By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Wearing both an embroidered kipah and his metaphoric Amnesty International hat, Middle East expert Marty Rosenbluth spoke to Jewish audiences around the Seattle area at the end of April. He called for respect for human rights on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
At the very beginning of his talk, Rosenbluth said forcefully that suicide bombings must be recognized as “crimes against humanity,” and denounced in no uncertain terms by the Palestinian leadership.
Over three days, Rosenbluth, who serves as Amnesty International’s Country Specialist for Israel, the Occupied Territories and the Palestinian Authority, spoke to congregations and open meetings at Temple Beth Or in Everett and Seattle’s Temple De Hirsch Sinai, and Temple Beth Am in the Northend.
Reflecting his organization’s approach to the conflict and the pattern of attack and retaliation it sees as fueling the continued conflict from both sides, Rosenbluth also referred to Israeli policies of attacking suspected militants with helicopter gunships and demolishing houses of suspected terrorists’ families as human rights abuses.
“We really do get attacked by pro-Palestinian folks who say we are pro-Israel and by pro-Israel folks who say we are pro-Palestinian,” he said. “Sometimes I say my main responsibility with Amnesty is Minister of Hate-Mail, because we get so many e-mails and letters and faxes and phone calls from people who are critical of our work.”
Rosenbluth said he was especially worried about the devastating effects of the continuing violence on the children of the area. Citing a recent report in the Hebrew daily newspaper Ha’aretz, he said 40 percent of Jewish school children, 70 percent of school-age Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza, and half of all Israeli Arabs suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders. What is more, he said, 70 percent of Israeli school kids surveyed said terror has affected their lives to one degree or another, and 20 percent reported that a relative had been directly exposed to a terror attack. Two percent had direct experience with a terrorist attack, according to the report.
“I say this not only as an Amnesty International activist and not only as a Jew, but as a parent, that I cannot imagine what the effect of this is going to be on these kids when they grow into adulthood,” Rosenbluth said.
In her introductory remarks, Diane Baer of Temple Beth Am’s Social Action Committee took up criticism heard in the community of having a speaker denouncing the State of Israel’s policies appear at a Jewish house of worship.
“Our goal really is to understand that there are many different perspectives,” Baer said, “all of which can, at the base, be reflective of a love for Israel, a belief that Israel has a right to exist with security, a belief that all people have a right to be treated with dignity and that human rights are important for all people – that’s Israelis, Jews, Palestinians.
“I hope that this will be some additional information – some different point of view that maybe, in some cases, you’re not familiar with,” she continued, “We all hope and pray for peace, but for us as Jews, peace and justice go hand in hand.”
Marty Rosenbluth spent more than seven years, from 1985 to 1992 living on the West Bank as a human rights activist. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he said he had a very typical Jewish upbringing, including participating in pro-Israeli groups. The road that led him to Ramallah, he said, went through Detroit, Mich., where he worked as an organizer for the United Auto Workers and where he first came into contact with members of the Palestinian community.
“Talking to Palestinians for the first time, I learned that they had a completely different narrative from what we have. Where we see a desert that was made to bloom, they see towns and villages, agricultural society and cities and a culture. Where we see a land without a people for a people without a land, they see their society that was destroyed. Where we see Israel as a democracy where Jews can live in freedom and safety, they see brutal military occupation.
“I figured the truth was somewhere in the middle, but I waned to find that out for myself,” he said. “I decided …rather than by going to Israel and visiting the West Bank and Gaza, I could learn more about that by living in the West Bank itself.”
When he returned to the U.S., Rosenbluth said, he did not want to get involved with any of the pro-Palestinian groups because he felt their focus was limited only to what the Israelis were doing, but he also felt that the pro-Israeli groups were similarly one-sided in their views. That is what drew him to Amnesty, which he called “one of the only mass-based organizations in the States that’s trying to address violations [of human rights] by all parties.”
Rosenbluth said he sees the one of the greatest problems in the Middle East debate to be what he called “the yes, but …” position heard from supporters of both Israel and the Palestinians.
“The arguments really parallel each other,” he said. “Pro-Israeli individuals and pro-Israeli groups will write to us and say, ‘I know these things are happening and I know that they’re bad, but you have to understand that Israel has to do what is necessary for its security.’
“Pro-Palestinian group and pro-Palestinian individuals write to us and say, ‘Yeah, I know you’re saying, that it’s terrible that Israeli civilians are getting killed. But you have to understand that it’s a struggle for liberation.’”
“We say to the Israeli government, we say to the pro-Israel groups in this country,” he continued, “that Israel has not only the right, but the responsibility to protect its citizens. But, in doing so, they have to act in accordance with international law and norms. We say exactly the same thing to pro-Palestinian groups.”
He said that Amnesty is often charged with “moral relativism” for applying the same standards to Israel and the Palestinians. But, he said, he is not clear on what is wrong with calling on both sides to respect the same human rights.