Because I teach ethics to university students, I know how hard it can be to argue convincingly that some things are right and wrong. Because in our pluralistic society there is no religious or philosophical source of moral values that everyone will accept as authoritative, and students are quick to point out that values differ among cultures and have changed throughout history.

But I always argue that some things are right and wrong, and my experience yesterday offers a good example. I went with a group sponsored by Rabbis for Human Rights to the Palestinian village of Einabus, which is in the middle of the West Bank just west of highway 60, about 50 miles north of Jerusalem and a few miles south of Nablus (near the ruins of Shechem).

Palestinians living in Einabus have olive groves on the hillside above their village, but they have been unable to tend their trees for the past few years because the settlers living on the top of the hill in a settlement called Yitzhar have frequently attacked them. A Palestinian was killed on the slopes above the village, and hundreds of olive trees have been damaged.

We went to Einabus to help Palestinians return to their land in order to tend their olive trees and plow their fields. The Israeli army had agreed to be present to protect us and the Palestinians, but we weren’t sure the army would do its duty for in the past it has allowed the settlers to drive the Palestinians from their land.

Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, led our party of ten, who drove up to Einabus in three cars. We were 6 men and 4 women, 9 Israelis and 1 American, 9 Jews (but not all religious Jews) and 1 Christian. All the men, except for Arik, were retired and elderly, but 2 of the women were in their forties or fifties.

Knowing that many Israelis would never go into the West Bank, for fear of being attacked and killed by Palestinians, I was curious as to why these Israelis were willing to go to Einabus. The answer was simple. They were appalled that the settlers had maliciously cut down the olive trees of the Palestinians. They had no doubt that this malicious act was wrong, and these Israelis felt morally compelled to try to do something to "right" this wrong.

Once we reached Einabus and made contact with the landowner of the olive grove at the top of the hill, just below the Yitzhar settlement, Arik called the army commander to be sure that soldiers would be present. After that was confirmed, we began our trek up the hillside along a winding donkey and tractor path. It was a steep climb, and along the way we encountered three blockades of stones and boulders, which the settlers had built to keep tractors out of the fields.

Near the top of the hill, where we could see the settlement and the army outpost, we saw two soldiers watching us from the ridge. So, we proceeded to walk around the slop to the olive groves. The Palestinians prune and shape their trees so that two or three main limbs extend out the trunk of the tree between two and three feet from the ground. This allows them to step up into the fork of the tree, where the main branches divide, in order to prune the branches.

The settlers had used chain saws to cut the main branches of each tree about waist height, probably because it was easier than bending down to saw trough the trunk. So, when we arrived at the olive grove we saw a field of stumps, each surrounded by the main branches that had been cut off. Some of the cut branches had been burned, and a few of the trees were entirely dead. But most of the tree stumps had new shoots growing out of the cut ends of the main branches.

My ethics students have been trained to try to see moral issues from both sides, so recalling my classes led me to ponder how the settlers would try to justify their actions. I can only think of two possible arguments.

The first might be that cutting down the grove gave the settlement added security, as it made it less likely that Palestinians could sneak up on the settlement and attack it. But this would be a weak argument, even assuming that Palestinians might want to attack the settlement, because the olive grove was a hundred yards below the settlement and the land between the grove and the settlement was open and bare of cover.

The second possible reason the settlers might offer to try to justify their destruction of the olive grove would be the claim that God has given all this land to Jews, therefore the Palestinians who are working the land have no right to do so. This argument ignores entirely the legal rights that Palestinians have, under Israeli law as well as international law. It simply claims that God’s will decides (and in this case has decided) what is right and what is wrong.

Not only many Jews, but many Christians as well (including what are known as Christian Zionists) would accept this argument, because it is based on a literal reading of the Bible that these true believers argue is the only correct way to read the scriptures.

Of course, if we disagree with this interpretation of the Bible, then it is easy for us to dismiss their argument. But how might we try to convince those, who read their scriptures this way that, nevertheless, they are wrong? This is the challenge taken up by Rabbis for Human Rights.

