Earlier this week an unusual article appeared in the online +972 Magazine, about a meeting held in London by Hannah Weisfeld, “who is working tirelessly to start an organization inspired by J Street in the UK”. The author of the article, Dahlia Scheindlin, was invited to speak to synagogue-attending Orthodox Jews who were disappointed that religious Israelis were not protesting against injustices towards Palestinians from within the Jewish tradition. Scheindlin observed that “these people are clearly not the only ones who hold such attitudes, but they are afraid to speak out publicly.”
The following day, a piece appeared in the Jerusalem Post by the UK’s chief rabbi of the mainstream British Orthodox synagogues, Jonathan Sacks, accusing British campuses of an anti-Israel campaign, and welcoming Israeli students who have come to British universities to “mount a counter-campaign called Israel Awareness Week” during Israeli Apartheid Week. Sacks maintains that “Their presence has been good for Israel, good for British Jewish students and good for universities that once were places where we put prejudice aside and pursue truth.” Sacks is due to meet the group on Sunday.
The truth, according to Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, is that Israel is “the only place where an Arab Muslim can freely criticize the government on national television. Israel is not perfect, but its ethnic and religious minorities have greater rights – vigilantly defended in the courts – than anywhere else in the Middle East.” The chief rabbi’s disingenuous defense of Israel’s treatment of its Palestinian citizens – in the face of discriminatory parliamentary bills and the arrests and imprisonment, on the basis of forced confessions, of several Palestinian human rights defenders in the last year alone – is not only an insult to the truth, but continues to make it difficult for Orthodox British Jews to speak out.
The Israeli students Sacks is endorsing are engaged in some bizarre whitewashing tactics at London, Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham University: ‘[they] set up their wooden bridge, which was supposedly meant to emulate their “core principles” and they danced, gave out free falafel and sandwiches as well as leaflets… Simon Furse of the Birmingham Palestine Society has described it as a “complete failure” especially as they were trying to distort what was happening on the ground by claiming, “civilian casualties on both sides of the conflict are about equal.”’
StandWithUS, known for their highly aggressive tactics in silencing critics of criminal Israeli policies, have distributed materials across more than 15 British campuses, according to the Jewish Chronicle. They will launch a series of lectures entitled Voices from the Middle East in May, featuring Muslim and Arab speakers “who will tell their personal stories.”
On May 15, an event named “Winning Britain back for Israel” will be held in central London. It is organised by Bicom, the Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre. The conference has the backing of the Jewish Chronicle, the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Union of Jewish Students. Bicom advertises the event on the website as a Community Conference that “will empower and motivate friends of Israel, creating a grassroots network of positive champions.”
Scheindlin writes that her talk was given to Orthodox Jews representing a range of ages and professions who want to support Israel “by supporting peace and democracy”. Their responses should be a warning to rabbi Sacks and to Israeli envoys and self-appointed representatives of British Jewry – a community that holds far from homogeneous political views: “They hung onto my talk but jumped in to demand what they could do. They probed eagerly to find out what the religious community in Israel is doing to protest the conflict, violations of human rights and violations of democratic principles in Israel.”
On Wednesday 23 March, the Israeli Knesset passed two bills: one allows small communities in the Galilee and Negev – with large Bedouin populations living in unrecognized villages, subject to repeated demolitions – to maintain admissions committees to screen potential new residents; the other bill bars public funding of entities that “undermine the foundations of the state and contradict its values,” including undermining the ‘Jewish or democratic’ nature of Israel. The question of violations of democratic principles is, therefore, one that the UK’s chief rabbi must urgently address instead of publically commending Israel for its “ethnic and religious tolerance”.
