PRESS RELEASE: 18 June 2018
‘The BOD doesn’t speak for us.’ An open letter to the Board of Deputies of British Jews from Jewish people
Today we have sent an Open Letter to the BOD, signed by 75 (currently 105) Jewish people in the UK, appalled that it supports the continuing Israeli massacre of Palestinian people.
The signatories include a number of prominent people: Prof Sir Geoffrey Bindman; Prof Moshe Machover; Michael Rosen; Alexei Sayle; Sir Stephen Sedley; Avi Shlaim FBA; Gillian Slovo; and Jamie Stern-Weiner.
Amongst the first to sign was Ronnie Kasrils, a leading anti-apartheid campaigner, who was in exile in Britain for some years, and later a minister in the Mandela government. He asked to be included because it was a “much needed statement”.
The letter was initiated by three members of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network UK.
For more information, see Facebook here; email UK@IJAN.org.
OPEN LETTER TO THE BOARD OF DEPUTIES OF BRITISH JEWS FROM JEWISH PEOPLE IN THE UK
We are appalled that the Board of Deputies (BoD) which claims to be “the voice of British Jews,” has once again attempted to justify the massacre of unarmed Palestinian people by the Israeli military. You issued a throw-away tweet on 31 March and a full statement on 15 May, followed by a comment opposing the World Health Organisation fact-finding mission into the health needs of the occupied territories on 24 May.
As you know, on 30 March, when Israel began its latest attack, Palestinians were commemorating Land Day. [1] It was the launch of their Great March of Return demanding the right to go back to their homeland and an end to the blockade of Gaza. The March continued until 15 May, the seventieth anniversary of the Nakba, when three-quarters of a million Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their land: hundreds of towns and villages were depopulated and destroyed to make way for the state of Israel.
Since 30 March, 123 Palestinians have been killed, including children, women and medics, and journalists wearing vests marked PRESS, many shot in the back, and 13,600 have been maimed or injured by live ammunition, tear gas and firebombs. For six weeks the killings continued, day after day, and on 14 May, when the US moved its embassy to Jerusalem, despite “overwhelming global opposition”, another massacre: 60 people killed, and 2,771 maimed and wounded. The Israeli use of illegal “dumdum” bullets which expand after entering the body was clearly intended to cause not only greater pain but permanent disabilities.
Your statement justifying this massacre prompted over 500 Jewish Zionists to write to outgoing president Arkush and president-elect Marie van der Zyl [2] protesting that BoD had “deeply misrepresented” their views by relieving Israel of all responsibility for the deaths caused by their snipers.
BoD is doing its best to hide that Jews are divided over Israel’s ongoing repression and slaughter of the Palestinian people, which many of us, like most people everywhere in the world, including a number of Zionists, are outraged by. So much for BoD “speaking for all Jews”! You are so determined to defend Israel that you have even accused Jewish organisations and individuals of “antisemitism” because they support Palestinian rights, and campaigned for their expulsion from the Labour Party.
This is not the first time the BoD has condoned murder, claiming to speak on behalf of Jewish people in the UK. The BoD publicly supported pro-Israel rallies during the bombing of Gaza in 2008/9 and 2014 that killed thousands of Palestinian women, children and men. It has consistently supported a regime that is widely considered guilty of war crimes and the racist crime of apartheid. You are now saying that opposition to Israel’s actions is antisemitic, thus demanding that Israel should be the only government in the world exempt from criticism.
The BoD in recent years has been uncritical of Israel and pro-Tory, contrary to the great Jewish working-class tradition of struggling for social justice in every situation. Arkush declared his political allegiance when (on 9 June 2017) he mourned the Tory prime minister’s failure to win an outright majority at the general election as a “loss” for the Jewish community, and described the Tory alliance with the extreme right-wing, homophobic, anti-abortion Democratic Unionist Party in the North of Ireland as “positive news” and the DUP as “exceptionally warm and friendly”. The Tories that Arkush supports are aligned in Europe with right-wing political parties that honour Nazi collaborators and Islamophobes. Arkush also celebrated the election of Trump undeterred by his racist, Islamophobic, and antisemitic campaign.
