Rabbis For Human Rights: The Annual Report 2012-2013
Rabbis For Human Rights: The Annual Report 2012-2013
Rabbis For Human Rights: The Annual Report 2012-2013
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RABBIS FOR<br />
HUMAN RIGHTS<br />
لجا نم ينماخاح<br />
ناسنلاا قوقح<br />
- טפשמ ירמוש<br />
םדא תויוכז ןעמל םינבר<br />
<strong>Annual</strong> Activity <strong>Report</strong><br />
<strong>2012</strong>- <strong>2013</strong>
As<br />
As many of our North<br />
American friends<br />
and supporters<br />
already know, it was<br />
announced in January <strong>2013</strong> that<br />
RHR and RHR-NA were severing<br />
their fiscal relationship, and that<br />
RHR-NA would now be known as<br />
“Tru’ah.” We are therefore taking<br />
the opportunity to “reintroduce<br />
ourselves” in this report, as well<br />
as highlighting our achievements,<br />
challenges, plans and goals.<br />
<strong>The</strong> section for each department<br />
begins with a summary of what<br />
the department does and who<br />
is involved. In these opening<br />
remarks, I would like to summarize<br />
the history and mandate of RHR. I<br />
and other staff and board members<br />
are making a special effort this year<br />
to visit communities around the<br />
world. Please contact us if you<br />
are interested in inviting us. We<br />
also make every effort to provide<br />
presentations, text study and/<br />
or tours to visiting groups and<br />
individuals. Please contact us about<br />
our own Jewish Leadership <strong>Human</strong><br />
<strong>Rights</strong> Tour October 1st – 8th, timed<br />
so that you can be in the courtroom<br />
with us for a crucial High Court<br />
session on October 3rd.<br />
RHR is “Israel’s rabbinic voice of<br />
conscience.” In successes deemed<br />
impossible, we have in very<br />
concrete ways changed Israeli<br />
policy, improving the lives of both<br />
Israelis and Palestinians. An equally<br />
important mandate is to expose our<br />
fellow Israelis to an understanding<br />
of Torah and our Israeli Declaration<br />
of Independence that challenge<br />
the nationalistic/particularistic<br />
Opening Word-President and Senior Rabbi<br />
Opening Word<br />
Rabbi Rabbi Arik Arik Ascherman<br />
understanding dominant in Israel<br />
today both among religious and<br />
secular Jews. In our work with<br />
Palestinians, we help to break<br />
down stereotypes and restore hope<br />
in the possibility of a better future.<br />
RHR was founded in 1988 by a<br />
group of Orthodox, Reform and<br />
Conservative rabbis, led by Rabbi<br />
David <strong>For</strong>man z”l. Today we are<br />
approximately 120 Israeli rabbis,<br />
also including Reconstructionist,<br />
Renewal and <strong>Human</strong>istic rabbis.<br />
In the challenging days of the<br />
First Intifada, Rabbi <strong>For</strong>man wrote<br />
an open letter to Israel’s Chief<br />
Rabbinate, asking why the religious<br />
establishment focused almost solely<br />
on Shabbat observance and Kashrut.<br />
As important as these things are, he<br />
asked where were rabbis like Rabbi<br />
Abraham Joshua Heschel addressing<br />
the burning moral issues our society<br />
faced from a religious Jewish<br />
perspective. While not ignoring the<br />
very real physical dangers that we<br />
faced, he argued that these threats<br />
could not be used as an excuse to<br />
behave immorally ourselves. In<br />
the words of Hillel the Elder, “If I<br />
am not for myself, who will be for<br />
me? If I am only for myself, what<br />
am I? And if not now, when?” He<br />
loved to remind us that, according<br />
the Midrash, even justice must be<br />
pursued through just means.<br />
In those early days, we saw ourselves<br />
primarily as a “Shofar,” who by our<br />
very presence visiting the scene of a<br />
human rights abuse sent the message<br />
that this was an issue of the highest<br />
Jewish, religious and moral concern.<br />
However, in 1992 we won our first<br />
precedent-setting High Court victory.<br />
Appealing along with Muslim and<br />
Christian religious leaders, the Court<br />
ignored closed door testimony from<br />
the security forces, and revoked<br />
a curfew in Ramallah that was<br />
preventing Christians from preparing<br />
for Christmas.<br />
Quickly we were endorsed in North<br />
America by the rabbinic bodies<br />
of the Reform and Conservative<br />
movements, and in 1993 received<br />
the Speaker of the Knesset’s Prize<br />
for our contributions to Israeli<br />
society. Rabbi <strong>For</strong>man was invited<br />
to deliver a keynote address at the<br />
Nobel Institute conference parallel<br />
to the awarding of the Nobel Peace<br />
Prize to Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon<br />
Peres and Yasser Arafat. Through<br />
the years, we have received<br />
additional endorsements from the<br />
Reconstructionist and Renewal<br />
rabbinic bodies in North America,<br />
as well as the Liberal Movement<br />
in Great Britain, the prestigious<br />
Niwano Peace Prize, and numerous<br />
additional recognitions. While the<br />
North American organization we<br />
helped found in 2002 has now<br />
become independent, we continue<br />
to be grateful to British Friends of<br />
RHR, Montreal Friends of RHR<br />
(Soon to be called Canadian<br />
Friends of RHR), Trees of Hope in<br />
the San Francisco Bay Area, and<br />
the thousands of rabbis and lay<br />
people who organize, contribute<br />
and advocate for our shared vision<br />
of an Israel living up to our highest<br />
Jewish values. We are grateful for<br />
our broad interfaith support. What<br />
unites us as people of faith can<br />
transcend our differences.<br />
In 1995, Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom and<br />
I succeeded Rabbi Ehud Bandel<br />
as co-directors. We developed<br />
a grassroots component to our<br />
work, succeeding in changing<br />
national policy by having one foot<br />
on the ground and the other in the<br />
corridors of power.<br />
In 1995, 95 percent of our work<br />
concerned Palestinians. Based<br />
on the Torah’s teaching that all<br />
human beings are created in God’s<br />
Image, RHR’s general assembly<br />
resolved that we must always be<br />
advocating for the human rights<br />
of both Jews and non-Jews. Today,<br />
the OT remains our largest single<br />
commitment, but it now represents<br />
less than 50 percent of our time<br />
and resources. While we wish we<br />
could put ourselves out of business<br />
by ending human rights violations,<br />
your increased support allowed<br />
us to grow our educational and<br />
internal Israeli socioeconomic<br />
justice work without backtracking<br />
on our commitment to Palestinian<br />
human rights. When I began, the<br />
entire budget was under $30,000.<br />
Today our projected <strong>2013</strong> budget<br />
is over $1,300,000.<br />
RHR is not affiliated with any<br />
political party. We have no position<br />
on borders or final status solutions.<br />
We state clearly that the Occupation<br />
leads to human rights violations, but<br />
leave it to others to determine just<br />
what ending the Occupation will<br />
look like. In terms of socioeconomic<br />
justice inside Israel, we struggle<br />
against the changes in our society<br />
created by the move from a social<br />
welfare economy towards a neoliberal<br />
economy.<br />
We achieve change through<br />
direct field work, the Israeli legal<br />
system, lobbying our Knesset and<br />
government, public campaigns<br />
and working with the international<br />
community. As a last resort, we<br />
have occasionally engaged in acts<br />
of civil disobedience.<br />
<strong>The</strong> following report will give<br />
you a good picture of RHR’s<br />
current project areas and future<br />
plans. I reflected after leaving the<br />
directorship in the capable hands of<br />
Ayala Levy in 2010 that it is clearer<br />
than ever that we are not “Rabbi<br />
for <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong>,” but “<strong>Rabbis</strong><br />
for <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong>.” <strong>The</strong> fact is that,<br />
while our organization is clearly a<br />
rabbinic organization, our staff is<br />
also interfaith. I was almost moved<br />
to tears at a recent meeting with<br />
an outside evaluator listening to<br />
their passion, commitment and<br />
dedication. <strong>The</strong>re are certain things<br />
that money cannot buy, and are<br />
difficult to define, but they make<br />
all the difference when the chips<br />
are down and the call comes in<br />
after hours.<br />
Finally, I have been reflecting a great<br />
deal lately about what is the essence<br />
of Jewish-based human rights work.<br />
Clearly our first goal is to create a<br />
society which acts according to<br />
our belief that all human beings are<br />
created in God’s Image. We must<br />
develop the “Spiritual vision” that<br />
can see through all that divides<br />
us, including real conflicts, and<br />
sometimes justified anger and fear.<br />
<strong>The</strong> breastplate the High Priest’s<br />
wore when he entered the Holy<br />
of Holies contained 12 different<br />
stones representing the 12 tribes.<br />
We must go even further. We<br />
achieve holiness when there is a<br />
place for all humanity in our hearts<br />
because we recognize the essential<br />
sameness that unites us in our<br />
diversity. We must be aware of how<br />
unequal power relationships lead<br />
to human rights violations. Ibn Ezra<br />
warns us that when we wrong the<br />
widow, the orphan or the resident<br />
alien, they are all too often voiceless<br />
and powerless to protest. Rabbi<br />
Samson Raphael Hirsch taught that,<br />
even with the best of intentions,<br />
it “Borders on criminality” when<br />
those with property and power<br />
take on the “White man’s burden”<br />
of deciding how to be just towards<br />
those who do not sit at the table.<br />
Rather than saying that they are<br />
powerless, some versions of Ibn<br />
Ezra say that the widow, orphan<br />
and alien have nobody to stand by<br />
their side. We must be those who<br />
stand by their side. But we must do<br />
so as partners, empowering them<br />
to find their own voice.<br />
I look forward to better explaining<br />
what I mean when I have the<br />
opportunity to visit your community,<br />
or to welcome you here in Israel.<br />
B’Vrakha (In Blessing),<br />
Arik<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong> 2<br />
3 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
RHR <strong>Annual</strong> <strong>Report</strong> – Chair’s Letter<br />
Opening Word<br />
Rabbi Rabbi Arik Barry Ascherman Leff<br />
As you will see from reading this report,<br />
<strong>2012</strong> was a year of notable successes for<br />
<strong>Rabbis</strong> for <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong>. However, for every<br />
success we also have ongoing challenges.<br />
<strong>For</strong> example:<br />
After a decade of working and advocating for<br />
the right of Palestinian farmers to access their<br />
lands, the Israeli security forces are doing a<br />
better job of guaranteeing this safe access.<br />
But destruction of olive trees by radical<br />
settlers continues.<br />
We saved the tires and mud school of the<br />
Jahalin Bedouin in Khan El Akhmar from<br />
demolition. But the Jahalin Bedouin near<br />
Mishor Adumim are still threatened with<br />
relocation closer to the garbage dump.<br />
Our letter writing campaign convinced<br />
the Jewish National Fund not to evict the<br />
Sumarin family in Silwan. But the JNF has<br />
only said they are not evicting the family “for<br />
now.”<br />
A building tender that would have resulted in<br />
the eviction Kurdish immigrants in the former<br />
Arab village of Lifta was cancelled, allowing<br />
the residents to remain in their homes. But<br />
the state and the developers have not given<br />
up.<br />
Our legal department secured a victory that<br />
allowed the residents of Bir El ‘Id to return to<br />
additional caves. But the Israeli government<br />
continues to threaten the expulsion of<br />
hundreds of Palestinians from their homes to<br />
create a new “Firing Zone.”<br />
Our <strong>Rights</strong> Center in Hadera provided<br />
hundreds of Jewish and Arab residents of the<br />
area with advice and legal help regarding<br />
their socio-economic rights. But the situation<br />
of many remains desperate, as shown by the<br />
tragic suicide of Moshe Silman, one of the<br />
many people we helped.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re are many more examples. Is the<br />
“glass half-full” or is it “half-empty?” Both.<br />
Our successes and our on-going challenges<br />
represent the reality of the human rights<br />
situation in Israel and the Occupied<br />
Territories.<br />
Organizationally, the end of <strong>2012</strong> brought<br />
with it a major change: the ending of our<br />
formal affiliation with <strong>Rabbis</strong> for <strong>Human</strong><br />
<strong>Rights</strong> – North America. RHR-NA has a new<br />
name, T’ruah – the rabbinic call for human<br />
rights. Over the past several years RHR-<br />
NA has grown, and its focus has changed.<br />
We welcome them as a new member of the<br />
Jewish human rights scene. In the meanwhile,<br />
<strong>Rabbis</strong> for <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> is now conducting<br />
its own fundraising and advocacy campaigns<br />
in North America.<br />
It is the generous support of our members and<br />
donors that allows us to continue our mission<br />
to help insure that Israel as a nation and a<br />
community lives up to the highest ethical<br />
ideals of the Jewish tradition. <strong>The</strong> Jewish<br />
people have been called “compassionate<br />
children of a compassionate God.” <strong>The</strong>re<br />
is no greater expression of compassion than<br />
taking action to protect those whose basic<br />
human rights are being violated.<br />
Occupied Territories<br />
RHR’s Occupied Territories Field Department, led by Rabbi Yehiel Grenimann, works to protect the rights of<br />
Palestinian farmers in the West Bank to safely access and work their lands throughout the year. An annual<br />
highlight is our Fall “Olive Harvest Campaign,” during which we bring hundreds of volunteers to work side<br />
by side with Palestinian farmers. After ten years, we now see a marked improvement in the willingness of<br />
the Israeli security forces to accept their responsibility (established in a court ruling in 2006) to ensure<br />
that farmers can reach olive trees in even the most dangerous locations. However, the scourge of olive tree<br />
destruction continues. Every year, RHR plants thousands of trees to replace those destroyed or damaged by<br />
settlers, or in areas in danger of takeover. We also advocate on behalf of the rights of the Jahalin Bedouin<br />
near Ma’aleh Adumim to remain on their lands, and run language courses and summer camps for children.<br />
This year, RHR and our coalition partners orchestrated international pressure forcing the Israeli security<br />
forces to commit not to forcibly move the Jahalin without an agreed upon plan for their welfare, but the<br />
intent is still to expel them. We also work in cooperation with other organizations to defend the rights of<br />
Palestinians to remain in their homes in East Jerusalem.<br />
“It is inspiring to work with so many good, devoted<br />
and idealistic people whose vision of peace and justice<br />
remains steady despite everything that happens. It is<br />
heartening to receive constant feedback emphasizing<br />
the importance of our presence as a religious Israeli<br />
group for human rights and to hear that we inspire<br />
hope in others, save Judaism (and humanism) for them,<br />
and break down stereotypes of both Israelis<br />
and Palestinians.<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong> 4<br />
5 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
I often like to tell a Talmudic story to our staff and<br />
volunteers regarding the nature of our work in<br />
the territories and the appropriate attitude for<br />
this work. <strong>The</strong> story is about the famous Rabbi Akiva,<br />
an illiterate shepherd who came to Torah study<br />
relatively late in life. He fell in love with Rachel, a<br />
young woman from a rich and educated family. She<br />
agreed to marry him if he studied Torah but he found<br />
learning to read and write very hard. Once while<br />
