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
Killings rise when Gaza Health Foundation distributes aid: Analysis
- Sky News finds correlation between aid drops, increased fatalities
- UN labels GHF sites ‘death traps,’ amid claims Israeli soldiers deliberately fire at civilians
LONDON: An investigation has found an increase in deaths in Gaza correlated with aid distribution overseen by the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Health Foundation.
The GHF took over humanitarian supply systems in the Palestinian enclave in May, replacing around 400 distribution sites run by other charities and NGOs with four designated facilities, called Secure Distribution Sites.
They were meant to ensure that aid did not fall into the hands of Hamas or other armed groups, which Israel alleges frequently happened under the previous UN-backed system.
However, Gaza’s health authorities say more than 600 Palestinians have been killed trying to access aid at the sites, which the UN has labeled “death traps.” Israeli soldiers have been accused of opening fire directly at civilians.
Analysis conducted by Sky News suggests that killings rise when aid is distributed by the GHF.
Sky’s Data & Forensics Unit found that an average of 48 deaths and 189 injuries are reported when the GHF operates two or fewer aid distributions. That number rises almost threefold when it runs five to six aid drops.
Sky reported that between June 5 and July 1, 77 aid distributions were conducted by the GHF. Of those, 23 — or 30 percent of the total — resulted in reports of violence, and at SDS4 half of all drops saw bloodshed.
A recent report by Israeli newspaper Haaretz interviewed Israeli soldiers who said they were ordered to fire at crowds of unarmed Palestinians at the GHF sites.
The Israeli military denies the allegations, but said it is investigating incidents where civilians have been harmed.
The UN, in its most recent update on June 24, put the number of casualties at GHF sites at 410, citing data available from nearby hospitals.
The GHF has been severely criticized for the manner in which aid is distributed, with footage obtained by Sky on June 15 showing Palestinians at SDS1 crowding and rummaging among hundreds of scattered aid packages discarded on the floor.
Sky’s analysis found that aid is often delivered in significantly smaller quantities than required, with supplies running out on average after just nine minutes. At 23 percent of aid drops, supplies were exhausted before the official opening time.
Sky reported that 86 percent of distributions were announced to people in the area less than 30 minutes in advance, and that maps and instructions distributed to locals to navigate and access the sites were inaccurate or dangerous, including telling civilians trying to reach SDS2, 3 and 4 to congregate inside areas labeled live combat zones by Israel.
In addition, the congregation areas are typically some distance from the sites, causing surges when they open as people attempt to cover the open ground to access the aid.
The shortest distance from a waiting point to an SDS is 689 meters, at SDS4, approximately 10 minutes away on foot — more than the average time before supplies run out.
Sam Rose, director of operations in Gaza for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, called the GHF’s system a “free-for-all.”
He told Sky: “What they’re doing is, they’re loading up the boxes on the ground and then people just rush in.”
Rose added: “They (the GHF) don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t have anyone working on these operations who has any experience of operating, of administering food distributions because anyone who did have that experience wouldn’t want to be part of it because this isn’t how you treat people.”
A group of charities and humanitarian groups on Tuesday condemned the GHF’s operations, saying they violate international principles.
More than 200 groups have called for the reinstatement of the previous aid distribution system overseen by the UN.
UN expert urges states to cut Israel trade ties over ‘apocalyptic’ Gaza situation
- Israel has rejected accusations of genocide in Gaza
GENEVA: A UN expert on Thursday called on states to impose an arms embargo and cut off trade and financial ties with Israel, which she alleged is waging a “genocidal campaign” in Gaza.
In a speech to the UN Human Rights Council, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese said: “The situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is apocalyptic.”
“Israel is responsible for one of the cruellest genocides in modern history,” she added, in a speech that was met with a burst of applause from the Geneva council.
Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Albanese’s speech.
Israel has rejected accusations of genocide in Gaza, citing its right to self-defense following the deadly October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Its delegate was not present in the room in line with a new policy to disengage with the council which Israel says has an antisemitic bias.
Albanese, one of dozens of independent UN-mandated experts to document abuses around the world, was presenting her latest report which named over 60 companies she said were involved in supporting Israeli settlements and military actions in Gaza.
“What I expose is not a list, it is a system, and that is to be addressed,” she told the council.
“We must reverse the tide,” she added, calling for states to impose a full arms embargo, suspend all trade agreements and ensure companies face legal consequences for their involvement in violations of international law.
Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva earlier this week said Albanese’s latest report was “legally groundless, defamatory and a flagrant abuse of her office.”
Gaza death toll rises: 82 killed, 38 while waiting for aid
- Gaza’s Health Ministry said the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza has passed 57,000
- More than 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has been displaced, often multiple times
TEL AVIV: Airstrikes and shootings killed 82 Palestinians in Gaza overnight, including 38 while attempting to get much-needed humanitarian aid, hospitals and the Health Ministry said Thursday.
Israel’s military did not have immediate comment on the strikes.
Five people were killed while outside sites associated with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the newly created, secretive American organization backed by Israel to feed the Gaza Strip’s population, while 33 others were killed waiting for aid trucks in other locations across the Gaza Strip.
Dozens of people were killed in airstrikes that pounded the Strip Wednesday night and Thursday morning, including 15 people killed in strikes that hit tents in the sprawling Muwasi zone, where many displaced Palestinians are sheltering, and a strike on a school in Gaza City sheltering displaced people.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza has passed 57,000, including 223 missing people who have been declared dead. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its death count but says that more than half of the dead are women and children.
The deaths come as Israel and Hamas inch closer to a possible ceasefire that would end the 21-month war.
Trump said Tuesday that Israel had agreed on terms for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza and urged Hamas to accept the deal before conditions worsen. But Hamas’ response, which emphasized its demand that the war end, raised questions about whether the latest offer could materialize into an actual pause in fighting.
The Israeli military blames Hamas for the civilian casualties because it operates from populated areas. The military said it targeted Hamas militants and rocket launchers in northern Gaza that launched rockets towards Israel on Wednesday.
The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages.
The war has left the coastal Palestinian territory in ruins, with much of the urban landscape flattened in the fighting.
More than 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has been displaced, often multiple times. And the war has sparked a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, leaving hundreds of thousands of people hungry.
Scorching summer heat deepens Gaza’s daily struggles
- Temperatures are exceeding 30 degrees Celsius with displaced children sweltering inside cramped nylon tents
KHAN YOUNIS: For Rida Abu Hadayed, summer adds a new layer of misery to a daily struggle to survive in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.
With temperatures exceeding 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), daybreak begins with the cries of Hadayed’s seven children sweltering inside the displaced family’s cramped nylon tent. Outside, the humidity is unbearable.
The only way the 32-year-old mother can offer her children relief is by fanning them with a tray or bits of paper — whatever she can find. If she has water, she pours it over them, but that is an increasingly scarce resource.
“There is no electricity. There is nothing,” she said, her face beaded with sweat. “They cannot sleep. They keep crying all day until the sun sets.”
The heat in Gaza has intensified hardships for its 2 million residents. Reduced water availability, crippled sanitation networks, and shrinking living spaces threaten to cause illnesses to cascade through communities, aid groups have long warned.
The scorching summer coincides with a lack of clean water for the majority of Gaza’s population, most of whom are displaced in tented communities. Many Palestinians in the enclave must walk long distances to fetch water and ration each drop, limiting their ability to wash and keep cool.
“We are only at the beginning of summer,” Hadayed’s husband, Yousef, said. “And our situation is dire.”
Israel had blocked food, fuel, medicine and all other supplies from entering Gaza for nearly three months. It began allowing limited aid in May, but fuel needed to pump water from wells or operate desalination plants is still not getting into the territory.
With fuel supplies short, only 40 percent of drinking water production facilities are functioning in the Gaza Strip, according to a recent report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. All face imminent collapse. Up to 93 percent of households face water shortages, the June report said.
The Hadayeds were displaced after evacuation orders forced them to leave eastern Khan Younis.
“Our lives in the tent are miserable. We spend our days pouring water over their heads and their skin,” Yousef Hadayed said. “Water itself is scarce. It is very difficult to get that water.”
UNICEF’s spokesperson recently said that if fuel supplies are not allowed to enter the enclave, children will die of thirst.
