This blog entry was supposed to be sent in this morning, but we have been dealing all day with precisely the settler violence and a false arrest that wouldn’t have happened if more of those of you who oppose the Occupation and human rights violations were here on the ground with us. That is the topic of this entry: what our camp needs to atone for. Details about today are on my Facebook.
—Arik Ascherman

There is nothing easier than pointing an accusing finger at others. But an individual, a camp, and a society must be able to take stock of themselves, certainly during the High Holy Days. It is true that here I also write about the transgressions of others. But when I am in conversation with God, I also reflect on my own many sins.

I am aware that in the Yom Kippur confessions we speak in the plural. We say, “We have sinned,” and not “I have sinned,” because there is collective responsibility for the sins of our society, our camp, and our country, even if we did not commit those sins personally.

Obviously, we can talk about the sins of our government, the security forces, and the settlers forever—towards Israelis living in poverty, towards the country’s non-Jewish citizens, and even more so regarding the Palestinians. I wrote in my dvar Torah for Rosh HaShana that in Hilkhot Teshuva in the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides writes that even countries are judged, and that there are sins for which there is no atonement:

And those are those for whom there is no portion in the world to come but alienation and loss, and they are judged for the greatness of their wickedness and their sin for all time and for all time.” (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance, Chapter 3)

Later, Maimonides says that a person can also repent for the sins on this list. But I really don’t know how there can be atonement as a society for the mass killing and atrocities in Gaza unless a significant number of Israelis take meaningful nonviolent steps to stop what is being done in our name. And I’m not talking about participating in protests. Protests may ease our consciences and let the families of the kidnapped know that they are not alone, but in the face of such a weak government, not much more than that. They don’t change policy.

We are all responsible for the sins of our country. But now I want to go closer to home. Those who say they oppose the evils of the Occupation are giving the settlers and their supporters—and all other violators of Palestinian human rights—victory on a silver platter by not being with us on the ground to physically protect Palestinians and their communities.

Clearly,........

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