sitting by a river in a moment of despair, he noticed<br />
water flowing through a rock in the river.He said to<br />
himself: “If water can penetrate and overcome such a<br />
hard rock, I too can succeed.” He went on to become<br />
a great scholar of Torah.<br />
This year RHR marked a decade of<br />
accompanying Palestinian farmers<br />
in their olive groves located near<br />
settlements, unauthorized outposts,<br />
or near the Separation Barrier. Over<br />
the past 10 years, we have ensured<br />
the rights of thousands of Palestinians<br />
to plant, harvest and prune their olive<br />
trees in areas where settlers and/or<br />
the Israeli security forces previously<br />
denied that right. This year we saw<br />
a marked improvement in how the<br />
Israeli security forces protected<br />
that right. In the past decade, RHR,<br />
together with the Harvest Coalition,<br />
has also brought thousands of<br />
Israelis and internationals to meet<br />
with Palestinians in their olive<br />
groves, where they learn about<br />
harsh realities on the ground as they<br />
pick side by side with one another<br />
in solidarity and friendship.<br />
Our work is not complete. Farmers<br />
still have great difficulty obtaining<br />
permits to access their land between<br />
the separation barrier and the Green<br />
Line. Despite the vast improvements<br />
resulting from our 2006 Supreme<br />
Court ruling, requiring that the army<br />
allow Palestinians to safely access<br />
their olive trees, RHR still must play a<br />
crucial role in coordinating with the<br />
army and ensuring that Palestinian<br />
villages be given a sufficient number<br />
of days to finish the harvest. <strong>The</strong>re<br />
are areas near settlements where<br />
all the trees have been poisoned,<br />
chopped down or uprooted. This<br />
year, over 450 destroyed or damaged<br />
trees were discovered at the outset<br />
of the olive harvest alone. RHR and<br />
our coalition partners are searching<br />
for ways to get the security forces<br />
to keep their court obligation to<br />
protect trees and property. While<br />
senior army officials told us they<br />
could do nothing more to stop the<br />
wave of harvest destruction, the US<br />
ambassador mentioned the problem<br />
in the UN Security Council, and<br />
the remainder of the season was<br />
relatively quiet.<br />
A key focus of our work this year<br />
was maintaining and expanding our<br />
contacts with Palestinian farmers<br />
from 50 villages in the Occupied<br />
Territories. RHR’s commitment<br />
to these villages does not end<br />
with agricultural access. Field<br />
Coordinator Zakaria Sadeh regularly<br />
visited the villages and responded<br />
to diverse problems, including<br />
settler violence, IDF inaction, illegal<br />
detentions, problems at checkpoints,<br />
IDF confiscation of equipment or<br />
vehicles, and ensuring transport to<br />
hospital for several patients. Among<br />
the Palestinians whom we help, a<br />
real trust in RHR has been created.<br />
<strong>The</strong> peak of our work with these<br />
villages is during the olive harvest,<br />
My lesson from this story is that just as the water<br />
was able to overcome the rock, so we can overcome<br />
the evils of the Israeli Occupation through our<br />
determination, however hard (and rock-hearted) it<br />
might seem to us. Water penetrates where there are<br />
cracks and openings in the rock and we too must<br />
penetrate in such a way until the system caves in and<br />
is replaced by something more humane. That is wiser<br />
than confrontational tactics that lead to sparks but no<br />
real change or improvement.”<br />
Rabbi Yehiel Grenimann,<br />
Director, Occupied Territories Field Department<br />
<strong>The</strong> Olive Tree Campaign – Agricultural Access<br />
which lasts for about one month<br />
beginning in mid-October. This past<br />
year we coordinated with the IDF<br />
to ensure army protection and safe<br />
access for farmers in at least seven<br />
villages during the harvest. As in past<br />
years, we also arranged for several<br />
hundred Israeli and international<br />
volunteers, including members of<br />
RHR, to work in the olive groves<br />
in 11 villages. Our presence in the<br />
field alongside Palestinian farmers<br />
provides protection against possible<br />
settler intimidation, enables farmers<br />
to pick within the limited number<br />
of days that they can safely do so,<br />
and has also become an act of<br />
solidarity between Israeli Jews and<br />
Palestinians. <strong>The</strong> sharing of lunches<br />
and eating together, Israelis and<br />
Palestinians, is usually the highlight<br />
of the day! By bringing together<br />
Israeli Jews and Palestinians under<br />
the shade of the olive tree, we<br />
believe that we are helping to<br />
change the minds and attitudes of<br />
Israeli Jews and Palestinians towards<br />
one another. We continue this work<br />
because we believe that it helps to<br />
change the face of the State of Israel<br />
into a more humane one.<br />
<strong>The</strong> ability of Palestinians to<br />
access their lands has improved<br />
immeasurably since our 2006 High<br />
Court victory, and in many cases<br />
we no longer need to maintain a<br />
physical presence or intervene in<br />
order to ensure that farmers can<br />
harvest their olives. In the areas<br />
where Palestinians cannot go without<br />
prior coordination (either because of<br />
closure orders, fear, or because the<br />
army has convinced the Palestinians<br />
that they cannot or should not go on<br />
their own), the number of days that<br />
the army allocates to the harvest is<br />
still inadequate. Unlike last year, this<br />
year all villages we were in touch<br />
with succeeded in completing their<br />
harvest in areas next to settlements.<br />
However, four villages were not<br />
able to complete their harvesting<br />
on their lands trapped between the<br />
Separation Barrier and the 1967<br />
border; the army did not allow them<br />
enough days to reach these areas,<br />
or any at all. In this coming year,<br />
we intend to continue working with<br />
the army to increase the number of<br />
harvest days so that so that farmers<br />
can reach all of their olive groves.<br />
Although the presence of the army<br />
as well as our presence in the fields<br />
give Palestinian farmers an increasing<br />
sense of security while harvesting<br />
their olives, <strong>2012</strong> witnessed a<br />
sharp increase in damage to trees<br />
and property, particularly before<br />
the olive harvest even started. In<br />
just one week, for example, 450<br />
trees were damaged, destroyed,<br />
or stripped of their fruit in Yanun,<br />
Krayut, Ein Abbus and Meghayer.<br />
<strong>The</strong> economic cost of the damaged<br />
trees is immense, and the emotional<br />
cost is also great. As in previous<br />
years, RHR acted on several fronts<br />
to request army protection of trees<br />
and property. Our ongoing presence<br />
in the field and immediate response<br />
to violations continues to be the<br />
most effective way to address the<br />
challenges on the ground.<br />
This report covers both the <strong>2012</strong> and<br />
<strong>2013</strong> planting seasons. Each year,<br />
RHR provides approximately 3,000<br />
olive trees to be planted in areas in<br />
danger of takeover, or where settlers<br />
have cut, uprooted and/or burned<br />
Our ongoing presence<br />
in the field and<br />
immediate response<br />
to violations continues<br />
to be the most<br />
effective way to<br />
address the challenges<br />
on the ground.<br />
trees in acts of vandalism and arson.<br />
We have reduced the number of<br />
places where we bring Israelis to<br />
plant together with farmers because,<br />
in some cases, the farmers prefer<br />
not to attract attention. However, Tu<br />
B’Shvat, the Jewish new year for trees,<br />
continues to be the day in which we<br />
organize a major pubic planting,<br />
with many volunteers. In doing so,<br />
RHR presents a different Jewish face<br />
than that of the extremists who carry<br />
out the “price tag” attacks. In <strong>2012</strong>,<br />
despite army attempts to block our<br />
arrival, 22 people joined RHR in<br />
planting in El-Jenia village in the<br />
Northern West Bank, where a “Price<br />
Tag” attack had taken place days<br />
before. <strong>The</strong> army left after forcing us to<br />
leave, and the Palestinians were able<br />
to quietly resume work. Nineteen<br />
volunteers and staff members<br />
joined us in planting 50 trees at the<br />
kindergarten in the Jabal, in solidarity<br />
with the Jahalin Bedouin, who were<br />
threatened with being relocated<br />
to the garbage dump of Abu Dis in<br />
early <strong>2012</strong> (see below).<br />
In December <strong>2012</strong>, trees were cut<br />
down on lands belonging to farmers<br />
from A-Asawiya. Two days later,<br />
RHR volunteers joined Palestinians<br />
in replanting. In January <strong>2013</strong>, we<br />
planted trees in Kusra, an increasingly<br />
tense area. Less than a week later,<br />
on the very day we were helping<br />
Fawzi Ibrahim in nearby Jalud (see<br />
below), we discovered that some of<br />
our trees had been uprooted in the<br />
middle of the night. <strong>The</strong> windows<br />
of a tractor were shattered, and<br />
hundreds of rocks were thrown at<br />
the home of an elderly couple living<br />
on the outskirts of the village. We<br />
therefore returned on Tu B’Shvat<br />
with several busloads of volunteers,<br />
and the Palestinians indicated that<br />
they would set up a system to keep<br />
watch over the trees even at night.<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong> 6<br />
7 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
Renovating Water Cisterns in South Hebron Hills<br />
In <strong>2012</strong>, Israel destroyed at least 35 rainwater cisterns used by Palestinian communities, 20 of them in the area<br />
of Hebron and the southern Hebron Hills. Usually, the communities whose cisterns were destroyed are a short<br />
distance from settlements and unauthorized outposts that enjoy a regular water supply. While these outposts have<br />
no permits the Civil Administration almost always destroys Palestinian tents, animal pens and food storage facilities<br />
for the lack of permit. Drying up the water supply of Palestinians is an affront to our basic religious and human<br />
morals.<br />
In the summer of <strong>2012</strong>, in response to this critical situation, <strong>Rabbis</strong> for <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> began assisting Palestinians<br />
in renovating destroyed water cisterns in the South Hebron Hills. We coordinated with both Ta’ayush and the<br />
Palestinian NGO “EWASH,” which specializes in water rights. Twelve student volunteers from the Canadian<br />
organization “Operations Groundswell” participated in this program. <strong>The</strong> group and some of our staff members<br />
spent a week renovating a cistern at Bir El Id, near Mitzpe Yair, one of the more radical outposts. <strong>The</strong> group dug out<br />
the cistern and transformed it from an unusable source of water to one that could start operating again. A week later<br />
after we had dug out this cistern, we learned that Hajj Ismail, upon whose land the cistern is located, was severely<br />
attacked with a knife by four masked settlers. It is possible that this attack was a response to our work there.<br />
Advocating on behalf of the Jahalin Bedouin<br />
<strong>The</strong> Jahalin tribe were uprooted from<br />
their lands in Tel Arad in the Negev<br />
in the early 1950s and resettled<br />
in the West Bank. Until 1967 the<br />
Jahalin preserved their traditional<br />
Bedouin lifestyle of thousands of<br />
years, supporting themselves mainly<br />
through herding. With the onset of<br />
the Israeli occupation, the Israeli<br />
army took control of large swaths<br />
of the Jahalin tribe’s grazing areas<br />
in the Jordan Valley, closing them<br />
off to Palestinians. <strong>The</strong> Jahalin were<br />
consequently squeezed into the area<br />
of the Jerusalem-Jericho highway and<br />
forced to abandon their traditional<br />
way of life. Since the establishment<br />
of Ma’aleh Adumim in 1975, the<br />
expanding settlement has repeatedly<br />
displaced Jahalin encampments.<br />
<strong>Rabbis</strong> for <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> has been<br />
advocating on behalf of the rights of<br />
the Jahalin Bedouin since 1997 when<br />
an encampment was demolished,<br />
and the Jahalin were given shipping<br />
containers to live in on an exposed<br />
hilltop near the Abu Dis garbage<br />
dump.<br />
In November 2011 we learned that<br />
the Civil Administration had reached<br />
an advanced stage of planning for<br />
the forced relocation of 600 Jahalin<br />
living near Mishor Adumim to a<br />
landfill site even closer to the dump.<br />
Such a plan, if implemented, would<br />
seriously endanger the health of the<br />
Jahalin.<br />
To help change the face of Israel, and<br />
to encourage the Israeli government<br />
to act on behalf of our Jewish<br />
values, we quickly launched both<br />
international and local campaigns<br />
and protests, with the help of the<br />
Catholic Comboni Sisters and the<br />
Jahalin Association.<br />
We asked our supporters to send<br />
letters protesting the plan to move<br />
the Jahalin to the garbage dump, and<br />
many of you responded. We also<br />
initiated a campaign appealing to<br />
Jewish leaders abroad, while B’Tselem<br />
organized tours for journalists and<br />
international diplomats.<br />
Although the 18th Knesset was<br />
reluctant to intervene on behalf<br />
of Palestinians in the Occupied<br />
Territories, even in cases of gross<br />
violations of human rights, in this<br />
case the details of the developments<br />
and an outpouring of international<br />
concern permitted us to request a<br />
session to discuss the matter in a<br />
joint meeting of the Environment<br />
and Health Committees, headed<br />
by MK Dov Khenin. We asked<br />
the committee to direct the Civil<br />
Administration to reverse its decision<br />
to adopt the plan to move the Jahalin<br />
to the dump in Abu Dis.<br />
Despite the positions of MKs Arye<br />
Eldad and Uri Ariel of the National<br />
Union Party, and of Uri Maklev of<br />
United Torah Judaism, and despite<br />
the claims by the representative<br />
of the Ministry of Environment<br />
that the site was scheduled to<br />
close, in the end the Ministry of<br />
Defense representative announced<br />
that its ministry would conduct a<br />
comprehensive risk assessment to<br />
cover the environmental risks in the<br />
area slated to absorb the Jahalin;<br />
only afterwards would any plans<br />
be crystallized regarding the actual<br />
relocation – and then only through<br />
dialogue with the residents.<br />
In addition to promising to relocate<br />
the Jahalin only in dialogue with the<br />
Jahalin, the Bedouin community of<br />
Khan El Akhmar was also promised<br />
that its school, built of tires and<br />
mud, would be allowed to continue<br />
until an alternative location was<br />
agreed. This effectively cancelled<br />
the demolition order against the<br />
school until an alternative location is<br />
finalized, much to the delight of the<br />
85 children who attend the school<br />
and their parents. RHR believes<br />
that the right to education is a basic<br />
human right, as well as one rooted<br />
within our Jewish tradition.<br />
RHR welcomed these decisions,<br />
but the Israeli authorities still plan<br />
to demolish the school and to<br />
To help change the face of Israel,<br />
and to encourage the Israeli government<br />
to act on behalf of our Jewish values, we<br />
quickly launched both international and<br />
local campaigns and protests<br />
displace all the Bedouin in the area,<br />
including those in the adjacent E1<br />
corridor. Having finished their study<br />
of health and other Bedouin issues,<br />
the Civil Administration has suggested<br />
two options to the Jahalin, both of<br />
which would entail displacing other<br />
Palestinians. <strong>The</strong> Jahalin reject this,<br />
but are willing to consider options in<br />
the Jerusalem-Dead Sea corridor on<br />
land that does not belong to others.<br />
This past summer, RHR again<br />
organized English and Hebrew<br />
lessons for the children in Khan El<br />
Akhmar and al-Jabal. Together with<br />
