T’ruah rabbis urge passage of Two-State Solution Act to ensure U.S. aid not used for evictions
NEW YORK — Israeli police conducted a nighttime raid on the home of the Salhiya family in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem Tuesday night, forcibly evicting residents and arresting 18 people before razing their home to the ground. In response, T’ruah, a rabbinic human rights organization that represents over 2,300 rabbis and cantors and their communities in North America, strongly condemned the demolition and urged Congress to pass the Two-State Solution Act to ensure U.S. military aid is not used in such evictions.
T’ruah CEO, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, released the following statement:
“We are outraged at this violent eviction of the Salhiya family from their home in Sheikh Jarrah and heartbroken by images of a home reduced to rubble and an extended family left homeless on a freezing night. Israeli officials’ claims that the house needed to be demolished to make way for a new school were simply a pretext for the eviction and belied the fact that suitable alternatives existed nearby.
“T’ruah has consistently opposed expulsions from Sheikh Jarrah and from Silwan, another East Jerusalem neighborhood, for more than a decade. We have fought back against attempts by Jewish National Fund-Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (JNF-KKL) to evict families and attempts by settler organizations to displace Palestinians for archaeological projects. Targeted evictions of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem — with the goal of “Judaizing” those neighborhoods — are unjust and illegal.
“This week, Jews read Parshat Yitro, the section of the Torah in which the Israelites receive Torah at Mount Sinai. This event, which comes almost immediately after the liberation from slavery, reminds us that a just legal code is necessary for establishing a society. Two of the laws included in the Ten Commandments, read this week, include prohibitions against bearing false witness and against stealing, both of which have been violated by the officials who made false claims against this Palestinian family and stole their land.
“This action did not happen in a vacuum. As American citizens, we can and must demand that U.S. aid funding military equipment not be used for evictions, demolitions, or settlement expansion, which are in violation of international law. T’ruah endorses the Two-State Solution Act, introduced in September by U.S. Rep. Andy Levin, which would provide these assurances. The legislation now has 45 cosponsors, and events like these make clear just how urgent its passage is.
“More homes in Sheikh Jarrah are at risk of destruction, and T’ruah rabbis and cantors will continue to stand with our Israeli partners, including human rights and civil society organizations, as well as with Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, in their efforts to protest and bring legal challenges to these immoral eviction efforts.”
T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights mobilizes a network of more than 2,300 rabbis and cantors from all streams of Judaism that, together with the Jewish community, act on the Jewish imperative to respect and advance the human rights of all people. Grounded in Torah and our Jewish historical experience and guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we call upon Jews to assert Jewish values by raising our voices and taking concrete steps to protect and expand human rights in North America, Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territories.
