British Jewish leaders call for rapid increase in Gaza aid
The Board of Deputies held an emergency meeting on Tuesday evening amid growing horror among British Jews at the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with children malnourished and starving and desperate parents being killed as they try to secure food for their families.
In a statement issued after the meeting, Phil Rosenberg, the board's president, said the Israeli government's recent moves to allow limited aid into Gaza in response to mounting international pressure was 'long overdue'.
He said: 'The 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.
'We 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.'
Rosenberg's statement came a month after the board took disciplinary action against 36 elected representatives who signed an open letter that was strongly critical of Israel's actions in Gaza. Five of the 36 were suspended for two years.
Before Tuesday's emergency meeting, dozens of deputies had written to the board leadership saying it must appeal to the Israeli government to 'end this suffering'. Their letter said: 'Nothing could be more damaging to the British Jewish community than staying silent in this moment.'
Last week, Marie van der Zyl, a former president of the board, wrote: 'Hunger and human suffering, on this scale, are incompatible with the core values of our faith.'
In an article in Jewish News, she called for 'urgent action to alleviate the conditions affecting civilians in Gaza'. She added: 'This is not a time for silence. It is a time for compassion.'
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 'callous indifference to starvation'.
Their letter warned that 'the Jewish people face a grave moral crisis', adding: 'We 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'.
Under the headline 'Jewish moral clarity means saying: Enough', 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.
The co-leaders of Progressive Judaism said in an open letter last Friday the 'deepening humanitarian catastrophe' in Gaza was 'not in our name, and not in line with the Judaism we teach, live and pass on'.
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Rabbi Charley Baginsky and Rabbi Josh Levy said: 'This is not just a political moment, it is a moral and religious one.'
In his statement, Rosenberg said the board supported a two-state solution but the UK government's plan to recognise a Palestinian state without a negotiated agreement 'risks putting gestures ahead of substance'.
The board's 'primary concern regarding the government's announcement is to avoid empowering or rewarding Hamas, or giving it incentives to continue evading a ceasefire'.
The statement added: 'It 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.'
The war in Gaza was taking a toll on Israeli citizens and the UK Jewish community, 'including through the unacceptable proliferation of hatred and discrimination directed at Jews in this country'.
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