Video of Rabbi Dovid Feldman from Neturei Karta International speaking at the rally in Support of Political Prisoners in Israel, in front of the Israeli Consulate in New York City, on Sunday, February 18, 2018.
We are here today to protest the Zionist occupation of Palestine and their holding of Palestinian and Jewish political prisoners.
In particular, today’s demonstration is in support of Ahed Tamimi, a 17-year-old Palestinian girl who is charged with punching and slapping two heavily armed Israeli soldiers after they had shot her cousin with a rubber bullet and refused to leave her family’s front yard. Her trial is taking place in Israeli military court behind closed doors.
Ahed symbolizes the ideal of non-violent resistance to an oppressive occupation that has made the Palestinians second-class citizens or stateless in their own homeland.
But Ahed is just one example of the over six thousand Palestinian political prisoners currently languishing in Israeli prisons. And people may not be aware that many religious Jews who resist Zionism are now being held in prison as well.
A large percentage of religious Jews all over the world have opposed the existence of the State of Israel from the day of its establishment. They oppose the occupation and its accompanying crimes, which they hold to be crimes against the Torah as well as international law. The Torah forbids stealing, killing, oppressing an entire people and depriving it of its homeland.
Aside from all of the above, according to Jewish belief, the existence of the State of Israel is illegitimate because Jews are in exile and it is forbidden for Jews to force their own way out of exile and build their own state anywhere in the world, and certainly in Palestine.
The Israeli government’s policy of forced conscription into its army has always made life difficult for the large anti-Zionist Jewish communities residing within its borders. As we write, dozens of boys and girls of draft age are held in prison for long periods of time for their courageous refusal to participate in the army. Like Ahed Tamimi, they are part of the movement of non-violent resistance to the state.
We share the pain of the Palestinian people because we anti-Zionist Jews, too, are victims of the occupation. And we want the world to know that this is not a religious conflict. Jews and Palestinians lived alongside each other in peace and harmony for centuries. It is the political ideology of Zionism that is the cause of the conflict. We declare therefore that the Zionist state is not a Jewish state and it does not represent the Jewish people, and certainly does not represent the holy Torah.
We cry out to the world:
Free political prisoners in Israel! Free Ahed Tamimi and all Palestinians opposing the occupation! Free Lauren Bas Rachel and other religious Jews refusing to serve in the IDF! Judaism Rejects the Zionist State of Israel!
Free ALL Palestine!
We pray for the speedy and peaceful dismantlement of the State of Israel, and then Jews and Palestinians will once again be able to live together in peace.
For more information of Israeli oppression of religious Jews visit www.IsraelVersusJudaism.org
#FreeAhedTamimi
#FreeLaurenBasRachel
