Vivien Duffield: I’ll be more ‘choosy’ in backing Israel after ‘apartheid’ law
search

The latest Jewish News

Read this week’s digital edition

Click Here

Vivien Duffield: I’ll be more ‘choosy’ in backing Israel after ‘apartheid’ law

British Jewish philanthropist who supports education and arts projects in the Jewish state, in an uncompromising attack on Nation state law

Joe Millis is a journalist

Dame Vivien Duffield
Dame Vivien Duffield

One of Britain’s biggest donors to Israel has said she will now be more “choosy” in selecting causes as she condemned the Nation State law, saying “my Israel has died”.

Dame Vivien Duffield –  the driving force between JW3 who also backs a wide variety of education and arts projects in Israel – described the new act as an “apartheid law”, in forthright interview with Haaretz.

“To be honest ‘my’ Israel has died”, she said. “I’m a very pragmatic person, but do I like what has been going on in Israel in the past few years? No. I hate what is going on in Israel.”

She added that she was aware that “hatred is a strong word, but I detest the processes Israel is going through. In my opinion, the vote in the Knesset on the Nation State law, all the latest laws that Israel has passed, are appalling. Dreadful. The new Nation State law is apartheid, it’s South Africa.

“It’s one law for one group and another for a second group. And that’s repulsive. There are two million Arabs in Israel and obviously they have their own language. It’s impossible not to recognise [officially] the language spoken by millions of citizens.”

Dame Vivien Duffield (centre) outside JW3 with former Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks and the centre’s CEO Raymond Smonson

Describing Israel as a “wonderful place”, she believed it was now “two states. Tel Aviv is multicultural and sophisticated … it is full of nice people who never go to Jerusalem. And there are other places. There’s always been a huge difference between people and the chasm has grown recently.

“At first, everyone was poor and they all lived modestly. Today there are very rich people who live in massive houses, there are serious disconnects between the religious and the secular… And in recent years the attitude towards the Arab minority is more brutal than it has ever been.”

Dame Vivien made it clear she was “not influenced by the BDS movement, and in the past, I have donated to organisations that have fought BDS, in both Britain and Israel. And as far as I am concerned, the developments regarding [Labour leader Jeremy] Corbyn show the depth of antisemitism in Britain. However, BDS isn’t as strong as it used to be.”

Asked whether she would continue donating to Israel, her answer was “yes, but I will have to be more choosy in what I donate to. The Weizmann Institute in Rehovot [to which the foundation has donated vast sums and whose Clore Center for Biological Physics is named after her father, Sir Charles Clore], is a non-political, non-Israeli centre. It helps the whole of humanity. I expect those are the kind of projects I will support.”

Dame Vivien Duffield supports Israel through the Clore Israel Foundation of which she is chair. The foundation donates to a variety of projects related to education, science, arts, culture, sports, welfare, diverse community and arab community. Tower of David is one of the Foundation’s flagship projects.

 

It supports the Clore Scholars Programme – an annual award of scholarships for outstanding doctoral students in science from all of Israel’s universities – and helps new immigrants with job retraining programmes and employment advice.

Israel’s Nation State Law, passed on 19 July, specifies the nature of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish People. The Law was adopted by Knesset 62 in favour, 55 against and two abstentions, and as a Basic Law will need a two-thirds majority of the 120-seat Knesset to be repealed.

One of its most contentious clauses says that “the State views the development of Jewish communities as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation of such communities”, a move seen as excluding Israel’s minorities.

However, Sara Greenberg, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Adviser for World Jewish Communities, dismissed the claims that the new law represented “apartheid”.

She wrote in the Jerusalem Post, that “Israel already has basic laws to protect individual freedoms [such as Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty] and to define the various branches of government [such as Basic Law: The Knesset].

“The new basic law does not, however, contradict or supersede the basic laws that protect and guarantee individual rights of all citizens regardless of ethnicity, religion or gender… The new law does not erode a single right or protection of any minority.”

 

 

Support your Jewish community. Support your Jewish News

Thank you for helping to make Jewish News the leading source of news and opinion for the UK Jewish community. Today we're asking for your invaluable help to continue putting our community first in everything we do.

For as little as £5 a month you can help sustain the vital work we do in celebrating and standing up for Jewish life in Britain.

Jewish News holds our community together and keeps us connected. Like a synagogue, it’s where people turn to feel part of something bigger. It also proudly shows the rest of Britain the vibrancy and rich culture of modern Jewish life.

You can make a quick and easy one-off or monthly contribution of £5, £10, £20 or any other sum you’re comfortable with.

100% of your donation will help us continue celebrating our community, in all its dynamic diversity...

Engaging

Being a community platform means so much more than producing a newspaper and website. One of our proudest roles is media partnering with our invaluable charities to amplify the outstanding work they do to help us all.

Celebrating

There’s no shortage of oys in the world but Jewish News takes every opportunity to celebrate the joys too, through projects like Night of Heroes, 40 Under 40 and other compelling countdowns that make the community kvell with pride.

Pioneering

In the first collaboration between media outlets from different faiths, Jewish News worked with British Muslim TV and Church Times to produce a list of young activists leading the way on interfaith understanding.

Campaigning

Royal Mail issued a stamp honouring Holocaust hero Sir Nicholas Winton after a Jewish News campaign attracted more than 100,000 backers. Jewish Newsalso produces special editions of the paper highlighting pressing issues including mental health and Holocaust remembrance.

Easy access

In an age when news is readily accessible, Jewish News provides high-quality content free online and offline, removing any financial barriers to connecting people.

Voice of our community to wider society

The Jewish News team regularly appears on TV, radio and on the pages of the national press to comment on stories about the Jewish community. Easy access to the paper on the streets of London also means Jewish News provides an invaluable window into the community for the country at large.

We hope you agree all this is worth preserving.

read more: