JPPI in the News
"Israeli Activist Promotes Peace"
By McDOWELL CROOK BIRMINGHAM POST-HERALD October 17, 2002
In 1996, Joshua Ruebner watched 27 people die outside his apartment in Jerusalem when a Palestinian terrorist walked onto a public bus and blew the packed vehicle to bits.
"It was like watching a scene from hell. Body parts all over, the smell of charred flesh ... it was just disgusting," he said.
Ruebner, a Jew in college at the time and who was slightly injured, said he could have allowed that emotion to create a bias against Palestinians, which has happened to many Israelis who have witnessed such events.
He decided to push for more understanding of the Palestinian position.
After his graduation, and after working for a brief time for the U.S. government in Washington as a foreign relations consultant, he quit and co-founded Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel, a Washington-based organization of American Jews who support justice and peace.
Ruebner spoke at the UAB Alumni Auditorium on Wednesday, his topic "A Jewish Perspective on a Just Peace in Palestine and Israel." He also spoke with members of Or Hadash, a Jewish humanitarian congregation, at a private home, before his UAB talk.
He acknowledged that few in the Jewish community are sympathetic to his views, but said that is changing.
"This is a growing movement within American Judaism," he said Wednesday before his talk. "Jews are standing up and saying what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people is unconscionable.
"This is revolutionary for our community because we have been very insular and we've been protective of the reputations of our brothers and sisters in Israel.
"But now you have thousands of activists around the country who are saying that this oppression of the Palestinian people needs to end, and end now."
Ashfaq Taufique, president of the Birmingham Islamic Society, who is involved with the Muslim Students' Association and Birmingham for Justice, the two groups that sponsored the event, said he hopes people will listen to Ruebner, even though his opinion is not widespread.
"It's not very popular right now, but at the same time it is an important voice," he said.
Ruebner's organization wants to see not only the end of Israeli military occupations, but the establishment of a Palestinian state, where "Palestinians are living side by side in peace with Israel," he said.
But until the military occupation ends, no progress will be made, he said.
"Palestinians can't go to work, go shopping or go to school without the permission of Israeli soldiers. This is a very degrading situation that has been going on for 35 years now," he said.
Suicide bombings are a result of the repressive conditions Palestinians live in, he said.
Such an environment creates the extremists who bomb people, he said.
"I think the whole situation is sad, that a Palestinian teenager sees no future to his or her own life, that this (suicide bombing) is the only productive way to end it," he said.
"I think that phenomenon will vanish once Palestinians are allowed to achieve their freedom and live in dignity. I don't see any reason a Palestinian would want to attack an Israeli once he had achieved those freedoms."
Ruebner said he has high hopes for the group's — and the cause's —future.
"This is the next big civil rights movement in America," he said. "
