ANALYSIS: How a letter from 0.01% of British Jews exposed tension that won’t go away

There was just one topic that dominated conversation in the UK Jewish community last week. 

On Wednesday, 36 members of the community’s representative body, the Board of Deputies came out in condemnation of Israel’s continued war in Gaza. The signatories claim that no key communal leader is speaking for them and they can no longer hold their tongue in the defence of Jewish values.

Criticism has focused not just on the content of the letter – but also on the way they chose to air their feelings.

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Their press release left open the interpretation that the signatories are more prominent in communal life than they are and gave at least a hint that they were conveying wider BoD opinion.

Some resultant headlines also contributed to widespread misunderstanding, inside and outside the community, about the significance of the letter. All of which left the Board’s leadership scrambling to distance themselves from the letter.

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The organisation’s president in particular came out swinging in an article for Jewish News, pointedly saying the Board would continue to advocate on behalf of the majority of British Jews rather than the 10 percent of members who signed.

There are around 300 Board members in total and each is elected by a synagogue or communal charity. To that extent they can be seen to represent more than themselves, though we don’t know how much consultation took place ahead of the letter’s release. It’s now known that others would have considered signing but didn’t get support from their constituencies.

Indeed, even Israel’s strongest advocates concede that frustration goes beyond the 36 rebels. More would likely sign up to a form of wording that apportioned more blame for the current situation on Hamas, and perhaps didn’t do so via the national media (even before the war, Benjamin Netanyahu’s disapproval rating with British Jews was at 79 percent and 72 percent were pessimistic about the future of democratic governance, according to a poll by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research).

There is little doubt that yet more British Jews still are privately concerned about the war at this point – when it’ll end, if it’s declared outcomes are fully achievable and of course about the terrific toll on innocents in Gaza. But, without an answer to the continued threat from the butchers of Hamas, they are also be concerned about their relatives facing a continued threat from Hamas and realise that if they don’t focus on Israel’s fight against terror, and the battle to return the hostages, no one else will. This is likely where most Jews fall.

While in Israel this discussion in raging under full public glare, supporters of Israel abroad have long been concerned about handing her opponents fodder at a time of crisis. The letter writers, however, would argue that that is trumped by the need to speak their truth to power. Even if it doesn’t move policy in Jerusalem.

This underlying tension is at the heart of the row that erupted so publicly this week. With BoD President Phil Rosenberg making it clear his organisation would continue to advocate for the majority view, that tension is unlikely to dissipate.