the Catholic Comboni Sisters, three<br />
RHR volunteers, and Ibtisam Hirsh, a<br />
local Bedouin woman, we organized<br />
a summer camp for 70 children,<br />
during which we even took the kids<br />
to the beach in Tel Aviv for a day. <strong>For</strong><br />
most of the children this was the first<br />
time they had ever seen the sea.<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong> 8<br />
9 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
East Jerusalem<br />
<strong>The</strong> Campaign against the Eviction of the<br />
Sumarin Family in Silwan<br />
In last year’s annual report, we mentioned an emerging campaign to prevent the eviction of the Sumarin family<br />
from their home in Silwan by Himnuta, a subsidiary of the Jewish National Fund. <strong>The</strong> home had originally been<br />
seized through the subsequently discredited and discontinued practice of declaring properties as abandoned,<br />
even when family members were living in them. <strong>The</strong> Custodian for Absentee Property transferred the Sumarin<br />
home to the Jewish National Fund. We knew that in similar cases the JNF transferred the properties to settler<br />
groups such as Elad as part of the broader plan to Judaize Silwan. Using lawyers who often work for Elad, the JNF<br />
had a court order that the family could be expelled as of November 28th, 2011.<br />
RHR, RHR-NA and additional<br />
partners launched a public letter<br />
writing campaign against the<br />
eviction, organized by Shatil<br />
Fellow Moriel Rothman and our<br />
Communications Department. Our<br />
campaign urged the JNF, as a group<br />
concerned with the well-being of the<br />
State of Israel, to stop this injustice.<br />
In parallel, we also ran an effective<br />
media campaign with dozens of<br />
media reports appearing in Ha’aretz<br />
and the American Jewish press.<br />
Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity held vigils<br />
and demonstrations in Silwan. As a<br />
result, thousands of people<br />
in the US, Israel and around<br />
the world responded, and<br />
<br />
an American board member of the<br />
JNF even resigned in protest.<br />
As Moriel Rothman recalls,<br />
“Thousands and thousands of<br />
letters were sent, dozens of op-eds<br />
and media articles were written,<br />
a number of protests, tours and<br />
solidarity vigils were held and<br />
when the December 18th eviction<br />
date was again delayed, and then<br />
the next date was delayed again,<br />
it began to become clear that the<br />
JNF did not intend to evict the<br />
Sumarin family in this round of the<br />
battle. Although the victory was<br />
not complete and the possibility<br />
of eviction still remains a reality to<br />
this day, it was a victory.<br />
We had won. <strong>The</strong> Sumarin family,<br />
the Palestinian and Israeli and<br />
international activists, the NGOs<br />
and <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> organizations,<br />
and RHR’s voice of a Judaism that<br />
puts justice first: we had won.”<br />
While the JNF has only said that it<br />
is not evicting the family ”for now,”<br />
Campaigning against the Slopes<br />
of Mount Scopus National Park<br />
RHR has joined with five other<br />
Israeli organizations and the<br />
Palestinian Popular Committees<br />
from A-Tur and Issawiya to<br />
oppose the proposed “Slopes of<br />
Mount Scopus” plan in which the<br />
Municipality of Jerusalem and<br />
the National Parks Authority are<br />
planning to build a “national park”<br />
Victory in Lifta<br />
RHR was also part of a small victory<br />
in the village of Lifta, just outside<br />
Jerusalem, whose Palestinian<br />
residents fled/were expelled in 1948.<br />
Afterwards, Kurdish immigrants<br />
were dumped in the neighborhood.<br />
we can proudly report over a year<br />
later that the Sumarin family is<br />
still in their home and the process<br />
remains frozen.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Ruweidi family was in a similar<br />
position, but decided to take<br />
proactive action and sue to register<br />
their land in their name. Again, RHR<br />
was part of a coalition to spread the<br />
word about the case. However, this<br />
time the Court ruled in the family’s<br />
favor, enabling them to register their<br />
property.<br />
Currently RHR is also following the<br />
cases of several families in Sheikh<br />
in this area. <strong>The</strong>re is no reason<br />
to create a national park in this<br />
location, other than to seize the<br />
last remaining land from the two<br />
adjacent villages/neighborhoods.<br />
East Jerusalem has an extremely<br />
disproportionate percentage of<br />
land designated as “parks.” <strong>The</strong>re<br />
are also threatened homes in the<br />
Jarrah. <strong>The</strong> family in the most<br />
imminent danger is the Shamasneh<br />
family, where settler agent Arieh<br />
King has apparently succeeded<br />
in locating and obtaining the<br />
cooperation of a woman claiming<br />
pre-1948 ownership. <strong>The</strong> family<br />
acknowledges that they have been<br />
renting the property, but have<br />
" We had won. <strong>The</strong> Sumarin family, the<br />
Palestinian and Israeli and international<br />
activists, the NGOs and <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong><br />
organizations, and RHR’s voice of a Judaism<br />
that puts justice first: we had won."<br />
<strong>The</strong> Kurdish immigrants are now<br />
being threatened with eviction, and<br />
a tender was granted to demolish<br />
the village in order to construct<br />
high-end homes. RHR was the<br />
only NGO willing to join activists<br />
claimed protected tenant status.<br />
RHR acknowledges that Jews can<br />
legitimately own property in East<br />
Jerusalem, but protests the “eifa<br />
v’eifa” double standards that allow<br />
Jews to avail themselves of the<br />
courts to claim property, but not<br />
Palestinians.<br />
endangered area. Recently RHR<br />
helped to stop the demolition of<br />
three homes that actually had a<br />
restraining order preventing the<br />
demolitions.<br />
in successfully getting the tender<br />
cancelled because of the historical<br />
nature of the buildings to be<br />
destroyed. However, the State and<br />
the developers have not necessarily<br />
given up.<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong> 10<br />
11 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
Some memories from RHR’s work this year by Yonatan Shefa<br />
Rabbinical Student Assistant in the Department of <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> in the Occupied Territories<br />
My favorite RHR moment this<br />
year was early one morning in<br />
the South Hebron Hills, just after<br />
sunrise. We brought a group out<br />
to dig a reservoir for a Palestinian<br />
farmer. Earlier, RHR had helped<br />
him confirm ownership of his land<br />
in the courts. <strong>The</strong> spot where we<br />
were working is surrounded by<br />
Israeli settlements on the nearby<br />
hilltops. As I was getting ready to<br />
pray Shacharit beside a nearby<br />
well, a Palestinian shepherd<br />
arrived to water his flock. <strong>The</strong>re I<br />
stood, kippah on my head, tzitzit<br />
swaying with my movements. I<br />
could have been anyone from<br />
the nearby settlements. He eyed<br />
me nervously. When he opened<br />
the well to discover that the rope<br />
had been cut and there was no<br />
bucket to draw water, he turned to<br />
leave. “Wait,” I said in a mixture<br />
of Hebrew and broken Arabic,<br />
“we’ve got a rope and bucket.” I<br />
ran back to our worksite, got what<br />
we needed, and ran back to him.<br />
<strong>The</strong>n together we drew water and<br />
poured it out for the sheep. We<br />
talked about his home, how long<br />
his family had been living in the<br />
area and relations with the nearby<br />
settlements. Just that simple act, of<br />
being openly Jewish and helping<br />
a Palestinian who didn’t know<br />
me from Adam to water his flock,<br />
helping him to be economically<br />
viable in his own homeland, felt<br />
like the essence of our work to<br />
me.<br />
So many of my cherished moments<br />
involve being openly Jewish in a<br />
context where the association<br />
with Jews is fearful, hateful, or<br />
both. Sitting in a room of about<br />
forty Arab men visiting their father<br />
and relative who had been beaten<br />
up by Jews… Going to assess the<br />
damage to a Palestinian farmer’s<br />
Just that simple act,<br />
of being openly<br />
Jewish and helping<br />
a Palestinian who<br />
didn’t know me from<br />
Adam to water his<br />
flock, helping him<br />
to be economically<br />
viable in his own<br />
homeland, felt like<br />
the essence of our<br />
work to me.<br />
trees after nearly a hundred and<br />
fifty had been cut down. So many<br />
instances of this…<br />
Taking a group of Israeli and<br />
Palestinian religious leaders on<br />
an expedition into the wilderness<br />
to break down barriers and build<br />
mutual understanding. Getting<br />
caught in the rain, finding shelter,<br />
and ending up wearing one another’s<br />
clothes. <strong>The</strong>n, after sunset, davening<br />
Aravit in a tiny room surrounded by<br />
Palestinians, followed by bearing<br />
intimate witness to their own<br />
evening prayers.<br />
Countless visits to the Jahalin<br />
Bedouin, countless cups of tea<br />
and coffee, even though I don’t<br />
drink coffee. Having a heart-toheart<br />
talk with a Palestinian pastor<br />
about the possibility for peace and<br />
co-existence, discovering how<br />
much we see things the same, and<br />
how much we feel differently. One<br />
of the most difficult and rewarding<br />
conversations I’ve had this year.<br />
Yonatan’s position with RHR is one<br />
of four in various RHR departments<br />
made possible by a generous grant<br />
from the Asia Tan Foundation to<br />
introduce rabbinic students and<br />
young rabbis to the possibility of<br />
human rights work as a part of<br />
their rabbinical functions.<br />
OT Legal Department<br />
RHR’s OT legal department, led by Adv. Quamar Mishirqi-Assad, comprises four full-time attorneys, two field<br />
workers and a legal advisor. <strong>The</strong> primary focus of our work is preventing or reversing the takeover of Palestinian<br />
lands and ensuring that Palestinian farmers can safely access those lands, Currently, two dormant or simmering<br />
issues are coming to a head and the coming year will largely determine whether the cave dwellers of the South<br />
Hebron Hills hold on to their lands. <strong>The</strong> first is a renewed attempt to expel the residents of eight Palestinian villages<br />
to create “Live Firing Zone 918,“ and the renewed attempt to wipe Susya off the map. Stemming from our longstanding<br />
goal to end administrative home demolitions, we have a twice postponed High Court appeal to return<br />
planning for Palestinian communities in Area C to Palestinian hands. Much of RHR’s work centers on the South<br />
Hebron Hills and Shilo Valley, and we have had several important successes this year returning land, winning<br />
compensation, and renewing long-denied access. Our growth plan is to find the resources allowing us to build<br />
on our experience and apply it throughout the Occupied Territories. In the past year we have begun to expand,<br />
particularly into the Bethlehem region. We work closely with Kerem Navot, which employs aerial photographs<br />
to understand the history of land takeovers. In the South Hebron Hills we enjoy a strategic partnership with<br />
Ta’ayush, whose activists accompany Palestinians accessing their lands, and with Breaking the Silence, which<br />
engages in advocacy, media work and alternative tourism. We work also with additional Israeli, Palestinian and<br />
international organizations, including Comet, JLAC, Bimkom and B’Tselem.<br />
Over the past year, RHR has<br />
steadily increased its resources<br />
and capacity to take on an<br />
unprecedented number of legal<br />
cases and to raise awareness<br />
of the plight of Palestinian land<br />
owners in the South Hebron<br />
Hills, both among Israelis and the<br />
international community. Together<br />
with our partner organizations<br />
Ta’ayush and Breaking the Silence,<br />
RHR has been able to elevate our<br />
work in the South Hebron Hills to<br />
new levels. <strong>The</strong>re and elsewhere<br />
in the Occupied Territories, we<br />
have achieved important and<br />
sometimes extraordinary reversals<br />
of the ongoing Israeli annexation<br />
of land.<br />
In this past year, RHR has had<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong> 12<br />
13 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
several major achievements.<br />
<strong>The</strong> most notable include:<br />
Returning the residents of Bir El<br />
‘Id to additional caves. Even after<br />
RHR returned the residents of Bir<br />
El ‘Id in 2009 to their village, from<br />
which they had been expelled<br />
for almost ten years because of<br />
army backed settler intimidation,<br />
the army has continued to issue<br />
demolition orders on everything<br />
they attempt to build, and say that<br />
even some of the original caves<br />
remained off limits. RHR therefore<br />
celebrated as we returned villagers<br />
to five additional caves, a water<br />
cistern and two animal pens RHR<br />
argued that these lands were part<br />
and parcel of the lands we had<br />
already agreed on in 2009.<br />
Palestinians resumed farming<br />
in areas where they had long<br />
been denied access due to army-<br />
backed settler intimidation in the<br />
Shilo Valley. This success means<br />
that for now the unauthorized<br />
hilltop outposts of Esh Kodesh and<br />
Akhia will again be surrounded<br />
by Palestinian worked fields. RHR<br />
submitted a High Court appeal on<br />
behalf of a land owner in Jalud<br />
to return 256 dunams of land<br />
surrounding Esh Kodesh. Not only<br />
had settlers enforced an expanding<br />
“forbidden zone” year after year,<br />
but in 2011 they actually planted<br />
a vineyard on some of these<br />
lands. Most of the human rights<br />
violations RHR deals with in the<br />
Occupied Territories take place<br />
in Area C (the areas still under<br />
full Israeli control, accounting for<br />
some 60 percent of the total area<br />
of the West Bank). Incredibly the<br />
settlers even blocked access to<br />
lands in Area B (under Palestinian<br />
civil control, but Israeli military<br />
control). Under pressure from<br />
the pending appeal the Legal<br />
Advisor closed the area to Israelis<br />
and ordered that the Palestinian<br />
land owner could access his land<br />
in coordination with the Israeli<br />
army. RHR again<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong><br />
14<br />
had to pressure the army when<br />
its procrastination almost made<br />
Fawzi Ibrahim miss the planting<br />
season for winter wheat and lose<br />
his investment in seeds. On the first<br />
day the reluctant security forces<br />
were not adequately prepared<br />
to deal with settler opposition,<br />
and ordered the Palestinians out<br />
of the fields. On the second day,<br />
despite primarily female settlers<br />
with babies doing everything they<br />
could to block the tractors, Fawzi<br />
finally plowed most of his land<br />
and sowed his wheat. He has not<br />
yet been allowed into the vineyard<br />
because of a settler appeal, and on<br />
the day he plowed, he discovered<br />
an additional vineyard. An indepth<br />
Channel 2 Television expose<br />
broke the story to the Israeli public,<br />
including the connection with<br />
the ongoing attacks on Kusra (see<br />
above in the OT Field Department<br />
report).<br />
Settlers are increasingly filing<br />
appeals against decisions by<br />
the OT Legal Advisor in order to<br />
delay justice; and accordingly<br />
the failure of such an appeal this<br />
year is particularly significant. In<br />
2006 RHR took on the case of<br />
five families (300 people) who<br />
had been forced off their own<br />
land after their livestock had been<br />
poisoned and after they could<br />
no longer endure the harassment<br />
and physical threats posed by the<br />
radical settler Yaakov Talia, who<br />
set up the unauthorized outpost<br />
he named “Lucifer’s Farm.” In<br />
early <strong>2012</strong> the army closed the<br />
area and announced that the<br />
Palestinian families could return<br />
to working their lands. Talia<br />
