By Manny Frishberg , JTNews Correspondent
When Rabbi Arik Ascherman was growing up in Erie, Pennsylvania in the 1960s and ‘70s, it’s unlikely that he imagined he would become the Israeli counterpart to the civil rights leaders whose faces and voices flashed across the TV screen. Yet that is how at least some people view the man who has become the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights.
These days, Ascherman is facing a prison term for blocking bulldozers sent to demolish Arab homes being built near Jerusalem. He is quick to point out that the demolition projects he and his cohorts are protesting are not like the ones that have gone on in Gaza over the last few weeks, which are being justified on security grounds. The buildings he has been trying to save are slated for demolition because authorities claim the owners, Palestinian residents on both sides of the Green Line, have not received the proper permits before starting to build.
“There are at least three kinds of demolitions,” Ascherman told JTNews on a visit to Seattle in mid-May. “There are the demolitions, which in a sense are collective punishment, but that the Israeli government argues are deterrents, when you’re talking about a suicide bomber or a suicide bomber’s family. There are the demolitions supposedly also taking place for security reasons, such as this issue down in down in Rafah, right now. The policy that we’re trying to reverse has nothing to do with security.”
Ascherman spoke at a series of events, including a public talk at Temple Beth Am in Seattle. Rabbis For Human Rights and their allies in the anti-demolition protests say local Israeli authorities have constructed bureaucratic bulwarks that make the permits all but impossible to get.
“If you’re a Palestinian in living ‘Area C’ or in East Jerusalem,” he said, “you could have a clean security record and a clear title to your land and, in most cases, unless you pay a bribe or agreeing to be an informer, you’re not going to get a legal permit. Then, when you’re forced to build without a permit, your home can be demolished.”
In April 2003, Ascherman, Ori Omer, and Shai Eliezer Tzvi, all members of RHR, stood between a bulldozer and a Palestinian home about to be demolished, leaving two families homeless within minutes. The three were arrested and charged with interfering with police in the execution of their duties.
Following the opening of the trial in an Israeli court this past January, Ascherman said, the protestor’s lawyers “presented a pre-trial motion arguing that the case should be dropped because it’s a policy that’s illegal and immoral.”
On March 24, 2004, the Magistrates Court in Jerusalem rejected the claim of “defense of justice.”
“All along,” the rabbi explained, “we’ve believed that in a democracy — and Israel is a democracy — that the idea of civil disobedience is to have a chance, in court, to prove that a policy that you’re opposing is illegal and immoral. That’s what we’ve been trying to do.”
The next hearing will be in held during the week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, in September. If convicted, they face up to three years in prison.
But civil disobedience is not really the core of RHR’s work, Ascherman said. “The pillars of our work right now are educating within the Israeli school systems about Judaism and human rights, economic justice for Israelis and Palestinian human rights,” he said. That includes operating a “Human Rights Yeshiva” for Israeli university students to study Jewish values as they relate to human rights questions and some of the social issues confronting Israel today.
“Respect for universal human rights is a Jewish imperative beginning with the first verses of the Torah, that all human beings are created in God’s image,” he said.