“For the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me.” (Leviticus 25:23)
Introduction
For more than two decades, T’ruah has organized rabbis and cantors across the United States and Canada to advocate for the human rights of both Israelis and Palestinians. While the specifics of the situation on the ground may shift, we remain steadfastly committed to building a democratic Israel that ensures the human rights of all of its citizens, to self-determination and human rights for Palestinians, and to peace and security for everyone in the region.
We seek a political solution that will allow all people between the river and the sea to thrive. For the sake of both Israelis and Palestinians, this must include an end to the occupation and of Israeli jurisdiction over a stateless people in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. We believe that a just and secure future for Palestinians and Israelis will best be achieved by a negotiated resolution that results in both peoples living side-by-side within their own sovereign states.
Ultimately, it will be in the hands of negotiators on both sides, as well as representatives of the international community, to determine details of such an agreement and to draw up maps. This is not a policy plan, but rather a statement of the central Jewish values and human rights commitments that underpin T’ruah’s vision and actions.
Principles
- All people are created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of the Divine.
The life of every single human being has infinite worth.
All people have the right to life and liberty, to freedom of movement, and to freedom from persecution, as well as to all the rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
All people deserve to be treated with dignity and to have their human rights protected — no matter their nationality, ethnicity, religion, level of religious observance, gender, sexuality, ability, political orientation, country of origin, or immigration or citizenship status.
- We act from ahavat Yisrael, love of our fellow Jews.
We chose to become rabbis and cantors because we love our fellow Jews as much as we love Torah and Jewish tradition. We are invested in the future of the Jewish people — including the half of the world’s Jewish population that lives in Israel.
Today, a small, but powerful group of Jewish zealots with a dangerous messianic vision is poisoning Judaism — and threatening the welfare of Jews in Israel and beyond. This settler movement values land and power over human beings, and has forgotten God’s repeated warning in the Torah that the achievement of sovereignty should not lead to an overinflated sense of one’s power.
We are committed to saving Judaism from this threat, and to ensuring that the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel be a means of making the divine manifest everywhere, and not a means of asserting power over another people.
- Both Palestinians and Jews have legitimate claims to the land.
The Land of Israel, Eretz Yisrael, has been the historic Jewish homeland from the time of the Torah. The Roman destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE ended Jewish sovereignty there. Since then, the Jewish community — scattered throughout the world — continued to pray daily for a return to Jerusalem and to mourn its destruction.
The 19th century Zionist movement emerged in response to the persistence of antisemitism in Europe and outbreaks of violence against Jews. The Zionist movement asserted that one could use modern political means to bring about that reality, rather than waiting for divine intervention. Early Zionists differed on whether to pursue independence or to seek safety under the Ottoman or later British Empire; on how to relate to Palestinian residents of the land; and on whether to seek a state of their own, a binational state, or some other configuration; and many other questions. The Holocaust, as well as the persecution and murder of Jews under the Soviet regimes increased the urgency both for Jews and for the broader world community of finding a safe home for Jews. Ultimately, as the British Empire sought to divest itself of Mandate Palestine after decades of violence there, the UN proposed a plan that would have divided the region into a Jewish and Palestinian State, and Israel declared its independence.
In the war that followed Israel’s declaration of independence, more than 700,000 Palestinians were forced to leave their homes or fled, in an event that Palestinians call the Nakba — catastrophe. Many of these families remain refugees, and many have passed down powerful stories of their former homes in what is now Israel.
Palestinians, who today include both some 20% of Israeli citizens as well as millions living under occupation as stateless people, trace their heritage in the land back for generations, before recorded history. Palestinians have deep historical and cultural roots embedded in the land, and a unique national identity.
Israelis and Jews worldwide must recognize the trauma of the Nakba, the decades of displacement by Jewish settlement, and the ongoing occupation of areas conquered in 1967, which has led to daily humiliations and human rights abuses including restrictions on freedom of movement, home demolitions and evictions, violence by soldiers and settlers, arrests and imprisonment — including of minors — without due process, and a two tiered system of justice for Israeli settlers and Palestinians. Likewise, Palestinians and their supporters must recognize the Jewish people’s real, historic connection to the land, the constant presence of a Jewish community there since ancient times, and the traumatic circumstances under which most Jews arrived in the region as refugees from multiple countries over the course of the 20th century.
- The freedom and safety of Jews and Palestinians are inextricably linked.
We are committed to the State of Israel’s, Medinat Yisrael’s, future as a Jewish and democratic state side by side with Palestine. Approximately 14 million Palestinians, Jews, and others call this land home, and no one is going anywhere. It is not possible to protect the rights and safety of one group at the expense of the other. Violence will never solve this conflict; the only path forward is a negotiated political solution that protects the rights of all people in the region.
We believe the most likely long-term solution to this conflict is two states, either with hard or soft borders, which will allow both people to realize their national aspirations, to find safety, and to flourish as individuals and as collectives.
We are committed to helping Israel live up to the ideals enshrined in its declaration of independence: to be a Jewish state where Jewish culture and Hebrew flourish and where Jews seeking safety can find refuge and a democracy that protects the individual and collective rights of all of its citizens. We support the decades-long efforts of Jewish and Palestinian Israeli civil society organizations and NGOs to build a shared society within Israel, and we honor their tremendous courage and persistence.
As a country, and a member of the United Nations, Israel is a political entity like any other and must uphold its human rights obligations under international law. This means that Israel must be a democracy of all of its citizens, and the occupation of stateless Palestinians must end, so Palestinians, too, may realize their national aspirations in a state of their own.
- Free speech strengthens Israeli democracy and Judaism.
Freedom of speech is fundamental to democracy, and protest can come from a place of love and a desire to improve a country. Yet some people — both here in North America and in Israel — have tried to silence criticism of Israeli government policy by characterizing it as inherently antisemitic.
There is nothing antisemitic about supporting the human rights of Palestinians, or about criticizing Israeli policy, just as one might criticize the policies or governments of any other country. Boycotting Israel is also not inherently antisemitic. While T’ruah does not support or participate in the Global BDS movement, we believe that boycotts — whether of a country, a company, or another entity — are protected free speech.
Israel is a country like any other and should be held to standards of democracy and human rights just like any other country. At the same time, we must be ready to identify and call out when criticism of Israel does veer into antisemitism. For more on distinguishing between legitimate free speech critical of Israel and antisemitism, read our guide.
All Jews, and all people, have a right to express their opinions safely and without fear of retribution from their government. We embrace the diversity of Jewish opinions, just as Jews have for centuries, recognizing that engaging with a multitude of voices strengthens our understanding. Jews have a wide variety of relationships to Israel, and none of these views makes them any more or less part of K’lal Yisrael, the Jewish people.