appealed the High Court decision<br />
but this year requested to cancel<br />
his claim because he understood<br />
that the law was not on his side.<br />
However, he reserved the right to<br />
appeal again, pointing out that if<br />
the State adopts the Edmund Levi<br />
Committee recommendations, the<br />
law will be on his side. <strong>For</strong>mer<br />
High Court justice Edmund Levi<br />
was appointed by Prime Minister<br />
Netanyahu to head a commission<br />
searching to legalize the building<br />
of settlements on land which the<br />
Israeli government recognizes as<br />
privately-owned Palestinian land.<br />
Noting the fact that there were no<br />
Palestinians on this commission<br />
and wondering whether the<br />
effect on Palestinians was at all a<br />
consideration in the deliberations,<br />
RHR submitted a position paper<br />
documenting village by village the<br />
many ways, beyond the obvious<br />
theft of land, in which the existence<br />
of outposts leads to human rights<br />
violations in the villages where<br />
we work. We also submitted an<br />
extensive section based on Jewish<br />
sources dealing with the image of<br />
God, double standards, property<br />
rights of non-Jews in the Land of<br />
Israel, and the inevitable injustice<br />
created when a group holding<br />
power appropriates for itself the<br />
“burden“ of determining how to<br />
be just towards the powerless and<br />
voiceless.<br />
Last year, we reported that we<br />
had managed to temporarily<br />
freeze the demolition of solar<br />
power installations at Imneizel<br />
village in the South Hebron Hills<br />
following our legal work and<br />
immense international pressure.<br />
Recently, the Israeli authorities<br />
requested that we withdraw our<br />
legal appeal as they decided that<br />
the demolitions were not going to<br />
take place at all.<br />
In response to an RHR petition<br />
demanding that the Israeli army<br />
protect Palestinian property<br />
and possessions, the army was<br />
ordered to pay compensation to<br />
elderly Palestinian land owners<br />
directly underneath the Bat<br />
Ayin settlement, who suffer<br />
repeated attacks and damage to<br />
their 60 year old olive trees in<br />
“Price Tag” attacks. However,<br />
the army made it clear<br />
that the compensation<br />
was not an admission of <br />
responsibility, and refused to take<br />
any additional steps to protect<br />
the farmers and their trees. With<br />
all of the positive improvements<br />
in safe agricultural access after<br />
RHR’s 2006 High Court victory,<br />
this is but one of example of<br />
how authorities have not fulfilled<br />
additional stipulations of the<br />
decision ordering security forces<br />
to protect Palestinian farmers<br />
and to bring people to justice.<br />
RHR therefore took this case to<br />
the Israeli High Court, which in<br />
February <strong>2013</strong> gave the security<br />
forces 60 days to explain why they<br />
were not doing more to protect the<br />
landowners.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Assad family from the village<br />
of El-Khader (between Alon Shvut<br />
and Elazar), has been plagued by<br />
constant settler harassment and<br />
land encroachment. <strong>The</strong> extremist<br />
settler organization Women in<br />
With our intervention, the family now is able<br />
to access lands that had been inaccessible for<br />
more than a decade.<br />
Green repeatedly has trespassed<br />
on these lands where they have<br />
planted saplings, olive trees and<br />
even erected several benches with<br />
plaques in honor of the donors.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Civil Administration in Beit<br />
El heeded our request that the<br />
area be closed to Israelis in order<br />
to prevent further incursions into<br />
the lands and ordered the army to<br />
remove the trees planted.<br />
Since the Second Intifada, the<br />
Hajaja-Jabarin family, whose<br />
lands are adjacent to Tekoa, has<br />
been subjected to constant land<br />
closures by the army, attacks by<br />
neighboring settlers on both person<br />
and property, and attempts to<br />
appropriate land by planting trees.<br />
RHR submitted several requests to<br />
the Civil Administration that it take<br />
action against the settlers and the<br />
army. With our intervention, the<br />
family now is able to access lands<br />
that had been inaccessible for<br />
more than a decade.<br />
RHR is appealing the decision to<br />
allow the family to access their<br />
lands only by prior coordination<br />
with the Civil Administration and<br />
is demanding free access to these<br />
lands.<br />
15 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
RHR <strong>2013</strong><br />
THE GRANDPARENT TEST<br />
Quamar Misirqi-Asad, who directs RHR’s OT Legal Department, says that she needs to go the extra<br />
mile on behalf of Abu-Jabar Sleibi because she looks in his eyes and sees her own grandfather. We in<br />
RHR often speak of the need to see God’s image in every human being, and the truth is that Quamar<br />
and the rest of our staff go the extra mile for everybody whom we seek to defend. However, it<br />
would be a great start if we could all look in the eyes of human rights victims, or potential victims,<br />
and see our own grandparents, parents, siblings, partners and children.<br />
Pending Cases<br />
Defending Palestinian village of Susya against Demolition<br />
In October 2011, the army commander in the South Hebron Hills declared sections of land in the area<br />
of Susya “closed to Israelis” in response to an appeal submitted by Palestinian families requesting that<br />
they be able to reach their lands where Israeli settlers have been taking over land. This was just one of a<br />
string of successes returning lands to their rightful owners. We know that the settlers in the region held<br />
emergency meetings regarding our successes. <strong>The</strong> lands closed in 2011 represented approximately 20<br />
percent of the lands covered in a petition we submitted on army procrastination on many additional<br />
cases of settler land takeovers, denial of access, and lack of protection for Palestinians. Altogether, the<br />
petition deals with some 2,500 dunams of land. We believe that this is the reason the extreme right-wing<br />
Israeli NGO Regavim and the adjacent settlement, also called Susya, submitted a High Court Appeal in<br />
February <strong>2012</strong> challenging the “slow“ pace of demolitions in the area and requesting that Palestinian<br />
Susya be demolished. In June <strong>2012</strong>, probably due to pressure from Regavim, demolition notices were<br />
distributed, with 70 structures or 80 percent of the homes in the village targeted for demolition. <strong>The</strong><br />
remaining 20 percent of structures already had demolition orders on them. <strong>The</strong> entire village therefore is<br />
under threat of demolition, and the future of the residents, comprising 120 people (including 25 women<br />
and 70 children), is unclear. In February <strong>2013</strong>, the Court heard together both the Regavim petition and<br />
RHR’s petition. <strong>The</strong> Court accepted the State’s position that it could not demolish the homes before<br />
processing an alternative building plan submitted by RHR, and gave us an additional 90 days to submit<br />
an additional plan for some homes in the adjacent village of Wadi Khesheish, not included in the original<br />
plan because a second organization is representing them. <strong>The</strong> Court did not accept the State’s excuses for<br />
its procrastination on the cases listed in our petition and requested a progress report within 90 days.<br />
This appeal has finally given us the opportunity to go head-to-head with Regavim, who have submitted<br />
many similar appeals in the past, using misleading statistics to claim reverse discrimination against settlers.<br />
While they lose almost every time, they actually win. <strong>The</strong> Court has always accepted the State’s position<br />
that its actions are proper since it is executing demolition orders at its own pace. RHR’s goal is not only<br />
to prevent the demolition of Susya and restore Palestinian access, but also to challenge the legitimacy of<br />
demolitions when discriminatory planning makes it almost impossible for Palestinians to build legally.<br />
<strong>The</strong> case of Susya is particularly poignant because the residents were reduced to living in caves in their<br />
fields after being expelled from their nearby village. <strong>The</strong> village was declared an archeological site after<br />
the discovery of an ancient synagogue. In 2001, the army expelled the Palestinians from their caves and<br />
destroyed most of them. Israel’s High Court returned them, but the inability to get building permits meant<br />
that anything they built to replace the demolished caves was illegal.<br />
16<br />
Firing Zone 918<br />
<strong>For</strong> over a decade, the 1,800 residents of 12 Palestinian villages in the area of Masafer-Yatta in the<br />
South Hebron Hills have lived under the threat of demolition, evacuation and dispossession. In 1999,<br />
the Israel security forces declared the area a firing zone and expelled 700 men, women and children.<br />
An interim injunction issued by the Israeli High Court enabled them to return to their homes in March<br />
2000. <strong>The</strong> State postponed the case time after time, until the new president of the High Court, Justice<br />
Asher Grunis, urged the State to either drop the case or pursue it. <strong>The</strong> Ministry of Defense intensified<br />
military exercises in the area and declared that it still wanted to expel the residents of eight villages.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y also demanded stringent limitations on development for the remaining four villages. RHR is<br />
not legally representing the threatened villages against the expulsions themselves, but is part of<br />
a broad coalition seeking to organize Israeli public and international opposition to the planned<br />
expulsions. Our legal department is demanding planning for two of the threatened cave communities,<br />
Sfai’i and Majaz, as part of our opposition to planned demolitions of British development projects in<br />
these villages. <strong>The</strong> victory of March 2000 has become an albatross around the necks of the residents<br />
because of the aforementioned draconian interpretation of the status quo mandated in the interim<br />
injunction that makes development even more impossible than in the rest of the Occupied Territories.<br />
It is therefore not sufficient to merely prevent expulsion.<br />
Zoning in Area C<br />
Susya and Firing Zone 918 are but two of the many examples of how discriminatory planning by<br />
army committees without Palestinian representation lead to home demolitions and the inability of<br />
Palestinian communities in Area C to develop. RHR’s High Court petition demanding that planning<br />
in Area C be returned to Palestinian hands was twice postponed in <strong>2012</strong>, and is now scheduled to<br />
be heard on October 3rd, <strong>2013</strong>. When requesting the latest postponement in November, the State<br />
claimed that the army’s Civil Administration was working hard to make changes to the planning system<br />
and needed more time.<br />
17 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
Socioeconomic<br />
Justice Department<br />
RHR’s Socioeconomic Justice Department, led by Rabbi Idit Lev, administers our <strong>Rights</strong> Center in Hadera,<br />
which helps around 200 unemployed and under-employed Israelis from Hadera and Wadi Ara to demand their<br />
socioeconomic rights. RHR also operates an empowerment group of Jewish and Arab women from Hadera<br />
and Wadi Ara, who have begun to work on promoting better conditions for single parents, the majority of<br />
whom are women. Rabbi Idit Lev also represents RHR in several coalitions concerning poverty, the state<br />
budget, and the groups that were formed following the social justice protests during the summer of 2011. We<br />
are beginning to focus on a common denominator linking many of the people we work with: the inability of<br />
working people to support their families.<br />
Inga, a woman whom we are helping to get disability<br />
benefit, said after the last time her application was<br />
rejected: “In another few months we will reapply. You<br />
will help me, right? If you help me, I won’t give up.”<br />
We promised that we will continue to help her.<br />
When Aaron, a 24 year-old student, entered RHR’s<br />
<strong>Rights</strong> Center for the first time he was scared, as he<br />
didn’t know how he could cope with a debt of 2,000<br />
shekels that he claimed he didn’t owe. After less than<br />
a week, the debt was reduced to only 181 shekels,<br />
and Aaron (who looked much better) said to us: “I also<br />
don’t owe this. I don’t intend to pay them. I am going to<br />
argue with them!” <strong>The</strong> change from a person who was<br />
broken when he came to our office a few days earlier to<br />
a person who could stand on his own was amazing.<br />
<strong>The</strong> past year was a significant one for RHR’s<br />
Socioeconomic Justice Department. <strong>The</strong> tent protest<br />
movement which began in the summer of 2011<br />
captured the headlines in Israel and thrust social justice<br />
issues into the national spotlight. As a result of the<br />
momentum of the protest movement, our economic<br />
and social justice work was reenergized.<br />
<strong>Rights</strong> Center<br />
RHR’s <strong>Rights</strong> Center provides Jewish<br />
and Arab residents of the Hadera<br />
and Wadi Ara region with advice<br />
and legal help regarding their<br />
socioeconomic rights. In <strong>2012</strong>, the<br />
Center served about 200 people,<br />
many of whom had first turned to<br />
RHR because of the subsequently<br />
defeated Wisconsin Plan. In<br />
addition, RHR began going doorto-door<br />
in selected neighborhoods<br />
in Hadera, informing people about<br />
the <strong>Rights</strong> Center. As a result<br />
of this proactive approach, the<br />
<strong>Rights</strong> Center received numerous<br />
additional requests for help. We<br />
deal with an average of 24 new<br />
cases per month. During <strong>2012</strong>,<br />
Rabbi Sigal Asher joined us at the<br />
<strong>Rights</strong> Center, as one of the four<br />
young rabbis/rabbinical students<br />
added to on our staff through<br />
a special grant, replacing Nico<br />
Socolovsky, who left to complete<br />
his rabbinical training in the US.<br />
<strong>The</strong> major focus of the center<br />
is to assist the unemployed and<br />
Composed of 20 Arab and Jewish women from<br />
Hadera and Wadi Ara, the majority of whom are<br />
single mothers, the group is currently addressing the<br />
socioeconomic rights of single parents. This year,<br />
they began working on extending annual subsidy<br />
given at the beginning of each school year to single<br />
parents to include high-school children. RHR hopes<br />
to create additional empowerment groups focused<br />
on other issues in other parts of the country where<br />
we already have a presence.<br />
Dorit explains the influence of RHR’s empowerment<br />
group: "To be able to express yourself is important;<br />
suddenly I see that I can speak without fear and<br />
without hesitating out of worry that I am saying<br />
something wrong.”<br />
Kulthum, an Arab woman fighting for the right of<br />
her daughter Ismi’ye to ride the district school bus<br />
underemployed with issues<br />
relating to rights available from<br />
the National Insurance Institute.<br />
This includes ensuring access<br />
to unemployment benefits and<br />
ensuring that employees have<br />
access to benefits such as paid<br />
leave, sick days, and assisting lowwage<br />
earners to pull themselves<br />
out of the cycle of poverty.<br />
While helping the unemployed<br />
and underemployed in Hadera<br />
and Wadi Ara to secure their<br />
social and economic rights, RHR<br />
will also identify issues requiring<br />
policy change on the national<br />
level. Helping to improve people’s<br />
lives locally is an essential part of<br />
our strategy to change the face of<br />
Israel nationally.<br />
Currently, RHR is launching a<br />
campaign based on a common<br />
denominator uniting many of the<br />
cases we are dealing with both in<br />
Hadera and elsewhere. Statistics<br />
indicate that at least one family<br />
