Forty-one years in the past, I used to be posted with the Israel Protection Forces as a soldier, within the Palestinian village of Tekoa within the West Financial institution. From the roof of the college constructing my unit was based mostly in, I might look right into a Palestinian household’s yard. Each from time to time once I sat there on guard responsibility, M-16 throughout my lap, I caught the attention of a girl bringing in her household’s laundry. There was disdain, bordering on pity, in her eyes that I felt deep in my soul. I used to be already rethinking the morality of the IDF, and the girl’s contempt knocked me off stability.
At the moment, I stay in Los Angeles. I’m a rabbi and a professor who trains future rabbis. Throughout the 4 years I studied Torah in a West Financial institution settlement, I noticed and encountered many Palestinians however I by no means had an actual dialog with even one in every of them. We lived in several nations, however typically it appeared like totally different planets.
This 12 months, as Jews have fun the Excessive Holy Days, I really feel a accountability to mannequin a distinct manner of being Jewish. Because of this, earlier this month I joined a protest on the places of work of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most important Jewish pro-Israel group in America. We have been demanding that AIPAC cease pressuring Congress to proceed funding Israel’s warfare in Gaza; the U.S. ought to halt army help to Israel so long as we consider it’s committing human rights violations. We invited AIPAC to affix us in calling for a hostage and prisoner deal and quick cease-fire.
Many years in the past, when getting ready for my reserve responsibility, I resolved to behave with kindness and justice. I’d refuse to participate in any pointless or unprovoked violence, I believed. Nevertheless, as soon as I donned the IDF uniform I rapidly realized I used to be a part of the army machine that allowed Israeli Jews to stay in what Sara Yael Hirschhorn, a scholar of the Israel-Palestinian battle, calls “occupied suburbia,” whereas forcing Palestinians to stay in fixed worry. As one Israeli soldier put it in 2014: “The entire thing is, ‘We’re right here, worry us, we’re in management right here.’”
This Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, my time as an IDF soldier has me carrying a have to repent for the occupation and name urgently for a cease-fire. There’s a lengthy list of sins — the Al Chet — that historically is recited a number of occasions throughout Yom Kippur providers. It’s written in plural, to sign that every particular person accepts accountability for the actions of the group. As we think about what now we have to atone for this 12 months, I feel these transgressions listed within the Al Chet are an excellent place to begin: “For the sins now we have sinned unknowingly. For the sins now we have sinned overtly. For the sins now we have sinned with intention and deception. For the sins now we have sinned with inside thought.”
What sins specifically? To start out, some within the American Jewish group have indiscriminately supported the state of Israel, regardless that in January the International Court of Justice discovered it believable that the Israeli authorities was committing genocide and ordered it to take measures to cease. Israel has been criticized for not complying by teams together with the United Nations and Human Rights Watch. And but, the web site of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles proclaims: “Our Federation and the Jewish group of Los Angeles stand in unequivocal solidarity with our homeland,” regardless of rising proof of alleged warfare crimes.
Moreover, some in my group have been so centered on the mandatory grieving for the greater than 1,200 Israelis killed in Hamas’ assaults on Oct. 7 that they haven’t been in a position to acknowledge and grieve the killing of greater than 41,000 Palestinians, lots of them kids, based on Gaza’s Well being Ministry, after Oct. 7 in each Gaza and the West Financial institution. Within the Nova exhibition, for instance, which paperwork the Oct. 7 bloodbath and lately got here to Los Angeles, there may be not a phrase about Oct. 6 or Oct. 8, 2023. In different phrases, there is no such thing as a context besides Israeli struggling. The occupation is just not named; Palestinians will not be named.
The kids who have been displaced from the college my fellow troopers and I occupied 41 years in the past are actually getting into center age. I take into consideration them as I educate the scholars in my classroom now. I hope these soon-to-be rabbis be taught by my instance that there’s a wealthy and very important Judaism that opposes oppression, violence and warfare. I hope they be taught that standing in opposition to wrongdoing is a mitzvah, a Jewish sacred obligation.
My protests, my name for a cease-fire, are a part of the way in which I’m nonetheless responding to that second, a long time in the past, once I locked eyes with my Palestinian neighbor carrying her laundry whereas I held an M-16 and felt ashamed. As a rabbi and a instructor of rabbis, I’m repenting this Yom Kippur for having been part of the occupation.
Aryeh Cohen is a rabbi and a professor at American Jewish College in Los Angeles. He’s a signatory to the “Rabbis for Ceasefire” letter.
