Free the Kidnapped Israeli Teens
By Rabbi Michael Lerner
Kidnapping anyone, anytime is always a violation of a basic human right. But is even more outrageous when done to children or teens who are particularly vulnerable.
So it is with shock and outrage that we at Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives respond to the kidnapping of 3 Israeli teens who were returning from their study at a yeshiva in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.
We demand the immediate release and safe return of those teens to their families!
We were shocked and outraged at the kidnapping of hundreds of Christian girls by Muslim fundamentalists in Africa, with the implied story that these girls would be raped (the functional equivalent of “forced marriages” along with forced conversions to Islam).
We are shocked and outraged when girls are kidnapped (or sold or persuaded by starving parents who see no other way to get money for their remaining starving children) into sexual slavery or forced marriages.
We are shocked and outraged when children or teenagers are forced into armies (whether through a supposedly “legitimate” draft process or through outright kidnapping) where they are forced to kill or be killed.
We reject any attempt to imply that somehow these acts are understandable given the oppressive conditions faced by the perpetrators. In the case of the Israeli teens some commentators have rushed in to remind us that there are thousands of young Palestinians, some of them younger than the teens who were teenagers, who sit in Israeli prisons or “detention camps,” without trials and sometimes for many months. Yes, this is also a human rights violation. But so what? It doesn’t justify or legitimate the crime committed against these Israeli teens.
There are those who have pointed out that the teens were attending a Yeshiva in a right-wing settlement and that that Yeshiva doesn’t teach about the humanity or the suffering of the Palestinian people, but instead justifies and defacto increases that suffering by participating in discriminatory practices that are part of the daily reality of the Occupation. Again, so what? No matter how reactionary the teachings, it is never appropriate to kidnap or inflict pain on others, except possibly in circumstances of immediate self-defense.
And these teens were not the perpetrators or the creators of the Occupation. They were children doing what their parents had brought them up to do and to be.
I’ve recently heard another such ridiculous attempt to “contextualize” this kidnapping. Just as, when Palestinian children have been shot or killed by Israeli forces enforcing the Occupation, some Israelis and American Jews have said (publicly and in a variety of Jewish newspapers) “these Palestinians don’t really care about their children, else they wouldn’t let them participate in activities that are known to be at risk,” so now some are saying that “Israelis don’t really care about their children, else they wouldn’t be sending them to study in a war zone in which violence against Palestinians is sometimes met by violence againstIsraelis—so anyone raising their children in the settlements or sending them to study in the Occupied West Bank really have only themselves to blame for whatever happens to them.” This reasoning is as obnoxious when applied to Israelis as it was when applied to Palestinians (or for that matter, when applied to parents who let their children get drafted into an army). The reality is that most parents whatever their religious, national, ethnic or racial backgrounds care equally and intensely about the well-being of their children, and the reasons that they get convinced to put their kids into situations of danger have little to do with how much they love their kids. When I signed permission for my own son to serve in the Israeli paratroopers, I was terrified and remained so throughout the time he was jumping from airplanes and serving in the Israeli army. I cared deeply for my son’s welfare and loved him intensely, spent all week waiting for him to return to our Jerusalem apartment just before Shabbat so I could wash his clothes and feed him home made Shabbat food. I’m not going to go into all the factors that led me to allow him to serve (“allow” because the Israeli military won’t allow an only child to serve in a combat unit without the signed agreement of their parent), but it certainly wasn’t lack of love. And I’ve spoken to many Palestinians whose children have been wounded or killed and they too care just as much about their children as any Israeli or American or any other parents on the planet.
For those of us who want to see an end to all this kind of suffering, it is appropriate for us to demand an end to all wars and all violence, and to an end of conditions that create this violence, including ending global poverty, ending the xenophobia and racism and homophobia and demeaning of “the other” (whether that other be Jewish Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, or whatever), and to urgently seek to end the environmental destructiveness that will soon become the source of more violence between “the haves” and “the have nots.” And it is appropriate to demand an end to the Occupation of the West Bank, to the occupation of Tibet by China and Chechnya by Russia and an end to every other unjust denial of rights to people who want their freedom.
Yet none of this should replace our outrage at the acts of kidnapping that go on “in the meantime.” And that is why we start and finish this note with a demand that whoever has those Israeli teens must return them immediately and safely to their families. And as a rabbi, I add to that demand a prayer for their wellbeing and the wellbeing of their families.
Rabbi Michael Lerner
Editor, Tikkun magazine and Chair, the (Interfaith and Secular-Humanist-Welcoming) Network of Spiritual Progressives www.spiritualprogressives.org
P.S. None of our outrage should be taken as legitimation of blaming the entire Palestinian people for this kidnapping or for assaulting the people of Gaza or a renewed military assault by the IDF beyond a narrowly pin-pointed search for the kidnapped teens. Punishing an entire population for the sins of a few was developed by Roman imperialists two thousand years ago and remains a disgusting and God-denying act of brutality that should never be tolerated by any humane society.
Dear Rabbi Michael,
Your last two paragraphs say a great deal, and you are right that we should be just as concerned about Israeli children as we are about any other child in the world.
Here is your quote and my comments follow:
“For those of us who want to see an end to all this kind of suffering, it is appropriate for us to demand an end to all wars and all violence, and to an end of conditions that create this violence, including ending global poverty, ending the xenophobia and racism and homophobia and demeaning of “the other” (whether that other be Jewish Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, or whatever), and to urgently seek to end the environmental destructiveness that will soon become the source of more violence between “the haves” and “the have nots.” And it is appropriate to demand an end to the Occupation of the West Bank, to the occupation of Tibet by China and Chechnya by Russia and an end to every other unjust denial of rights to people who want their freedom.
