There shall be one law and one ordinance for you and for the stranger who resides with you. (Numbers 15:16)
We are outraged that at least nine of our fellow Israeli and North American rabbis and dozens of others were detained while assisting a Palestinian family harvesting olives, and we call upon Israeli authorities to follow due process, immediately release all those detained, and protect Palestinians who peacefully work their land from harassment and violence.
That farmers need to have others serve as a protective presence from violent settlers is itself a betrayal of Jewish values. Yet recent settler attacks on Palestinian harvesters and those working alongside them—and authorities’ failure or refusal to stop such attacks—have made that protective presence necessary.
Our global memberships span the political and ideological spectrum. Yet we are united in opposing all forms of terrorism across the region and in our conviction that detaining rabbis working for justice undermines Israel’s democratic values.
We are in close contact with our members, and others on the scene, and are reviewing all the details as they emerge. As we gather information about this detention, we call on the Israeli government to release the detainees immediately, enable the productive harvesting of land, and turn its law enforcement efforts toward the violent settlers who have long been attacking Palestinian farmers and, more recently, journalists and diplomats.
Rabbinical Assembly United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism MERCAZ USA Central Conference of American Rabbis Union for Reform Judaism Reconstructionist Rabbinic Association Reconstructing Judaism
God looked upon creation and saw violence, chaos and mean-spirited self-centeredness engulfing every heart. There was neither kindness nor justice in the world. Empathy had ceased. Fear and hatred had replaced peace and love. In an instant God determined to destroy the world and return existence to primordial darkness.
The Eternal God mourned and recalled how great was the effort to create the heavens and earth, give life to growing things, design and fashion the birds, sea creatures and animals in their variety, shape, color, function, and form. That thought grew within the Divine mind. The Creator hesitated and thought thinking how great the tragedy to destroy that which God had called “good.”
God wondered ‘Is there one human on earth, different from the rest, who fathoms Me, who hasn’t been consumed by the sitra achra, the evil that brought darkness to My creation.’
In a blink of the Divine eye, God peered into every human soul seeking that one, better than the rest, who though not yet a complete tzadik might be good enough and able to hear the Divine voice and save what could be saved.
God found Noah and plucked him out and instructed him to build an ark, to save his family and two of every creature that all might not be lost and the world might begin anew.
As God contemplated the potential devastation Divine tears fell heavily to earth in a torrential downpour that lasted forty days and nights.
When finally God’s tear ducts were dry the waters receded, dry land appeared, and the ark docked. The Eternal God spoke to Noah:
“I am God, Noah, Who created you and brought you into this new land. Look around you and see the cleansed earth. The world is once again new. There is no longer rage nor hatred, violence nor hubris in the human heart. I will make with you a covenant marked by a sign that will remind us both how I created the world in peace, then destroyed it allowing it to begin anew that it should be a place of peace for all time.
And the sign of this covenant will be a radiant smile stretching across the heavens and filling the sky, an arc of light shining through the flood waters, a vision of loveliness inspiring love for and awe of Me.
This promise, Noah, shall be called the ‘rainbow,’ and this bow in the sky will remind you, your progeny and Me that I will never again bring such devastation to the earth.
Your duty and the duty of your children and children’s children must be to protect My creation, to preserve and nurture it, for there will come no one after you to set it right if you destroy it.”
God bent towards the earth and stretched the Divine arm across the sky and created an arc. Where God’s hand had been appeared a sheltering bow of every color spread across the blue canvas of sky.
And God spoke of the colors and the rainbow sign:
“First comes red to stand for the blood pulsing through human veins that carries My Godly soul and makes all things live; orange is for the comforting warmth of fire and its potential to create, build and improve upon what I created; yellow is for the glory of the sun that lights the earth and gives vision to earthly souls that they might see Me in all things and live; green is for the grass and the leaves of trees and their fruit, that all creatures might be sustained in life; blue is for the sky, sea and rivers that joins air and ground and makes clear that all is One, divinely linked and a reflection of Me; indigo appears each day at dusk and dawn to signal evening and morning, the passage of time and the seasons, the ever renewing life force that is intrinsic to all things; violet is for the coming of night when the world rests and is renewed, and it carries the hope that all might awake in the morning and utter words of thanksgiving and praise.”