Jewish-Arab Women’s Empowerment Group<br />
member is working in 52.9 percent<br />
of families living below the poverty<br />
line. Behind the statistics are real<br />
human tragedies caused by the<br />
combined effect of inadequate<br />
wages, an unresponsive system,<br />
and the growing holes in Israel’s<br />
social security net during our<br />
transition from a welfare state to a<br />
neo-liberal economy.<br />
RHR’s <strong>Rights</strong> Center found itself in<br />
the spotlight following the tragic<br />
suicide of the late Moshe Silman,<br />
who sought help from our <strong>Rights</strong><br />
Center after meeting Rabbi Idit<br />
Lev at the social justice protests<br />
in Haifa (see below for Rabbi Idit<br />
Lev’s moving eulogy for Moshe<br />
Silman). Moshe’s story was a<br />
particularly tragic example of a<br />
much broader reality. With Rabbi<br />
Lev being quoted and interviewed<br />
in the Israeli media after Moshe’s<br />
death, we found ourselves<br />
inundated with calls from people<br />
in similar situations to that of<br />
Moshe Silman.<br />
said, "Suddenly, I said that I wanted to be strong<br />
like Ayesha [RHR social economic justice facilitator<br />
and field worker] and to request the right for my<br />
daughter [to bus transportation] in a loud, clear<br />
and confident voice, and to make it clear that I am<br />
requesting a right, not charity".<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong> 18<br />
19 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
Portrait of one of our young rabbis/rabbinical students:<br />
Nico Sokolovsky<br />
<strong>For</strong> the past two years, Nico Sokolovsky managed our <strong>Rights</strong> Center in Hadera. In June <strong>2012</strong> he left in order<br />
to complete his rabbinical studies in the US. Nico offers the following thoughts on the center and on his<br />
experience in the field:<br />
“<strong>The</strong> center in Hadera is our opportunity to be present in the place where we are needed – it is no coincidence<br />
that Makom [place, in Hebrew] is one of the names of God. <strong>The</strong> center is an expression of our support for<br />
a population that does not get a hearing owing to its position and location… Indeed in this place we get an<br />
opportunity to be present! “Being present,” after two years in this position, is in my understanding a mitzvah of<br />
the highest importance – maybe it should be included in the Ten Commandments. “I am the Lord your God” is<br />
interpreted by the Rambam as a command to know God; I interpret it as an invitation to be present.<br />
My job gave me the chance to visit and to accompany the sick; to care for the poor, the widow, the orphan,<br />
the weak, and those beaten by the system; and to try to improve on the experiment of realizing the dream of<br />
a Jewish state; to feel that I am engaged in the Jewish-Zionist enterprise; to raise my voice and shout against<br />
the loss of direction that our country suffers from…To leave (if only for a minute) the small closed reality that I<br />
live in and to meet the “other” (in terms of economic status, social grouping, religion, etc.) and – through this<br />
meeting with him or her – to widen my knowledge of my God. As a result of my work for this organization,<br />
my understanding of justice has deepened. Thank you!”<br />
Special Projects<br />
Under the direction of Rabbi Arik Ascherman, RHR has developed a number of special projects. <strong>The</strong>se<br />
projects include our work with public housing tenants to ameliorate public housing; to support the African<br />
asylum seekers; and to advocate for the struggle of the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev.<br />
Public Housing<br />
<strong>The</strong> initiatives described in last<br />
year’s report have blossomed into<br />
a major program area for RHR.<br />
While affordable housing was<br />
one of the main rallying cries of<br />
the 2011 protest movement, most<br />
of the demands have since been<br />
“buried” in committees. <strong>The</strong> need<br />
is great. Over 40,000 Israelis are<br />
on the official waiting list for public<br />
housing, many waiting for six years<br />
or more. However, the list does not<br />
reflect the actual need. Inappropriate<br />
criteria leave many like the late<br />
Moshe Silman ineligible for support.<br />
Many of those in need repeatedly<br />
rent apartments they cannot afford<br />
until they are evicted, while others<br />
sleep in cars, on friends’ sofas or on<br />
park benches. <strong>The</strong> trauma suffered<br />
by children is particularly tragic.<br />
Nothing is done to replenish the<br />
public housing stock, let alone to<br />
increase it. Many existing apartments<br />
are in need of serious repair and<br />
some suffer from potentially lifethreatening<br />
problems. Thousands of<br />
other government owned buildings<br />
are left empty. Money intended<br />
for public housing is diverted to<br />
other uses, while those in need<br />
face an often obtuse and insensitive<br />
bureaucracy.<br />
Last year we described how we<br />
first encountered this issue in Beit<br />
Shean and began to develop our<br />
policy recommendations together<br />
with public housing residents<br />
in the city. At the time, the local<br />
branch of Amidar, one of Israel’s<br />
semi-governmental public housing<br />
companies, seemed utterly<br />
unresponsive and sometimes even<br />
hostile. With the guidance of Rabbi<br />
Arik Ascherman, Rabbi Kobi Weiss<br />
has reversed this situation. Realizing<br />
that the root of the problems in<br />
Beit Shean is the difficulty<br />
that individuals face when<br />
standing alone against a<br />
powerful bureaucracy, Rabbi Weiss<br />
opened lines of communication<br />
with Amidar. Students from RHR’s<br />
Jezreel Valley College <strong>Human</strong><br />
<strong>Rights</strong> Yeshiva, and area volunteers,<br />
including some who live in public<br />
housing, he has helped resolve<br />
debts, avoid eviction, obtain repairs,<br />
find appropriate apartments, etc.<br />
This past June, Jezreel Valley College<br />
chose the work of human services<br />
student Rivka Yones with RHR’s<br />
public housing advocacy program<br />
in Beit Shean as one of the two<br />
outstanding projects of the year, out<br />
of 130 competing projects. Since<br />
September of 2011, we have helped<br />
85 tenants, successfully resolving 25<br />
cases and assisting in the resolution<br />
of an additional 20 cases. We are<br />
continuing to work on most of the<br />
open cases. Our challenge is that most<br />
of the tenants with open cases have<br />
problems related to policies decided<br />
at the regional or national level;<br />
we are drawing on the issues these<br />
cases raise as we move forward with<br />
efforts to change national policy (see<br />
below). It is not our goal to remain in<br />
Beit Shean indefinitely: this year we<br />
are focusing on empowering tenants<br />
and local volunteers to support each<br />
other and to resolve problems on<br />
their own.<br />
While in Beit Shean we work mainly<br />
with public housing tenants, RHR<br />
works in Jerusalem with those who are<br />
not even deemed eligible for public<br />
housing due to unrealistic criteria.<br />
<strong>The</strong> protest encampment initially<br />
sponsored and sustained by RHR<br />
in 2011 has become a collective of<br />
activists and those in need of public<br />
housing called “the Ma’abarah”<br />
(echoing the name given to transit<br />
camps for new immigrants to Israel<br />
in the 1950’s). Long after the middle<br />
class protestors folded up their tents<br />
in the fall of 2011, the Ma’abarah<br />
was one of a handful of low income<br />
groups that continued the struggle.<br />
With many members literally having<br />
nowhere to live, the collective<br />
broke into abandoned buildings (an<br />
activity not sanctioned by RHR), set<br />
up new encampment sites or lived<br />
in donated office space, until the<br />
Municipality eventually provided<br />
supplementary funds allowing those<br />
in need to rent. However, these<br />
funds have now run out, and some<br />
members of the Ma’abarah are again<br />
in danger of eviction.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Ma’abarah has been one of<br />
the groups continuing with high<br />
profile protests highlighting the<br />
unresponsiveness of municipal<br />
and national officials. <strong>For</strong> example,<br />
during the Sukkot holiday the<br />
Ma’abarah built a “Sukkah on<br />
Wheels” representing needed<br />
homes, and paraded from Jerusalem<br />
Mayor Nir Barkat’s public Sukkah<br />
to the home of Prime Minister<br />
Netanyahu to a large public gathering<br />
of Kurdish Jewry in Sacher Park.<br />
<strong>The</strong>se protests elicited a defensive<br />
reaction from outgoing Housing<br />
Minister Ariel Atias. While he didn’t<br />
change the problematic way his<br />
Ministry operated, Atias made some<br />
proposals to replenish the supply<br />
of public housing. <strong>The</strong> proposals<br />
constituted an insufficient step in<br />
the right direction, but they were<br />
not adopted by the government. In<br />
some cases demonstrations were<br />
met with police brutality and arrests.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Ma’abarah has waged several<br />
campaigns on behalf of individuals<br />
faced with eviction, most notably<br />
waging a successful campaign<br />
against Amidar to prevent the<br />
eviction of Ovadia and Miriam Ben<br />
Avraham. In a very powerful Tisha<br />
B’Av Mincha service and program,<br />
RHR and the Ma’abarah drew links<br />
between the loss of our national<br />
home mourned on Tisha B’Av and<br />
the housing insecurity facing many<br />
Israelis. We also built on the theme of<br />
emerging hope which characterizes<br />
the Tisha B’Av Mincha.<br />
In May <strong>2012</strong>, the Ma’abarah entered<br />
a former kindergarten abandoned<br />
for three years in the low income<br />
Katamonim neighborhood, where<br />
the need for public housing<br />
is particularly acute. It<br />
turned out that this property<br />
<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong> 20<br />
21 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
was owned by Na’amat,<br />
the women’s organization<br />
affiliated with the Histadrut,<br />
Israel’s largest labor organization.<br />
Rather than evict the Ma’abarah,<br />
Na’amat recognized that we had<br />
common goals and began negotiating<br />
with the Ma’abarah to allow them to<br />
use the building as a neighborhood<br />
community center and a base for<br />
education and advocacy.<br />
Because the Ma’abarah is not a<br />
legal entity, RHR agreed to sign a<br />
contract on its behalf. However,<br />
around Rosh Hashana, Na’amat<br />
broke off negotiations and initiated<br />
court action to evict the Ma’abarah.<br />
We suspect that Mayor Barkat and<br />
others applied financial pressure on<br />
Na’amat. Just as we were waiting<br />
for a court ruling, Na’amat agreed<br />
to mediation. Noting their deep<br />
awareness of campaigns such<br />
as RHR’s request that overseas<br />
supporters contact their local<br />
Na’amat affiliates, Na’amat agreed<br />
to rent the premises to the Ma’abarah<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong><br />
22<br />
through the end of <strong>2013</strong>, giving<br />
us an important base to galvanize<br />
support for public housing policy<br />
change. We ask all those who<br />
contacted Na’amat on this issue to<br />
thank the organization for resisting<br />
financial extortion and staying true<br />
to its own values.<br />
With the help of Attorney Becky<br />
Cohen-Keshet, RHR has successfully<br />
defended several other families<br />
facing eviction around the country.<br />
In the case of Rachel Levy from<br />
Yavneh, who was evicted from<br />
her apartment, we are working to<br />
reestablish her and her daughter’s<br />
right to public housing.<br />
RHR’s initiated the Public Housing<br />
<strong>For</strong>um to translate the lessons<br />
learned at the grass roots level into<br />
policy change. <strong>The</strong> forum unites<br />
veteran policy groups and grass roots<br />
organizations. As part of the Public<br />
Housing <strong>For</strong>um, together with the<br />
organizations Community Advocacy,<br />
the Eastern Democratic Rainbow,<br />
Shatil, Tarabut, the Periphery <strong>For</strong>um,<br />
and the Social Welfare Department<br />
of the Jerusalem Municipality, RHR<br />
developed a position paper focusing<br />
on such issues as: Investment in<br />
public housing; Revising criteria to<br />
ensure that all those who are in need<br />
are deemed eligible; Transparency;<br />
Changing the often demeaning<br />
treatment of tenants by public<br />
housing officials; A total freeze on<br />
evictions.<br />
As reported last year, the <strong>For</strong>um<br />
created a broad-based Knesset<br />
Public Housing Caucus to<br />
translate the passion of the protest<br />
movement into concrete public<br />
housing gains. In <strong>2012</strong>, the<br />
caucus hosted a public hearing in<br />
the Knesset and a Public Housing<br />
Day, including another Knesset<br />
hearing and discussions in several<br />
Knesset committees. <strong>The</strong> <strong>For</strong>um<br />
has prepared proposed legislation<br />
to address each of our policy<br />
demands, and will be introducing<br />
this into the Knesset in <strong>2013</strong>.<br />
<strong>The</strong> shocking and tragic selfimmolation<br />
of the late Moshe Silman<br />
(see Rabbi Idit Lev’s moving eulogy<br />
below) during a demonstration in<br />
June <strong>2012</strong> powerfully highlighted<br />
the closed doors many Israelis face<br />
in dealing with the public housing<br />
bureaucracy. Moshe Silman’s state<br />
of desperation was expressed in a<br />
note he left blaming the government<br />
and welfare authorities for bringing<br />
him to the brink of homelessness.<br />
While Silman’s act reflected a<br />
personal state of severe depression,<br />
it also served as a warning call<br />
regarding the human toll resulting<br />
Moshe, we met last year at the tent<br />
encampment, where we took part in<br />
many late-night discussions. Only after<br />
we had dismantled our tents did I learn<br />
that you needed help in exercising your<br />
rights. At a meeting about the future of<br />
the social protest movement, you told<br />
me, in between cigarettes, that you<br />
were not hopeful about your future.<br />
You added that you would not live on<br />
the street. I do not recall my answer<br />
at that moment, but I remember that<br />
I was optimistic, as I am with every<br />
person who enters through the door of<br />
our <strong>Rights</strong> Center, with the hope that<br />
this time we will win. I knew that we<br />
had ten months to prevent you from<br />
being thrown out on the street. We<br />
immediately set to work.<br />
As the months passed and doors were<br />
slammed in our faces, your despair<br />
grew. In May, RHR’s <strong>Rights</strong> Center, with<br />
assistance from other friends in Haifa,<br />
succeeded in reinstating your disability<br />
benefit, but not in obtaining any rental<br />
assistance. Neither letters nor lawyers<br />
nor the appeal of Knesset member Orly<br />
Levy-Abekasis helped. We tried every<br />
approach, and in the last weeks of your<br />
life, we tried to change your fate, but<br />
from Israel’s move from a social<br />
welfare system to a neo-liberal<br />
philosophy. It was also a sobering<br />
reminder of our own limitations.<br />
<strong>For</strong> almost a year, several RHR staff<br />
members dealt with this case.<br />
Rabbi Idit Lev accompanied him<br />
on a daily basis, while Rabbi Arik<br />
Ascherman also helped when Rabbi<br />
Idit Lev was not available. Attorney<br />
Becky Cohen-Keshet dealt with the<br />
legal aspects of his situation. In<br />
cooperation with RHR, MK Orly<br />
Levy-Abekasis, chairperson of the<br />
Knesset Lobby for Public Housing,<br />
also tried to negotiate with the<br />
A Eulogy for Moshe Silman z”l<br />
by Rabbi Idit Lev<br />
Ministry of Housing on Moshe’s<br />
behalf, but all was in vain. <strong>The</strong><br />
Amidar official made it clear to<br />
Moshe that he was not entitled to<br />
rental assistance because he did<br />
not meet the strict criteria. Moshe<br />
appealed again and again, and<br />
refused to accept the decision that a<br />
man in his condition was not entitled<br />