Your identification with the Israeli government could prove even more frightening. Governments and people around the world fear that the wrecking of the agreement with Iran by Netanyahu and Trump (the heads of two nuclear powers) may start yet another war, repeating the horrors of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. You may find yourself not only supporting the destruction of Iran, but urging the risk of nuclear war.
As Jewish people we are distraught that the Nazi holocaust has been, and continues to be, used to justify the brutal occupation of another people who played no part in our historic persecution, and to indulge in warmongering.
We reclaim our tradition of struggling for social justice for all by echoing the call by Jamal Juma, coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign and the Land Defence Coalition:
“It is time for the world to stop standing in implicit or explicit complicity with Israeli apartheid and to join us in nonviolent action by taking up the Palestinian call for boycotts, divestment and sanctions until Israel respects international law and human rights.” [3]
Footnotes
1. Land Day is the annual remembrance of the 1976 general strike protesting Israeli land theft from Palestinian citizens of Israel, when six unarmed Palestinians were killed, a hundred were wounded, and hundreds arrested.
2. We note that van der Zyl’s suitability to be president of BoD has been questioned by victims/survivors of child sexual abuse who accuse her of “abandoning” them in their efforts to eradicate this crime from Jewish institutions.
3. Quoted from The National (Scotland), Why the time is right for action to help Palestine, 23 April 2018
Initial signatories:
1. Craig Berman
2. Sarah Glynn
3. Abe Hayeem
4. Rosamine Hayeem
5. Yael Kahn
6. Michael Kalmanovitz
7. Roisin Kalmanovitz
8. Agnes Kory
9. Selma James
10. Les Levidow
11. Moshe Machover
12. Helen Marks
13. Sam Weinstein
14. Karl Weiss
Signatories so far (21 Sept 2018):
15. Susie Barry
16. Graham Bash
17. Mervyn E. Bennun
18. Sir Geoffrey Bindman
19. Pamela Blakelock
20. Hagit Borer
21. Haim Bresheeth
22. Tony Booth
23. David Cannon
24. Michael Chambers
25. Linda Clair
26. James Cohen
27. Jake Colman
28. Ruth Conlock
29. Ivor Dembina
30. Greg Dropkin
31. Judit Druks
32. Thomas Eisner
33. Bridget Dunne
34. Mark Elf
35. Liz Elkind
36. Michael Ellman
37. Pia Feig
38. Tansy Feltis
39. Deborah Fink
40. Sylvia Finzi
41. Carol Foster
42. Kenny Fryde
43. Claudio García Ehrenfeld (former UK resident)
44. Dr Jay Ginn
45. Dr David Goldberg
46. Martin Golding
47. Jen Green
48. Tony Greenstein
49. Malcolm Hecks
50. Susan Himmelweit
51. Hannah Hurst
52. Nicholas Jacobs
53. Riva Joffe
54. Naomi Junnor
55. Stephen Kapos
56. Ronnie Kasrils (former UK resident)
57. Jenny Kassman
58. John Keidan
59. Yosh Kosminsky
60. Adam Kossoff
61. Richard Kuper
62. David Landau
63. Bernice Laschinger
64. Ruth Lass
65. Lorry Leader
66. Stephanie Lee
67. Hilary Lester
68. Leah Levane
69. Rosalind Levy
70. John Lipetz
71. Jola Litwitz
72. Renato Loeffler
73. Prof. Yosefa Loshitzky
74. Deborah Maccoby
75. Ilana Machover
76. James Mcleavy
77. Ros Meadow
78. Angie Mindel
79. Prof David Mond
80. Idit Nathan
81. Diana Neslen
82. Richard Pearl
83. Stewart Permutt
84. Miranda Pinch
85. Judy Rabinowitz Price
86. Jacqueline Rose
87. Michael Rosen
88. Leon Rosselson
89. Sabby Sagall
90. Prof Andrew Samuels
91. Ian Saville
92. Alexei Sayle
93. Glyn Secker
94. Emma Segar
95. Sir Stephen Sedley
96. Jenny Secretan
97. Avi Shlaim, FBA
98. Andy Simons
99. Ray Sirotkin
100. Gillian Slovo
101. Annabelle Sreberny
102. Jamie Stern-Weiner
103. Ruth Tenne
104. Jeremy Weinstein
105. Prof. Nira Yuval-Davis
