Again – support for Palestinians drives away Labour voters


April 16, 2015
Sarah Benton

 

 

Thatcher’s seat is not for turning as Jewish voters warn Labour over Israel

Jonathan Arkush said Labour’s unconditional support for Palestinian statehood was pushing members of the Jewish community away

By Joseph Watts, Evening Standard
April 10, 2015

Labour was warned today by one of the country’s most senior Jewish figures that its “hostile stance” towards Israel means Jews will think twice about backing Ed Miliband to be prime minister.

Jonathan Arkush, vice-president of the Board of Deputies — the voice of British Jewry — said Labour’s unconditional support for Palestinian statehood, and its stance during the 2014 Gaza invasion, had pushed members of the community away.

The message will be critical in Finchley and Golders Green, where 22 per cent of voters are Jewish. Labour is trying to overcome a 5,800 Tory majority in a totemic seat once held by Margaret Thatcher.

But despite Mr Miliband pouring resources into the battle — it is one of his party’s targets — the Conservatives are quietly confident, in a constituency that is home to London’s largest Jewish population.

Last year was an anxious one for Britain’s Jews, as tensions soared during the Gaza conflict. The Community Security Trust recorded 1,168 anti-semitic incidents in the UK, the highest on record.

Mr Arkush, who originally hails from Finchley, said the community had looked to political leaders for reassurance — and some felt upset at what they heard.

“There was widespread concern about Ed Miliband’s stance during last summer’s conflict in Gaza,” said. “On the one hand, he said Israel was entitled to defend itself, but on the other that they should not have attacked Hamas in Gaza.

“The community asked, ‘Well, what do you think would have been a response to rocketing from Gaza?’ and the community waited in vain because answer came there none.”

The Commons motion calling for recognition of Palestinian statehood without waiting for a peace settlement also proved contentious. Tory and Liberal Democrat members were allowed a free vote. Mr Miliband enforced a three-line whip in support of the move.

Mr Arkush also highlighted how Birmingham MP Shabana Mahmood took part in a protest against goods from Israeli settlements which shut a Sainsbury’s store. Another Labour MP, Yasmin Qureshi, was forced to deny she compared Britons joining the Israeli army to those joining Islamic State.

Mr Arkush said: “It has definitely affected individual community members’ perceptions about what it would view as Labour’s hostile stance towards the state of Israel. I think that is going to be a factor in the election.”

In the aftermath of the Palestine vote, The Independent quoted a prominent Jewish financial backer and lifelong Labour supporter saying he no longer wanted to “see Mr Miliband in Downing Street”. And Jewish actress Maureen Lipman also abandoned a lifetime’s support for the party — which Mr Arkush claimed gave voice to wider concern.

He underlined that the Board of Deputies is apolitical, but argued that some in the community would contrast Labour’s position with David Cameron’s refusal to say that Israel’s action in Gaza was disproportionate. This was borne out by research by Survation for The Jewish Chronicle, which found that nationwide, 69 per cent of Jewish people planned to back the Tories at the election, compared with 22 per cent for Labour.

 Sarah Sackman

The Labour challenger in Finchley is Sarah Sackman, who says she is from a “strongly Jewish family, a Zionist family”. Party insiders admit the Palestine vote has come up on the doorstep. Ms Sackman said it was a “touchstone issue”.

She acknowledged some would have preferred Mr Cameron’s position, and highlighted that she personally “disagreed with the stance taken by the Labour Party”.

She added: “Being from that community gives me an insight and an empathy with how people are feeling; the need to have an MP for this area that supports and stands up for Israel, but is not blind to, or is not uncritical in that support.”

Finchley born and bred, Ms Sackman claimed the Tory incumbent, Mike Freer, had not been as strong a community campaigner as he should have been. She compared that with her activism aimed at saving local health services and libraries — a campaign she claims her rival was slow to back.

Ms Sackman brands Mr Freer a “fiscal hawk”, highlighting his Commons support for the bedroom tax and tuition fees. “People who have met him may regard him as perfectly personable,” she said.

“But if you don’t stand up on the issues that people care about at the time of asking then your influence is limited.”

Perhaps her best hope is stealing disillusioned Lib-Dem voters. Nick Clegg’s party won the support of 8,000 residents in 2010.

Candidate Jonathan Davies, treasurer of Golders Green Synagogue, suggests the Jewish community will follow the same issues as the national vote, but doesn’t miss an opportunity to twist the knife. He said: “The [Palestine vote] has upset some people that opposed that policy.”

Mr Freer is running on a platform of local activism too, citing campaigns over Finchley Memorial Hospital and for more school places. But he also thinks Ed Balls’s mansion tax plan is a problem for his rival.

“Even Labour supporters say the requirement to fork out £20,000 to £25,000 a year or more to live in the family home means they are not voting Labour,” he said. “They think it’s a tax on aspiration.”

Mr Freer quit the junior government job which prevented him taking part in the Palestine vote so he could oppose the motion. Since then he claims to have spoken to voters who have abandoned Labour after it “turned its back on Israel”.

In 2008, while leader of Barnet council, he was named in The Jewish Chronicle’s Power 100 of people shaping British Jewish life.

The irony is that he himself is not Jewish — but then again neither was Mrs Thatcher.

After making relations with the Jewish community central to her incumbency, she held the seat for 33 years.


Letter to Evening Standard, unpublished

Dear Editor,

I suppose we should not be surprised that ‘Thatcher’s seat is not for turning’ (Evening Standard 10/4/2015) . Nevertheless, as a Jew committed to the values of human rights, which of course includes the rights of Palestinians, I find seriously depressing the message to the Labour Party from Jonathan Arkush, Vice President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who says that Labour has pushed the community away by its support for Palestinian statehood and its criticism of the horrendous and disproportionate bombardment of Gaza last August.

Every single one of the MPs who spoke in favour of the resolution to recognise the Palestinian state (including the Labour members) did so on the premise of a two state solution, in the belief that both the Israeli government and the Palestinians had been participating in the Kerry negotiations in good faith. Following Mr.Netanyahu’s election statement that there would be no Palestinian state under his watch, there must now be a sense of betrayal, that his participation was merely a calculated ploy to cover continued expansion of the settlements. Mr. Arkush offers no reservation whatsoever about Netanyahu’s appalling deceit. One must ask who is pushing who away? Surely it is Netanyahu and his supporters in the Board of Deputies who are alienating the public, whose opinions are duly reflected by their Parliamentary representatives.

The Community Security Trust (a Jewish organisation) has been selectively quoted. The glaring omission is that the Trust has found a very close correlation between peaks in antisemitic incidents and Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Gaza in 2006, and the further attacks on Gaza in 2008/9 (Cast Lead), 2012 (Pillar of Defence) and 2014 (Protective Edge). The biggest peak was during Protective Edge. The average number of incidents in July and August was more than five times higher then the average of the previous six months. Following that peak, there were elevated levels of incidents for three more months. The roots of these surges in antisemitism lie in Israel’s policies, it is not home grown antisemitism and it is Israel’s policies which serve to compromise Jewish security here.

The failure by Mr.Arkush and the body he represents to offer any criticism whatsoever of Israel’s gross violations of human rights serves only to compound the problem.

Yours sincerely,

Glyn Secker

Executive Committee
Jews for Justice for Palestinians

Links

Let’s blame Ed for Jews’ drift the right, April 2015

Miliband attacked for ‘betraying Israel’, April 2015
Labour slammed as anti-Israel, April 2015

What world is Maureen Lipman living in?

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