to the state assistance he required in<br />
order to live with dignity. In June,<br />
the Housing Ministry rejected his<br />
appeal. With a little more time, we<br />
believe that we had a decent chance<br />
to at least obtain a rent subsidy.<br />
Sadly, in his depressed state, Moshe<br />
had lost all hope.<br />
were unable to. At the beginning of June,<br />
I told friends at RHR’s <strong>Rights</strong> Center that<br />
your case was our greatest failure in<br />
realizing rights, as you were deserving<br />
of them, but we could not manage to<br />
make the authorities understand this.<br />
On Friday, Moshe, you said to me:<br />
“I shall make my protest alone,” and<br />
you did, carrying us all away in the<br />
whirlpool.<br />
You presented Israeli society with a<br />
mirror, and an ugly image of poverty in<br />
the State of Israel <strong>2012</strong>; a poverty that is<br />
shaming and humiliating; a poverty that<br />
cannot navigate an unbelievable maze<br />
of bureaucracy; a poverty that in even<br />
after receiving state assistance forces a<br />
person to collect handouts in order to<br />
survive.<br />
Every day since we established RHR’s<br />
<strong>Rights</strong> Center in Hadera, where I<br />
encounter daily stories of people like<br />
you, I am reminded of a sentence from<br />
the Jewish prayer after meals:<br />
“May the Lord, our Father, tend and<br />
nourish us, sustain and maintain us,<br />
and speedily grant us relief from<br />
all our troubles. Make the Lord<br />
make us dependent not on the<br />
<br />
23 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
handouts or loans of others, but<br />
rather on God’s full, open and<br />
generous hand, so that we may<br />
never be humiliated or put to shame.”<br />
How wise our rabbis once were, because<br />
now, in the State of Israel, matnat basar<br />
vedam (receiving help) involves shame<br />
and humiliation.<br />
Today in Israel more than 20,000 families<br />
and individuals live in Kafkaesque<br />
situations similar to that of Moshe<br />
Silman, a step away from living on the<br />
street, hungry, with not enough money<br />
to go to the doctor or to buy medicines,<br />
unable to cover expenses of the<br />
deteriorating educational system, and<br />
without any right to receive sufficient<br />
assistance from the State.<br />
Moshe, the mirror you set before us<br />
says “Enough!” You told us it was time<br />
to demand from the State to solve this<br />
national crisis. Contrary to what the<br />
Prime Minister of Israel said, this is<br />
not a personal tragedy – it is a national<br />
tragedy.<br />
<strong>The</strong> time has come for the citizens of<br />
the State of Israel to have suitable public<br />
housing, a good public healthcare<br />
system, an excellent public education<br />
system, and a welfare system which<br />
helps those who need assistance.<br />
Rabbi Heschel said: “In a democratic<br />
society, some are guilty, all are<br />
responsible.” We, as longtime social<br />
activists and the multitudes who have<br />
joined the social protest movement<br />
in the last year, have assumed our<br />
democratic responsibility of changing<br />
the State in which we live, of turning<br />
it into a place where the Rambam’s<br />
highest level of justice prevails:<br />
“You shall thou uphold him: he live<br />
with you as a resident alien” (Leviticus,<br />
25:35). That is, strengthen him so that<br />
he does not fall and be in need.<br />
<strong>The</strong> government of Israel does not take<br />
responsibility for its actions, and it is at<br />
fault that Moshe died in vain.<br />
To the ministers in the Israeli<br />
government– you are happy to be<br />
given the honor of being a minister,<br />
but you flagrantly ignore the grave<br />
responsibility that comes with the post,<br />
the responsibility for all the citizens of<br />
the State of Israel. We will not let you<br />
forget your role, and we will not let you<br />
continue to conduct a greedy economic<br />
policy on our backs. You are guilty of<br />
Moshe’s death. You are responsible for<br />
the plight of the homeless and those<br />
sleeping on sofas in Israel, for the hungry<br />
and the sick and those struggling with<br />
poverty.<br />
We demand that you listen to the words<br />
of the Supreme Court: “Personal dignity<br />
includes… Guaranteeing the minimum<br />
required for human sustenance…A<br />
man living on the street who has no<br />
home, is a man whose dignity has been<br />
compromised; a man who is hungry<br />
is a man whose dignity has been<br />
compromised; a man who has no access<br />
to basic medical care is a man whose<br />
dignity has been compromised; a man<br />
forced to live in humiliating material<br />
conditions is a man whose dignity has<br />
been compromised.”<br />
We demand that Moshe be the last<br />
victim. We demand that you will never<br />
again compromise anybody’s dignity,<br />
and that you will never endanger<br />
anyone’s the life.<br />
I pray that Moshe will be the last<br />
victim.<br />
In these days, bayn hametzarim (the<br />
3 weeks between the fast day of 17<br />
Tammuz, marking the breach of the<br />
walls of Jerusalem, and Tisha’ B’Av, the<br />
fast day commemorating the destruction<br />
of the Second Temple) are difficult days,<br />
I ask all those who are in terrible need,<br />
please look after your souls and bodies.<br />
“Guard your souls well”<br />
(Deuteronomy, 4:15).<br />
Israel’s Unrecognized Bedouin Villages of the Negev<br />
As we write this report, Israel has<br />
intensified its efforts to eliminate<br />
the “unrecognized” Bedouin<br />
villages in the Negev, which either<br />
existed before Israel was founded<br />
or were created in locations to<br />
which the Israeli army itself moved<br />
Bedouin in the early years of the<br />
State. Being unrecognized, they<br />
receive no services, their homes are<br />
automatically “illegal” and subject<br />
to demolition, and their crops are<br />
sprayed and killed. RHR and our<br />
coalition partners are working to<br />
prevent the forceful transfer of some<br />
40,000 additional Bedouin into<br />
artificially created cities, and the<br />
theft of their land.<br />
Throughout <strong>2012</strong>, RHR continued<br />
to take action to publicize the<br />
plight of El-Arakib, which has been<br />
demolished over 40 times since the<br />
first and most traumatic demolition<br />
in July 2010. Rabbi Ascherman has<br />
been the driving force in RHR behind<br />
the support of this community. RHR,<br />
along with RHR-NA (now T’ruah)<br />
and the Jewish Alliance for Change,<br />
successfully pressured the JNF-KKL<br />
to agree to freeze the planting of<br />
forests closing in and threatening to<br />
erase the memory of El-Arakib. <strong>The</strong>y<br />
have agreed to do so on four plots<br />
until the court rules on competing<br />
state and Bedouin land ownership<br />
claims. We asked the JNF to focus<br />
on their admirable work in the<br />
fields of forestry and ecology, and<br />
to leave behind that part of their<br />
history which has been complicit in<br />
unjustly creating facts on the ground<br />
and discriminating against Israel’s<br />
Arab citizens. In December, the<br />
High Court ordered that the District<br />
Court hear these claims, despite<br />
state contentions that all Bedouin<br />
proof of ownership is irrelevant<br />
because the state expropriated the<br />
lands in 1953. RHR is now urging<br />
the JNF to freeze the forestation on<br />
all of the El-Arakib lands, which will<br />
be discussed before the Court, and<br />
not just the four plots.<br />
El-Arakib is but one poignant<br />
reminder of the forced evictions<br />
that some 30,000-45,000 Bedouin<br />
in the Negev may face. Ignoring<br />
the government-sponsored<br />
recommendation of the Goldberg<br />
Committee to legalize most of<br />
the “unrecognized” villages, the<br />
government sought to implement the<br />
Prawer recommendations, calling<br />
for additional mass expulsions and<br />
forced relocation into seven artificial<br />
cities, which have become magnets<br />
for crime, poverty, drugs and despair<br />
and threaten the Bedouin way of<br />
life. In January <strong>2013</strong>, the outgoing<br />
government adopted Minister Benny<br />
Begin’s report, which combined the<br />
understanding language of Goldberg<br />
with the cruel recommendations<br />
of Prawer. Because right-wing<br />
extremists have expressed that<br />
the planned expulsions and land<br />
theft don’t go far enough, Begin<br />
apparently felt that this is the best<br />
deal the Bedouin could get.<br />
RHR now faces the very difficult<br />
task of ensuring justice for the<br />
Bedouin in light of the Begin report.<br />
As a part of the Coexistence <strong>For</strong>um,<br />
and along with the Negev Bedouin<br />
leadership, RHR will continue with<br />
a public campaign and lobbying<br />
strategy to prevent the passage of<br />
legislation implementing the Begin<br />
report. <strong>The</strong> JNF-KKL also shares<br />
some of the responsibility for the<br />
Prawer/Begin plan. <strong>The</strong> CEO of<br />
JNF-USA proudly proclaimed in a<br />
meeting with Rabbi Ascherman that<br />
he lobbied the Knesset to adopt the<br />
Negev Development Plan, which<br />
the Prawer/Begin plan serves. <strong>The</strong><br />
JNF-KKL will be asked to create a<br />
green belt on much of the land.<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong> 24<br />
25 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
African Asylum Seekers in Israel<br />
RHR has been increasingly active<br />
regarding the plight of African asylum<br />
seekers fleeing from the killing<br />
fields of Sudan and Eritrea. Sadly,<br />
we are ignoring our own history by<br />
closing our borders. A new law now<br />
theoretically makes it a crime to<br />
help the some 60,000 refugees and<br />
asylum seekers in Israel, and we have<br />
one of the lowest rates in the world<br />
for granting refugee status. Current<br />
policy pits disadvantaged veteran<br />
residents of South Tel Aviv against<br />
the asylum seekers. Attacks and<br />
other manifestations of hatred and<br />
anger have become more frequent.<br />
In addition to our longstanding<br />
participation in High Court appeals<br />
seeking to allow them to work,<br />
prevent geographical restrictions<br />
on where they are allowed to live,<br />
etc., we did our best to publicize<br />
the plight of the South Sudanese<br />
who were ultimately deported<br />
in <strong>2012</strong> after losing the group<br />
protection still given to Eritreans<br />
and those from North Sudan. Our<br />
Education Department now brings<br />
Israeli young people to South Tel<br />
Aviv, and during the “Aseret Yamei<br />
Teshuvah” between Rosh Hashanah<br />
and Yom Kippur, RHR co-sponsored<br />
a series of vigils outside the homes<br />
of Interior Minister Yishai, Prime<br />
Minister Netanyahu and Defense<br />
Minister Barak. RHR recently asked<br />
our supporters around the world<br />
to write letters to the Ministry of<br />
Interior because refugees were<br />
being told they either face at least<br />
three years of detention or must<br />
“voluntarily” leave. That policy<br />
has been cancelled, but growing<br />
numbers of asylum seekers are<br />
being incarcerated. We have been<br />
working increasingly closely with<br />
the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society<br />
(HIAS), and hope to: 1. Ensure that<br />
Israel implements fair policies for<br />
granting refugee status and accepts<br />
our fair share. 2. Look for creative<br />
solutions such as getting third<br />
countries to allow Israel to act as<br />
a way station, and ask Jewish and<br />
other communities in host countries<br />
to make this easier by sponsoring<br />
refugee families. We need your<br />
help to make this happen. In<br />
December, at the invitation of HIAS,<br />
Education Director Rabbi Nava<br />
Hefetz addressed a U.N interfaith<br />
conference on the plight of refugees<br />
around the world. Her remarks<br />
can be found on RHR’s website.<br />
Since the conference, Rabbi Hefetz<br />
has been working with <strong>Rabbis</strong><br />
Ascherman and Yehudai to help<br />
establish international interfaith<br />
standards on this issue.<br />
Portrait of one of our young rabbis/rabbinical students:<br />
Rabbi Kobi Weiss<br />
Kobi comes from an ultra-Orthodox background, and was ordained within that world. He later<br />
left religion entirely, but did not find himself in the secular hi-tech world. Judaism was in his<br />
soul, and he began to teach in pre-army academies and to lead worship services for secular<br />
Israelis. Although he would put on a kippah and serve as an army rabbi when called up for<br />
reserve duty, he still had difficulty calling himself a rabbi.<br />
Working with RHR has reconnected Kobi with the purpose of Judaism. He says that it has<br />
helped him define what it truly means to be a rabbi, “<strong>The</strong> work has sharpened my philosophy of social justice<br />
from a Jewish perspective – what are goals are. Working for human rights is an integral part of the responsibility<br />
of the Jewish people in our generation, each from his/her own place. This realization doesn’t just impact on my<br />
work for RHR, but everything else I teach, how I teach, how I structure my day…It isn’t about politics and it hasn’t<br />
changed how I vote. It is much deeper than that. It is about what it means to be called ‘rabbi.’… My work in Beit<br />
Shean has crystallized my thoughts about poverty and work. I have been teaching for two years in a program for<br />
discharged soldiers. I teach them that the essence of being a leader is not averting one’s eyes and turning away.”<br />
Kobi’s community work in Beit Shean has led him to understand and to teach that you can’t simply talk about issues<br />
such as poverty via theory and statistics. You need to experience them at the grassroots level. He learned that we<br />
must be careful not to patronize those with whom we work. Our goal must be to help people overcome all of the<br />
forces that lead us not to take action to help ourselves or others.<br />
Kobi writes, “This work challenges me. RHR is a reference group. I am not Reform, Conservative or Orthodox. I<br />
come home and my family doesn’t fully understand that I am not in any particular movement. But I never had a<br />
support group. Now I have people around me whom I can speak with.”<br />
Education Department<br />
HR’s Education Department, directed by Rabbi Nava Hefetz, teaches<br />
the connection between Judaism and human rights to young people<br />
in 13 pre-military academies. We engage university students at our<br />
<strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> Yeshiva at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and have<br />
opened a new yeshiva at Jezreel Valley College. In addition to study,<br />
the yeshiva students also participate in a human rights project with<br />
RHR or another human rights organization. RHR works with Jewish<br />
and Bedouin women students at Sapir College, who learn about<br />
each other and about our faith traditions regarding human rights<br />
and the status of women. We give the women tools to be activists<br />
and they conduct shared social change projects. In partnership with<br />
the San Francisco Jewish Learning Initiative (formerly the Bureau<br />
of Jewish Education) we have produced an English version of RHR’s<br />
Tractate Independence, and developed a middle school curriculum<br />
for American Jews.<br />
“We’re ending the year not only more aware of our<br />
rights, but also more involved in the whole issue of<br />
the rights of everyone in Israel. You’ve shown us the<br />
meaning of tolerance and pluralism, the importance<br />
of looking deeper into things, conveying criticism and<br />
reinterpretation of things on the spot instead of taking<br />
what’s written as the only correct interpretation.”<br />
Nachshon Junior College, Metzudat Yoav<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong> 26<br />
27 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
Teaching <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> in Israel’s Pre-Military Academies<br />
RHR’s Education Department was particularly busy<br />
this past year. In October <strong>2012</strong>, we increased the<br />
number of pre-military academies in which we work<br />
from 11 to 13, and we hope to continue to meet<br />
the growing demand for this program in the coming<br />
years. Some 600 young people, the majority of whom<br />
