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