Yet none of this should replace our outrage at the acts of kidnapping that go on “in the meantime.” And that is why we start and finish this note with a demand that whoever has those Israeli teens must return them immediately and safely to their families. And as a rabbi, I add to that demand a prayer for their wellbeing and the wellbeing of their families.”
I would simply emphasize that when there is an imbalance in power, as is the case in the Israel/Palestine situation, one hears less about the hundreds of kids spending time in prisons for no crime. We should, indeed, be concerned about every child who is kidnapped no matter who they are, but we don’t have a chance to be outraged about every single Arab kid, because it does not make the news. There is a saying that,”God sends rain on both the just and the unjust, but the just is more apt to get wet, because the unjust has the just’s umbrella” – in this case, the just has no media advocate.
Thanks for all you do – I own two of your books and continue to advocate for an end to the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and free access to Gaza for food, medicines and all other supplies needed for normal life. I am also helping a Christian Northern Nigerian woman and her child raise funds for continuing her education to stay longer in the US. She hopes to get asylum. All violence is wrong.
Lois Dickason
Rabbi–
Your positions here cannot be rationally or spiritually refuted, but it’s your repeated use of the phrase “so what?” that is so troubling and undermines your moral stand. The phrase is flip and, unintentionally, show indifference to the suffering of others.
David Drews
To me these issues about which so much is said can be summed up by the fictional Prince of Verona: “And who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?”
The world is filled with so many blood feuds; we don’t call them that but fundamentally the reason the violence continues is because of someone else’s violence. And unless someone is brave enough to say “No more” in each of these situations, it will go on forever.
Punishing an entire population for the sins of a few was developed by Roman imperialists? Oh no dear Rabbi I am afraid our Own Hashem has ordered consequence in this manner long before he punished King David the way he had. For this method prompts a leader to consider the consequences closely as the service to his nation and people is a heavy charge.
Abduction is something selfish when done to a child as a child has not been prepared to enter an adult world passing by so fast at the hand of abductors. Are children like rag dolls to be merely dashed and trodden under foot without a care because the innocent do not know what all the rushing about means. Does this same child not feel for his or her separation from all of those esteems and affections which protected them? Do questions about when one would see their parents again continued unanswered for years? Mine were as I was draged from one place to another. I missed critical trainings. Instead of those milestones of training and discipline by the say of a loving father it was blocked. Instead of those tender nuturings of a loving doting mother it was blocked. Who then could usurp in the place of beloved and not give my portion of love in order to live and hope for life and happiness, but more over security? These where what I went through the first ten years of my abduction. The terror revisited again to be come a torture which would at the whim of ANY who would learn that such a thing was easily done to me. My own people’s children did this with the permission of their parents. My own school administrators obliged to also join in since there was no easier a scapegoat to place upon any available child so idealy positioned and my reports of violence went unheard, but it wouldn’t be until 15 years from there that ANY mention of this ancient activity was pronounced as an inhumanity. It would be even ten years beyond then that the word: Trafficking would ever come to be known through the Hostage era. It has been in that decade of talks, that other laws would consider WHO’S abduction mattered, whether the abduction of an adult or that of a child. In my personal case my nation sought to rescue a teacher who was established and known. My citizenship did not count for much because the citizenship of minors was of no real legal worth, but was it?
Parents love their children or are actually supposed to defend how ever they know how, but when one loses the power of influence one does not stand a chance. Is influence a question of postion and finances? Moral conduct isn’t established according to financial worth, nor title, and education, but a standard which comes from ethics, and the knowledge of International Humanitarian Law. We live to see things through no matter what outcome nor how many are our foe. On both sides of the fence both the Palestinian, the American, the Jew…etc come to the bottom line. Is war necessary if the innocent will somehow get dragged into it? Should children now be used as shields?
As an abducted who has experienced both black/white hat activities neither of which helped me the best path I ever took was walking away and saving myself! Hashem was with me every step of the way. I decided liars wasted my time, I never got a straight answer for any of my questions so why did these think I had to answer any of theirs. Sold by my own into the slave trade I was merely gotten rid of but guess what: I met some truly wonderful people who might have felt themselves cut off until I crashed into their world. I’ve been crashing into every dimension, every people, every reality, going in and aboat how ever when ever. I became a Terrorist for just trying to find my way home. A terrorist for telling the truth which shown the light on the dark activities that continue to bury this problem to such a degree I have been facing countless people telling me I am dead, was missing long ago. Rediculous! Nobody looked for me so I was not missing at all. TO these I was a resurrection, to these I was an Avatar! Nonsense! Everybody has to learn to face what they have done and pay for everything they have not done. Sooner or later people shall understand it pays to be Humane. It isn’t correct to equate agaist ones age recieving a report from a child, teen, or young adult. With Abduction theres no time for games Officers of the Peace need to know International Law and Humanitarian Law. Servants who serve whether public or private need to understand color of law violations. Citizens of any nation need to know what is considered a federal matter and what is a local matter. Healing happens when people find closure and move forward whether law and order showed up or not. Let those in the dark who love the dark scramble to change from one position to the next for the rest of their lives. Not one will find peace but those who walk away in peace. As in the story of Yosef; who also was abducted/Trafficked as a youth. He faced every experience by moving forward and soon those of the past showed up for chance to restore. Peace is better than war because Love is always best no matter what heritage and bloodline!