With Tu B'Shvat blessings for fruitfulness and renewal of the Tree of Life —

FROM THE GRASS-ROOTS — OLIVE TREES FOR PEACE

The Shalom Center (see the special section on "Olive Trees for Peace");
Rabbis for Human Rights;
The Shefa Fund;
National Coalition-Building Institute.
Like most of us, you have probably been feeling depressed and powerless about making peace in the Middle East.

Since the old approaches are clearly not working, we have been seeking new approaches to doing that.

Grass-roots approaches, people-to-people connections, that do not need to wait for governments, but can get governments moving again in a peaceful direction.

Below you will find the text of a new statement on a new grass-roots approach to making peace in the Middle East —
OLIVE TREES FOR PEACE.

We are excited about this new approach for grass-roots work to renew and restart peacemaking through people-to-people contact, since the governments are clearly stuck — or worse.

Our new approach is clearly rooted in the Jewish community, working closely with Rabbis for Human Rights (in Israel) and through them with Palestinian villages in the West Bank/Gaza.

At the same time, it clearly reaches out to invite all Americans to join in.

We hope you will help Rabbis for Human Rights directly replant olive trees that have been uprooted in Palestinian villages.

This replanting will address not only humanitarian and human-rights needs, but the need for healing of the land itself.

We are inviting you to become one of the initiators who help spread the word even further among caring Americans.

We seek to publish this statement in the New York Times or (if the cost is too great there) another leading American paper.

We believe the time is absolutely ripe, and that if we can reach people quickly with this new approach, a great stream of new energy will come pouring forth, for peace and the ecological healing that goes with it.

Please help make this happen by signing and supporting, through the coupon at the end of this post.

Please circulate this letter and statement to your friends.

With thanks, warm regards, & blessings of shalom,

On behalf of "Break the Silence":

Cherie Brown, Director, National Coalition-Building Institute
Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, The Shefa Fund
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Director, The Shalom Center
********************************
Organizations noted for identification only:
Cantor David Shneyer, Am Kolel
Rabbi Leonard Beerman
Rabbi Philip Bentley, Jewish Peace Fellowship
Jeffrey Dekro, President, The Shefa Fund
Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, Federation of Reform Synagogues, Philadelphia
Prof. Arthur Green, Brandeis University
Dr. Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth University
Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer
Dr. Judith Plaskow, Manhattan College
Rabbi Daniel Polish, Director, Commission on Social Action, UAHC
Max Samson, Board, Americans for Peace Now
Mark Seal
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, ALEPH
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel

FROM THE GRASS-ROOTS — OLIVE TREES FOR PEACE

The Israeli and Palestinian governments have failed to make peace, and worse is now likely. We dare not leave peacemaking solely in the hands of Prime Minister Sharon and Chairman Arafat.

Both peoples must now act at the grass roots.

What can we do?

We must take small steps to renew trust between our communities, while keeping fresh before us the vision of a broad and comprehensive peace agreement.

Without a vision, our steps will stumble; without small steps, our vision will turn into hopelessness.

Though Israel remains the most powerful state in the Middle East and one of the strongest in the world, the deepest fears of the Israeli people have been galvanized by the new intifada. The Israeli government has responded with actions that are neither necessary to Israel's security nor grounded in the best traditions of the Jewish people.

One most poignant: To protect Israeli settlers whom successive governments have allowed to build towns in the Palestinian areas, the West Bank & Gaza, Israel has resorted to barricading and besieging many Palestinian towns.

And Palestinians, beset by their own fear and rage, have used violence to strike back, and been met with still more violence in response.

The governments have acted so badly that the grass-roots of both peoples are at each others' throats. This must be transformed for both peoples if there is ever to be peace and dignity for either.

Some deeply wrong actions may teach us how to set things right.

In some Palestinian towns, Israeli soldiers and settlers have even destroyed the olive trees that have been the economic and ecological basis of the town for centuries past and must be for decades to come. It has done this even though Torah itself declares, "Even if you are at war with a city . . . you must not destroy its trees." (Deut 20: 19-20). In the village of Hares, for example, the Israeli rabbis of Rabbis for Human Rights found 1500 olive trees destroyed — many in places far from where they could have been used as cover for violence.

These olive trees were not decorative. They were the life-support of the village. Some of the trees were hundreds of years old, having produced for this village oil and olives for all that time. Each one of them paid the cost of year after year of schooling for a child. Or the cost of a room built for a growing child. Or a dowry for a girl about to be married.

In short, these trees are the family bank accounts. They are also beloved members of the families of the village. Many are now gone.

So we are joining in an act of people-to-people peace-making with Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel — the only Israeli rabbinic association that includes Orthodox, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative rabbis — to help purchase new trees for several Palestinian villages, and then to replant these trees and help meet the humanitarian, human-rights, and environmental needs of these villages while the trees regrow.

We ask the American Jewish community and all Americans who care about the lives, security, and peaceful future of Israelis and Palestinians to help Rabbis for Human Rights work with Palestinian villages to replace these uprooted olive trees.

We also invite you to think about additional steps we need to take, in order to protect Israelis and Palestinians and secure peace.

1. Anyone who cares about Israeli lives should demand the end of the dangerous settlements of Israelis within the West Bank and Gaza. They weaken the security of Israel & are not in the least necessary to Israel's existence or self-definition. Indeed, they put Israeli soldiers who are assigned to protect them at totally unnecessary risk, and they require economic investments that would be far more valuable if invested inside Israel.

Meanwhile, they make impossible the emergence of a viable and peaceful Palestine: Many settlers use violence against the Palestinians near whom they live; they attract rage from Palestinians whose land, water, and sense of identity they shatter, and they are vulnerable to violence from outraged Palestinians, leading to by far the largest number of Israeli deaths.

These settlements are bad for both Israel & Palestine. The settlers should be given the compassionate and honorable choice either to come home to Israel or to live as citizens of Palestine, under Palestinian law and with no special relationship to Israel.

2. Similarly, there will never be peace unless Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem can govern themselves in a peaceful way. Any act by the Sharon government to shatter these neighborhoods will lead to desperate bloodshed. Jews must oppose such actions, for the sake of the Jewish state and Jewish lives. Instead, the Palestinians in these neighborhoods must be given the right to elect their own leaders now, so as to establish a responsible self-governing body.

3. We urge Palestinians to respond to such increasing people-to-people peacemaking by turning to vigorous non-violent protest, rather than violence, to bring about justice.

The moment has come. If these steps are not taken at the grass roots, for both societies the future will be sour and bitter.

The OLIVE TREES FOR PEACE CAMPAIGN has the possibility of changing both Palestinian attitudes toward Israelis and Jews, and the attitudes of Jews in Israel and America toward Palestinians.

The governmental ambassadors have failed. Before they can succeed, we must greatly multiply the numbers and the visibility of people-to-people ambassadors at the grass roots — the "tree roots" — of our two peoples.

We invite the American people as a whole to join in this grass-roots, tree-roots approach to making peace — and to urge the US government to adopt these principles.

Eytz chayyim hi, l'makhazikim bah —
  Eytz chayyim hi, l'shalom.
A Tree of Life she is, for those who hold her close;
  A Tree of Life, for shalom.

As Torah teaches, "Seek peace and pursue it." — Go forth from your house and your habits to pursue peace. And if even this should fail, "Even if you are at war with a city . . . you must not destroy its trees." (Deut 20: 19-20).

Signers:

On behalf of "Break the Silence":
Cherie Brown, Director, National Coalition-Building Institute
Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, The Shefa Fund
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Director, The Shalom Center
********************************
Organizations noted for identification only:
Cantor David Shneyer, Am Kolel
Rabbi Leonard Beerman
Rabbi Philip Bentley, Jewish Peace Fellowship
Jeffrey Dekro, President, The Shefa Fund
Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, Federation of Reform Synagogues, Philadelphia
Prof. Arthur Green, Brandeis University
Dr. Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth University
Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer
Dr. Judith Plaskow, Manhattan College
Rabbi Daniel Polish, Director, Commission on Social Action, UAHC
Max Samson, Board, Americans for Peace Now
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, ALEPH
Mark Seal
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel

It is urgent BOTH to help Rabbis for Human Rights work with Palestinian villages to replant olive trees, and to multiply that help by spreading the word among Americans. Please use this coupon to do both things.

------------------------------------------------------

OLIVE TREES FOR PEACE
c/o The Shefa Fund
8459 Ridge Ave, 2d floor
Philadelphia PA 19128

___ To help spread the word and help Rabbis for Human
Rights replant olive trees and give other humanitarian
aid to Palestinian villages, I am adding my name and
enclosing —

___ $1800; ___ $720; ___ $360; ___
$180; ___ $72; ___ $36; ___ Other.

(Make out this check to
"Shefa Fund/Olive Trees for Peace")

(The Shefa Fund is a non-profit tax-exempt group, and
contributions are tax-deductible under US law.)

Name/s _______________________________________________
Address ______________________________________________
______________________________________________________
Email address [important!] ___________________________
Phone/s ______________________________________________

------------------------------------------------------