will become army officers, are exposed to our human<br />
rights teachings in these 13 pre-military academies.<br />
<strong>The</strong> students all use the same text, “Tractate<br />
Independence” – RHR’s rabbinical interpretation of<br />
the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel.<br />
We encourage the students to engage with the values<br />
in the Declaration and to compare them to Jewish<br />
worldviews found in the Jewish tradition through the<br />
generations.<br />
<strong>The</strong> goal of this course is to educate the participants<br />
and to encourage them to ask questions and challenge<br />
their views and prejudices, exploring the concept of<br />
“the other” in Israeli society. We examine the roots of<br />
the approach to “the other” in Jewish sources and using<br />
different philosophical approaches. As future soldiers,<br />
commanders and leaders, it is our hope that when<br />
fulfilling their duties at checkpoints or commanding<br />
groups of soldiers, these young people will be influenced<br />
and deeply affected by the rights of the “other.”<br />
Students in RHR’s <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> courses in the<br />
pre-military academies are also exposed to human<br />
rights issues outside the classroom. In the 2011-<br />
<strong>2012</strong> academic year, all the academies participated<br />
in a tour of the Separation Barrier in Jerusalem, and<br />
several took pilot tours examining the situation of<br />
African refugees and asylum seekers in South Tel Aviv<br />
and the unrecognized Bedouin villages of the Negev.<br />
In the <strong>2012</strong>-<strong>2013</strong> academic year, our goal is that each<br />
academy will take four tours: the Separation Barrier,<br />
South Tel Aviv, the unrecognized villages, and the<br />
South Hebron Hills.<br />
Last year, several groups of students joined RHR staff<br />
and members at meetings with Sudanese and Eritrean<br />
refugees in South Tel Aviv, hearing firsthand about<br />
their experiences in Israel. We also met with a Jewish<br />
resident of the Shapira neighborhood, as well as with<br />
the director of the Levinsky Garden Library.<br />
One student who participated in the tour commented:<br />
“<strong>The</strong> refugee problem is a humanitarian one; the<br />
situation is in flux and it is difficult to deport them back<br />
to their original countries. <strong>The</strong>y feel like citizens of the<br />
land, joining youth groups such as the Scouts, and they<br />
learn Hebrew.” Upon meeting with Margaret, one of<br />
the social activists from the Shapira neighborhood,<br />
the student wrote that, “<strong>The</strong> situation is insane.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re is a lack of preschools, a lack of space, a lack<br />
of solutions to the distress of the foreign workers’<br />
children. Educationally, the problem is even more<br />
severe – there are not enough schools, and there is no<br />
capacity to absorb such a large population. <strong>The</strong>re is<br />
no investment in infrastructure, in lighting, and there<br />
is no secular elementary school – parents are forced<br />
to send their children farther away. Margaret lives<br />
on a relatively middle-class street. She contends that<br />
the boundary between the building and the street has<br />
blurred, and the situation is chaotic and untenable.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re are alcohol and drugs everywhere, to the point<br />
of public nuisance. <strong>The</strong> Shapira neighborhood is a<br />
microcosm of the whole migration issue. <strong>The</strong> place<br />
feels like a garbage dump.”<br />
We also took each pre-military academy on a tour of<br />
the Separation Barrier in Jerusalem, contrasting Israeli<br />
security concerns with the challenge of upholding the<br />
<strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> Yeshivas<br />
rights of Palestinians residents of East Jerusalem. <strong>The</strong><br />
tour includes meetings with local Palestinian residents<br />
who tell the students first-hand about the challenges<br />
that they face; for many young Israelis, this is their first<br />
time meeting Palestinians. Students from the Ami-Chai<br />
Junior College wrote to Rabbi Nava Hefetz, “We the<br />
students at the Ami-Chai Junior College wish to thank<br />
you for the tour along the separation barrier in Jerusalem.<br />
<strong>The</strong> junior college students were not familiar with the<br />
reality of the fence. <strong>The</strong> tour enriched our knowledge<br />
and opinions. <strong>The</strong> way in which the content was given<br />
over was inspiring. Most people are too closed off to<br />
others’ opinions and speak rudely. You conveyed things<br />
pleasantly and calmly, and in a very positive way.”<br />
In addition to the tours, many of the pre-military<br />
academies engage in human rights projects with<br />
marginalized communities within Israel. By working<br />
within these pre-military academies, <strong>Rabbis</strong> for<br />
<strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> is helping the next generation of Israeli<br />
leaders to change the face of Israel.<br />
We have high hopes for these young people, many<br />
of whom were involved in the social protests of the<br />
Summer of 2011 and continue to work for social<br />
change within Israel. We see our former students<br />
involved in many organizations and initiatives, and<br />
sometimes in key positions as Knesset aides, in the<br />
prosecutor’s office, etc. We need many more initiatives<br />
like this, because others who do not share our values<br />
also have been investing in education for many years<br />
quietly and out of the spotlight.<br />
RHR’s <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> Yeshivas also continued to flourish this past year. In 2011-12, we ran two <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> Batei<br />
Midrash: one at Hebrew University, operating since 2003, and the other at the Open University in Ra’anana. At<br />
the end of the academic year, we decided to close the program in Ra’anana, as the university tends to attract older,<br />
more mature students who are returning to study after being in the workforce, while we seek to reach out to Israel’s<br />
young generation. In October <strong>2012</strong>, we again launched the <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> Yeshiva at Hebrew University for 20<br />
students, with Debbie Shoua-Haim, one of RHR’s four rabbinical students/young rabbis/prospective next generation<br />
rabbis, appointed as coordinator. Our new program at Jezreel Valley College in the North, run by Rabbi Kobi Weiss<br />
and Rabbi Tlalit Shavit, attracted 80 applicants for just 20 places! Students who participate in the <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong><br />
Yeshivas receive a stipend and are expected to intern in a human rights or social change organization. While Jezreel<br />
Valley College has agreed to pay the stipends for the students, RHR covers this cost at the Hebrew University. In<br />
the coming year, we hope that rabbis around the world will help support our <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> Yeshivas, including the<br />
sponsorship of students.<br />
Over the past year, RHR also worked on the English version of our Tractate Independence (RHR’s commentary on<br />
Israel’s Declaration of Independence, teaching democracy and human rights as Jewish values in a Talmudic style).<br />
<strong>For</strong> the past year, Debbie Shoua-Haim and long-standing board member Rabbi Amy Klein have worked toward<br />
completing this task, focusing on creating a middle school curriculum suitable for Jewish day schools, supplementary<br />
schools and youth groups. Several Bay Area Jewish schools have committed to running pilot programs in the <strong>2013</strong>-<br />
2014 academic year, and we would be happy to conduct pilots in additional cities.<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong> 28<br />
29 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
Citizens for Equality<br />
This year marks the third and final year of the first cohort of RHR’s Citizens for Equality program, engaging Jewish<br />
and Bedouin women students at Sapir College. <strong>The</strong> three-year program has been demanding and difficult. At the<br />
beginning, the participants had difficulties finding common ground, as they came from vastly different social and<br />
religious backgrounds. Students also faced difficulties in continuing the program, with some revolting against the<br />
traditions of their own societies, and standing by their resolve to participate in the program, and to improve their<br />
own lives and those of their communities. Coordinators Amal El-Sanah and Leah Shakdiel worked hard to create<br />
cohesion amongst the participants.<br />
At the beginning of <strong>2012</strong>, Citizens for Equality participants held a study day in Jaffa, touring the city in order to<br />
understand the often opposing Jewish and Arab narratives. We met the rabbi of the Torah-centered settlement group<br />
in Jaffa and with Tel Aviv-Jaffa City Councilor Sami Abu Shehadeh. We also toured South Tel Aviv in order to learn<br />
more about the plight of the African refugees and their Jewish neighbors.<br />
In this third and final year, the students are embarking on small, community-based projects devoted to human<br />
rights and social change. <strong>The</strong> aim of these projects is to encourage leadership skills and create social change in<br />
communities in the Negev area. Projects planned include building a park in the presently neglected area of Tel<br />
Sheva; using music as a tool for communication between different ethnic and religious groups; and running an<br />
advisory center for women who lack the knowledge to apply for social benefits. Although these projects are small<br />
in scale, they enable the students to apply their knowledge gained throughout the past two years, and in doing so,<br />
empower themselves as they help others.<br />
Interfaith<br />
Portrait of one of our young rabbis/rabbinical students:<br />
Debbie Shoua-Haim<br />
I was born and raised in Jerusalem. I’m married to Alon and I live in Jerusalem. Prior<br />
to working at RHR, I was trained as a Jewish studies teacher and taught in various<br />
Jerusalem high schools. I’m finishing my MA in Bible Studies and am planning to<br />
study for the rabbinate over the coming years.<br />
My work at RHR (in the Education Department) has opened up my eyes to see more<br />
and more wrongs in our society and has opened my heart to feel the suffering of others. I learn from<br />
RHR’s more experienced rabbis and employees about justice, morality and fighting for worthy causes.<br />
In my work I truly feel that I have a chance to make a difference in the way that young people, high<br />
school and university students perceive the importance of human rights, their connection to the Jewish<br />
tradition, and the duty we all have to fight for them.<br />
RHR’s Interfaith work is mainly led by Rabbi Yehiel Grenimann, and we work in a variety of interfaith<br />
capacities. We are part of the “Tag Meir” (light tag) coalition of organizations (see below), and we also<br />
have several interfaith projects involving young religious students and leaders.<br />
Tag Meir<br />
RHR organized and participated in several<br />
activities of "Tag Meir" (light tag), a coalition<br />
of organizations that respond to so-called “Tag<br />
Mekhir” (price tag) Jewish terror and violence<br />
against Palestinians, refugees and migrants,<br />
and others in Israel and the West Bank. In June<br />
<strong>2012</strong>, we participated in a Tag Meir event at<br />
Neve Shalom, at which RHR board member<br />
Rabbi Gil Nativ spoke. In September <strong>2012</strong>,<br />
in response to the desecration and attempted<br />
arson of Latrun Monastery, we joined in an<br />
interfaith prayer held at the monastery. Earlier,<br />
at the end of 2011, RHR organized solidarity visits to the villages of Asira al-Qibliya and al-Burka. In<br />
Asira al-Qibliya we visited with a family who had been subjected to many violent attacks by settlers from<br />
the nearby outpost of Yitzhar. In addition to words of support and commitment to peace and justice,<br />
we donated a barbed-wire fence to help protect them from the ongoing violence from their neighbors.<br />
In al-Burka we visited the mosque, which had been subject to arson only a week before. We brought<br />
them new books of the Qur’an, replacing those destroyed in the fire and again both sides spoke of their<br />
commitment to peace and coexistence. It was most heartening to see many young people participating<br />
and the warm reception from our Palestinian hosts.<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong> 30<br />
31 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
Seminary Students Environment Project<br />
Yonatan Shefa, who holds one of our four rabbinical student/young rabbi positions, devoted part of his<br />
time in the second half of <strong>2012</strong> to facilitating groups of Jewish, Christian and Muslim seminary students<br />
who engaged in joint study about the overlap between human rights and the environment. This project<br />
comprises a series of intensive seminars that to date have focused on the subjects of water, the desert, and<br />
olive trees. <strong>The</strong> project is being run in partnership with the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development<br />
and will continue through <strong>2013</strong>.<br />
Emerging Religious Leaders Project<br />
In May <strong>2012</strong>, Yonatan Shefa also began co-facilitating a project that brings together emerging Palestinian<br />
and Israeli religious leadership to develop mutual understanding and trust, with the aim of creating<br />
collaborative projects promoting peace and human rights. This yearlong project is sponsored by Search<br />
for Common Ground and the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land.<br />
RHR in the News<br />
During <strong>2012</strong>, RHR continued to implement the strategic decision taken during 2010 to promote our unique<br />
voice to the Israeli public. After Yariv Mohar began to work as our spokesperson during 2011, RHR began to<br />
enjoy increased exposure in the Israeli media and diversified coverage in the internet media as well as in the<br />
more traditional print media, television, and radio during <strong>2012</strong>.<br />
In <strong>2012</strong>, RHR was mentioned in 149 media items, including three items on Channel 2, the leading and most<br />
selective television station in Israel; 17 items on Kol Israel, the leading Israeli radio network; 11 items on<br />
YNET, the country’s most popular internet news site and nine on MAKO, the internet site of Channel 2; as<br />
well as 30 items in Ha’aretz, which appeals to Israel’s elite and decision makers. In addition, we were cited<br />
numerous times in both the general and Jewish press abroad. RHR also contributed hundreds of op-eds to<br />
local newspapers and internet news sites.<br />
With the dedication and knowledge of Matti Shmueloff, our Social Media Director, our online presence has<br />
also increased. Our near daily posts on Facebook in English and Hebrew are widely and increasingly read<br />
and reposted. In the beginning of <strong>2012</strong> alone, 46,688 unique visitors accessed RHR’s Hebrew and English<br />
language websites; 30 percent are regular readers and follow our activities on an ongoing basis.<br />
During <strong>2012</strong>, our Communications Department also completed a video diary presenting the daily life and<br />
hardships of a 13-year-old Palestinian girl from the South Hebron Hills. <strong>The</strong> first two clips of this diary were<br />
launched at the end of December in an internet-based campaign designed to raise awareness of human rights<br />
abuses in this area. <strong>The</strong> diary seeks to reach the generally apathetic Israeli public: most Israelis are unaware of<br />
the existence of and hardships faced by the people of the South Hebron Hills. <strong>The</strong> story of this young woman<br />
will lend a human element to the issues in this area.<br />
Staff and Board<br />
RHR would like to thank Nico Sokolovsky, who left RHR’s staff after serving as the director of our Hadera<br />
office. Nico was one of the four rabbinical students/young rabbis whom we hired with a special grant.<br />
We wish him good luck in his rabbinical studies in the US. We also thank Shatil/New Israel Social Justice<br />
Fellow Moriel Rothberg for his contribution to RHR over the past year, as well as the outgoing <strong>Human</strong><br />
<strong>Rights</strong> Yeshiva director, Rabbi Gideon Sylvester.<br />
In <strong>2012</strong>, RHR welcomed Advocate Miya Keren to RHR’s Legal Department; Rabbi Sigal Asher, as our<br />
new manager of the Hadera office; Rabbi Tlalit Shavit as co-coordinator of the <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> Beit<br />
Midrash in Jezreel Valley College; civilian service intern Aviv Nesher; Everett Fellow for Social Justice,<br />
Vicky Liderman; and volunteers Ilana Sabu, Maria Gavrilova and Katie Deutsch.<br />
<strong>Rabbis</strong> Susan Silverman and Michael Klein-Katz, Rabbi Professor Yehoyada Amir and rabbinical student<br />
Josh Weinberg all joined our Board in <strong>2012</strong>. Stepping down from our board this year were <strong>Rabbis</strong><br />
Gil Nativ, Miri Gold, Galia Sadan, Yehoshua Engelman and Ehud Bandel, who has joined our Audit<br />
Committee. We welcome Rabbi Amy Klein back to our board.<br />
Contributors<br />
RHR’s work would not be possible without you. We value each and every one of you, regardless of the<br />
amount of your contribution. We are blessed with far more contributors than we can possibly list here. <strong>The</strong> list<br />
that follows acknowledges contributions of $360 or more received between November 2011 and December<br />
<strong>2012</strong> If we have inadvertently omitted your name, please let us know and we will correct it in future copies<br />
of the report.<br />
Osei Tesdakha,<br />
$5,000 +<br />
<strong>The</strong> Ada G. and Stanley I.<br />
Halbreich Foundation<br />
AECID<br />
Alan Sussman<br />
Alexander S. Preker<br />
Alfred Bader<br />
Anonymous<br />
Caritus Belgium<br />
Church of Sweden<br />
European Commission<br />
Firedoll Foundation<br />
Foundation for Middle East<br />
Peace<br />
George and Bella Savran<br />
Google Matching Gifts Program<br />
<strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> Defenders Fund<br />
Iris O’Brien Foundation<br />
<strong>The</strong> Social Justice Fund<br />
Karl Kahane Foundation<br />
Kerk in Actie<br />
Liberal Judaism- <strong>The</strong> Montagu<br />
Center<br />
Lois Q. Whitman<br />
Lois and Richard England<br />
Foundation<br />
Luis Lainer<br />
Michael J. Hirschhorn<br />
Michael Ratner<br />
Misereor<br />
<strong>The</strong> Moriah Fund<br />
New Israel Fund<br />
NGO Development Center<br />
Norwegian Church<br />
Overseas Resources<br />
Foundation Ltd.<br />
Quail Roost Foundation<br />
Robert L and Edith Zinn<br />
<strong>The</strong> Samuels Foundation<br />
Topol Family Fund<br />
Sparkplug Foundation<br />
Stein Sharpe Family Fund<br />
Tal Pritzker<br />
Tom and Gail Kaneb<br />
Trocaire<br />
Vivian and Paul Olum<br />
Charitable Foundation<br />
Winograd-Hunter Fund<br />
Shomrei Mishpat,<br />
$1,000-$4,999<br />
Almoney Fund<br />
Amcha <strong>For</strong> Tsedakah<br />
Rabbi Amy E. Eilberg<br />
Rabbi Amy Schwartzman<br />
Rabbi Andrea C. London<br />
Asia Connection, Inc.<br />
Barbara Dobkin<br />
Rabbi Barbara J. Zacky<br />
Susan & Benjamin Baxt<br />
Beth El Synagogue, St. Louis<br />
Park, MN<br />
Bureau of Jewish Education<br />
Catherine S. England<br />
Rabbi Charles M. Feinberg<br />
Coggeshall Restoration, Inc<br />
Congregation Beth El of Sudbury,<br />
MA<br />
Craig M. Oettinger<br />
Daniel Bogard<br />
David Smiley<br />
David Berkal<br />
Rabbi David Stern<br />
Rabbi David A. Teutsch<br />
David and Rabbi Jacqueline<br />
Koch Ellenson<br />
Edward Witten<br />
Eleanor Friedman<br />
Elizabeth Lehman and Ruben<br />
Kraiem<br />
Ellen Grobman<br />
Rabbi Ellen Lippmann<br />
Rabbi Elliott Tepperman<br />
Rabbi Elyse D. Frishman<br />
Enid Shapiro<br />
Evely L. Shlensky<br />
Freeman Family Foundation<br />
Gail Tomberg<br />
Glickenhaus Foundation<br />
Google Matching Gifts<br />
Program<br />
Rabbi Gordon Tucker<br />
Harriet & Richard Orkand<br />
Family Educational &<br />
Charitable Fdn<br />
Howard J. Wial<br />
Daniel Rice and Ilise S.<br />
Cohen<br />
Rabbi Isaac D. Serotta<br />
Jeanne Blaustein<br />
Jeffrey Justin<br />
Dr. Jeremiah P. and Alicia<br />
Ostriker<br />
Joan M. Karlin<br />
Rabbi Joel Sisenwine<br />
Rabbi Jonathan Kligler<br />
Rabbi John L. Rosove<br />
Rabbi Jonathan P. Slater<br />
Rabbi Joseph Wolf<br />
Joshua Newman<br />
Judith A. Jarashow<br />
Judith Orloff<br />
Judith Scheuer & Joseph<br />
Mellicker<br />
Jules Bernstein<br />
Rabbi Kenneth M. Chasen<br />
Kit Colbert<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong> 32<br />
33 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
Larry Buck<br />
Larry K. Keefer<br />
Laurel E. Friedman<br />
Rabbi Lester Bronstein<br />
Louise D. & Morton J. Macks Family<br />
Foundation, Inc.<br />
Rabbi Marcia Prager<br />
Marianne Udow-Phillips<br />
Marion Fredman<br />
Rabbi Mark H. Levin<br />
Marlene Booth<br />
Marvin Naiman and Margery Goldman<br />
Family<br />
Maxine A. Goldblum<br />
Michael J. Skloff & Marta Kaufman<br />
Michael Kieschnick<br />
Michael Radwin<br />
Michael Schecter<br />
Rabbi Michael Strassfeld<br />
Michael J. Zigmond<br />
Michelle H. Green<br />
Michelle A. Ores Schorin<br />
Microsoft Matching Gifts Program<br />
Milton Viorst<br />
Nancy Bernstein<br />
Rabbi Nancy Flam and Neil Kudler<br />
Nancy Meyer<br />
Rabbi Nancy H. Wiener<br />
Oz Benamram & Gali Freedman<br />
Paul S. Grobman<br />
Rabbi Paula F. Marcus<br />
Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein<br />
Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg<br />
Rachel B. Tiven<br />
Rachel S. Bearman<br />
Rabbi Richard J. Jacobs<br />
Richard Tavan<br />
Robert L. Zinn<br />
Rabbi Rolando J. Matalon<br />
Ronnie Williams<br />
Rubin Family Foundation<br />
Russell Pearce<br />
Rabbi Sally J. Priesand<br />
Sameer Y. Merchant<br />
Sarah Perman<br />
Scott & Jasmine Roseman<br />
Rabbi Sheila P. Weinberg<br />
Stephanie Barbe Hammer<br />
Stephen Marglin<br />
Rabbi Steven C. Reuben<br />
Stanley Eisenberg<br />
Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell<br />
Rabbi Susan A. Talve<br />
Suzanne J. Marks<br />
Sybil and Steve Wolin<br />
Temple Beth Emeth, Ann Arbor, MI<br />
Vivian and Paul Olum Charitable<br />
Foundation<br />
William Resnick<br />
William E. Rose<br />
Dorshei Mishpat<br />
$360 to $999<br />
Rabbi Aaron B. Bisno<br />
Rabbi Aaron Spiegel<br />
Rabbi Adam Zeff<br />
Adas Israel Congregation, Washington<br />
DC<br />
Alan Altschuler<br />
Alan Green<br />
Alexandra Wall<br />
Alfred E. Marks Charitable Trust<br />
Allen H. Mushinsky<br />
Amy L. Lansky<br />
Amy R. Harrington<br />
Rabbi Andrea C. London<br />
Andrea L. Turner<br />
Andrew Shugerman<br />
Rabbi Andrew Vogel<br />
Cantor Angela Buchdahl<br />
Ann Sprayregen<br />
Anne E. Belford<br />
Rabbi Ariel Stone<br />
Arlene Alpert<br />
Rabbi Arthur O. Waskow and Rabbi<br />
Phyllis Berman<br />
Aryeh Cohen<br />
Avi M. Schulman<br />
Rabbi Avi Winokur<br />
Barrett S. Litt<br />
Benita Kaimowitz<br />
Rabbi Bernard Barsky<br />
Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman<br />
Beth E. Burrows<br />
Beth Israel Congregation, Ann Arbor, MI<br />
Bettyruth Walter<br />
Bill Harford<br />
Bonni Schiff<br />
Boris Kofman<br />
Rabbi Bruce Elder<br />
Carol J. and Sidney Hurlburt<br />
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller<br />
Rabbi Charles K. Briskin<br />
Claudia Little<br />
Community Health Charities of New<br />
England, Inc.<br />
Community House Church, Washington<br />
DC<br />
Community Synagogue, Port<br />
Washington, NY<br />
Craig M. Oettinger<br />
Cynthia McClintock<br />
Daniel Goldrich<br />
Daniel G. Zemel<br />
Rabbi Daniel J. Isaak<br />
Rabbi Daniel Levin<br />
Rabbi Daniel M. Bronstein<br />
Rabbi David A. Teutsch<br />
Rabbi David Adelson<br />
David Grubin<br />
Rabbi David Posner<br />
Rabbi David Mersky<br />
David Weiser<br />
Deana Katz<br />
Deanna Love Rutman<br />
Rabbi Deborah Bronstein<br />
Deborah D. Moore<br />
Deborah H. Warden<br />
Rabbi Debra L. Rappaport<br />
Diana R. Engel<br />
Diane R. Baer<br />
Rabbi Douglas Heifetz<br />
Douglas S. Kerr<br />
Rabbi Edwin Harris<br />
Elaine Reuben<br />
Elinor Sashse<br />
Ellen Farmer<br />
Rabbi Elliot Strom<br />
Elsbeth Reisen<br />
Enid Shapiro<br />
Ephraim Pelcovits<br />
Eric M. Meyers<br />
Ernestine S. Elster<br />
Eve M. Wider<br />
Ezra A. Amsterdam<br />
Evelyn Hutt<br />
Rabbi Felicia L. Sol<br />
Rabbi Floyd L. Herman<br />
Francis Schrag<br />
Frank Bamberger<br />
Frederick A. Horowitz<br />
Rabbi Frederick H. Reeves<br />
Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman<br />
George Kennedy<br />
Rabbi Gilah Lagner<br />
Gregory Rapp<br />
Rabbi Gregory Wolfe<br />
Rabbi Haim D. Beliak<br />
Harriet A. Feinberg<br />
Harriet J. Korim<br />
Rabbi Hector Epelbaum<br />
Rabbi Herbert Brockman<br />
Howard J. Wial<br />
Ilana R. Schatz<br />
Irwin Tauben<br />
Rabbi Irwin Zeplowitz<br />
Jacques L. Zakin<br />
Janet Kolodner<br />
Janet R. Newman<br />
Rabbi Jeffrey Brown<br />
Rabbi Jeffrey S. Saxe<br />
Jeffry S. Abrams<br />
Jennie E. Roitman<br />
Joan Blum<br />
Rabbi Joel Schwab<br />
John Washburn<br />
Rabbi John S. Friedman<br />
Jonathan W. Malino<br />
Rabbi Joshua Davidson<br />
Rabbi Joshua Lesser<br />
Joshua M. Levin<br />
Judith Kunofsky<br />
Judith Plaskow and Martha<br />
Ackelsberg<br />
Judith Ruderman<br />
Judith L. Tharp<br />
Rabbi Julie L. Roth<br />
June H. Nadle<br />
Katz-Lapides Family Fund<br />
Kehilla Community Synagogue,<br />
Piedmont, CA<br />
Key Foundation<br />
Rabbi Laura J. Geller<br />
Laurence Zuckerman<br />
Leola Lapides<br />
Les Rothschild<br />
Leslie Lomas<br />
Lili Perski<br />
Rabbi Linda J. Holtzman<br />
Linda Novick<br />
Liza Shtromberg<br />
Lois Fingerhut<br />
Lori Koffman<br />
Lucile Rosenberg<br />
Madeline Hirschland<br />
Rabbi Marc J. Margolius<br />
Marc Waldor<br />
Rabbi Marc Soloway<br />
Mark C. Levy<br />
Marsha D. Perman<br />
Mary K. Losman<br />
Max Samson<br />
Rabbi Melissa Klein<br />
Mervin N. Cherrin<br />
Mia Buckwald Gelles<br />
Rabbi Michael Goldman<br />
Michael Lezack<br />
Michael Marcus<br />
Michael Schechter<br />
Rabbi Michael Weinberg<br />
Rabbi Michael A. White<br />
Mira Wasserman<br />
Miriam J. Foss<br />
Mitchell Silverman<br />
Mitchell Udell<br />
Rabbi Mordechai E. Liebling<br />
Rabbi Nancy Wiener<br />
Rabbi Nancy F. Fuchs Kreimer<br />
Nancy Sherman<br />
Nathan Cogan<br />
Norbert Goldfield<br />
Paul Fitzpatrick<br />
Rabbi Paul J. Golomb<br />
Paula M. Jacobs<br />
Peter R. Olson<br />
Rabbi Peter Rigler<br />
Rabbi Peter S. Berg<br />
Rachel Evnine<br />
Richard Rosen<br />
Richard Soble<br />
Rabbi Richard S. Ugelow<br />
Robert B. Lifton<br />
Robert Factor<br />
Rabbi Robert H. Loewy<br />
Robert J. Schloss<br />
Rabbi Robert M. Dobrusin<br />
Rabbi Rosalind A. Gold<br />
Professors Ruth Anna and Hilary<br />
Putnam<br />
Rabbi Ruth H. Sohn<br />
Ruth L. Kraut<br />
Rabbi Ruth Zlotnick<br />
Sabina Harris<br />
Samuel Fleischacker<br />
Rabbi Samuel Gordon<br />
Samuel H. Neff<br />
Sander Mendelson<br />
Sandra C. Savett<br />
Rabbi Sara O’Donnell Adler<br />
Rabbi Sheldon J. Lewis<br />
Rabbi Sidney Schwarz<br />
Stefan F. Tucker<br />
Stephen O. Lesser<br />
Sterling Clarren<br />
Steven M. Cohen<br />
Steven Marcus<br />
Susan Swartz<br />
Rabbi Suzanne Griffel<br />
Rabbi Suzanne Singer<br />
Temple Israel, Minneapolis, MN<br />
Rabbi Terry Bookman<br />
Rabbi Toba E. Spitzer<br />
Todd Chanko<br />
Tom Schwab<br />
Rabbi Wendi Geffen<br />
Rabbi Yocheved Mintz<br />
Rabbi Yoel H. Kahn<br />
Victor A. Kovner<br />
Victor Honig<br />
William O. Sweeney<br />
Yossi Zaira<br />
RHR <strong>2013</strong> 34<br />
35 RHR <strong>2013</strong>
Board: Chairperson: Rabbi Barry Leff; Treasurer: Rabbi Ma’ayan Turner; Steering Committee: <strong>Rabbis</strong> Yehoyada Amir, Yonatan<br />
Chipman, Yehoshua Engelman, Shaul Feinberg, Miri Gold, Amy Klein, Michael Klein-Katz, Uri Regev, Galia Sadan, Ofer<br />
Shabbat-Bet Halachmi, Susan Silverman, Anita Steiner, Levi Weiman-Kelman, Zvi Weinberg, Moshe Yehudai. Student<br />
Representative: Josh Weinberg<br />
Staff: Executive Director: Ayala Levy President and Senior Rabbi and Special Projects: Rabbi Arik W. Ascherman; Special<br />
Projects Assistant: Rabbi Kobi Weiss; Educational Department Director: Rabbi Nava Hefetz; Educational Assistant: Debi<br />
Shoua-Haim; Economic Justice Department Director: Rabbi Idit Lev; <strong>Rights</strong> Center in Hadera: Adv. Becky Keshet, Aisha<br />
Sidawi, Rabbi Sigal Asher; Lobbyist: Nitzan Tenami; Legal Department Director: Adv. Quamar Mishirqi-Asaad; Lawyers:<br />
Avital Sharon, Keren Knafo, Miya Keren; Legal Assistant: Muhammad Abu-Sneineh; Legal Advisor: Adv. Netta Amar; Field<br />
Coordinator: Guy Butavia; Legal Secretary: Tiferet Kedmi; Occupied Territories Department Director: Rabbi Yehiel Grenimann<br />
Field Researcher: Zacharia Sadeh; Occupied Territories Assistant: Jonathan Shefa, Director of Resource Development: Ela<br />
Greenberg; Grants Director: Adena Ben-Reuven Spokesperson: Yariv Mohar; New Media Director: Mati Shemoelof; Office<br />
Secretary: Rivka Shochat<br />
Visiting Israel/Palestine: If you are organizing a group tour to Israel/Palestine or traveling on your own, <strong>Rabbis</strong> for <strong>Human</strong><br />
<strong>Rights</strong> would be happy to meet with you! If you are bringing a group to Israel/Palestine, please contact info@rhr.israel.net to<br />
arrange for a staff or board member to meet your tour group while you are here. In addition to meeting with your group, we<br />
also offer tours of East Jerusalem to learn about human rights issues and the Separation Wall; South Tel Aviv to learn about<br />
African refugees in Israel; to the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev, and to South Hebron Hills, where Palestinian<br />
villages are being threatened by displacement<br />
Graphic Design: Rachel Ramon-Nofech [racheli.nf@gmail.com]<br />
YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE! HELP US CONTINUE AND EXPAND OUR WORK!<br />
Online: We are pleased to accept online donations in U.S. dollars, Euros, pound sterling, and Israeli shekels, made possible<br />
through our partnership with Israel Gives, an Israeli non-profit organization committed to furthering Israeli philanthropy.<br />
Israel Gives has partnered with American Support for Israel, Inc., an American 501(c)(3) public charity, and UK Toremet in<br />
the UK, so that donations from the U.S. and U.K. are tax deductible.<br />
To make an online donation, go to https://israelgives.org/custom/rhr/cart<br />
By check: We accept U.S. tax-deductible donations through American Support for Israel, a 501(c)(3) public charity that<br />
encourages philanthropy to Israel.<br />
Please make the donation out to “American Support for Israel” and write:<br />
“<strong>Rabbis</strong> for <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong>, ID # 580151967” in the “<strong>For</strong>” or “Memo” column of the check.<br />
You are also invited to attach a letter to your contribution in which you indicate the organization you recommend the<br />
donation be used for.<br />
Please mail your contribution to:<br />
American Support for Israel<br />
PO Box 3263<br />
Washington, DC 20010<br />
We accept U.S. tax-deductible donations through the New Israel Fund.<br />
Checks (minimum $100), made out to the New Israel Fund, and marked as “donor advised to <strong>Rabbis</strong> for <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Rights</strong>”<br />
in the memo line, may be sent to:<br />
New Israel Fund<br />
2100 M Street NW<br />
Suite 619<br />
Washington DC 20037<br />
Please let us know that you sent a donation to us via American Support for Israel or via the New Israel Fund by sending<br />
an email to Adena Ben-Reuven, Grants Director, at adena@rhr.israel.net<br />
Direct deposits in any currency:<br />
Bank HaPoalim| Branch 782| 38 Aza St. | Jerusalem, 92384, ISRAEL| Account No. 153380<br />
Please let us know if you have made a direct deposit: adena@rhr.israel.net | +972-2-648 2757<br />
Canadian Donors:<br />
Please contact us directly about tax-deductible donations: ela@rhr.israel.net<br />
Please note: After many years of fruitful partnership since RHR helped create RHR-North America in 2002, our organizations<br />
announced on January 15th, <strong>2013</strong> that RHR-NA was changing its name to T’ruah, and will no longer be receiving donations<br />
on behalf of RHR. We wish T’ruah well in its work.<br />
RHR contact details: www.rhr.org.co.il<br />
9 Harechavim St. Jerusalem Israel 93462 Tel. 972-2-648-2757 info@rhr.israel.net