Rabbi Lerner’s Home Attacked by Right-Wing Zionists 

(A Press Release from Tikkun Magazine on May 3, 2010)

Press Release: From Tikkun Magazine

Contact: Will Pasley 510 644 1200

Rabbi Lerner’s Home Attacked by Right-Wing Zionists

Berkeley, Ca. May 3, 2010

Release dare: May 4, 2010

Berkeley police today confirmed that the attack on Rabbi Lerner’s home late Monday May 2nd or early morning Monday May 3rd was in fact a crime and was being investigated. This followed a week in which Rabbi Lerner received several verbal death threats on the phone and lots of hate mail to him and to Tikkun.

The attackers used a powerful form of glue to attach posters to his door and around the property of his home attacking Lerner personally, and attacking liberals and progressives as being supporters of terrorism and “Islamo-fascism.” They posted a printed bumper sticker saying “fight terror–support Israel” next to a caricature of Judge Goldstone whose UN report on Israel’s human rights violations in its attack on Gaza last year has been denounced as anti-Semitic and pro-terror by right wingers in Israel and the U.S.. The caricature has Goldstone talking about his being kept from his grandson’s bar mitzvah, and the caricature of Rabbi Lerner responds by saying “any enemy of Israel is a friend of mine.” This attack and vandalism follows on a week filled with Lerner and Tikkun staff receiving hate mail, prompted apparently by Tikkun’s announcement that in case the South African Zionists had succeeded in preventing Judge Goldstone from attending his grandson’s bar mitzvah, as they threatened several weeks ago, that Rabbi Lerner would gladly hold the bar mitzvah in the SF Bay Area instead, and following Tikkun’s announcement that in light of Goldstone’s courageous willingness to stand up for human rights in Israel (his report called on the Israeli government to do its own independent, public and credibly objective investigation, punish those responsible for the crimes or show that they didn’t happen, and thereby show that these actions were not government policy but the mistakes or evil choices by people in the IDF who were acting as rogue elements and not as a manifestation of the people of Israel) that Tikkun will award our prestigious Tikkun Award to Judge Goldstone in 2011 at the event celebrating our 25th anniversary! This story, which was prominent in Ha’aretz and many other Jewish magazines and websites, has intensified anger against Lerner and Tikkun among those who seek to perpetuate the Occupation, and great support among those who realize that the Occupation is really hurtful both to Israel and to the Jewish people world-wide.

In the 24 years of Tikkun’s operation, we have received many death threats and vicious hate mail, including phone calls to our office announcing that “Rabbi Lerner is dead” and others saying “We will kill all of you.” This particular attack has two worrisome elements not previously there:

1. They attack Rabbi Lerner’s home. As law enforcement people told us, this is a way of conveying the messages to Lerner: “We know where you live, we know your house is vulnerable, so don’t ignore our threats.”

2. By linking Lerner to alleged terrorism, they provide for themselves and other extremists a “right-wing justification” to use violence against Lerner, even though Lerner has been a prominent advocate of non-violence. He regularly critiques Palestinian acts of violence when they occur, including the shelling of Israeli towns by Hamas,  just as he critiques the violence of the Israeli occupation, and as he critiques the US war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the occupation of Chechnya by Russia, the occupation of Tibet by China, the human rights violations against their own people by the rulers of Iran, the acts of violence of those resisting the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the violence against women and homosexuals in many Arab and African countries (and in the US and Israel as well), the genocide in Darfur, the violence against Jews in some parts of Europe, and the list goes on.

Needless to say, this latest attack, on Lerner’s home, has caused great concern to his family.  It should also raise deep concerns about protecting freedom of the press (Lerner is attacked because he is the editor of Tikkun magazine). And it should provide incentive for the Jewish community to stop labeling people as anti-Semitic for the “crime” of critiquing Israeli governmental policies toward Palestinians. To take a flagrant example that may have been part of the causal chain leading to the attack on Lerner’s home, two days before that attack Lerner was attacked personally by Alan Dershowitz. In an article labeling all the rabbis who had publicly protested against Goldstone’s exclusion from his grandson’s bar mitzvah, Dershowitz, writing in the Jerusalem Post and on Huffington Post April 29,  labeled the protesters “Rabbis For Hamas.”  He went on to say that Lerner was the worst among them. Dershowitz is well known for defending the alleged right of Israel and the Jewish people (and Bush) to take pre-emptive action against “suspected terrorists” through “targeted assassinations.” So here Lerner is being identified as supporting terrorists,  coming from an advocate for those who take violent action against those “suspects.” It isn’t hard to see how others would follow through against Lerner, and against others in the future, perhaps even with the kind of violence that now leads some right wing Jews to be violent against the Israeli army. The Dershowitz quotes are worse than you would believe: read it at cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/dershowitz/entry/it_is_goldstone_who_is

And we at Tikkun know that this dynamic of demeaning and incitement too frequently leads to violence. Please be aware that these same right-wing Zionist forces state openly that they believe Obama is trying to destroy the state of Israel and that he is an anti-Semite. So these are issues that should concern everyone in America. The attack on Lerner should be challenged now, before it becomes a new level of “acceptable” behavior in the Jewish world.

What can you do? Let people know that this kind of thing is happening in the Jewish world to people who critique Israeli policies. And demand that the Jewish organizations, newspapers and official bodies state clearly that they oppose any efforts to label as “anti-Semitic” or “self-hating Jews” those whose criticisms are focused solely on the policies of the government of the State of Israel. Help alert the general public in the US to help their Jewish neighbors by letting them know that by using the term “anti-Semitic” or “self-hating” against those whose offense has been to strongly critique Israeli policy is to risk emptying those terms of the power that they might otherwise have to deter racism against Jews.

–Tikkun Magazine

To reach Rabbi Lerner directly: RabbiLerner@Tikkun.org or call the Tikkun office at 510 644 1200.