JVP Rabbinical Council Stands With Jenin

As rabbis, we condemn the Israeli government’s devastating attack on the people of Jenin. We watched as a refugee camp and city were encircled and then bombed, and as thousands of Palestinian families were forced at gunpoint to flee their homes. The Israeli military’s actions were unconscionable. And the U.S. government is a collaborator in the project. 

The devastation of Jenin is the true face of the Israeli government and an expression of Israel’s endgame: the depopulation of Palestinians from historic Palestine, along with the total pacification of those who remain. This has always been a main component in achieving the Zionist goal of complete Judaization of eretz yisrael, and the callous disregard of Palestinian life. Israel’s Jewish supremacy is an ongoing and imminent threat to Palestinian life. 

The Israeli government constantly deploys the products of its massive military and technological industry against Palestinians, whose existence it views as disposable. The Israeli military’s cruel attack on Jenin’s beloved Freedom Theater, while families were sheltering inside, highlights the ongoing crimes against Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank and Gaza; It is quite literally enclosing people in a kill zone. The Israeli government has authorized: dropping bombs on civilians and assassination by snipers, the unleashing of settler pogroms, the persecution and targeted killing of journalists and activists, the continued denial of healthcare to wounded people, and the massive destruction of civil infrastructure and family homes. There is no safety from the cruelty of Israeli invasions. The children of Jenin are crying out to us from behind the Wall. What shall we do? 

There is no hiding from the horror of what Jenin has endured. We must act. We must hold Jewish communities and government officials accountable for allowing the attacks to continue. Each day a Jewish person takes action to resist Israeli occupation, we affirm what the Torah requires: To protest within our households, our cities and our world until the occupation is ended, the right of return is restored and Palestinians can live peacefully in their land.