www.reformjudaism.org.uk

MANNA 107: Spring 2010

Written by Rabbi Dr. Tony Bayfield Tuesday, 17 August 2010

Tom Phillips, British Ambassador to Israel, is the finest of men and an unshakeable friend of the Jewish people. He is also a British Ambassador in the traditional style – not prone to shows of emotion. When Phillips holds his head in his hands and speaks of “tragedy”, no one with a shred of sense should fail to take notice.

Dow Marmur is the unofficial spokesperson for progressive Judaism in Israel. In one of his many recent earticles, he writes: “Charedi behaviour may be radicalising even liberals who normally don’t have much fire in their bellies and prefer to bitch at home to acting in public. Yet over a thousand of us came out on Saturday night to demonstrate outside the Prime Minister’s official residence in Jerusalem against the cumulative effect of charedi excesses.”

The formal reason for the demonstration was to protest against gender-segregated buses in Jerusalem. But the article was entitled ‘Apartheid City?’ For the demonstration was equally motivated by outrages that now dominate article after article – settlers seeking to take over Arab neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, as distinct from building in areas of East Jerusalem where there are no Arabs. Then there is the Wiesenthal Centre’s Museum of Tolerance on a disputed piece of land in Jerusalem that was once and may still be a Muslim cemetery; spitting at Christians; the blind eye of the police and the complicity of government.

Marmur uses the phrase “the Talibanisation of Jerusalem”. What is true of Jerusalem is substantially true of the whole of Israel. Jerusalem has become the bastion of religious fundamentalism and Tel Aviv the capital of liberal secularism.

MANNA has for years been sounding the alarm at the rise and ever higher rise of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. We have frequently been attacked for implying moral equivalence. We have also been dismissed with the assertion that fundamentalists are mostly nice, cuddly people who keep the flame of traditional learning blazing brightly. But it is not learning that is burning brightly. It is intolerance, bigotry and a sinister determination to impose a particular view of the world on everyone else. Sadly MANNA has been proved right to be alarmed.

Over the last thirty years, arrogance and contempt for non-Ashkenazi Jews has borne fruit in the rise to power of Jews with origins outside Europe,
Mizrachi Jews is a more accurate term than Sephardim. The Shas party has been little short of brilliant in exploiting the genuine grievances of the
Mizrachi population and representing not just religious fundamentalism but the dispossessed, the poor, the victims of internal Jewish discrimination.

The alliance of Shas and religious fundamentalism with right-wing Jewish nationalism, led by Russian immigrants with little or no experience of modern liberal religion and modern liberal democracy, has proved immensely powerful. It has led us to the virtual eclipse of the two-state solution and the dwindling of Israel’s allies. Middle East envoy Tony Blair said last year: “The West will pay a very high price for Israel’s security. It will not pay for Israel’s intransigence.” Commenting on David Miliband’s expulsion of an Israeli diplomat from London over cloned passports, a member of the Knesset told the London Times, “The British are dogs who can’t be trusted. This is anti-Semitism disguised as anti- Israel.” It is not anti-Semitism. It is not even anti-Israel. Its despair at policies which so openly defy Israel’s friends and allies and all attempts to bring about a just compromise and peaceful coexistence.

Everything that we hoped and prayed for seems to be disappearing like sand through our fingers. Hence Tom Phillips holding his head and speaking emotionally of “tragedy”. Marmur was revealing in referring to “liberals who normally don’t have much fire in their bellies and prefer to bitch at home to acting in public.” It is increasingly hard for those of us outside Israel to understand how the fundamentalist-nationalist alliance has become so dominant and where the mainstream of Israeli society, never mind the religious liberals, are.

MANNA will not criticise them but rather leave the criticism to Marmur and those hundreds of thousands of Israelis who are doing everything in their power to protest and to combat what is happening; the supporters of human rights groups so cynically under attack.

But MANNA believes that it can no longer absolve Diaspora Jews from speaking out. It is beyond reasonable dispute that there are tens of thousands of us in Britain who love Israel with all our hearts and all our souls and all our might. The phrase is chosen deliberately, not because we deify Israel but because there is no better phrase to convey the strength and depth of our love. But we do not love the present Israeli government, its complicity in the charedi-isation of Israel and its resistance to the two-state solution.

For many years it has been the conventional wisdom that British Jews should not criticise the government of Israel publicly because such criticism
will be used by our enemies. Israel does have many enemies. Anti-Semitism is on the increase in Europe and there are significant numbers whose anti-Israel statements and actions are simply a cover for anti-Semitism.

But the present government of Israel is supplying all the ammunition that our enemies need. We are moving faster and faster, seemingly inexorably towards a tragedy of immense proportions. It is now not only impossible to restrain ourselves, it is also irresponsible. For the sake of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in intolerable conditions; for the sake of the Jewish people, its land, its soul and its integrity, MANNA believes that Progressive Jews must speak out.

In the name of all that is just and decent, in the name of those values which give meaning, purpose and dignity to human existence, Israel must cease building settlements and use its international friends and allies to negotiate and guarantee a just settlement with the Palestinians. Only a just settlement will provide lasting security for the people and land we love.