“You can’t keep ignoring Israel/Palestine”

My book, Judaism, Education and Social Justice , is coming out in paperback in May. If you like the sound of a challenging, academic, philosophical read about faith, education and progressive politics, this is the book for you. It’s available here with a 20% discount if you pre-order – use code GLR AT5.

Here’s today’s extract. If it whets your appetite, please be in touch (I’d love to discuss!) and share with friends and colleagues.

Some of my interviewees criticise the tendency of Jews who are involved in social activism to ignore justice issues in Israel and Palestine.

Tamar*, director of an organisation working to promote a two-state solution, notes the centrality of Israel/Palestine to most human rights and international development organisations and, in contrast, its marked absence from Jewish social justice discourse:

“What was weird about the Jewish community, which was unlike any of those other organisations, is that Israel is over in one corner and everything else like social justice is in another corner and God forbid they should mix. If you are working for Christian Aid, Oxfam etc., the Israel/Palestine thing is part of the rubric of your organisation. … It was really a sense of, okay, as Jews who are engaged in talking about social justice, can we any longer ignore this major issue of social justice? What was going on inside the only Jewish state in the world?”

In contrast, most of the activists I interviewed do connect their social justice agendas and relationships with Israel and are deeply concerned about attacks on democracy, human rights and civil society in the Jewish state.

Tamar emphasises the need for UK Jews to respond to these issues:

“How do you give a voice to people who want to be able to speak out in support of their values? And even if that sometimes means being critical, actually giving people a space where they feel comfortable doing that. Whether that is for example, being able to say actually as Jews we really have a problem with the Nation State bill [a bill designed to anchor the Jewish character of the State of Israel in law] and we think it’s going to destroy the democratic fibre of the State of Israel, or whether that is saying to the Board of Deputies , buses have just been segregated going in and out of the West Bank and surely as Jews who believe in equality and human rights we have got something to say about the fact that buses are being segregated and that keeping shtum [silent] is basically complicity in supporting it.”

While emphasising the need to support Israel in the face of attacks, Masorti rabbi Jacob* also sympathises with this position:

“So the other side of it is that Israel’s perpetrating things which are deeply unjust and inculcating a level of racism which is … well, the arson attack and murder of that baby [Ali Dawabshe was killed in an arson attack by Israel settlers on his family’s home in the West Bank village of Duma in 2017] is a symptom; it’s not just a one-off event. It has to be regarded as a symptom and an outcome of an unacceptable rhetoric, and though the acts which don’t include murder but they do include destroying people’s homes for example, or refusing to allow them to build. So there’s some of the most unjust things going on and I find that very painful, and it’s extremely difficult to know how to address these things and how to take your community with you because the other side is that it’s also true that Israel has enemies around it. It’s constantly threatened.”

*All names are pseudonyms.