The typical observance of the Jewish holiday Tisha b’Av involves fasting, mourning, and reading scripture. Rabbi Arik Ascherman, however, is a decidedly atypical rabbi. Ascherman spends his time accompanying Palestinian shepherds and documenting settler violence; he once requested that a person who attacked him not face jail time. “If I am concerned about the Image of God in every human being,” he said at the time, “that includes those who have done me harm, or who think very differently than I do.”
Rabbi Ascherman holds true to the tenants of Tisha b’Av in a unique way. Every year, he observes the holiday—which marks the destruction of the first and second Jewish temples in Jerusalem in 586 BCE and 67 CE—by visiting different Palestinian communities suffering under Israeli government rule. This year, Ascherman visited communities that had lost their homes due to some form of violence. He drew a parallel between what’s happening in Palestine to the Hebrew phrase for the destruction of the temples Khurban Bayit, which includes the word for “house” or “home.”
At each site, Palestinians shared their stories with a group of Israeli and international Jews, myself included. Participants on the trip also read a chapter from the "Book of Lamentations," the section of the Hebrew Bible that describes the temples’ destruction.
Reading from the "Book of Lamentations" in Turmus Ayya, a Palestinian town in the West Bank.
Our first stop was Turmus’ayyeh, a Palestinian town in the North of the West Bank that was the location of a settler pogrom in June. During the attacks, Israeli settlers set fire to about thirty houses and sixty vehicles, injuring dozens, and killing Omar Ketin, a twenty-seven-year-old Palestinian.
Roughly 80 percent of Turmus’ayyeh’s residents are U.S. citizens. Because of this, after the violence, local officials reached out to the U.S. embassy for support. But, as one resident told Ascherman, the embassy’s response was slow and unhelpful.
At Turmus’ayyeh, we heard from a resident named Qaid, a Palestinian-American who brought his family to Palestine so they could meet extended family, embrace their culture, and learn Arabic. He sold his home in Illinois to relocate; just a few days later, his new home in Turmus’ayyeh was burned down. Rabbi and activist Lexie Botzum read the first chapter of Lamentations in the ruins of Qaid’s home.
Ascherman was in Turmus’ayyeh in June providing support during the attacks, and he frequently engages in activism in the area. “I’ve seen here on a number of occasions settlers attacking the police and the army,” he told us.
Our second stop was the depopulated village of Ras Al-Tin, which is located in Area C, the portion of the West Bank under full Israeli military control. The residents of the village fled their homes this past year after the constant violence became too much for them. “It’s not just settler violence,” the vice-mayor of a nearby community called Mughair emphasized. “It’s state violence…. The connection between the settlers and this government is stronger than ever.”
The escalation brought on by Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government may have only just begun. Analysts say that Netanyahu’s recently passed judicial reform law, which scraps the “reasonable” clause that allowed the court to strike down laws it deemed unreasonable, will disproportionately harm Palestinians.
After Ras Al-Tin, the tour passed by Ein Samia in the Jordan Valley, another depopulated village whose last residents fled the area just a few months ago. Books and overturned desks were strewn about the village’s school and the nearby grounds. Ascherman pointed out that the last residents left on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot.
Basil Adra, a Palestinian activist, describes an expulsion that took place in 1999.
The latter part of the tour took place in the southern part of the West Bank. We heard from Basel Adra, a Palestinian writer and activist from Masafer Yatta. Adra recounted the expulsion that took place in 1999 when the residents of the village were placed on trucks and removed from the area in what the military has declared “Firing Zone 918.” They were eventually allowed to return due to a court injunction. A separate court ruling in May 2022, however, gave the military full permission to evict families from the firing zone, and the people of Massafer Yatta are again at risk of expulsion.
The last stop on the tour was a meeting with Bedouin communities in the Negev desert near Umm al-Hiran. These communities have suffered from multiple evictions and a constant threat of further expulsions since the formation of the state of Israel in 1948. Their presence in the region predates the nation’s founding by close to a century.
We concluded with a break-fast meal in Al-Araqeeb and words from Ascherman, who remarked that it had been a “meaningful day, strengthening our commitment [to justice for Palestinians]” and that “We are in great need of additional field activists, lawyers, bloggers, and more.”