“Me and my children spend our days sweating,” said Reham Abu Hadayed, a 30-year-old relative of Rida Abu Hadayed who was also displaced from eastern Khan Younis. She worries about the health of her four children.
“I don’t have enough money to buy them medicine,” she said.
For Mohammed Al-Awini, 23, the heat is not the worst part. It’s the flies and mosquitoes that bombard his tent, especially at night.
Without adequate sewage networks, garbage piles up on streets, attracting insects and illness. The stench of decomposing trash wafts in the air.
“We are awake all night, dying from mosquito bites,” he said. “We are the most tired people in the world.”
Ailing South Sudan president prepares volatile succession
- For months, Kiir has been manoeuvring to sideline rivals
- The world’s youngest country, South Sudan has been plagued by poverty and violence since gaining independence in 2011
JUBA: With South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir undergoing medical tests abroad after years of rumors about his health, analysts say a long-gestating plan has been set in motion to secure his succession.
Kiir returned from at least 10 days in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, with state media saying he had been “exploring new avenues for economic cooperation.”
But members of his entourage, speaking on condition of anonymity, previously told AFP he was there for medical tests — reinforcing long-held concerns about the 73-year-old’s health.
The world’s youngest country, South Sudan has been plagued by poverty and violence since gaining independence in 2011, including a civil war that killed some 400,000 people in 2013-2018.
After a few relatively calm years, the country has been thrown back into turmoil in recent months, prompted, say analysts, by Kiir’s declining health and his efforts to install his heir-apparent, businessman Benjamin Bol Mel, in power.
Bol Mel is a controversial figure, who gained prominence as a construction magnate and was said to handle the Kiir family’s finances.
He was placed on a sanctions list by the United States in 2017 for corruption.
For months, Kiir has been manoeuvring to sideline rivals.
His old foe, Riek Machar, against whom he fought the civil war, was placed under house arrest in March and many of his political allies disappeared into detention.
Kiir’s forces have attacked Machar’s military bases and other armed groups drawn from his ethnic group, the Nuer.
More than 700 people were killed in clashes between January and March alone, according to the United Nations.
Rumours about Kiir’s health have long circulated but the topic is absolutely off-limits for discussion in official circles.
“If you want to visit a grave quickly, talk about it,” said a local activist, requesting anonymity for safety reasons.
Nonetheless, the frailty was obvious in April when Kiir hosted Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who walked briskly despite his 80 years while Kiir moved in tiny steps.
In May, the foreign ministry had to issue a statement assuring that the head of state was still alive following rumors to the contrary on social media.
State media footage of Kiir’s return from the UAE on Wednesday cut away every time he was about to take a step.
During his absence, it was Bol Mel — who was named second vice president in February and deputy head of the ruling party in May — who chaired last week’s cabinet meeting.
“It seems to be a script written a long time ago and being implemented in phases,” said Wani Michael, a former activist now in exile.
“They had to take away Riek Machar to pave the way for Bol Mel because... Riek would give Bol Mel a hard time,” he added.
In October, Kiir also fired his intelligence chief, Akol Koor, another potential rival who held that post for 13 years.
Bol Mel “has taken control of the security forces by installing loyalists. He has taken over the security and financial apparatus since last November-December,” said a diplomat based in Juba, also speaking on condition of anonymity.
Despite an uptick in violence, the moves have not triggered renewed war as many feared.
“It’s devastating on a humanitarian level, but it’s nothing compared to the colossal massacres of a few years ago when thousands died each month,” said the diplomat, adding that the government “has been fairly successful in subduing the various rebellions.”
Machar’s forces have barely retaliated to attacks and his party is split on the way forward.
But success is not guaranteed for Bol Mel, either, warned local analyst James Boboya.
“The government has not gained legitimacy at home or internationally,” he told AFP.
There is particular disillusionment at the failure to hold the country’s first-ever elections, which were again postponed last year to 2026.
“Elections are the only viable way for a peaceful transfer of power,” said Edmund Yakani, president of the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, a local NGO.
“We need the power of our vote in shaping the future. Not the bullet, and not leaders imposed on us.”