In response to the claim that scripture justifies driving Palestinians from the landGod has given the children of Israel, RHR makes several arguments based on other passages in Jewish scripture.

First, Genesis 1:27 at the very beginning of the Torah states that every human person is made in the image of God, and thus the human rights of every person, whether Jew of Gentile, must be respected. This means, at least, that Jews must consider the right of Palestinians, and cannot simply ignore or violate these rights.

Second, the Torah admonishes the people of the covenant to pursue justice. Deuteronomy 16:20 reads: "Justice, justice shall you pursue so that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God gives you." Rabbinical commentaries explain that the word "justice" is used twice to remind the reader that both the ends pursued, as well as the means used to attain these ends, must be just. Even if a Jewish state on all the land of ancient Israel were a just goal (which many Jews would dispute), the means of establishing this state must also be just. Land that belongs to others, and is worked by them for their livelihood, cannot simply be taken from them.

Third, in addition to these texts in the Torah, the Prophets contain many statements that show God’s love and concern for other nations. For instance, Micah 6:8 reads: "for what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" And Isaiah 1:27 proclaims: "Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent by righteousness."

If Jewish settlers should argue that God’s concern for justice is limited to conflicts among the chosen people, RHR would cite texts from the Torah where again and again God reminds the Israelites that they were strangers in Egypt. Yet, God cared for them, so they, too, must care for and respect the strangers among them.

Moreover, RHR would turn as well to teachings in the great rabbinical tradition that has long guided Jews and their understanding of Torah. For rabbis of the past made clear that the biblical command to conquer the land of Canaan was limited to the generation of Israelites that did so, and that Jews are to inherit this same land only by peaceful means with God’s aid. (Ketubot 11a, Maimonides, introduction to Sefer HaMitzvot; Sefer Hachinuch, Commandment 532)

In response, the settlers might point to statements by contemporary leading rabbis, such as Sefardi Shas party leader Rabbi Ovadai Yoseh, who has called settlers on the West Bank "heroes" and who now claims that Jews are commanded to settle all the land given by God to Israel. But in its annual report for 2004, RHR points out that even Rabbi Ovadia Yosef more than 20 years ago admitted that Jews can compromise with Arabs about the land in order to avoid continuing bloodshed. (Torah SheBal Peh, Itzhak Rafael, etc. Mosad HaRav Kook 1980)

The Talmud, which is the book of rabbinical commentary used by Orthodox rabbis to interpret the Torah, says that: "Whosoever has the capacity to prevent his household from committing a crime, and does not, he is accountable for the sins of the entire household." (Shabbat 54b) This is why some Jewish Israelis take part in actions organized by Rabbis for Human Rights. These Jews want to pressure the Israeli army to fulfil its legal obligation to protect Palestinians, who seek only to work their own land in order to provide a livelihood for their families.

At least several of the Israelis I worked with in the olive groves above Einabus were secular Jews, so quoting the Talmud or even the Torah was, for them, hardly the point. The moral claim of the Palestinians was clear and compelling, because the conduct of the religious settlers was malicious and cruel. For some, simply the idea of damaging olive trees was utterly wrong. And whether or not they knew it, there is Jewish teaching that condemns this specific action, even when the trees "belong" to an enemy. For the trees and their produce are a gift of God and the land, and these gifts are not to be neglected or abused simply in pursuit of selfish, human ends.

All the Israelis felt it was right to help the Palestinian landowners reach their land safely, and to pull cut branches from the weeds and drag them to the sides of the grove, so it would be possible with a tractor to plow and cultivate around the trees. Yet, as we took breaks to rest from the strenuous labor, some of the Israeli men had moral questions about our intervention.

They noticed that only two landowners were with us in their olive groves that day, and wondered why one of these landowners stopped us from moving to a grove lower on the hill, saying that this grove belonged to someone else. We knew RHR lacked the means to contact individually all the landowners, so Arik had relied on one of the landowners telling the others we would be there that day. Had he done that? Were the other landowners away, or too afraid to come up into the fields, or simply unaware that we were planning to be there?

