I write this with some mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am pleased that my original post on Zeek / New Jewish Thought was taken seriously enough by Diana to provoke her into writing a lengthy, articulate and serious response. However, I am also concerned that readers of Zeek, which in my understanding caters to a largely North American/Israeli readership, might find the exchange between us difficult to translate into local vernacular, if not irrelevant to their national experiences as Jews.

In our defence though, the questions we are grappling with are important ones in global Jewish terms. Who should represent Jews, what Jewish politics should consist of, how we should relate to Israel: these issues recur throughout the Jewish world.

The first thing I should say in my response to Diana is that her piece appears to conflate two public statements I have made. The first, my piece for Zeek, only mentions Jews for Justice for Palestinians in one paragraph as part of a wider (and generally rather abstract) discussion of British Jewish politics. The second is an invited speech I made at the Annual General Meeting of JFJFP a few weeks before the Zeek article was published. In my speech I described myself as a ‘critical friend’ of the organisation and suggested ways in which JFJFP might build a closer relationship to the UK Jewish community. This speech was for the most part received respectfully but it was also clear that most (but by no means all) participants at the AGM disagreed with what I had to say.

In what follows I will respond briefly to some of Diana’s points. Some things we will have to agree to differ on; other criticisms that Diana made are based perhaps on a misunderstanding of my intentions in writing the Zeek piece and conflating what I said at the AGM and what I wrote in the article.

First of all, I should say that I share many of Diana’s historical criticisms of the Board of Deputies. In its long history it has a shameful history of quietism and accommodation with power. However, while some of the basic problems with the Board remain, I do think that there are grounds for working with the organisation. First, it provides an umbrella for a lot of uncontroversial and necessary work, such as statistical research. Some of its representative work attracts little criticism, as in its defense of Kashrut. The Board is also involved in important inter faith work (although arguably some of its public positions on Israel may undermine this at times) and I had absolutely no reticence in completing a research report on inter faith work for them earlier this year.

Second, the Board no longer has the kind of unquestioned power it used to. The fast-growing UK Haredi community is not affiliated to it and power has shifted to the Jewish Leadership Council and other ad hoc groupings. Third, the recent election of Vivian Wineman, a former chair of British Friends of Peace Now, as President, does suggest that there is more room for movement among the Deputies than has often been supposed. Indeed, Diana herself notes that the Board’s unquestioned support for Israeli actions may finally be waning.

Diana represents my views regarding the Board as follows:

He suggests, as perhaps a modernising response, that like the British democratic parliament, there should be a parliamentary opposition which would allow the safety valve of open debate and thus draw the sting from those who feel excluded from Jewish life, because they happen to have fundamentally different conceptions of what the Board should be doing, particularly with respect to Israel.

I wasn’t actually suggesting that the Board needed to have an official opposition as a practical policy suggestion. Rather, I was trying to demonstrate that the parliamentary model on which the Board is based is imperfect as it fails to allow for an organised but respected opposition. I certainly would not want people who have different conceptions of the Board to be incorporated and neutered through some cynical ‘safety valve’. In fact, my suggestion, perhaps an overly subtle one, was much more radical: that we rethink what it is to ‘represent’ a community.

On to my views of JFJFP, Diana argues that I did not ‘do justice to the actions of JFJFP’ in my article and that the organisation has ‘made strenuous efforts to bridge the gap between ourselves and mainstream Jewry’.  Diana quite rightly points out that JFJFP are often viewed with great hostility and that attempts to reach out are often rebuffed. Where I would differ from her is in her argument that ‘It is not us who shun the community but the mainstream community who seem to find our message difficult to digest’.

Now I have absolutely no hesitation in recognising and condemning the hostility that JFJFP engenders. I acknowledge that JFJFP have, in their public statements at least made efforts to use moderate language most of the time. I also acknowledge that in their current process of consultation about whether to support boycotts of Israel there is a real internal debate going on as to how to engage with the Jewish community and how to bridge the divides on the boycott question within JFJFP itself.

The problem is that there are many signatories to JFJFP that I met at the AGM and at other occasions that are incredibly angry at the ‘mainstream’ community, have very little involvement with it and have no hesitation in attacking it rather than working with it. Now much of this attitude does indeed stem from the historic conformism and conservatism of Anglo-Jewry. Until very recently the only choice for the leftist Jew with concerns about Israel was ‘put up or shut up’. Understandably, many rejected this choice and chose to leave the community, while often still identifying as secular Jews. 

