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Jews against Israeli terror in Middle East
Byrnzie
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http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1183428.ece
Excerpt:
Ten days ago, it took only 48 hours for the organisation Jews for Justice for Palestinians to collect the names of 300 British Jews, including Harold Pinter, Mike Leigh and Gillian Slovo, together with small donations worth £10,000 to pay for a full-page advertisement in The Times condemning Israel's bombing of the power station in Gaza that has deprived the civilian population of water, food and dialysis machines, and which has led some to make comparisons with conditions in the Warsaw ghetto...
Reform Rabbi Tony Bayfield, writing in The Guardian, described a deepening dilemma for many British Jews, torn between dismay and despair at Israel's actions and anger at the response to them in the British media. "As I listen to the news, with its details of Israel's return to Gaza, I cringe," he wrote. "I cringe at the continuing involvement of Israeli Jews in the suffering of Palestinians. I cringe because I can't believe that it will advance the cause of peace. I cringe at the seeming hopelessness of it all. But I also become incandescent at the sanctimonious advice and the hypocritical disavowal of any responsibility that is so prevalent in this country and even in certain quarters of the Church."
Privately, figures in what is known as the Jewish "establishment" have been aghast at right-wing American support for Israel and the campaigns of bombarding dissenting journalists with abusive e-mails. "If you want to characterise British Jewry, as opposed to the American Jewish community," sources say, "it has tended to support those Israeli governments that have made moves towards peace. The natural inclination here is to vote Tory in Britain and support Labour governments in Israel. People know where they want to get to. The South African Jewish community was far less ready to move with the times and US rabbis have been part of [right-wing] demonstrations against Israeli governments. It's not a coincidence that most of the hard-line Gush Eminem [settler] movement speaks with an American accent."
...While at least two members of the Board of Deputies are known to have signed the Times advertisement, for many Jews on the left, the board's refusal to engage critically with Israeli government policy has given rise to a "not-in-my-name" movement. Jews for Justice for Palestinians was founded in 2002 by Irene Bruegel, Professor of Urban Policy at South Bank University. It is currently chaired by her partner Richard Kuper, a founder of the left-wing publishing house Pluto Press. She had been a member of Women in Black, a women's peace organisation originally founded in Israel in 1988 in response to the occupation, but which now considers itself to be an international movement. In 2001, she took part in a visit to Israel and the West Bank, out of which the International Solidarity Movement was born....
Jon Benjamin describes the Jewish community as having a "siege mentality about talking openly about Israel because they know that others who wish Israel harm will take those views and turn them around to use them against Israel's right to exist." The sense of being pressed between two powerful and opposing points of view has led many Jews, whose political opinions are naturally on the left, to feel isolated...
...Israel and Zionism have now become virtual arguments between strangers on internet chatrooms - an alternative war in which the missiles being lobbed are URLs mined from Google supporting the thesis of either side. Reading these hysterical and abusive fights with their mutual accusations of "Nazi!", one is struck by how few of the participants, particularly those from America, have ever been to the country they feel so passionately about, either for or against. What differentiates most British Jews from the rest of the population is that they have actually visited Israel, and often have relatives there, often because before the Second World War families fleeing Europe took whatever visa they could get and found themselves flung out across the globe - in Britain, America, Argentina, South Africa or Mandate Palestine. Others emigrated to Israel out of ideological conviction or because they liked the place, or married Israelis....
Excerpt:
Ten days ago, it took only 48 hours for the organisation Jews for Justice for Palestinians to collect the names of 300 British Jews, including Harold Pinter, Mike Leigh and Gillian Slovo, together with small donations worth £10,000 to pay for a full-page advertisement in The Times condemning Israel's bombing of the power station in Gaza that has deprived the civilian population of water, food and dialysis machines, and which has led some to make comparisons with conditions in the Warsaw ghetto...
Reform Rabbi Tony Bayfield, writing in The Guardian, described a deepening dilemma for many British Jews, torn between dismay and despair at Israel's actions and anger at the response to them in the British media. "As I listen to the news, with its details of Israel's return to Gaza, I cringe," he wrote. "I cringe at the continuing involvement of Israeli Jews in the suffering of Palestinians. I cringe because I can't believe that it will advance the cause of peace. I cringe at the seeming hopelessness of it all. But I also become incandescent at the sanctimonious advice and the hypocritical disavowal of any responsibility that is so prevalent in this country and even in certain quarters of the Church."
Privately, figures in what is known as the Jewish "establishment" have been aghast at right-wing American support for Israel and the campaigns of bombarding dissenting journalists with abusive e-mails. "If you want to characterise British Jewry, as opposed to the American Jewish community," sources say, "it has tended to support those Israeli governments that have made moves towards peace. The natural inclination here is to vote Tory in Britain and support Labour governments in Israel. People know where they want to get to. The South African Jewish community was far less ready to move with the times and US rabbis have been part of [right-wing] demonstrations against Israeli governments. It's not a coincidence that most of the hard-line Gush Eminem [settler] movement speaks with an American accent."
...While at least two members of the Board of Deputies are known to have signed the Times advertisement, for many Jews on the left, the board's refusal to engage critically with Israeli government policy has given rise to a "not-in-my-name" movement. Jews for Justice for Palestinians was founded in 2002 by Irene Bruegel, Professor of Urban Policy at South Bank University. It is currently chaired by her partner Richard Kuper, a founder of the left-wing publishing house Pluto Press. She had been a member of Women in Black, a women's peace organisation originally founded in Israel in 1988 in response to the occupation, but which now considers itself to be an international movement. In 2001, she took part in a visit to Israel and the West Bank, out of which the International Solidarity Movement was born....
Jon Benjamin describes the Jewish community as having a "siege mentality about talking openly about Israel because they know that others who wish Israel harm will take those views and turn them around to use them against Israel's right to exist." The sense of being pressed between two powerful and opposing points of view has led many Jews, whose political opinions are naturally on the left, to feel isolated...
...Israel and Zionism have now become virtual arguments between strangers on internet chatrooms - an alternative war in which the missiles being lobbed are URLs mined from Google supporting the thesis of either side. Reading these hysterical and abusive fights with their mutual accusations of "Nazi!", one is struck by how few of the participants, particularly those from America, have ever been to the country they feel so passionately about, either for or against. What differentiates most British Jews from the rest of the population is that they have actually visited Israel, and often have relatives there, often because before the Second World War families fleeing Europe took whatever visa they could get and found themselves flung out across the globe - in Britain, America, Argentina, South Africa or Mandate Palestine. Others emigrated to Israel out of ideological conviction or because they liked the place, or married Israelis....
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