‘A dark day for Britain’s Jews’: Chief Rabbi Mirvis responds to West Bank sanctions

Chief Rabbi Mirvis has responded to the UK’s announcement of sanctions on the West Bank by describing today as “truly a dark day for Britain’s Jews”, and accusing the government of having “chosen to ignore the deep concerns expressed by so many of us.”

The measures, announced today by the Foreign Secretary in Parliament, will see the UK, alongside 11 other countries institute a ban on goods from Judea and Samaria. Ed Miliband’s speech to the House of Commons made the accusation that “ethnic cleansing” was being carried out in the West Bank by “terrorists” with Israeli government backing, and that the Israeli government had committed “war crimes” in Gaza.

Chief Rabbi Mirvis described the measures announced as amounting to “little more than political flag bearing for mendacious anti-Israel rhetoric and those who harbour a dangerous obsession with the Jewish State. These measures will succeed only in bolstering the very extremism they seek to target.

“On the eve of Rosh Hashanah and at a time when our community is more vulnerable than ever to the wave of extremism that has been building over recent years, these sanctions do nothing to advance the cause of peace. Nor do they make anyone safer – quite the contrary.

“Gesture politics of this kind feeds into an increasingly hostile discourse about Israel, and the cumulative effect of such punitive policies is to further embolden those, at home and abroad, who use hatred as a weapon against Jews.”

During his appearance in the House of Commons, Miliband subsequently appeared to suggest that under Keir Starmer there had been reluctance to take this move, responding to a question from another MP by telling them: “I’ll say very bluntly we should have acted earlier. And it has taken the new prime minister to come in and recognise the gravity of the situation.”

Late last month Chief Rabbi Mirvis met Miliband, and described how in their meeting he had told the Foreign Secretary that “While we share fervent hopes for a future of peace and security in the Middle East, I explained why I believe the UK Government’s intended sanctions will be counter-productive and even endanger such a vision of peace.

“I told the Foreign Secretary that many within the UK Jewish community will view such measures with deep dismay, at a time when the vilification of Jews, Judaism and the Jewish State has already reached unprecedented levels. The intended policy will not influence Israeli decision-making in the way the Government intends. Instead, it risks inflicting real harm across the region.”

Chief Rabbi Mirvis went on to say that he had told Miliband that “given the obvious challenges of defining and implementing such measures, there is a clear danger that they will spiral into a de facto boycott of trade with Israel more broadly, damaging the long-term relationship between our two countries and threatening the livelihoods of tens of thousands of Palestinian workers. These measures will also disproportionately affect British Jews because of our close religious, family, charitable and educational ties to Israel.

“Over recent years, we have seen repeatedly that when rhetoric towards Israel escalates, hostility towards Jews is never far behind. I strongly condemn the reprehensible violence perpetrated against Palestinians by a small number of extremists, yet the UK Government’s proposals will only embolden the tiny minority who support such criminality, while penalising countless others who abhor it. The stated justification for punishing an ally in this way, is Israel’s long-planned construction of homes in the E1 area. Yet successive peace efforts, from Oslo to Camp David and beyond, have envisaged a final agreement in which this area would remain under Israeli sovereignty. It is therefore difficult to escape the painful conclusion that domestic political considerations are driving foreign policy, the impact of which is negative both for prospects for peace in the Middle East and for the UK Jewish community.”

In recent weeks, the Foreign Secretary met a range of different British Jewish communal organisations, as well as both lay and religious leaders, who are believed to have given him their opinions on the proposed sanctions.