The UK\u2019s largest Jewish organisation has called for a \u201crapid, uninhibited, and sustained increase in aid through all available channels\u201d in Gaza in a rare implicit criticism of the Israeli government.<\/p>\n
The Board of Deputies held an emergency meeting on Tuesday evening amid growing horror among British Jews at the humanitarian crisis in Gaza<\/a>, with children malnourished and starving and desperate parents being killed as they try to secure food for their families.<\/p>\n In a statement issued after the meeting, Phil Rosenberg, the board\u2019s president, said the Israeli government\u2019s recent moves to allow limited aid into Gaza in response to mounting international pressure was \u201clong overdue\u201d.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cThe suffering we are witnessing in the Gaza Strip demands a response. The new measures announced by Israeli authorities to address the humanitarian crisis are essential if long overdue.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to see a rapid, uninhibited, and sustained increase in aid through all available channels, and we need to see all agencies cooperating in this endeavour. As we have been saying for months, food must not be used as a weapon of war, by any side in this conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n Rosenberg\u2019s statement came a month after the board took disciplinary action against 36 elected representatives<\/a> who signed an open letter<\/a> that was strongly critical of Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza. Five of the 36 were suspended for two years.<\/p>\n Before Tuesday\u2019s emergency meeting, dozens of deputies had written to the board leadership saying it must appeal to the Israeli government to \u201cend this suffering\u201d. Their letter said: \u201cNothing could be more damaging to the British Jewish community than staying silent in this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, Marie van der Zyl, a former president of the board, wrote: \u201cHunger and human suffering, on this scale, are incompatible with the core values of our faith.\u201d<\/p>\n In an article in Jewish News<\/a>, she called for \u201curgent action to alleviate the conditions affecting civilians in Gaza\u201d. She added: \u201cThis is not a time for silence. It is a time for compassion.\u201d<\/p>\n More than 400 rabbis from around the world, including Jonathan Wittenberg, the leader of Masorti Jews in the UK, and other leading UK rabbis, called on the Israeli government to cease its \u201ccallous indifference to starvation\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n Their letter warned that \u201cthe Jewish people face a grave moral crisis\u201d, adding: \u201cWe cannot condone the mass killings of civilians, including a great many women, children, and elderly, or the use of starvation as a weapon of war\u201d.<\/p>\n Under the headline \u201cJewish moral clarity means saying: Enough<\/a>\u201d, an editorial last week in the Jewish News, one of the two main Jewish news outlets in the UK, said the war in Gaza must end now.<\/p>\n The co-leaders of Progressive Judaism said in an open letter<\/a> last Friday the \u201cdeepening humanitarian catastrophe\u201d in Gaza was \u201cnot in our name, and not in line with the Judaism we teach, live and pass on\u201d.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Rabbi Charley Baginsky and Rabbi Josh Levy said: \u201cThis is not just a political moment, it is a moral and religious one.\u201d<\/p>\n In his statement, Rosenberg said the board supported a two-state solution but the UK government\u2019s plan to recognise a Palestinian state without a negotiated agreement \u201crisks putting gestures ahead of substance\u201d.<\/p>\n The board\u2019s \u201cprimary concern regarding the government\u2019s announcement is to avoid empowering or rewarding Hamas, or giving it incentives to continue evading a ceasefire\u201d.<\/p>\n The statement added: \u201cIt is clear that our community overwhelmingly rejects the appalling rhetoric and unacceptable proposals from some Israeli ministers, particularly in relation to the forced displacement of Gazans, as well as the intolerable violence perpetrated by extremist settlers in the West Bank, all of which are in complete contradiction to our values.\u201d<\/p>\n The war in Gaza was taking a toll on Israeli citizens and the UK Jewish community, \u201cincluding through the unacceptable proliferation of hatred and discrimination directed at Jews in this country\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK\u2019s largest Jewish organisation has called for a \u201crapid, uninhibited, and sustained increase in aid through all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-303400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114941153948289159","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}