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United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) Conference, Stamford, CT March 25, 2012 Selected audio from plenary sessions and panel discussions

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Rabbis' Group Fights for Rights of the Oppressed in Israel and the U.S.

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Posted Feb. 15, 2012

Interview with Rachel Goldenberg, co-chair of Rabbis for Human Rights, North America, conducted by Scott Harris

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Rachel Goldenberg is rabbi of a congregation in Connecticut and co-chair of Rabbis for Human Rights, North America. The organization, founded in 2002, addresses issues of concern in the U.S., such as the torture of American-held prisoners, the rise of Islamophobia, and protecting the rights of farm workers. The group also raises financial support for the Rabbis for Human Rights’ Israeli chapter.

The organization in Israel works to protect Palestinians' rights and access to their land, in accordance with Israeli Supreme Court decisions; supports the rights of Bedouins living in Israel’s Negev desert, opposes evictions and home demolitions of Palestinian families living in East Jerusalem; protects the rights of foreign workers inside Israel, and sponsors educational programs that connect Jewish values to human rights.

The group believes in and supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – taking a lesson from the Jewish experience during the Nazi Holocaust, that the human rights of all who are oppressed must be defended. Rabbi Goldenberg recently spoke at the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale University. After her talk, she spoke with Between The Line’s Melinda Tuhus about her work with Rabbis for Human Rights.

RACHEL GOLDENBERG: They have projects in the territories, specifically in the West Bank, mostly around access of Palestinian farmers to their agricultural land, working with the Israeli military administration to enforce the court rulings we won a few years ago that protect Palestinian farmers' rights to work their land to be free of harassment. So that's one big project. Another big project that Rabbis for Human Rights is involved with in Israel is the issue of unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev (desert). There's been state policy for many, many years of not recognizing encampments of Bedouin communities that have been in the same place for a long time. We often think about nomads – "oh, they don't have a place where they live." But they do. They settle in a place, and they establish cemeteries, for instance. Since the founding of the state this has been an issue, with these villages not being recognized, therefore not receiving utilities and schools and other kinds of services. There have been many iterations of different kinds of policies over the years. One was, there were these – they are called by the human rights community, townships – towns set up, but they say "townships" because they evoke poverty and slum, and that's what they are – towns set up where the government would then put the bedouins, where they have no place to graze their animals...

BETWEEN THE LINES: So, they're forcibly removed?

RACHEL GOLDENBERG: They're forcibly removed, yes. Well, there's different levels of force, right. If you're not getting the services you need, and you can't get your kids to school because you don't have a school in your community, it's maybe easier then, to move...

BETWEEN THE LINES: They provide schools in the slums?

RACHEL GOLDENBERG: Yes, these are recognized towns – they have utilities, they have paved roads, they have schools, but it means the heritage of bedouin life, their roots are being uprooted. So, we've been working on the issue, first of all, is we want those villages to be recognized; we don't want more Bedouins to be evicted from their homes, children watching their homes demolished. Their parents are helpless.

BETWEEN THE LINES: To ask the obvious, if these people have been there all the time since before the state of Israel was created, and then Israel was created and they're still there, they're among the Arab Israelis, and other Arab Israelis have schools and services and everything, why haven't these been recognized?

RACHEL GOLDENBERG: We don't really know. It's not in the interest of the state. There have been various reasons given over the years: it's a closed military zone. Maybe it's to make way for other kinds of development and other kinds of planning. It's hard to say.

BETWEEN THE LINES: So the government doesn't...

RACHEL GOLDENBERG: It doesn't give them reasons.

BETWEEN THE LINES: The other things that's been in the news a lot here is issues around the ultra-Orthodox, especially demanding that women basically not be seen, or (to) move away from the ultra-Orthodox men. There were men in the military who left some kind of military gathering who left when women began to sing because they said they weren't allowed to hear a woman's voice. How does that play out in Israel and also in the Jewish community here when you work with Rabbis for Human Rights here?

RACHEL GOLDENBERG: Rabbis for Human Rights does not deal directly with issues of religious pluralism in Israel. There are other wonderful organizations that do. So it's really an issue of religious extremism in the Jewish community. The ultra-Orthodox, we can't generalize and say they all agree with these policies of segregation of the sexes, just like you can't say all Muslims agree with veiling women from head to toe. It's really an extremist group that intimidates its own people. If you live in that community, which is a very insular, self-regulated community, and you speak out against segregation of the sexes, your kids could be kicked out of yeshiva, you could be told the community will cut you off, you can't live in your apartment anymore. Truly, breaking away from the fold in any kind of public way is dangerous; it's risky. So that's how extremists operate in that community, through this kind of intimidation. There are moderates in that community, who disagree with the rabbis and extremists who are making these policies. They're having a hard time safely making their voices heard.

This is a story I heard through the Israel Religious Action Center and their director, Anat Hoffman. The center has been part of these protests against religious extremism, and they've been receiving phone calls from ultra-Orthodox women, and maybe men too, but definitely women – thanking them and this is so interesting because the center is an arm of the reform movement, the conservative movement, the reconstructionist movement in Israel – the liberal movements of Judaism that ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel tend to say we're not Jewish. They don't call our rabbis rabbis. And yet we're getting thanked for saying what they feel unsafe saying in their own communities. So it's quite a breakthrough; it's quite an amazing thing.

Learn more about Rabbis for Human Rights, Israel by visiting rhr.org.il/eng and Rabbis for Human Rights, North America at rhr-na.org rhr-na.org