OPINION: Ghosted for Gaza – British Jews left in the cold
Labour’s reassurances ring hollow as backbench pressure fuels hostility towards Israel
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza in recent weeks has refracted on all our lives. It is the issue which dare not raise its name in conversation with non-Jewish friends. They will personally challenge and even ghost you as if someone living in Anglo-Jewry could influence decision making in Jerusalem.
But the harsh rhetoric from our political leaders David Lammy and a lesser extent Keir Starmer, who has convened a special Cabinet meeting on Israel-Gaza, does hurt. Both leaders face tremendous political pressure from their backbenchers who have already humiliated Labour over welfare reforms.
I remember raising my concerns about the new intake of Labour MPs and their views on the Middle East with a leading member of the Jewish community in the days after the July 2024 election. The individual assured me, over breakfast, that the new intake had been closely vetted by Labour, and the community had nothing to fear.
Admittedly the situation on the ground and the media coverage of it has worsened since then. But the person couldn’t be more wrong about the mood among some Labour MPs and the tide of often ill-informed abhorrence which has built up against Israel.
What is really alarming now is the way in which recent events in Gaza, namely the images of emaciated children (concocted as some suggest or not), have divided our own communities. In the Kiddush in Shul last Shabbat, it was the whispered subject which people feared to raise for causing rifts with old friends.
An exasperated acquaintance, a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel, bemoaned the silence of Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis. The Chief’s own personal record of being on the side of human rights in his native South Africa and more recently when Syrian refugees crowded into Europe has been exemplary.
What is really alarming is the way in which recent events in Gaza, namely the images of emaciated children (concocted as some suggest or not), have divided our own communities
Another member, an expert on genocides, repeatedly has made the case that there is no legal or intellectual support for charging Israel. The language as used by Israel’s enemies and some media commentators (who should know better) he argues is wrong. There is no need here to rehearse the incomparable events of the Shoah and the Hutu massacres in Rwanda to make the case. Yet this academic too, clearly is disturbed by the turn of events.
A now former schoolfriend of my spouse spewed out hatred and a series of untruths about the Israel’s behaviour on Facebook verging on the anti-Semitic. My wife decided to respond with some simple facts. What followed was an abomination of anti-Semitic abuse.
Then there are the divisions in our own family. When one of my offspring decided to post his sadness about the emerging picture of a humanitarian catastrophe, the riposte from close family members on the other side of the world was uncompromising. Family Jewish upon Jewish disagreements over the Middle East inevitably cause anguish.
Israel’s approach to providing good and medical assistance is disturbing and out of keeping with the essential values of Judaism although one must recognise the IDF operates in perilous conditions.
It is hard to endorse the sentiments of the letters circulating among Masorti Rabbis and others which refer to ‘mass killings of civilians.’ Yes, there have been unacceptable levels of civilian deaths, but the word mass is imprecise. It can only provide comfort to the enemies of Judaism and Israel of which there are too many. The nightly bombardment of BBC news bulletins with damaging, often unsubstantiated, images reports about Gaza is heart rending.
The repetition does immeasurable harm to the British Jewish community and that around the world. Over the years I have developed admiration for Jeremy Bowen’s reporting from warzones and trouble spots. The calm way, however, that he regurgitates Hamas information and the harsh way he pronounces the word Jew as an occasional alternative to Israeli, is unnecessary.
There is so much naïvety in the way Israel-Palestinian issues are discussed. Recognition of Palestine has been seen by President Macron in France as putting down a marker for a peace process. Pressure on Keir Starmer, now famous for his U-turns, will encourage him to become part of the gesture politics.
One should ask leaders urging such a step what recognition of South Sudan, as a new state, has done since 2013. Latest numbers point to 400,000 deaths and displacement, to neighbour countries such as Uganda, of 4.5 million people. That is from a population of 11 million. Statehood doesn’t guarantee the start of a peace process.
Personally, I have been deeply disturbed by the reported killings which have taken place at food distribution points organised by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the charges of a man-made famine.
However terrible the rape, pillage and murder of October 7 proved, and I have personally seen the blood-stained walls and images of violated women, it doesn’t justify restricting food, water and medicine to Palestinians. As Jews we believe in a merciful G-d and is not beyond the wit of the IDF to create the necessary security corridors to let the traditional aid organisations do that stuff.
My heart bleeds most for the hostage families and the unbelievable pain they are still going through after 21-months or so of captivity. No sovereign, democratic state can find that tolerable and the battle against Hamas and its cohorts must go on.
But that doesn’t excuse forgetting the humanity of Israel. It has for decades provided maternity care to Palestinian women alongside Jewish women and provided the very best heart care to Arab children. Military goals should not erase compassion.
- Alex Brummer, City Editor, The Daily Mail
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