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Gaza: What do Jewish people on both sides of the debate think?

Voice of Russia
July 05, 2014

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Britain’s Liberal Democrats are calling for the suspension of arms export licences to Israel. It comes after Baroness Warsi resigned as a Foreign Office minister, arguing Downing Street’s stance on Israel’s actions was “morally indefensible”. Amid the claims and counter-claims, what do Jewish people think about the conflict? Is it reported fairly? What about the western response and British policy on Israel? VoR’s Brendan Cole hosts a discussion.

Israel launched Operation Protective Edge last month with the stated aim of ending rocket attacks and destroying tunnels used by Palestinian militants. Gaza officials say the conflict has killed 1,800 Palestinians, while 67 Israelis have also died.
Brendan is joined by:

Glyn Secker, JfJfP signatory

Glyn Secker, member of the executive committee of Jews for Justice for Palestinians, captain of the boat to Gaza in 2010
Geoffrey Alderman, professor of politics and contemporary history at the University of Buckingham, author of the book British Jewry since Emancipation.​

GS: “I think she [Baroness Warsi] is absolutely right to do what she did, she was lobbying inside the Conservative party for quite some time for them to take a more principal stand in position what was Israel doing to the Palestinians, and she got nowhere with that lobbying, and came to the point where on principle she resigned, and that’s a commendable thing”.

“What is British policy on Gaza is a very good question, it has not been made clear. What is clear is that the current government is really tailing behind the American position; every now and then you have someone in the government calling on Israel to be proportional in its response, not really saying anything about our own engagement with the Israelis”.

GA: “It might be the right move for Nick Clegg to try and get as many British Muslims to vote for the LibDems as possible for the next election; I was personally very disturbed by Baroness Warsi’s letter of resignation. I think it’s a sinister letter, because if you read carefully, what she’s saying to the government is, ‘If you don’t do what I want you to do regarding Gaza you might have a problem with radicalised British Muslims’. That is a threat that I regard as political blackmail”.

GS: “First, from a Jewish perspective, as a representative of a Jewish organisation, the first thing we do is to say that Israel doing is not in our name, Israel does not represent us, it does not represent hundreds of thousands of Jews here and in America, we won’t allow Israel to speak for us because we come from a different position – the one which is based on human rights and morality. If Israel succeeds in identifying all Jews with the horrendous actions that they are taking at the moment, it’s not surprising that there will be reaction in the world against all Jews. So we think we actually have a particular responsibility to say loud and clearly: ‘Not in our name. This is not done in the name of all Jews. This is done in the name of Israel and its current government’.”

GS: “I condemn any anti-Semitism, of course, but you have to look at the causes of it. And if the cause, in this case, of the growth of the anti-Semitic feeling across the world is violations of human rights on a gigantic scale, we have to address it”.

GA: “One of the achievements of Hamas is to have demonstrated that when push comes to shove, there’s really no difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Actually, I personally regret that. As a historian I look back to a time when we have to agree that anti-Zionism was quite fashionable within British Jewish communities, but that was before the recreation of a Jewish state. And that recreation, whether you think that Israel should or shouldn’t speak for all Jews (personally, I have never met anyone who would claim they speak for all Jews, it’s a silly claim) the equation has changed”.

GS: “There was an article in the Times of Israel just a day before yesterday commenting on the National Union of Students in the UK recently voting to support the boycott movement against Israel, and because the journalist who was writing it identified himself as a Jew wholly and absolutely with Israel the argument was that any boycott against Israel is a boycott against himself as a person. And he then leapt from that to the position that the NUS was boycotting Jewish students, which it definitely was not. And therefore he was saying, ‘Perhaps we should as Jews all now wear the yellow star?’ – with a reference back to Fascist Germany. Now that is the general drift of the arguments coming out of Israel”.

GA: “Clearly there is no one angle of Jewish voice on anything. We are talking about the Anglo-Jewish community: there’s no such thing. There are separate sets of communities, some of whom, unfortunately, are not on speaking terms with each other, mainly for religious reasons rather than political. So you have within Anglo-Jewry – and let’s get it in perspective, British Jews are no more than an absolutely maximum 350,000, we are a drop in the ocean of the UK population – an enormous variety of opinions, and I am certainly in favour of all sides of all debates being heard”.

GA: “You know they say ‘two Jews three opinions’, and there are very lively debates going on within the British Jewish communities as to the actions and inactions of Israel, the hypocrisy of the state, faith schools, you name it – there’s a debate going on about it”.

GS: “You said that Jewish community in the UK is a drop in the ocean, we are the drop in the ocean of the Jewish community. We have 1800 members, signatories as we call them, so we are small, but I think we are significant. There are some even smaller groups which have been around for a long time which oppose to Israel’s current policies, but apart from them we are the only group that gets up on the platform and makes our voices clear, because you are right, there is a debate within the Jewish community, but the tradition within the Jewish community is it is always kept behind closed doors, and I am pointing to a real danger of that, because it means that if the world outside the Jewish community doesn’t see there’s a Jewish dissent from what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, then the outside community will think all Jews think the same, all Jews are behind these atrocious violations in Gaza, and that will stoke anti-Semitism”.

GA: “Clearly there is that danger if people conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, but not all Jews necessarily support all actions of all Israeli governments: after all, British Jews do not elect Israeli government, I don’t have a vote as a member of the Israeli electorate”.

GA: “If Glyn is right and his organisation represents 1800 or so Jews, what kind of a voice does he think proportionally – I’ll use this phrase – he should have? Should an organisation of 1800 have the right to have an advertisement in the Jewish Chronicle? He’s having a voice now, he will have a voice in the Guardian, I may even write about him so he will have a voice in the Jewish Chronicle then, but if he’s saying – My 1800 or 1799 Jewish people deserve their policies to be adopted by the British Jewry”, then we are on a slippery slope. And if he’s further saying – If the policy of me and my 1799 people is not adopted, we might have more anti-Semitism in this country, then I think Glyn needs to reflect on where that slippery slope leads to”.

GS: “What I think is dangerous is the way Israel is trying to close down the criticism. The argument is – Israel represents all Jews, it’s the Jewish state. Therefore, to criticise Israel is to criticise Jews and therefore to be anti-Semitic. And if anti-Semitism spreads to large proportions, then we know, they say, where it leads – into the direction of the Holocaust. And because now, thankfully, they received knowledge about the Holocaust in the world, it was the most wakeful and atrocious thing (I say that having lost members of the family in the Holocaust), and therefore it closes down criticism. Now, if you can’t criticise Israel, that puts Israel in an ivory white tower, then it can then take whatever actions it likes, and then it’s beyond moral reproach – that is seriously dangerous, and that is what I think is happening in Israel at the moment”.

GA: “Just as in this country before 1939, there were very lively debates about appeasement in Israel, which was very popular, Neville Chamberlain was a very popular person, but when the chips were down in 1939, the country came together. And that is what has happened in Israel at the moment. I don’t think it’s right to say that Israel shuts off debate, I have criticised Israel, I have a weekly column in the Jewish Chronicle, it’s a country where you have democratic values, freedom of expression, all sorts of people attend my lectures, Jews, Arabs, atheists, Haredi (ultra-orthodox Jews) – we have debates! I simply don’t recognise in the words that Glyn has used the Israel that I know.”

Barnaby Raine interviewed by Sky news, makes clear that many British Jews oppose, and march against, Israel’s assault on Gaza. Watch Barnaby Raine on Sky news. JfJfP signatory.

The 61 year-old of Jewish origin is speaking out on Palestinian casualties since the conflict intensified last week
By Natalie Glanvill, Waltham Forest Guardian
21st July 2014

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi says Palestinians are being slaughtered on a “horrific scale”. A video is embedded in the original article.

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, 61, of Highams Park, is a primary school teacher in Waltham Forest.She is of Jewish origin and a member of the Waltham Forest Palestine Solidarity Campaign (WFPSC), a local branch of the nationwide organisation.Ms Wimborne-Idrissi sympathises with the Palestinians and the 200 plus deaths since the conflict intensified on July 8 and is calling on the community to boycott Israeli goods “until it abides by international law”.[a hastily cut article which says Naomi ‘sympathises with the … 200 plus deaths…’ – Naomi of course deplores the deaths, now over 1,800; and it doesn’t mention she is a signatory of JfJfP or a founder of Jews4Big.]

Tricycle theatre: moral stand or “anti-Semitism”?

Laurie Penny tells Stephen Pollard , editor of the Jewish Chronicle he is absurd. Click headline to hear this argument on Radio 4’s World at One, August 6th.

Hannah Weisfeld of Yachad says the vitriol in this conflict is worse than she’s ever known and international actors must intervene. Watch Hannah Weisfeld on BBC News, July 27.