Matt Peiken: What are your feelings about what Israel should do at this point? We had a ceasefire for a while. Now it's back on the battlefield. I think still people look to Hamas should release hostages, Israel should back off. Is it that simple and then what happens? What do you want Netanyahu and the government to do? What are you calling for as leaders in our Jewish community? What do you want to see happen?
Rabbi Batsheva Meiri: That's the million-dollar question and I can only answer it on a big ideological level. I want Israel to emerge from this war with its humanity. I think it's trying really hard and it is traumatized and shattered, and for very good reason. I want there to be justice for Palestinian people who are credible partners and actors in wanting to live in the region next to a sovereign Jewish state and amongst Jews.
I think that would be wonderful. I think that there are voices within the Palestinian community that could be uplifted and I hope they will be, I hope there'll be space for that. And I do want to say that despite, how people feel, and this is a war about feelings or a debate about feelings. Despite that the Israeli army has embedded in its Training, a whole purity of arms ethics code, it is part of the very basic training that every single IDF soldier goes through, where they are to understand the rules of engagement and what's permitted and what's not permitted. That has always been the case and this moment is no different than all those other moments that Israel has had to be on the defense for its existential right to exist and what I really hope is that there is some end and dismantling of the organization of Hamas and that the Israeli people and the Palestinians who will live amongst them and with them will be able to find a way forward together. That's what I hope. That's pie in the sky when you talk about how people feel, but I want Israel to, and I think all American Jews want Israel to maintain its highest values.
And just having been there, I know that there are rules and procedures of how they're going house to house. It's taking them a day to gain a meter of ground because they send two dogs in before they even go into a house. They are trying to be very careful.
Matt Peiken: And at the same time, though, you're talking about on the ground, and I think a lot of people see bombs are indiscriminate. That while there might be careful militant operations on the ground and operating by this code that you're talking about, I think the images that I was referring to are also of bombs.
Rabbi Batsheva Meiri: And here's where I think we have a problem because I think Hamas is very familiar with the Geneva Conventions, which say that hospitals should be off limits. I think that is part of the strategy.
Matt Peiken: Oh, I think a lot of people believe that.
Rabbi Batsheva Meiri: So all these people who have all kinds of outrage as to how Israel is prosecuting the war. Tell me, give me a strategy that works better.
Matt Peiken: I, I don't know. I think the counterargument would be just don't drop those bombs. Find another way into those tunnels. I've had conversations with people like that.
Rabbi Mitchell Levine: Yeah so what would be the, what would be the find that way? What would you do without bombs?
Matt Peiken: I don't know. I'm just curious. I wouldn't personally, just from my ethic, my own personal ethic. You don't drop bombs when you know that there's going to be far more collateral damage now again I'm not a military officer. I'm not I haven't been at Israel in 12 years So I can't say but from a moral and ethical standpoint I do criticize that.
Rabbi Mitchell Levine: Look so Matt you're not a military expert, and I'm not a military expert, so let's find an analogy, perhaps, that brings it down to our scale and we can figure it out together ethically, right? So I'm gonna offer an analogy. Let's say you have a situation, God forbid, where there's an active shooter downtown.
An active shooter has an assault rifle and they're shooting at people on the sidewalk. There's a patrol car or a few police officers, a handful of police officers, SWAT team, whatever you call them, right? And they have to react to this, right? So they start shooting back. And unfortunately in the tragedy of a gunfire, a lot of innocent people on the sidewalk near the active shooter also get hit.
Matt Peiken: I don't think that happens anymore, right? Rarely very rarely does that happen. So what should happen instead? Again, you find, you negotiate, you find a way in, you clear people out. But the idea of bad actors using human shields is because they know law enforcement will not shoot through the human shield to get that person.
So I think the analogy supports my argument.
Rabbi Mitchell Levine: No, so I wonder how, but how far are you willing to let it go? If they take hostages and use human shields to keep shooting people, at what point do you say, no, we got to take a chance. We got to do what needs to be done.
Matt Peiken: I guess it's on a case-by-case basis, but when you're beneath a hospital and you know, there are legitimately injured and sick people in that hospital, Hamas cravenly beneath that hospital using tunnel system, I think there's got to be a way out of these tunnels.
Let's find a way out and get into those tunnels somehow. Maybe I'm naive.
Frank Goldsmith: I think that is asking a bit much of the Israeli military. I'm not an expert either, although I, part of my military duty was to instruct troops and their commanders on the law of war during the Vietnam War when I was serving.
And Israel, as rabbis have said, makes every effort to comply with the law of war. There are principles that they adhere to. There's a principle of distinction which means distinguishing a legitimate military target from a civilian target. That is complicated by the fact that Hamas creates military targets out of what otherwise would be civilian targets.
How do you do that operationally? How do you go after that? Because I think the ultimate goal, to go back to your previous question, for me at least, I would like to see the military capacity of Hamas destroyed. They have vowed that nothing is going to stop them, they're going to repeat October 7 over and over again until they, Wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
You cannot have that kind of organization, that kind of administration of a state, so to speak, living next door and not do something about it. And so these calls for a ceasefire I think are really misplaced. How can you reward Hamas for that behavior? by saying, okay, you get a pass, we're going to cease fire.
So there's the principle of distinction. There's a principle of proportionality and Rabbi Levine was spot on about that, that it's not a tit for tat thing. It is what is the level of force required to mitigate the threat that you're facing. And then there's the principle of I guess you'd call it mitigation.
There is probably other words for it where you're required to mitigate civilian casualties by doing what you can, and it may mean using a different munition, it may mean adjusting the time of your attack, it may mean giving warnings, which Israel does, at great peril to its soldiers. So I think people who just say Israel should do more, tell us what?
This other side doesn't adhere to international law at all. Israel does. It makes every effort to. They do embed legal advisors in their troops. And so I just think I need to hear a practical alternative to what they're doing, to be convinced.
Rabbi Batsheva Meiri: And the other side of this, going back to the either overt or unconscious anti-Semitism of it, is that people are talking about war crimes by Israel. Is anybody talking about war crimes for Hamas? It took the UN weeks to acknowledge That women were raped and mutilated. It wasn't even simple for the UN to decry the enormous violence against the women that was perpetrated on October 7th, and this in a long history of the UN calling Israel out.
Over and over and over, and so it's a difficult trigger. And I'd like to remind us about what Hillary Clinton said recently on "The View" there was a ceasefire. that, that was in place with Hamas until October 6th.
Matt Peiken: Right.
Rabbi Batsheva Meiri: They broke it.
Matt Peiken: Very, Very true.
Rabbi Batsheva Meiri: And what strikes me and what is so difficult right now for Jews, and this is difficult for Jews here in the United States and Senator Chuck Schumer just gave an address before the President and Congress on this, is that what this whole condemning and focus on this war in Israel is doing to Jews here is triggering a sense that there's nothing that Jews can do. There's no way for us to do the right thing. And it's a very lonely, lonely place. And it triggers generations of trauma that we've all that our parents and grandparents and our whole origin story here in this United States was about fleeing from wherever we were to come for a better life here. And then, to be allies with all these people and trying to make our society better and lift all boats up, to be called out as the ones in the wrong and to not be stood next to, to not have our Christian neighbors.
We have to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on off-duty police officers so that we can have 50 people in this building at any given moment. The fact that is the case, and not because of our own hysteria, but because the police and the FBI and all of our sources say this is what's necessary in this country today, in 2023, it would be a dereliction of your duty not to have security at a synagogue, is a It is a statement of what the state of affairs is here in the United States.
Matt Peiken: And let's be clear, synagogues in this country have had to have security beyond what churches do for many decades in this country.
Sharon, can you speak to historically, and I asked this earlier, but I want to revisit this. In your research on the history of Jews in this region, have Jews here had targets on them in a sense for persecution in a way that other people maybe have not? or other white people in this community maybe have not?
Sharon Fahrer: Absolutely. We have to look at William Dudley Pelley, who was here from 1931 to 1941. He was the self-proclaimed American Hitler. He came here with his silver shirt organization. He brought his printing press. He tried to start a college, Galahad College. Almost across the street from the JCC on Charlotte Street.
People were afraid he would walk around town with these big bodyguards and intimidate people. And when, in fact, this is why we have a JCC today. Different Jewish organizations would hold meetings at the S& W Cafeteria in this time period and they would have to post a guard outside, one of their own people, to make sure that everybody inside was going to be safe.
And so by 1938, they said, we need our own safe space and they purchased a house to have a JCC. That's why it was formed at that particular time.
Matt Peiken: What are local Jews doing now to either work with others in the community or to mobilize amongst themselves to make statements in this community, to try to change the tenor of the conversation, the tenor of the way people think about Jews? What's happening on the ground now in your congregations, at the JCC elsewhere in this community?
Rabbi Mitchell Levine: The Jewish community relation council recently came out with a written statement.
Matt Peiken: Can you give me the thrust of this statement? You don't have to read the entire statement, but tell me what your goal was with this statement.
Frank Goldsmith: I wrote it in connection with a lot of people. It's not solely my work. I'm on the Jewish Community Relations Council, and we felt that it was incumbent upon us to speak out about what happened on October 7th and about the anti-Semitism that has arisen because of it.
And I'll make clear, the Jewish Community Relations Council is not solely about combating anti-Semitism. In our mission statement, we're against all forms of hatred and bigotry, discrimination, expressly including Islamophobia as well. But in this time, we wanted to make a statement, and one of the things we have said is that we want people to condemn the massacre on October 7 without trying to diminish the horror of that event by contextualizing it and saying that it's because of some root cause of Palestinian oppression, because we don't believe that whatever might have happened or what might still be happening to Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel and wherever cannot justify that kind of horror that was visited on people. And so there's this tendency of both sides ism or false equivalency of treating them the same or saying it's a cycle of violence and one inevitably flows from the other.
We don't think that's true. So we had a brief statement that speaks to that and speaks to the increased threats, especially on college campuses, I want to say, because it is a really fraught place for a Jewish student to be right now on a college campus.
Matt Peiken: Sharon, can you talk about this? Your book talks about the Jewish presence and the Jewish accomplishments and achievements at UNC Asheville and the number of Jews who've made significant contributions to that university. Frank alluded to, that on college campuses, it's increasingly challenging to be Jewish.
Do you get the sense, or do you know whether that is happening at UNC Asheville, despite the history of significant achievement and contribution of Jews to UNC Asheville?
Sharon Fahrer: I think that students don't look at history. They don't see lessons in history, and while this generation before us was so engaged with UNC Asheville, it's just a name, it's just names.
Matt Peiken: It's just a plaque on a wall, is what you're saying.
Sharon Fahrer: Yeah, I don't think they really think about the connection of it. They don't have the same connections that we do.
Matt Peiken: Frank, you wanted to add to that?
Frank Goldsmith: I'll just add to that because here at UNCA, as well as at UNC Chapel Hill, there have been recently, I mean in the last weeks, events sponsored by very pro-Palestinian professors, sometimes called for the eradication of Zionism.
And the dismantling of Zionism or use these rhetorical bombs like apartheid and genocide and colonialism and so on. And the professors are teaching the students in those sessions that's the truth.
Matt Peiken: How do you know that? How do you know that to be true that's kind of discussion is happening in class?
Frank Goldsmith: Okay I'm talking about in events like a session, I don't know what you would call it, whether it's in a class session or an event on campus, I've seen the emails at UNCA through a source and pushed back against that, and I've read news accounts about what's happened at UNC Chapel Hill. It's very inflammatory language.
Matt Peiken: I do know, and correct me if I don't have the whole picture on this, I know that there has been a pro-Palestinian protest in Pack Square that was by all accounts peaceful. I don't recall anything that has been a pro-Israeli public event. I don't think anything like that has happened around here. Has anything to your knowledge happened like that?
Frank Goldsmith: Not to my knowledge. Our advice to people when we've heard about pro-Palestinian events and they have every right to do that. It's a First Amendment.
Matt Peiken: Sure I'm not denigrating that i'm just saying to do that,
Frank Goldsmith: but we've Suggested not to try to have a counter-protest and as far as I know we have an organized protest. We've had a vigil at the synagogue as Rabbi Levine mentioned but not
Matt Peiken: I guess it would be a protest against Hamas, I know, that's, I'm just wondering, I haven't seen that happen.
Rabbi Mitchell Levine: It's funny, Matt I've going over my mind this, the, our use of terms, and I'm curious about that when we call something a pro-Palestinian rally. I imagine a true pro-Palestinian rally would include an anti Hamas component and the opposite of what you're suggesting by your question.
In other words, what makes it pro-Palestinian? If it's not anti-Hamas, how could the objective be in any sense good for the Palestinian people with Hamas still in place?
Matt Peiken: That's a really great point. I'm glad you put it that way, and I was looking at it as, as just on the surface, as either you have a pro-Palestinian event or a pro-Jewish slash Israeli event, but you're very right in that way.
Why are we not seeing that kind of parsing of this conversation? Why is that not happening?
Sharon Fahrer: There was a big demonstration in Washington.
Matt Peiken: Not here. Not here. Rabbi, you were just in Israel. How long were you there? Where did you go? And who did you talk to?
Rabbi Batsheva Meiri: I was there for three days. And I went to places where people have been internally displaced from the South, from kibbutzim and cities in the South that were part of the massacre and school children and hearing firsthand accounts of people who had to hold the doorknobs of their safe rooms while people were outside wanting to kill them and hearing their neighbors being killed.
It's a horrible thing. And then in addition to that. Hearing from thought leaders who are really trying to answer that question that you asked before, which is, what do we hope to see the day after the fighting? What is it that we want to build in place of all of this destruction?
And I think that there's a lot of internal soul-searching that's going on. And I will say that there are There's at least one glimmer of hope, which is that. I think that there is almost virtual unity amongst the vast majority of Israelis that this government should no longer be the custodians of the Jewish state.
That they miserably failed and should be held accountable for that in deep and important ways. But they can't do anything in a time of war. which is unfortunate. So that being said whatever is going to happen the day after, I'm confident it's going to look different and the question is will they be able to dig deep into their humanity and not respond from the trauma and the fear that is rightly theirs to experience in this moment?
Will there be some way to overcome that and see a way forward that's different, that actually leads to a sustainable peace and not just a temporary pause, a humanitarian pause for all concern, but actually healing and a new path forward. So it's devastating. It's real. To go there is different from even to hear people on video talking on our computers. And I think that there's also enormous appreciation for the fact that The Jewish community here is holding them and hugging them and standing with them and there's an enormous need for us with the distance that we have, having not been the victims of the trauma, but only the holders of somebody else's trauma to be that conscience and to continue to push them to find their humanity so that we can make a way forward.
Matt Peiken: Is there anything any of you want to add that we haven't talked about yet that you think is really important for people to know or to supplement something we've already talked about?
Rabbi Mitchell Levine: So Matt, one of the things that you brought up, I think repeatedly, we're very focused, for obvious reasons, on what's going on in the Middle East, what's going on in Israel and Gaza. But you kept repeatedly bringing it back to Asheville, the United States, what's going on here. And that really struck a chord with me.
As a rabbi, I don't have any special sources of knowledge. I get my information from the same newspapers and social media and television stations that you and everybody else does. And one of the things that I've noticed that I'm still trying to get my head around is, what's an acceptable way of talking? What's an appropriate way of thinking?
Like a short while ago, I think Rabbi Meiri alluded to this with her comment about the good people on both sides. When we had in Charlottesville right-wing extremists chanting the Jews will not replace us, the Jews will not replace us, I didn't see any attempts to contextualize that, to say, oh what those people really mean is that they've been economically victimized by global capitalism and their factories have closed.
And that's why they're saying these things, right? But when we see from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. That to me is the equivalent of the Jews will not replace us. It's saying the same thing. It's saying Jews do not belong. We'd like to be rid of the Jews. We'd either like to be rid of them in Charlottesville, or we'd like to be rid of them in the biblical land of Israel.
