Picking Olives in the West Bank
An American rabbi and a congressman-to-be picking olives the day after being detained by Israeli police for picking olives.
Dear friends,
New Shul member, Dov Alperin, along with many of my friends and colleagues are picking olives in the West Bank this week. They are part of a campaign bringing together several Israeli and Jewish American organizations to perform protective presence in endangered villages around the West Bank, where farmers cannot access their lands without the accompaniment of volunteers. Some of the olive farmers they're supporting have not been able to reach their fields in over three years. Even when the volunteers are there, the harvesting doesn't always happen as planned. Settlers sometimes attack the volunteers, then call the police or the army, who come and arrest the activists and/or the Palestinians. So Israelis for Peace, Rabbis for Human Rights, T'ruah and several other organizations came together to do what they can to stop this blatant attempt to push these Palestinians off of their lands.
I connected with Dov on Wednesday while he was in detention by the Israeli police, along with 80 others, including many rabbis and Brad Lander. At the time, they were told they would likely be deported. Hours later, however, they were released, most likely due to mounting pressure from people like you or me who understand that the police is the extremist settler Ben Gvir's army, and the army takes orders from the settlers themselves, or sometimes from the ultra right wing Minister of Defense, Israel Katz. I've been out there many times supporting Palestinians who can't reach their wells, their grazing grounds, their fields. I can tell you that blaming the settlers in the area for the situation is the like blaming your hands for stealing but saying you yourself had nothing to do with it. The problem has been systemic for decades, and under this current government it has become as close as can be to official policy.
Many of the Israelis for Peace folks there are Israeli New Yorkers who flew home to protect the harvest, and vote. Like most of our teachers at the School for Creative Judaism, they went to bring a change. In a few days the elections will take place there, and there is hope that some change will come. Gadi Eisenkot, currently leading in the polls against Netanyahu has said that stopping Jewish terror in the West Bank will be priority for him. It's unlikely that a new leader will signal the type of deep change in direction that many Israelis I know yearn for, but there is a possibility that a new government would at least manage to stop the Jewish terrorists there from acting with complete government support. This would offer respite to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the Wild West of Jewish supremacy known as the West Bank.
The day after they were detained, the activists were back in the fields picking olives. Let us pray that those olive branches they pick the fruit from settle into the weary Israeli hearts and lead to the sprouting of new shoots of hope, accountability, equality and healing; the early beginnings of a return to a Judaism of compassion and care. The Zohar teaches that when the prophets called our father, Abraham "ohavi", the one who loves God, it was manifested in one way - his love of Tsedakah; charity or justice. Let our people return to the way of our first ancestor who manifested his love of the divine through acts of love and care to the human beings he met along the way (none of which, I mind you, were Jewish).
With gratitude and pride for Dov and the rest of the brave olive pickers.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha