British rabbis back UK sanctions on Israeli settlements, denounce BDS
Wan Taufiq reports in The New Arab on 10 September 2026:
Several leading British rabbis have backed the UK’s new sanctions on Israeli settlements, amid protests from prominent Jewish groups and leaders against the measures.
A day after the sanctions were announced by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, senior Masorti rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg took to X to express his support for the sanctions. “What is taking place today in the West Bank is a Chillul HaShem, a violation of God’s name of the worst order. We cannot stay silent. This is terrible for Palestinian people who want to get on with their lives in peace. It is terrible for Israel,” Wittenberg wrote on X.
The rabbi highlighted that he had been in the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair when Miliband’s announcement was made, where he witnessed the horrors of settler violence with his “own eyes”. “We must speak out. We must do so out of deep concern for what is human and just, and for the sake of Israel and Judaism. We cannot turn away.” Wittenberg expressed his opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, while also describing Israel as his “family”.
Elsewhere, Rabbi Alexandra Wright of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London said that the “occupation and escalating violence are harming Palestinians and Israelis”. “The sanctions are the UK’s commitment to a two-state solution. The Anglo-Jewish community is committed to a Jewish state that is founded, not on oppression and violence, but, in the words of Israel’s declaration of independence, ‘on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel’,” Wright said. The rabbi also urged the Jewish community to “not hold back any progression towards a two-state solution”.
Other rabbis who came out in support of the measures include Jeremy Gordon of the New London Synagogue, and Lev Taylor of Kingston Liberal Synagogue.
Their statements came as prominent Jewish leaders and groups attacked the sanctions against illegal settlements.