We'd like to be rid of the Jews. There, the New York Times or something will say Some people say it's anti-Semitic. Some people say it's a call for the aspiration and hope of the you know what? The Jews Will Not Replace Us was also a call for aspiration and hope for white racists in Charlottesville.
Why? Why is that, Matt? Why is it okay to be a left-wing racist bigot antisemite, but it's not okay to be a right-wing racist? And I'm not suggesting it should be okay. I'm suggesting it should not be okay on both sides.
Rabbi Batsheva Meiri: I would also say two things, I want to talk about the hostages and I want to talk about the left-wing bigotry that seems to be being fomented on this occasion, prompted by October 7th.
I find it intellectually dishonest for people who deeply believe in democracy and equality for women, in equality for LGBTQ individuals, to align themselves with a group, namely Hamas, who shares none of those values and to see in their aspirations some kind of simpatico relationship when those people, those same people would hurt them, and don't desire democracy and don't treat women equally and would behead or throw off the roof somebody who expressed themselves in a different way. So I wanna just call that out. Because again, that to me feels at least unconsciously anti-Semitic and not intellectually honest. But I also want to say that on my trip to Israel, while it was, It was enormously painful to meet with people who were first hand survivors of the massacre.
It is the deepest pain to have visited in the hostage square in the middle of downtown Tel Aviv, where literally the family members are standing there holding pictures of their loved ones who are being held captive. That the Red Cross has not been vigorous about their Responsibility to visit with those individuals, to affirm whether they're alive or dead, to affirm that they are healthy and being treated properly, that essentially what Israelis are saying is the Red Cross has been like Uber and nothing more.
A transport. A car that takes a few hostages from Gaza back to to Israel and not the moral institution that the Red Cross should be and the moral player that it needs to play and that this isn't a humanitarian crisis of the utmost with 30 countries represented in that hostage population, that this is not the thing that we're talking about.
I'm wearing, I have bling all over my body about remembering that there are people who are sitting 40 meters underground in the dark being tortured, eating toilet paper that's soaked with the water of walls because they're not being fed anything else, but the toilet paper that they're supposed to use to clean themselves becomes their food.
This is a crime against humanity of the utmost proportions and the fact that is not on the front page of the newspaper every single day that somebody's picture, you can't go on a street in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or anywhere in that Jewish state without looking in the eyes of a captive and saying, this is wrong, we've got to do something.
And unfortunately, there is a human tendency to forget and I just wanted to take the time to say this is not something that we can forget because we can talk all about how 1, 200 people were massacred and everything else. There are still, I think, 160 people whose fates we do not know. We don't know if they're alive or dead.
We don't know if they're being held by Hamas or elsewhere. We don't know if they've been dead for a long time. And their families are living in a different universe, and they can't go on, and they can't move, and they can't think of anything. Anything else except for that loved one. There's a 10-month-old baby.
It's unconscionable. And it should rack all of our moral fibers. Every one of our moral fibers to not be calling that out.
Matt Peiken: Thank you, Rabbi. Sharon, do you want to close with anything?
Sharon Fahrer: I Have to look back and say, why haven't we learned our lessons from history?
Why is this still being repeated? And why do we still have anti-Semitism? And if we get rid of the people that are fighting for Hamas, how do we get rid of the ideology?
Matt Peiken: Thank you for that. Frank?
Frank Goldsmith: Yeah, I guess if I had one thing I would like to close with, it is to say to the people, to Our allies in the social justice movement who believe that, somehow, that Israel is a white, oppressive power, that it's engaged in ethnic cleansing, that it's engaged in genocide, or whatever, go to Israel and see what a pluralistic, racially diverse country it is.
21 percent of its people are Arab. It's not an apartheid state. Those people can live where they want to, they can marry whom they want to, they can work, they they can serve in the military, they form political parties, they're represented in the Knesset, they're represented in the diplomatic corps, an Arab has served on the Israeli Supreme Court, the list goes on.
This is not an apartheid state, it is not a white state, and people just need to understand that and adjust their lens. through which they view Israel. So that's what I wanted to say.