AT-TUWANI, West Bank: Young American rabbinical students are doing more than visiting holy sites, learning Hebrew and poring over religious texts during their year abroad in Israel.
In a stark departure from past programs focused on strengthening ties with Israel and Judaism, the new crop of rabbinical students is reaching out to the Palestinians. The change reflects a divide between Israeli and American Jews that appears to be widening.
On a recent winter morning, Tyler Dratch, a 26-year-old rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Boston, was among some two dozen Jewish students planting olive trees in the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani in the southern West Bank. The only Jews that locals typically see are either Israeli soldiers or ultranationalist settlers.
“Before coming here and doing this, I couldn’t speak intelligently about Israel,” Dratch said. “We’re saying that we can take the same religion settlers use to commit violence in order to commit justice, to make peace.”
Dratch, not wanting to be mistaken for a settler, covered his Jewish skullcap with a baseball cap. He followed the group down a rocky slope to see marks that villagers say settlers left last month: “Death to Arabs” and “Revenge” spray-painted in Hebrew on boulders and several uprooted olive trees, their stems severed from clumps of dirt.
This year’s student program also includes a tour of the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron, a visit to an Israeli military court that prosecutes Palestinians and a meeting with an activist from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which is blockaded by Israel.
The program is run by “T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights,” a US-based network of rabbis and cantors.
Most of T’ruah’s membership, and all students in the Israel program, are affiliated with the Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative movements — liberal streams of Judaism that represent the majority of American Jews. These movements are marginalized in Israel, where rabbis from the stricter Orthodox stream dominate religious life.
The T’ruah program, now in its seventh year, is meant to supplement students’ standard curricular fare: Hebrew courses, religious text study, field trips and introductions to Jewish Israeli society. Though the program is optional, T’ruah says some 70 percent of the visiting American rabbinical students from the liberal branches of Judaism choose to participate.
The year-long program is split into one semester, focused on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and another, on alleged human rights abuses inside Israel.
T’ruah claims its West Bank encounters aren’t one-off acts of community service, but experiences meant to be carried home and disseminated to future congregations.
“We want to propel them to action, so they invite their future rabbinates to work toward ending the occupation,” said Rabbi Ian Chesir-Teran, T’ruah’s rabbinic educator in Israel.
The group began its trip in the most Jewish of ways, a discussion about the weekly Torah portion that turned into a spirited debate about the Ten Commandments.
“The Torah says don’t covet your neighbor’s fields, and we’re going to a Palestinian village whose private land has been confiscated for the sake of covetous Jews building settlements,” Chesir-Teran said.
As their bus trundled through the terraced hills south of Hebron, students listened to a local activist’s condensed history of the combustible West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
As part of interim peace deals in the 1990s, the West Bank was carved up into autonomous and semi-autonomous Palestinian areas, along with a section called Area C that remains under exclusive Israeli control.
The destinations of the day — the Palestinian villages of At-Tuwani and Ar-Rakkes — sit in Area C, also home to around 450,000 Israeli settlers. Palestinians seek all of the West Bank as the heartland of a hoped-for independent state.
The group was guided by villagers to their olive trees — an age-old Palestinian symbol and a more recent casualty of the struggle for land with Israeli settlers.
Israeli security officials reported a dramatic spike last year in settler violence against Palestinians.
Yishai Fleisher, a settler spokesman, blamed the attacks on the “atmosphere of tension” in the West Bank. “We’re against vigilantism, unequivocally,” he said.
As Israeli soldiers watched from the hilltop, Palestinians and Jews dug their fingers into the crumbling soil, setting down roots where holes torn out of the field hinted at recent vandalism.
Dratch said he came of age in Pennsylvania during the violent years of the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s. “My religious education was steeped in fear of Palestinians,” he said.
But in college, Dratch’s ideas about Israel changed. Dratch says he still supports Israel, while opposing its policies in the West Bank. “I realized I could be Zionist without turning my back on my neighbor, on Palestinians,” he said.
With hundreds of young American rabbis sharing such sentiments, some in Israel find the trend alarming.
“I worry about a passion for social justice becoming co-opted by far-left politics among future American Jewish leaders,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish research center in Jerusalem.
“Future rabbis are marginalizing themselves from the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews,” he added.
As Israel heads toward elections in April, opinion polls point to another victory for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his religious, nationalist allies.
In the US, meanwhile, surveys show American Jews, particularly the younger generation, holding far more dovish views toward Palestinians and religious pluralism. Netanyahu’s close friendship with President Donald Trump has further alienated many American Jews, who tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
Two weeks after visiting At-Tuwani, the group received disheartening news: half of the 50 trees they’d planted had been uprooted, apparently by settlers. The students scrambled to make plans to replant.
Dratch said that while his time in Israel has provided him with plenty of reasons to despair, he still harbors hope for change.
“We’ll be sharing these stories to give people a full picture of what it means to care about this place,” he said.
Future rabbis plant with Palestinians, sow rift with Israel
Future rabbis plant with Palestinians, sow rift with Israel
- The gap between American and Israeli Jews seems to be widening
- American rabbinical students plant olive trees in a Palestinian village
798 people killed while receiving aid in Gaza, says UN human rights office
- Killings both at aid points run by the US- and Israeli-backed group and near humanitarian convoys run by other relief bodies
The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a UN-led system that Israel says had let militants divert aid.
The United Nations has called the plan “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality rules.
“Up until the seventh of July, we’ve recorded now 798 killings, including 615 in the vicinity of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, and 183 presumably on the route of aid convoys,” OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May and has repeatedly denied that incidents had occurred at its sites.
Kurdish PKK militants begin handing over weapons in cave in Iraq
- Disarmament ceremony marks a turning point in the transition of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party from armed insurgency to democratic politics
- Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan said peace efforts with the Kurds would gain momentum after the PKK begin laying down its weapons
SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq: Dozens of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants began handing over weapons in a ceremony in a cave in northern Iraq on Friday, officials said, marking a symbolic but significant step toward ending a decades-long insurgency against Turkiye.
Helicopters hovered above the mountain where the disarmament process got underway, with dozens of Iraqi Kurdish security forces surrounding the area, a Reuters witness said.
The PKK, locked in conflict with the Turkish state and outlawed since 1984, decided in May to disband, disarm and end its separatist struggle after a public call to do so from its long-imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan.
After a series of failed peace efforts, the new initiative could pave the way for Ankara to end an insurgency that has killed over 40,000 people, burdened the economy and wrought deep social and political divisions in Turkiye and the wider region.
The ceremony was held inside the Jasana cave in the town of Dukan, 60 kilometers northwest of Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan region of Iraq’s north, according to an Iraqi security official and another regional government official.
Around 40 PKK militants and one commander were to hand over their weapons, people familiar with the plan said. It was unclear when further handovers would take place.
The PKK has been based in northern Iraq after being pushed well beyond Turkiye’s southeastern frontier in recent years. Turkiye’s military has regularly carried out operations and strikes on PKK bases in the region and established several military outposts there.
No footage of the ceremony has been made available yet, but Turkish broadcasters have been showing the crowds gathered near Sulaymaniyah and landscapes of the mountainous region as part of their coverage of what they said was a historic moment.
The arms are to be destroyed later in another ceremony attended by Turkish and Iraqi intelligence figures, officials of Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, and senior members of Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish DEM party – which also played a key role in facilitating the PKK’s disarmament decision.
Next steps
The PKK, DEM and Ocalan have all called on Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s government to address Kurdish demands for more rights in regions where Kurds form a majority, particularly the southeast where the insurgency was concentrated.
In a rare online video published on Wednesday, Ocalan also urged Turkiye’s parliament to set up a commission to oversee disarmament and manage the broader peace process.
Ankara has taken steps toward forming the commission, while the DEM and Ocalan have said that legal assurances and certain mechanisms were needed to smooth the PKK’s transition into democratic politics.
Omer Celik, a spokesman for Erdogan’s AK Party, said the disarmament process should not be allowed to drag on longer than a few months to avoid it becoming subject to provocations.
Erdogan has said the disarmament will enable the rebuilding of Turkiye’s southeast.
Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek has said Turkiye spent nearly $1.8 trillion over the past five decades combating terrorism, endorsing the peace steps as an economic boon.
The end of NATO member Turkiye’s conflict with the PKK could have consequences across the region, including in neighboring Syria where the United States is allied with Syrian Kurdish forces that Ankara deems a PKK offshoot.
Washington and Ankara want those Kurds to quickly integrate with Syria’s security structure, which has been undergoing reconfiguration since the fall in December of autocratic President Bashar Assad. PKK disarmament could add to this pressure, analysts say.
Gaza civil defense says Israeli strikes kill six
- In central Gaza on Friday, the Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat said it received several casualties after Israeli forces had opened fire at civilians near an aid distribution point
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes on Friday killed at least six people in the Palestinian territory’s north, including five at a school-turned-shelter.
“Five martyrs and others injured in an Israeli strike on Halima Al-Saadia School, which was sheltering displaced persons in Jabalia Al-Nazla, northern Gaza,” the agency said in a brief statement.
In a separate strike on Gaza City, to the south, the agency said at least one person was killed and several others wounded.
In central Gaza on Friday, the Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat said it received several casualties after Israeli forces had opened fire at civilians near an aid distribution point.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has recently intensified its operations in the Gaza Strip as the war against Hamas militants entered its 22nd month.
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defense agency and other parties.
A Palestinian speaking to AFP from southern Gaza on condition of anonymity said there were ongoing attacks and widespread devastation, with Israeli tanks seen near the city of Khan Yunis.
“The situation remains extremely difficult in the area – intense gunfire, intermittent air strikes, artillery shelling and ongoing bulldozing and destruction of displacement camps and agricultural land to the south, west and north of Al-Maslakh,” an area to Khan Yunis’s south, said the witness.
Francesca Albanese, UN investigator and critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza, shocked by US sanctions
- Francesca Albanese: The powerful are trying to silence me for defending those without any power of their own
- Albanese accuses US officials of receiving Israeli leader with honor and standing side-by-side with someone facing an arrest warrant
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina: An independent UN investigator and outspoken critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza said Thursday that “it was shocking” to learn that the Trump administration had imposed sanctions on her but defiantly stood by her view on the war.
Francesca Albanese said in an interview with The Associated Press that the powerful were trying to silence her for defending those without any power of their own, “other than standing and hoping not to die, not to see their children slaughtered.”
“This is not a sign of power, it’s a sign of guilt,” the Italian human rights lawyer said.
The State Department’s decision to impose sanctions on Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, followed an unsuccessful US pressure campaign to force the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, the UN’s top human rights body, to remove her from her post.
She is tasked with probing human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories and has been vocal about what she has described as the “genocide” by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and the US have strongly denied that accusation.
“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on social media. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”
The US announced the sanctions Wednesday as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was visiting Washington to meet with President Donald Trump and other officials about reaching a ceasefire deal in the war in Gaza. Netanyahu faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, which accuses him of crimes against humanity in his military offensive in Gaza.
In the interview, Albanese accused American officials of receiving Netanyahu with honor and standing side-by-side with someone wanted by the ICC, a court that neither the US nor Israel is a member of or recognizes. Trump imposed sanctions on the court in February.
“We need to reverse the tide, and in order for it to happen – we need to stand united,” she said. “They cannot silence us all. They cannot kill us all. They cannot fire us all.”
Albanese stressed that the only way to win is to get rid of fear and to stand up for the Palestinians and their right to an independent state.
The Trump administration’s stand “is not normal,” she said at the Sarajevo airport. She also defiantly repeated, “No one is free until Palestine is free.”
Albanese was en route to Friday’s 30th anniversary commemoration of the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica where more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys in a UN-protected safe zone were killed when it was overrun by Bosnian Serbs.
The United Nations, Human Rights Watch and the Center for Constitutional Rights opposed the US move.
