Right Photo: Israeli police officers surround US and Israeli rabbis and rabbinical students from the group ‘Rabbis for Ceasefire’ during their march toward the Erez crossing on frontier between Israel and Gaza, on 26 April 2024 (Jack Guez/AFP)

Comments by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

350+ Jewish Rabbis and other prominent Jewish figures took out a full page advertisement in the New York Times last week, stating: “Jewish People Say NO to Ethnic Cleansing!”

The full page ad was prompted by Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would expel Palestinians from Gaza, turn it into a beach resort, and not allow them to return.

“Jewish leaders from across the political spectrum are outraged by the proposal and felt compelled to speak forcefully against it, even as some American and Israeli Jewish communal leaders endorse Trump’s plan,” a statement from Cody Edgerly, the director of the In Our Name campaign, said.

In Our Name is not affiliated with any other group, Edgerly explained to Middle East Eye.

“This action is unbranded and unaffiliated,” Edgerly said.

The rabbis who signed the ad include those from Conservative, Orthodox, Reform, Reconstructionist, Renewal and Kohenet movements working in congregations, campuses, hospitals, rabbinical seminaries, and community organisations around the world, Edgerly said.

“Donald Trump – like Pharaoh in the Bible – seems to believe he is God with authority to rule, own, and dominate our country and the world. Jewish teaching is clear: Trump is not God and cannot take away Palestinians’ inherent dignity or steal their land for a real estate deal,” rabbi Yosef Berman of the New Synagogue Project in Washington, DC, said.

“Trump’s desire to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza is morally abhorrent.” (Source.)

President Donald Trump and many Zionist members of Congress are currently proposing to deport foreign students from U.S. College and University campuses who they label “antisemetic” if they protest for Palestinians, and are against ethnic cleansing.

Many of the students in these protests on campuses are ethnic Jews. So are they going to be deported to Israel for being “antisemetic”?

“But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Rabbi Jesus in Matthew 15:24)