Electricity in Danger – Newsletter of Parashat Ki Tissa ›

Purim in the streets of Jerusalem |  cc: wikipedia

Parashat “Ki Tissa”: The weekly report of Rabbis for Human Right

Despite the many protests, the solar electricity system of South Hebron Hill residents is in danger to be demolished without giving them any alternative (please read The Washington Post, the UN report and also on this site). Israel wants to take away the only infrastructure the Palestinian residents have. We congratulate adv. Adv. Beki Keshet-Cohen, who works with us in RHR and also the activists of the Liberated Beer Sheva for succeeding to stop the eviction of Lea Shemi from her public housing apartment. In addition As Purim is coming up we issued a public appeal to write us and try to solve the tension between the killing of Haman and family by the hands of the people who were saved from destruction. Happy Purim and Shabbat Shalom.

Rabbi Ron Kronish sees  in parashat Ki Tisa a productive space for renewal.  As Purim is coming up, we have published a public appeal to writers to try to solve the difficulty of the massacre of Hamam and his family by the people who were saved from a massacre. Here are three articles on this matter:

• A permitted and a forbidden killing – Rabbi Yuval Sherlo
• Jews too can kill – Ron Newland (in Hebrew only)
• The Amalek in us – Rabbi Dubi Hayun

Donate and volunteer

• We need urgently Volunteers during the day to our rights center in Hadera – to help in promoting social justice issues. Please contact Nico: 050-2003979, nocosoco@gmail.com

• Urgent! Donate to the charity fund for those whose human rights were violated – in order to build animals’ pen and save the sheep of Ta’ale owned by the residents in South Hebron Hills.

• On Friday, March 9^th 2012 at 15:00 the weekly Sheich Jarrah protest will take place. Please call Rabbi Arik Ascherman: 050-5607034.

• On Sunday March 11^th 2012, at Lehavim junction, a demonstration against Praver report and for a joint future for Bedouins and Jews in the Negev.

• Please help to stop the eviction of the Menashe family from Ramle. Volunteers are needed the whole week to stay with the families. 

Shir Shimoni on a Winter meeting of RHR and Sapir college academic program Female Citizens for Peace. The meeting raised difficult questions about gender equality.

Rabbi Yehiel Greniman describes the “legal” discriminating regime in the occupied territories by two events of harassment of Palestinians in the villages of Burin and Farata. The Palestinians can not get a real protection of the Israeli security forces. In these dark moments Rabbi Greniman sees RHR’s work and important and enlightening.

On 28.2.12 the hearing on the Ruweidi family in Silwan’s demand to have their home registered in their name was postponed because their lawyer was sick. The family wants to register their home because they fear that the JNF/KKL’s subsidiary Himanuta, which was unfairly given the property under the Absentee Property Law, will try to evict them. Up to how, Himanuta has not made any moves against the family, but they did transfer the adjacent property, also claimed by the Ruweidi’s, to the settler organization Elad. Two weeks ago RHR-NA organized a campaign in which some 1,500 letters were sent to the CEO of JNF-USA asking that the JNF/KKL/Himnuta not evict any more Palestinian families from their homes in E. Jerusalem.  RHR-NA’s executive director and the NF-USA CEO each wrote point/counterpoint op-eds for the American Jewish press.

As a part of our activities in South Hebron Hills, we were mentioned in the UN’s report on what is going on in the occupied territories. One day we received an official letter informing us that our home was declared as an “absentee property”, and we have to leave our home immediately and without any compensation. After we will leave, our home will be passed to a rich company named – Americans leave the city. Moriel Rothman on the Silwan absurd in a article published in 972Magazine amd “Haoketz“.

The poet and social activist Eitan Kalinski thanks our organization in an article he wrote in “News 1” website. “The farmers’ sons are worth more than sons in public housing sons” Beky Cohen-Keshet’s column, who works for Rabbis for Human Rights, was published in The Marker.

As a part of the “For is the tree of the field a man?: a halachic project for ‘T Bishvat’”, we are glad to publish Rabbi David Bigman’s response regarding the issue of tree uprooting. First list

Happy Purim and Shabbat Shalom.