was not that we had been there.

It was that we had left.

There was a time when the villagers in Umm al-Khair could call the police for support or rely on the army to stand in their way. Now, if the police come, they will fit the residents for crimes and arrest them. If the army come, it is more likely that they will shoot the villagers. The settlers, too, now have guns and military uniforms.

After the settlers had shot the Palestinians, it seems the army came back to shoot them some more. When ambulances came, settlers prevented them reaching the wounded. It was a wonder the ambulance came at all. Everything in the south Hebron Hills is now geared towards expanding Jewish territory and displacing Palestinians.

The only thing that is preventing greater violence and deeper ethnic cleansing is the presence of internationals and Israelis. While they are being watched, the settlers and the army hold back.

It is, by no means, a solution, but it is the only thing in the power of ordinary individuals.

In order for it to work, however, it needs 24/7 presence from human rights activists in every village. My time here has been quiet, mostly because the village we are supporting has that constant support, predominantly from retired Israelis.

Masafer Yatta has retained a strong international presence, but in the moments where they have been left unsupported, they have experienced dire crisis.

So where are all the internationals? When I talked to Saleh in Sheikh Jarrah, he shared what an outpouring of support they had received around 2008-2009 (when I first became politicised on the issue). But where are they now?

In theory, the entire area should be swamped by radicals and peaceniks. There are millions of tweets about the issue every day, and thousands of demonstrations worldwide. If even a fraction of the people who shared links on the Internet or marched in the big cities would come and do protective presence work, the situation here would look very different.

Come with Rabbis for Human Rights. You don’t have to be a rabbi. You just have to believe in human rights.

There are so many organisations doing this too, and all are struggling to recruit. Join women’s groups supporting the olive harvest. Come with the ISM. Come with the Jewish Centre for Non-Violence. Or Tzedek Torah. I don’t care. Find the group that works for you and get out here.

You can be any age. Plenty of the activists are either university students or retired people.

You don’t have to speak Hebrew or Arabic (though I recommend learning a little).

And, yes, it is dangerous, obviously. Not long before I came out, two Israeli activists were shot. You need to be realistic with yourself about what risks you can take and what it means to you.

But we really do need people.

The settlers have realised that, with fascists in the coalition government and the window of the war in Gaza, they have an unprecedented opportunity to destroy villages and get away with it.

You have the power to reverse that tide.

Get out here.


The Eternal One is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?
God is with me as my helper. I will see the downfall of those who hate. – Psalm 118

diary · israel

A commitment to myself

levtaylor

In my early 20s, when university friends first came back from the West Bank with stories of what they had seen, I did not listen as I should have done.

One friend described the death of a child and sitting consoling her mother and said, “There’s just not enough sad in the world for how sad it is.”

I thought, “yes, yes, I know, let’s get onto talking about action we will take and what our solutions are and how we theorise all this.”

I feel thoroughly embarrassed at how callous I was. I feel deep shame and a need to make amends.

I understand better now why I was wrong.

Yesterday, we went to the ruins of Umm al-Khair to show solidarity. There were not enough activists there to keep a permanent protective presence.

So, as we were in the car on the way to a peace conference, we received news that the villagers had been shot by settlers. Apparently, it was a “revenge” attack on them for daring to show their devastation to internationals.

I listened to speeches with grand promises of peace, equality, and coexistence.

Then, in the car on the way back, we heard that the army had also gone in to shoot at the Bedouin too, and destroyed one of their temporary structures.

The people in Umm al-Khair now have had their homes, water, and electricity destroyed. And they have at least two elderly women in hospital. And these were people I met and looked in the eye and wished for God to give them strength. These were friends of friends with full lives.

After the conference, we had no discussions about the speeches or the ideas. There was nothing to talk about. Only Umm al-Khair. Only getting as many internationals and Israelis there as possible. Only doing everything possible to stop them dying.

It is a small piece of everything that is happening here. How can we talk ideologies when people are dying imminently? We may waste our entire time coming up with solutions while entire families, cultures, and livelihoods are destroyed.

This is my promise to myself. I will not be part of that.

I will never, for a moment, let myself think that ideologies matter more than human lives.

I will always prioritise people first.

Because there is not enough sad in the world, and I wish I had seen that sooner.