A magistrate’s court handed down a guilty verdict Tuesday, March 22, in the case of an American-born rabbi who tried to prevent Israeli bulldozers from demolishing illegally built Palestinian homes in Jerusalem.
However, prosecutors asked the court to set aside the verdict and allow Rabbi Arik Ascherman, a former spiritual leader of Temple Beth Hillel in Richmond, to perform community service. In this case, Ascherman — who now heads the group Rabbis for Human Rights, which tries to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes — would not have a criminal record.
No decision about setting aside the verdict was announced.
Ascherman’s case resonates with the wider issue of who controls Jerusalem.
Israel claims the entire city as its capital. Palestinians seek East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 War, as the capital of a future state.
Ascherman, who was tried along with two other Jewish activists, claims Israel prevents Palestinian growth in Jerusalem by creating bureaucratic obstacles to obtaining building permits. He says he blocked the bulldozers because he had a moral responsibility to stop them.
Ascherman was convicted of interfering with police performance of duties on two different occasions in 2003, and the intention to commit acts to prevent police from performing their duties.
He said he was disappointed the court “did not decide to relate the decision to the policy of home demolition in any way.
“For us, this trial really was about the people who have no voice here, the victims of home demolition. And that’s why we’re going immediately from the courthouse … to begin the rebuilding of one of these homes.”
Defense attorney Leah Zemmel told the court during the trial, “It was discriminatory to bring this group to trial for nonviolent protest while not arresting settlers” for protesting removal of settlements.
In an unusual gesture, the prosecution called on the court to set aside the verdict because Ascherman and his group are “not criminals, and in fact are upstanding citizens.”
On the other hand, the prosecutor warned that “especially in these days”— a reference to the planned evacuation this summer of 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank against stiff opposition from settlers — such protests could pose a danger.