God explained to Noah that the rainbow appears to the human eye as a half circle:
“Do not be fooled, my most righteous one! There is more to life than what the eye can see. There is both the revealed and the hidden, and the hidden half of the bow reaches deep into earth that you and those who yearn after Me might come and discover Truth, and reveal and make whole the revealed and the hidden in My world.”
Remember this blessing, My child, and you will remember My promise – Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, zocheir habrit v’neeman biv’rito v’kayam b’maamaro – Praised are You, Eternal God, Sovereign of the revealed and the hidden, Who remembers, is faithful to and fulfills the Divine covenant and promise.”
Written by Rabbi John Rosove and inspired by classic Midrashim – First published on my blog on 18 October, 2018
Why do the American radical political left and the radical American political right focus so obsessively on delegitimizing Zionism and Israel as a Jewish state?
Dr. Micah Goodman, a political philosopher, writer, and among Israel’s most thoughtful public intellectuals, explains in a recent podcast hosted by Amanda Borschel-Dan of the Times of Israel (TOI).
Goodman also discusses why most Israelis are not paying attention to the challenges now confronting the US-Israel relationship and what that might mean for Israel’s security and future and for the growth of antisemitism in the United States.
Published – September 17, 2026 by Günther Jikeli and Philippe Karpe
This is an important study by two scholars of antisemitism and international law about the three charges made against Israel. I recommend that you read the entire paper. The Abstract is as follows, and the bios of the two scholars are below.
Abstract
This article examines three recurrent classifications of Israel and its conduct: apartheid, settler colonialism, and genocide. It treats apartheid and genocide as legal classifications with defined elements and settler colonialism as a historical-comparative framework. After reviewing the principal arguments and evidence, it concludes that apartheid and genocide are not established and that settler colonialism is an inadequate classification, including in the settings where each accusation is strongest.
The evidence does not establish apartheid in Israel’s citizenship regime or in the West Bank. [my emphasis] The latter presents the stronger case because of prolonged occupation, settlements, unequal legal arrangements, and movement toward de facto annexation. Yet Palestinian self-government, the negotiated origins of the present structure, security considerations, judicial review, and repeated negotiations over withdrawal and statehood leave the required purpose or intent to establish or maintain systematic racial domination and oppression unproven. Settler colonialism illuminates aspects of pre-state settlement, Palestinian displacement, and the post-1967 West Bank settlement enterprise, but does not adequately account for Zionism’s national and refugee character, Jewish historical attachment, or the absence of a conventional or functionally equivalent metropole. Even in the West Bank, divergent territorial strategies and negotiations over withdrawal complicate the claim of a continuous project of permanent incorporation. The record establishes extensive Palestinian death, injury, deprivation, and civilian suffering, but does not establish the specific intent to destroy Palestinians, in whole or in substantial part, as such, required for genocide under the Convention.
More broadly, expansive definitions and selective evidence allow the three accusations to reinforce one another, shift the burden of proof, and erode the distinctions they are meant to capture, converting bounded legal and historical categories into comprehensive claims about the illegitimacy of Israel as such.
Günther Jikeli – Interim Director 2025-2026, Borns Jewish Studies Program, Erna B. Rosenfeld Associate Professor for the Study of Antisemitism at Indiana University’s Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Associate Professor in the Borns Jewish Studies Program and Germanic Studies. He is a historian and sociologist of modern Europe, with particular interests in the history of antisemitism and in critical antisemitism studies. His research focuses on online and offline forms of contemporary antisemitism. He runs the research lab “Social Media & Hate.”
Philippe Karpe – Senior Researcher and international expert at CIRAD-UR GREEN (Gestion des Ressources Renouvelables et Environnement). He is also a lecturer (University of Strasbourg (France) and University of Hokkaido (Japan). He holds a PhD in law and an Accreditation to Supervise Research in Law. Conducted over about thirty years, his research has covered several successive legal topics, including the protection and promotion of human rights, (especially those of the indigenous peoples, peasants, rural youth and women), the compliance with human rights obligations by businesses (with a focus on land grabbing and biopiracy), the legal recognition of the local, minority and indigenous customs and the relations between Human and Nature.
