A large group of US-based rabbis and cantors pinned a letter towards US President Joe Biden in early March demanding that he work “to use the full force of America’s leverage and global leadership to end the war.”
The letter was published on the T’ruah website, an organization whose mission states that it “brings the Torah’s ideals of human dignity, equality, and justice to life by empowering rabbis and cantors to be moral voices and to lead Jewish communities in advancing democracy and human rights for all people in the United States, Canada, Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territories.”
The letter starts by acknowledging the “unfathomable suffering of Israelis and Palestinians” and thanking the US leader for working towards a bilateral ceasefire, and they believe that “a ceasefire is the only reliable, proven means for securing the release of the remaining hostages and ensuring the provision of desperately needed humanitarian relief to Gaza.”
A military solution to end the conflict does not work, the rabbis and cantors in the letter stress. The letter also endorses the creation of a Palestinian state in a two-state solution and claims that Jewish safety and Palestinian safety are intertwined.
Jewish trauma
The trauma of the Hamas attacks is also mentioned in the letters, as the signatories state that they’ve “wept and held our communities through the trauma of October 7,” and they state their concern at the rising antisemitism following the attack.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his governing coalition are also condemned in the letter, stating that the Palestinian civilian death count is too high, claiming that “the majority of whom are women and children who bear no responsibility for Hamas’s crimes,” but also note how the terrorist organization “has repeatedly and deliberately endangered the lives of their own people.”
One of the main points in the address to Biden is the Jewish signatories’ wish for Biden to prevent Israel from launching an incursion into Rafah.
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