Beside Israel’s devastating continued assault against a Gaza Strip on the brink of famine, the public reaction to 18 months of war by a small group of UK citizens might seem unimportant – all the more so after the senseless and indefensible killing of two young Israeli embassy staff in Washington DC on Wednesday evening.
But last month’s declaration by 36 members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews against an escalation of the war in which "Israel's soul is being ripped out" is not only still reverberating through their own community, but has a much wider significance.
The case, put by the 36, has become all the more salient since it was first aired. And because it was issued by practising Jews representing their local synagogues and prominent in their own communities, it inevitably undermines the argument – repeatedly promoted by Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu – that any criticism of his government’s policies is “antisemitic.”
The groundbreaking letter, which the 36 sent to the Financial Times in mid-April – saying their “Jewish values compel us to stand up and to speak out” against the “unbearable” events unfolding after the decision to restart the war in March and then impose a total blockade – has triggered a serious backlash.
It was immediately addressed by the Board’s president, Phil Rosenberg. The Deputies’ leadership has opened disciplinary proceedings against the signatories after receiving “multiple complaints”; one executive board member, Harriet Goldenberg, has been suspended as vice chair of the Board’s international division for signing the letter.
Another signatory, Rebecca Singerman-Knight, told the Jewish Chronicle that she and her colleagues had been called, among much else, “kapos” – the term originally used about those who supervised their fellow concentration camp inmates on the Nazis’ behalf.
This reaction seems all the more hyperbolic given that for the signatories, the existence of Israel is a sine qua non. All see themselves as Zionists – and many originally supported Israel’s war in the wake of the October 7 2023 attack. Indeed, the complaint of one signatory, Philip Goldenberg, in a BBC radio interview on the day the letter was published, was that “more damage is being done to Zionism by Netanyahu than by Hamas.”
What the 36 deputies are highlighting is the difference between support of the state of Israel and its government – in this case, by far the most ultra-nationalist and right-wing in Israel’s history. Most belong to the Reform or Liberal streams of British Jews – which, after lengthy dialogue covering issues unconnected with the Gaza war, merged last week into a new single one Progressive Judaism. Many of the complaints are from the United Synagogues, the largest body representing Orthodox British Jews.
Yet this isn’t some mere inter-denominational dispute, but is over a fundamental question which may surface at what had promised – at least before the fatal shooting in Washington – to be a lively plenary meeting of the Board this Sunday: whether it is the Board’s collective duty to stand by Israel’s government, right and wrong.
While the meeting will be precluded from discussing the ongoing investigation into the 36, some have intended to challenge the Board’s executive on whether they should not also be calling out the Netanyahu government for its unprecedentedly lethal and prolonged assault on Gaza.
Israeli military forces are currently killing well upwards of 50 people a day, as part of an overall death toll of 53,000 in the past 19 months – according to Palestinian health authorities. Netanyahu’s aid blockads have pushed the Gazan population to the brink of famine in an attempt to “wipe Hamas off the face of the earth” (and in reaction to the militant group failing to release the 58 Israeli hostages, alive and dead, still held in Gaza).
The Board has stressed that the letter’s signatories are only 10 per cent of its membership, while admitting that there will be others who agreed but didn’t sign. Even last September, polling showed widespread concern – around three quarters (74 per cent) either strongly agreed or "tended to agree" that Netanyahu was pursuing his own political interests, rather than Israel’s.
Some of those complaining about the FT letter may regard any criticism of Israel’s government as a betrayal of Zionism. But there is anecdotal evidence that many UK Jews, agonised – even appalled – by Netanyahu’s conduct of the war nevertheless feel they should not be “washing their dirty linen in public”.
What’s most baffling about this is its insular neglect of what has been happening in Israel. Would they say the same about the tens of thousands of Israelis who march almost daily calling for a hostage deal and an end to war (in effect representing the 68 per cent who tell pollsters they want just that)?
Or about Yair Golan, the leader of the opposition Democrats, a former Israel Defence Forces deputy chief-of-staff, who – on October 7, 2023 – bravely went to the battleground and personally rescued young Israelis fleeing the Nova massacre, but this week accused the “failed” government of turning into a “pariah” like apartheid era South Africa, fighting civilians, aiming to expel the Gaza population and even killing Palestinian children as a “hobby”?
In reality, many British Jews publicly criticise the Gaza war – some joining the marches against it. Numerous rabbis have signified their support for the 36. Na’amod and Yachad are just two Jewish organisations with the goal of justice and security for Palestinians in their DNA. But the 265-year-old Board of Deputies is British Judaism’s parliament, each member elected from their local synagogue, and is invariably treated by governments and the media as what it describes itself – the collective “voice” of British Jews.
Some, at least, of the FT signatories believe the Board’s failure to condemn Netanyahu’s current war leadership imperils their objectives of enhancing the Jewish community’s reputation in the wider public, promoting inter-faith dialogue, faltering because of the war, and showing solidarity with the many Israelis who were against it restarting. In an ideal world, given what has happened since their letter was written, the investigation should be dropped. But the board’s constitution precludes that without the complaints being withdrawn (of which there is no sign).
Meanwhile, the 36 have been given no details of who will sit on the independent three-person panel reviewing the complaints; or whether they can be assured of an impartial process – up to (and including) appeal. Moreover, while they agreed to accept mediation, their opponents have not (rather damagingly for their argument that it’s the signatories who are dividing British Judaism).
And yet, the letter may eventually prove a tipping point for the view that the Board needs to defend the Israeli government, whatever it does. It may be too much to say that it gave Sir Keir Starmer the domestic space he needed to join Mark Carney and Emmanuel Macron in – at last – taking a more robust line on the Israeli decision to abrogate the January hostage deal and re-start this gruesome offensive. Netanyahu’s response to which was to accuse the UK prime minister of being on the “wrong side of humanity” and siding with Hamas.
But it’s striking that it preceded that decision by a month. History will surely judge that it was the 36 – and not their opponents – who were ahead of this particular curve.