But while I understand where the hostility comes from, I also think that it is ultimately self-defeating and increasingly anachronistic.  In the last decade or two, things have moved on in Anglo-Jewry. Among a younger generation, brought up with Limmud, Jewdas, the JCC for London and the Moishe House, the old choice to put up or shut up no longer has to be made. There are spaces now to be a leftist, critical Jew and still be religious to some degree and to be part of the Jewish community. I have no illusions as to the limits of this trend and that many mainstream institutions are unreformed. But – for the first time in decades, perhaps even ever – there is now something to play for.

There is a real chance to change the Jewish community, to create more spaces to be Jewish and progressive, without the need for hostility and anger.

The biggest difference between Diana and myself probably lies in my attitude to the Palestinians. She claims that

‘It is difficult to understand how to equate the brutality of a military occupation together with its denial of human rights, with injustice to Jews.  Indeed it is difficult to know how, when Jewish life has never been less constricted, what injustice is being perpetrated.’

I do not for a moment deny that the more powerful party in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle is the Israeli one. I do not for a moment seek to minimise the brutality of the occupation and the injustices heaped on the Palestinians. However, none of this is to say that Israelis/Jews do not suffer terribly from the conflict. Suicide bombings are horrific and cause huge pain. The spasmodic bombardment of Sderot – however amateurish and however few it kills – causes terrible fear and trauma. No of course I would rather live in Sderot than Gaza, but pain is pain, anguish is anguish, post-traumatic stress is post-traumatic stress.

There’s a bigger issues here. Diana argues:

There is also the question raised by those of us who are schooled in the anti-colonialist struggles of the last century.  This is that those from the dominant side have a responsibility to challenge our own side and to expect the challenge to the oppressed side, to come from within.  Anything else is paternalism.

Absolutely, those of us who are attached to the most powerful side in such conflicts have a duty to challenge our own side. But things don’t stop there. There are fundamental questions of morality and ethics. To give a ‘free pass’ to the ‘oppressed side’ in a conflict is immoral and ultimately self-defeating. One of the main problems in liberation struggles is that when the oppressed side eventually wins, they frequently themselves end up as oppressors. Look at Mugabe!

It is utterly wrong to suspend moral judgements until the far-off day when victory is won. The liberated state is always formed in embryo in the struggle. Do you really want to see a Hamas style government in the occupied territories? In any case, it is pointless to remain silent if the tactics of the oppressed will only increase their suffering and make liberation less likely. Bombarding Sderot was a gift to the right-wing in Israel. It has probably put paid to any chance of a just peace for decades. Hamas and the Israeli right are both happy that they can continue their sordid little conflict indefinitely.

I should state here what it is that I would like to see: a real peace movement that makes excuses for NO ONE. A movement that rejects violence on both sides. At the moment there is no peace movement – just people who are happier to excuse one sides crimes that the other’s.

This is the problem with single –issue politics. In focusing ire on just one group, institution or issue, any kind of holistic vision is lost. The argument I have with Engage is similar to the one I have with you. I am frustrated that in their justifiable desire to oppose anti-Semitism, a leftist group most of whose members hold views on Israel are not to different from JFJFP have essentially sidelined activism against the occupation. I am equally frustrated by JFJFP’s lack of enthusiasm at fighting anti-Semitism (and yes I recognise that the issue is controversial and different definitions abound) which is sidelined in the fight against the occupation. I recognise that JFJFP do important quiet work on anti-Semitism in the pro-Palestinian movement and that Engage do restate their opposition to the occupation regularly, but there is no question that these activities come a very distant second to the main activities.

As I have stated before, there is a real opportunity for a broad-based progressive Jewish organisation that is critical about Israel. At the moment though, the internecine warfare that bedevils the Jewish community and the Jewish left makes this a dim possibility.

But perhaps Diana and I are both wrong: me in my call for a more politicised Jewish community and Diana in her defence of the integrity of her organisation. Maybe, just maybe, the new generation that is emerging will build a Jewish community that is less limited by the (non)-politics that those of us who grew up in the pre-Noughties community have experienced. Perhaps there is more respect for difference – on Israel and on other things. Perhaps there is less tolerance for puerile ‘Judean People’s Front’ politics and a greater desire for grassroots coalition building. Perhaps there is a willingness to see love of Jews, love of Israelis, love of Palestinians, hatred of violence, hatred of racism and hatred of anti-Semitism as non-contradictory values.