“The imposition of sanctions on special rapporteurs is a dangerous precedent” and “is unacceptable,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
While Albanese reports to the Human Rights Council – not Secretary-General Antonio Guterres – the US and any other UN member are entitled to disagree with reports by the independent rapporteurs, “but we encourage them to engage with the UN human rights architecture.”
Trump announced the US was withdrawing from the council in February.
The war between Israel and Hamas began Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel and killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 people captive. Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed over 57,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which says women and children make up most of the dead but does not specify how many were fighters or civilians.
Nearly 21 months into the conflict that displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, the UN says hunger is rampant after a lengthy Israeli blockade on food entering the territory and medical care is extremely limited.
ICC warns of worsening atrocities in Darfur, cites evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity
- Court’s deputy prosecutor, Nazhat Shameem Khan, tells UN Security Council the humanitarian situation in the region has reached an ‘intolerable’ level
- ‘People are being deprived of food and water. Rape and sexual violence are being weaponized. Abductions have become common practice,” she says
NEW YORK CITY: The International Criminal Court has “reasonable grounds to believe” that war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed in Darfur, its deputy prosecutor, Nazhat Shameem Khan, told the UN Security Council on Thursday.
The humanitarian situation in the region has reached an “intolerable” level, he warned.
Speaking in New York, Khan described an escalating crisis marked by widespread famine, targeted attacks on hospitals and aid convoys, and sexual violence.
“People are being deprived of food and water,” she said. “Rape and sexual violence are being weaponized. Abductions have become common practice. Things can still get worse.”
Her comments came amid escalating violence in Sudan’s Darfur region, where the Rapid Support Forces, one of two main rival military factions in the country, and allied groups have been accused of targeting civilians at displacement camps such as Zamzam and Abu Shouk, and during attacks on the regional capital, Al-Fashir.
Khan said the findings of the ICC were based on extensive evidence gathered from various sources over the past six months, including field missions to refugee camps in Chad, and cooperation with civil society organizations and UN fact-finding agencies.
“We have collected over 7,000 evidence items, documentary, testimonial and digital, supporting our conclusion,” she added.
Highlighting gender-based crimes as a key focus of the investigations, Khan detailed ongoing efforts to increase the visibility of such violations, which remain “underreported and insufficiently recognized.”
A dedicated team is working with Darfuri women and girls to gather testimonies of sexual violence, she said, adding: “There is an inescapable pattern of offending targeting gender and ethnicity through rape and sexual violence. These crimes are being given particular priority.”
There were signs of growing cooperation with the court from the Sudanese government, including a recent visit to Port Sudan that allowed investigators to identify potential new witnesses, Khan said, and a second visit is planned in the near future.
But she urged Sudanese authorities to take bolder steps, particularly in the execution of ICC warrants for the arrest of senior officials, including the former president, Omar Bashir, as well as Ahmad Harun and Abdul Raheem Mohammed Hussein, former officials wanted by the ICC over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Darfur conflict of the early 2000s.
“Transferring Mr. Harun now would carry exceptional weight,” Khan said. She noted that the charges against him closely resemble those at the heart of another ongoing case, against Ali Mohammed Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, a former Janjaweed militia leader accused by the ICC of orchestrating war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Darfur conflict. A verdict in that case is expected this year.
Khan urged the Security Council and the wider international community to act collectively to address the crisis and break what she described as a “seemingly never-ending cycle of violence fueled by impunity.”
She added: “Every single state here is appalled by what is happening in Darfur. Let us take our report as a blueprint. With your support, we can not only deliver justice but prevent this cycle of violence.”
Despite mounting challenges, including limited resources and obstruction on the ground, Khan said the ICC remains determined to pursue accountability in Darfur.
“We need your support now more than ever before,” she said. Though the ICC’s progress is “never sufficient, relative to the scale of the suffering,” if it can be reinforced through international support, “justice delivered collectively can reduce suffering and lay foundations for peace,” Khan added.
“If we can come together, if we can agree that such suffering needs the support of all those who are able to provide it, I believe the present crisis can ultimately demonstrate how justice delivered collectively can set the foundations for the reduction of suffering and the beginning of work towards peace.”