Another Israeli wondered why the Palestinians didn’t cooperate more, for his experience in coming out to these work projects was that each landowner was concerned only with his own fields. Coming down the hill we moved the stones and boulders out of the rutted path up the hillside, so tractors could pass. But this was hard, exhausting work, which could have been done much more easily (and with less strain on our backs) by a tractor with a grader on the front. We could hear a tractor tilling a grove below us, and wondered why there wasn’t an organized effort by the entire village to help us accomplish more that day.

The two Palestinian landowners we did help each spoke good Hebrew, and clearly that gave them an advantage in dealing with Israelis. Were these two men the "best" contacts for the village? Or were we only helping those with the most land and skill? And might other members of the village resent our presence and assistance?

These are moral questions cannot simply be dismissed, because we are unable to answer them.

Certainly, by our actions we were strengthening friendships among Israelis and between Israelis and Palestinians. When we arrived in Einabus one of the Israeli women warmly embraced one of the Palestinian landowners, and the landowners gave us food and drink before we were done for the day. Moreover, the Israelis who came out to support the work of RHR and to help Palestinians on their land enjoyed their breaks together, and chatted amicably in simple English and halting Arabic with several young boys who came up the hill after school.

The men who had come out were mostly retired professionals. They included two physicists, an economist, a computer programmer, and an agronimist. They also had wonderful Jewish names: Avraham, Aaron, Benjamin, David, and Hillel. All the Israelis spoke English, some fluently, and two of them had children in the United States within an hour’s drive of my home. Three of the older men were clearly worn out by the hard work that day, and one of them had a bad leg that he favored as we slowly descended the hill.

One of the women was quite limited in her ability to do physical work, but had come to offer her presence as protection for the Palestinians. She sat by herself on the hillside, as we cleared the tangled olive grove of dead branches. The three other women worked hard with the men. The oldest, a small woman wearing a scarf wrapped around her head, was seemingly indefatigable.

I was delighted to find these Israeli women engaged in a lively conversation with three Palestinian women, who came up the hillside in the afternoon to pick and gather herbs. I watched as the women chatted together, smelling various plants, and pointing to their abdomens or making other motions with their hands, to help them communicate.

These very human interactions led me to conclude that what we were doing was right, despite the moral complexity of our intervention. It was right to help these Palestinians with their olive groves not only because the destructive acts of the settlers were wrong. It was right because we were building relationships among people, who were divided by their different cultures and religious traditions, as well as by their common commitment to live on this land.

Once we had descended the hillside and were packing our stuff into Arik’s car, I took a few photos of one of the landowner’s children, who wanted to pose for me. They were delighted to see themselves in the viewer of my digital camera, and they waved with their father and mother as we drove away.

Further down in the village, however, when we drove through a crowd of young boys, they also greeted us, but banged on the car as we passed by. It was impossible to know, if they were aware we were mostly Israelis, or whether or not they were friendly.

A group from RHR will return to Einabus, on days the army has agreed to provide protection for the Palestinians, and RHR groups will go to other villages with similar problems. All this data will be included as evidence in the RHR appeal to the Israeli high court for a judgment that would require the Israeli army to protect the right of Palestinians to access and use their land.

Such a ruling, if it comes, will not completely right the wrong done by Jewish settlers, unless adequate compensation is also ordered for the economic loss sustained by the Palestinian villages denied access to the land that provides their families with a living.

But if the court recognizes the right of the Palestinians to their land and also their right to be protected by the Israeli army, as they use their land, then a moral victory for both Palestinians and Israelis will have been achieved. And Israelis and Palestinians will have taken together one small step towards a just peace in this divided land.

Bob Traer, 12 April 2005

I am writing as a participant in the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel, which is sponsored by the World Council of Churches. The views expressed above are my own and do not necessarily represent the World Council of Churches. If you wish to publish or disseminate this letter beyond personal friends, please contact the EAPPI Communications Officer (eappi-co@jrol.com) for permission to do so. Thank you.

For photos from the olive groves about Einabus, go to http://christian-bible.com/Ethics/photos.einabus.htm. 

To read other Letters from Jerusalem, go to http://christian-bible.com/Ethics/lj.letters.2005.htm. 

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