In short, maybe Diana and I are dinosaurs.

Keith Kahn-Harris, in his discussion of British Jewish politics (Zeek, June 30th), presents a rather timid community, anxious to maintain cohesion behind its chosen voice, the Board of Deputies of British Jews.  He chooses to present this organisation as the quasi-parliamentary representative voice of British Jewry and shows that the elections to the board from the organisations that pay their rather steep affiliation fees, are seldom openly contested.

Kahn-Harris identifies the antipathy of the Board to open dissension within the Jewish community.  He suggests, as perhaps a modernising response, that like the British democratic parliament, there should be a parliamentary opposition which would allow the safety valve of open debate and thus draw the sting from those who feel excluded from Jewish life, because they happen to have fundamentally different conceptions of what the Board should be doing, particularly with respect to Israel.

The Board of Deputies behaves in this way, Kahn-Harris posits, as a coping strategy by a group infused with anxiety.  He traces this to years of persecution and the necessity of showing a harmonious face to the outside world, which otherwise could divide and destroy it. Its a familiar argument, often used to rationalise reactionary Jewish political behaviour. Unfortunately, in this instance, this account is not applicable.

The Board is only copying a tactic used over the centuries by Jewish communities, where Jewish male elders negotiated for their communities in arenas often hostile to them.  It kept the communities safe, enabled them to live according to Jewish precepts, allowed for the  advancement of the leadership and maintained social control. But this depended above all on the fact that no party rocked the boat.  This precluded of course negotiating with those  from within the communities, who could be seen to challenge powerful interests.

The Board of Deputies has tried on the whole to maintain good relationships with those in power and has usually been on the side of reaction. Although according to William Rubinstein's A History of Jews in the English Speaking World, the Board initially campaigned against the 1905 Aliens Act, Britain’s first anti-immigration law, passed to limit the number of Jews settling in the country, they soon adapted to it, as the implementation was not strict.  The Board of Deputies argued against confronting Fascists during the 1930s.  The Board were similarly hostile to the pre-war effort to boycott Nazi Germany, a tactic demanded by many Jewish communities throughout the world, but not by the Yishuv in Palestine. It also argued strongly against working with the left wing Anti-Nazi league against British Fascists in the late 1970s.

Although initially an anti-Zionist organisation, seeing themselves as Jews and not as nationalists, this changed in 1937, according to Geoffrey Alderman in Modern British Jewry, with the election onto the Board of an organised group of Zionists .  Since then, the board has maintained a consistent pattern of open defence of Israel’s actions and of organising solidarity events whenever there is major criticism of Israel’s behaviour.  Thus, in spite of the fact that the Zionist Federation is Israel’s main supporting organisation in this country, it is the Board, whose remit is British Jewry, not Israeli politics, that will publicly defend Israel’s actions.

It would seem that the Board actually follows the communal lead by identifying the changing opinions within the community and harnessing them in its public pronouncements.  This is fine when there is a degree of homogeneity within the community and when the board is able to co-opt its critics into the big tent, but fails comprehensively once there is real dissent. 

As Keith Kahn-Harris correctly points out, the major source of dissent now is the behaviour of the state of Israel and the fact that among thinking Jews, the idea of blind support of Israeli actions is no longer acceptable.  In his presentation to the annual general meeting of Jews for Justice for Palestinians,  Kahn-Harris outlined what he sees as a significant change in Jewish responses to Israel’s actions and his view that there are many Jews thirsty for fresh streams.  He identifies the Gaza attack as perhaps the trigger for a sense of discomfort in the Jewish community about the direction down which Israel is travelling.  This together with the new extreme government in Israel has made Jewish people in Britain start to question their allegiances. 

A group who have been active since the beginning of the second intifada, campaigning against the occupation and for a just peace, namely Jews for Justice for Palestinians may be well placed to pick up those increasingly disillusioned with undiscerning mainstream support. 

Kahn-Harris came to address our annual general meeting and was unhappy with what he found:

‘Many of those attending were extremely bitter with the ‘mainstream’ Jewish community, and most were uninterested in working to bring Jews who were more involved in the community on board. As much as the mainstream community shuns leftist critics of Israel, many of them effectively shun themselves’.

