Fresh Updates from RAC

Last week the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom released its 2013 Annual Report. The report details the rights of religious minorities and the current state of government repression of religious practices around the world. In a statement issued at the report’s release the Commission Chair, Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett said, “The state of international religious freedom is increasingly dire due to the presence of forces that fuel instability.  These forces include the rise of violent religious extremism coupled with the actions and inactions of governments.”

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While the new Senate comprehensive immigration reform bill takes many strides toward improving our immigration system, it also includes some significant steps backward. Our Jewish tradition not only teaches us, but commands us to treat the foreigner living in our country with the same laws as our own.

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In 1969 the Reform Movement issued a resolution on the use of Germ Warfare saying, “As religiously motivated men, women and youth, we enjoin President Nixon to take a moral stand here and now, that the United States unilaterally renounce experimentation with and use of germ warfare and nerve gases. Even belatedly, we press for ratification of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 renouncing the use of chemical and biological agents.” It is always sad when we have to repeat such urgent calls for human rights nearly fifty years after they are first made.

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On Yom Hashoah we remember the great tragedy that we as a people and as a world faced during World War II over 60 years ago. But how do we use that memory today? To what end does that experience motivate our community? Surely one answer is that we as a people must be particularly attuned to atrocities committed around the world.

Yesterday the United Nations observed a Day of Remembrance for victims of the Rwandan genocide. This week marks the 19^th anniversary of the beginning of a 100 day period during which hundreds of thousands of Rwandan men, women and children were murdered, and countless others forcibly displaced. Fifty years after the international community said ‘never again’ to the atrocities of the Holocaust, the world let the people of Rwanda down.

Speaking in 2004 Rabbi David Saperstein demanded surer action to atrocities in the future, “As a Jew and as a rabbi, I stand here today because, for thousands of years, the Jewish people have been among the quintessential victims of persecution and oppression simply because of who we are, because of what we believe. We waited for others to speak out, but too often we heard only silence. “

Rabbi Saperstein continued, “Having witnessed and experienced the horrors of the Holocaust, the world collectively cried, ‘Never Again!’ Never again would we stand idly by while human beings are slaughtered because of their race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. We are not powerless to stop the oppression of others; we have the power to speak out, to act, to intervene, to ensure that genocidal activities stop now.”

Steps are being taken to learn from these experiences and seek better ways to prevent and respond to atrocities around the world. In 2012 President Obama unveiled the Atrocities Prevention Board, an interagency board to ensure that genocide prevention is a top priority in U.S. foreign policy. A warlord responsible for mass violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had his first day in court at the Hague last month. We owe it to the memory of the Holocaust and the memory of Rwanda to strengthen and support these important advances.

The national debate around how to best prevent gun violence took on an international dimension when, on Tuesday, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a treaty to regulate international trade in small arms. The Obama Administration has played a critical role in crafting and developing this treaty and the United States joined 154 countries that voted for it; only three countries voted against it (Syria, Iran and North Korea), and twenty others abstained.

The treaty – which includes tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber weapons, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles and launchers, small arms and light weapons – would require that sellers of munitions take steps to ensure that the weapons are not likely to be used in the abuse and violation of human rights.

Much of the discussion around this treaty has focused on Bashar Asad and the Syrian government who, despite well-documented human rights abuses and killing of countless civilians, have continued to receive arms shipments from abroad. Anna McDonald, an analyst for Oxfam International, said of this treaty, “This treaty won’t solve the problems of Syria overnight, no treaty could do that, but it will help to prevent future Syria, It will help to reduce armed violence. It will help to reduce conflict.” Syria was joined by North Korea and Iran in an attempt to block the treaty from coming to a vote late last week.

In order for the treaty to take effect it needs to be ratified by at least fifty countries, and that is likely to be a difficult fight. President Obama, who has repeatedly expressed support for the treaty, will likely face intense resistance in the Senate, where it must pass with a two-thirds majority. The National Rifle Association has come out strongly against the bill saying that it could infringe on the Second Amendment rights of American citizens. There is likely to be considerable resistance from arms manufacturers as the United States is the leading exporter of arms around the world. Finally, there is little appetite for any international treaty for some in Congress, as particularly in light of last year’s disappointing vote on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The Religious Action Center has been engaged in a number of actions to help prevent gun violence over the past several months (make sure to call your Senator through Faiths Calling on April 9^th in advance of their vote on a domestic gun violence prevention package! ) and we will continue that work as the attention of U.S. lawmakers turns toward considering this treaty.

This post is part of our Passover series, in which we think about the application of our age-old Passover story and traditions to the crucial issues we face today. For ways to infuse your seder with social justice, see our holiday guide.

When we gather around the table for seder, we will retell the story of the exodus from Egypt – the journey from slavery to freedom, completed by our Jewish ancestors. Each year, we seek to relate this central story to our modern struggles. This year, the struggle of asylum seekers fleeing to Israel begs comparison. Read more…

This post is part of our Passover series, in which we think about the application of our age-old Passover story and traditions to the crucial issues we face today. For ways to infuse your seder with social justice, see our holiday guide.

Each year our seders culminate in the same jubilant cry, “Next year in Jerusalem!” Indeed the entire night can be seen as build-up to that promise, a journey toward freedom. But at the same time it is a profound retelling of oppression. We are commanded not only to remember that we were slaves in the land of Egypt, but to tell the story as if it happened to us personally: to say, “This is what the Lord did for me when he brought me out of the land of Egypt.”

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The quote from Deuteronomy, “Justice, justice you shall pursue” (Deut. 16:20) is a bit of a catchphrase here at the Religious Action Center. It is our proof text for the many long struggles toward justice in which we engage. However, it can be a difficult idea to fully grasp. For one thing, scholars have long debated just what the repetition of the word tzedek – justice – really means. At organizations like the RAC, which works on some 60 issues, perhaps it means that we must pursue multiple justices at once. We must seek this justice and also that justice at the same time – a task riddled with difficulties in the modern era of omnibus legislation.

One such difficulty played out this week when President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for 2013. As we have written on this blog before, this year’s NDAA contained several concerning sections about the rights of service-members and detainees as well as a major victory for servicewomen and reproductive rights.

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