Activist rabbi in the dock, but he hopes Israeli policy will be on trial

Activist rabbi in the dock, but he hopes Israeli policy will be on trial

NEW YORK, Jan. 14 (JTA) — As the Israeli bulldozer rumbled toward him, Rabbi Arik Ascherman says, he thought of Rachel Corrie.
Ascherman, 44, a U.S.-born Reform rabbi who now lives in Jerusalem, was trying last April to block the demolition of the Maswadeh family’s home in Beit Hanina, an Arab village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The house violated municipal zoning regulations.

Corrie, 23, an American activist with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement, had been crushed to death a month earlier by an Israeli bulldozer demolishing a Gaza Strip home that allegedly concealed the exit of an arms-smuggling tunnel.

“I don’t think we’ll ever know whether she fell, whether the bulldozer saw her or whether it was a game of chicken that went too far,” Ascherman says. “If it was an accident, it drives home that when you’re in front of a bulldozer knocking down a home, accidents can happen.”

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Activist rabbi in the dock, but he hopes Israeli policy will be on trial

a brave and principled man, and a credit to his religion.