In my view, this bald statement does not do justice to the actions of JFJFP.  It is important to recognise that JFJFP has made strenuous efforts to bridge the gap between ourselves and mainstream Jewry.  We find it extremely difficult if not impossible to obtain access to mainstream synagogues, or community facilities. In fact only recently we were well on the way to mounting an uncontroversial event in a synagogue. But the event was cancelled perhaps because of concerns expressed by some that JFJFP were sponsoring it.  Recently we offered to talk to a community in the home counties, after they expressed anger at a meeting arranged by humanitarian activists to highlight injustices suffered by Palestinians.    The response was a public letter of uncontrolled venom.  And indeed JFJFP has met with the Board on at least two occasions.  It is not us who shun the community but the mainstream community who seem to find our message difficult to digest.

In his presentation, Keith Kahn-Harris made a number of suggestions as to how JFJFP could change to harness this disquiet.  He made it clear that our approach is not calculated to appeal to Jews who ‘love Israel’.  These Jews, according to Kahn-Harris, ask ‘Jews for Justice for Palestinians, what about Jews for Justice for Jews?’  They ask why we do not criticise Palestinians who deserve criticism as much as Israelis do and why we are silent on the issue of anti-Semitism and of Hamas.  He believed that this would encourage those Jews now looking for an alternative to take the plunge and join with JFJFP.

Each area mapped out by Keith Kahn-Harris is highly contentious.  It is difficult to understand how to equate the brutality of a military occupation together with its denial of human rights, with injustice to Jews.  Indeed it is difficult to know how, when Jewish life has never been less constricted, what injustice is being perpetrated.  There is also the question raised by those of us who are schooled in  the anti-colonialist struggles of the last century.  This is that those from the dominant side have a responsibility to challenge our own side and to expect the challenge to the oppressed side, to come from within.  Anything else is paternalism.  And indeed while Israel’s supporters continue to maintain a silence about its offences, they take every opportunity to criticise the Palestinians, and often peddle lies. 

Anti-Semitism today has become a much more contested arena.  There are those who would call it anti-Semitism to ‘deny Jews the right to self-determination’, as the EU Monitoring Commission seemed to suggest, taken up with alacrity by the Parliamentary committee on anti-Semitism.  This definition faces challenges from the European Jews for a Just Peace and from JFJP as it seems to be a stalking horse for a declaration that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.  True anti-Semitism is always challenged by members of our group, when on marches or when working with other solidarity movements, and we have managed to change behaviour.  We regard anti-Semitism as the enemy of the Palestinian cause, as much as it is the enemy of Jewish people.  However in talking about anti-Semitism, we need clarity to know exactly what people mean.

At the annual general meeting, signatories suggested that it is not for JFJFP to change, in  reaching out to the anxious, but rather for another organisation, a sort of half way house to be established, something like the almost moribund Peace Now. This would be able to net the unhappy in a way they would find amenable.  Sadly this organisation seems to have gone into hibernation following the ‘War on Terror’.  Now that this strange period is on the wane, perhaps the luminaries of this organisation both in Israel and in the UK might begin to emerge again and take their place in the peace pantheon as a half way house for those beginning at last to feel discomfort  caused by uncritical support for Israel’s actions.

It is strange that Kahn-Harris should be trying to disinter the bones of the British parliamentary system, one that the British public is finding increasingly unsatisfactory.  Maybe it would be more apt to look at the survival tactics of the board over the years.  The board identifies with powerful interests and tries to modify its stance in accordance with perceived changes in the Jewish community itself.  It is now apparent that powerful interests in the United States, in the European Union and in Britain are no longer willing to give Israel the free pass to disregard all international legal frameworks in its endeavour to achieve dominion in the Middle East.  This change is reflected in the more thoughtful approaches of many in the Jewish community that Kahn Harris at the annual general meeting, and Anthony Lerman have sketched out.

This wind of change seems even to be blowing in the direction of the Board itself, perhaps responding to perceived changes in the community. A quick peak at the Board of Deputies’ website shows a complete lack of any activity on behalf of Israel, other than prayers for the family of Gilad Shalit. Maybe the Board itself is beginning to adapt to the new environment in which it now needs to operate. What organisations like Jews for Justice for Palestinians can do is maintain their integrity.  Our goal is ultimately to be accepted by mainstream Jewish organisations, but not to destroy our own values in the process.  

