Ex-JLC chair attacks ‘traditional view’ that UK Jews should stay out of Israeli politics
Sir Mick Davis spoke on a panel at Sunday's Haaretz conference at JW3 in North London
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
Ex-Jewish Leadership Council chair Sir Mick Davis has strongly criticised “the traditional view” of some communal leaders who argue that UK Jews should refrain from taking a stance on Israeli politics.
Speaking at Sunday’s Haaretz conference at JW3, Davis, a former CEO of the Conservative Party, noted:”The right wing of Diaspora communities feel entitled and enabled to engage and be part of the Israeli social and political setup.”
Appearing at a panel event titled Diaspora Jews and Israel, which was chaired by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting’s Daniella Peled, Davis said it was “entirely right” that right-wing diaspora leaders to “feel entirely vested and enabled to engage and be part of the Israeli social and political setup.”
He added “they have basically joined forces with the political right in Israel.”
But the ex-JLC leader then said:”When people like me want to speak about peaceful settlement with the Palestinians, fairness in society, I’m looked upon as if I’m a complete idiot or I’m speaking stuff which is inappropriate to be speaking.”
“Israel’s existential threat is entirely internal and not eternal,” he added. “The issue is not October 7,” he said, but “the relationship to the Palestinian people” and the fact that the “occupation is corrosive in every sense in Israeli society.”
Appearing on the same panel Jonathan Freedland, columnist at The Guardian and co-host of the Unholy podcast, said it was often the case that diaspora Jews have felt “intense guilt” in their interactions since October 7th.
“A polarisation is happening,” he said. “People look at what’s happened in Israel over the past year. They are coping by choosing a side. One is to say ‘all of this media bias’. It’s Jeremy Bowen, it’s the BBC.”
Freedland said “the hardest position” to take was one that “thinks two things at once”…”there are appalling things going on in Israel right now, but that doesn’t mean this country, unique among the countries of the world, should stop existing.”
Frreland also said of disaora Jews; “The fact that we are not sitting in a shelter during missile strikes, our distance, gives us a privilege to speak with a cooler head and say the country is on the wrong path.”
Dr. Ayala Panievsky, a research fellow at the City University and University of Cambridge, said it was clear that the “Jewish diaspora is pretty low on the agenda” of Israelis at the moment for obvious reasons.
She also said the surge in antisemitism was being “framed by political forces” in Israel as a way to evade accountability by claiming “the whole world is against us.”
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