Jewish communal groups must work with the government now more than ever

None of us in positions of Jewish leadership in Greater Manchester, particularly those of us who sit on the Management Board of the Jewish Representative Council (JRC), are surprised by Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s positions on Israel, the Palestinians, the war in Gaza and the wider Middle East.

We knew this was likely to be his position. My colleague Mark Adlestone, the Jewish Representative Council Chair, made that clear in his article for Jewish News when Andy Burnham was campaigning to return to Parliament.

There was a clear pattern. The Prime Minister gave his first major interview as an MP to the Guardian on Gaza and swiftly followed this with an appearance on Gary Lineker’s podcast. He then took the seismic – and in my opinion totally wrong and dangerous – decision to place sanctions on Israeli settlement goods and services from the West Bank, alongside an arms embargo. Taking all this into account many people have said that he is “no friend of the Jews” and demanded that we, as a community, should totally cease to engage with our government.

My question is: what does that actually mean?

As Metro Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham was an enormous supporter of our Jewish communal charities, particularly those providing social care. He supported them both financially and morally on numerous occasions.

Would he have done that if he were no friend of the Jews?

Some may argue that, as a politician, he simply felt obliged to do so. However, those of us who worked closely with him saw first-hand that he genuinely valued the way our organisations operated and the way we cared for our community, both publicly and privately. These feelings have been voiced publicly again in his role as Prime Minister.

He also attended and spoke at the JRC’s communal vigil held several days after 7 October in 2023 and the one we held the day after the Heaton Park Synagogue terror attack last year.

He was also a passionate advocate for Holocaust education and was genuinely humbled in the presence of Holocaust survivors. I worked closely with him on Holocaust education projects across Greater Manchester. He has spoken publicly numerous times about the huge impact he believes The Fed’s My Voice project has had on Holocaust education and remembrance and how important this work is. Again, would someone who was hostile towards Jews have championed Holocaust education in this way? It seems highly unlikely.

Nor should anyone be surprised by Andy Burnham’s political positions on Israel. He is a left- wing Labour politician and has probably held these views for many years. Perhaps the fact that whilst he was Metro Mayor, he only made one comment about the Gaza war – unlike his London colleague Sadiq Khan – lulled people into a false sense of security. In today’s political climate, where he must take domestic pressures from the Greens and the Muslim vote into account, he is even more likely to express them publicly, however strongly many of us may disagree with them.

As a Jewish community, we rightly argue that the actions of the State of Israel should not be conflated with British Jews. If we now adopt the position that some are advocating – that we should disengage from a Labour Government, the Labour Party or Labour-led local authorities – are we not doing exactly what we criticise others for? Are we not allowing our relationship with British politics to be determined solely by that government’s position on Israel? In doing so, we risk conflating Israel with the British Jewish community ourselves.

More importantly, we risk cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Should our social care charities stop engaging with government if doing so jeopardises funding and ultimately affects the care provided to thousands of vulnerable Jews?

Should CST stop working with the Home Office on community security funding and intelligence?

Should our communal organisations abandon the engagement that has helped secure the proscription of Palestine Action and the IRGC, legislation relating to the hate marches, the Protecting What Matters Counter-Extremism Strategy, the CPS fast-tracking antisemitism cases, and the full implementation of Lord Mann’s NHS report, alongside commitments to implement Sir David Bell’s recommendations on schools?

That same engagement has also helped secure almost £300 million in additional security funding and prevented several hate preachers from entering the UK.

None of this means we should remain silent. On the contrary, we must challenge the Prime Minister’s views in the strongest possible terms. We need to make him understand that the overwhelming majority of Jews in this country are connected to Israel through faith, family, history and culture. Israel is an integral part of Jewish identity for many British Jews and matters deeply to our community. A large majority oppose his actions on Israel, despite the vocal support of a few marginal Jewish organisations.

We also need to explain, unequivocally, that by only paying lip service to the events of 7 October, by failing to acknowledge Hamas’s agency in the war in Gaza, neglecting to highlight its deliberate use of civilians as human shields and its construction of an extensive terror tunnel network beneath residential areas, he presents an overly simplistic and one-sided narrative of the conflict.

He ignores Hamas’s refusal to disarm or relinquish power. He makes little or no mention of Iran and its proxies. Nor does he offer any realistic assessment of how Israel should have responded after 1,200 of its citizens were murdered, many more were raped and maimed, and 251 people were taken hostage into terror tunnels beneath Gaza.

He has also taken a naïve and one-sided view on the West Bank and ignored the Palestinian Authority’s Pay to Slay policy, incitement in textbooks and refusal to be a genuine partner for peace. Once again, my colleague Mark Adlestone has written powerfully about this here.

In effect, Andy Burnham’s position places responsibility for virtually everything that has happened in the region on Israel alone. Whether intentionally or not, that has consequences. It reinforces the worldview of those already predisposed to hatred and violence against Jews by suggesting that Israel alone bears responsibility while Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and others bear little or none.

That matters because those who wish to attack Jews often use precisely this narrative to justify their actions. We saw that with the terrorist who attacked Heaton Park Synagogue, shouting, “This is what happens when you kill our children,” as he attempted to force his way inside to murder more Jews.

So, does all this mean Andy Burnham is “no friend of British Jewry”?

I don’t believe the issue is that simple.

It is entirely possible for someone to care about the welfare of British Jews while simultaneously holding views on Israel that many of us fundamentally oppose. Our challenge, as communal leaders, is to navigate that complexity without abandoning relationships that continue to benefit our community in practical and tangible ways.

We must challenge where challenge is necessary. We must oppose narratives that we believe are unfair to Israel or dangerous to British Jewry. We need to make the Prime Minister see that his actions on Israel will bring danger to our door. But we must also avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

As someone who took part in the recent meeting with the Prime Minister and Angela Rayner, I am confident that our community’s leadership has both the experience and the judgement to strike that balance, and I would encourage many of my fellow British Jews to reflect carefully before concluding that total disengagement is the right path.

Raphi Bloom is the Director of Fundraising and Marketing and the My Voice Project at The Fed, a Management Board Member of the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester and a trustee of the Jewish Leadership Council.