Politics is an inescapable part of human existence. It concerns the way that people organise themselves, in particular how they act within institutions and units of governance. Above all, politics concerns the way humans interact with power. It is therefore self-evident that politics exists in the British Jewish community, but what I want to question is how far the British Jewish community has an acknowledged politics.

In much of the British Jewish community, politics is in ‘bad taste’. In synagogues a macher that is too overt in political scheming is likely to be viewed with suspicion. On a community-wide level, inter-denominational politicking is widely practiced, but often looked down on. In the oldest and most influential UK Jewish representative organization, the Board of Deputies, which has a quasi-parliamentary structure and whose deputies elect a president and vice-president, there is nothing resembling parties and deputies rarely face election fights in their own communities. Even those few organisations that are openly political, such as the UK branches of Israeli political parties, tend to be low-key and poorly supported.

In short, there is a disparity between the de facto inevitability and ubiquity of British Jewish communal politics and the degree to which this politics is openly recognised. British Jewish politics is largely a matter for quiet, behind-the-scenes activity.

This reticence is perhaps a function of a tacit assumption that politics is antithetical to community. To be openly political is seen to be to seek to divide, to create strife and discord that threatens to rupture communal harmony. In part this may derive from long-held feelings of insecurity that as a minority in British society, the Jewish community must show a united front and that division can only equal weakness. In terms of Israel, one of the most contentious issues in British Jewish life, public campaigning against Israeli policies (from both a right and a left perspective) or open support for Israeli political parties, are marginal activities – viewed by much of the community as bad form and potentially dangerous. 

The assumption that small minorities need to present a united front is not necessarily illegitimate. The problem is that the lack of politics can create problems more serious than those it is designed to combat. If Jewish communal politics is not acknowledged, politics will still continue, but it will continue in ways that can be corrosive. If those who disagree with a particular direction the community takes can only been seen to legitimately disagree if they do so privately, this increases the likelihood that rather than accept their marginality they will resort to attacking the community.

I am thinking here about the position of those who disagree with communal support for Israel. Contrary to the commonly made accusation that the community ‘suppresses’ debate, it is more the case that debate is possible if it is done quietly and behind the scenes. The trouble is that some will not accept only being able to disagree privately while in public maintaining a facade of unity. Without a legitimate political process through which to debate communal policies, those British Jews who are critical of Israel have often resorted to attacking the community from the outside.

I recently attended the annual general meeting of Jews for Justice for Palestinians, an organization whose aims I broadly support. Many of those attending were extremely bitter with the ‘mainstream’ Jewish community, and most were uninterested in working to bring Jews who were more involved in the community on board. As much as the mainstream community shuns leftist critics of Israel, many of them effectively shun themselves.

It is essential to begin the process of rethinking British Jewish politics. The tacit assumption that politics and community are antithetical needs to be questioned. In any but the tiniest, most homogeneous community, differences of opinion are inevitable and there has to be a way of dealing with these differences without the dissolution of the community. What models might there be for a community whose political system could allow for the mediation of difference? What kind of political language do British Jews need to embrace in order to function without undue rancor?

One source of inspiration might be parliamentary democracy itself. The Board of Deputies is structured as a kind of parliament, but it lacks one crucial element of parliamentary democracy – an official opposition. When a politician who has been democratically elected speaks for a country, region or locality, it is clear that even if they govern for all, they were only elected by some. To be a leader in a democracy is to publicly affirm that not everyone agrees. Indeed, when democracies work best (and admittedly they often do not) the opposition plays an important role in the democratic process, scrutinising the executive and acting as a constant rebuke to delusions of unanimity. Political opponents may disagree vehemently but in the best parliamentary democracies, this does not stop them respecting each other as individuals, nor does the fact of divided political loyalties necessarily prevent the cohesiveness of the nation.

The parliamentary model is of course not applicable in its entirety in the British Jewish community. It is hard to envisage a truly representative Jewish parliament – who decides who is a Jew and who can vote? But the parliamentary model teaches us that it does suggest that politics can overt politics can not only allow community and difference to be balanced, it can also improve the quality of the leadership within of the Jewish community. Above all, it suggests that we should not fear politics but embrace it.