Latest news with #BoardofDeputiesofBritishJews
Middle East Eye
28-05-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Board of Deputies member quits in protest over Gaza ‘genocidal assault'
A member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews has resigned over what he described as the failure of its leaders to explicitly criticise 'the Israeli government's ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza'. Speaking at a board meeting on Sunday, Daniel Grossman said he had lost confidence in the leadership of the board, a representative body made up of elected members from synagogues and Jewish organisations that describes itself as 'the voice of the British Jewish Community'. He said recent meetings between board leaders and Israeli ministers and officials, including foreign minister Gideon Saar, were 'both untenable and morally bankrupt'. Grossman, a deputy for the Union of Jewish Students who is currently studying at the University of Bristol, said board leaders had 'both failed to act ethically and also to represent the increasing diversity of opinion' over Gaza within Jewish communities. He said that Israeli opposition figures including Yair Golan, the main opposition leader, and Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, were publicly recognising that atrocities are being committed. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters 'What good are private words in plenaries when you continue to meet with Israeli government officials and oppose any real action to stop their crimes?' he said. 'How many more Palestinians have to be killed and Israeli hostages sacrificed before the board speaks out against Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza?' As part of his work for the board, Grossman was a member of its international division and co-chaired a two-state solution working group. Critical letter Grossman was among 36 board members who last month signed a letter published in the Financial Times in which they strongly condemned Israel's renewed assault on the Palestinian enclave and its withholding of food and aid which has left hundreds of thousands on the brink of starvation. 'The inclination to avert our eyes is strong, as what is happening is unbearable, but our Jewish values compel us to stand up and to speak out,' they wrote. Leaders of the board accused the 36 deputies of 'misrepresenting our community', launched disciplinary proceedings against them, and suspended an executive committee member who had signed the letter. More than 800 lawyers and judges call on UK to sanction Israel over Gaza war Read More » Writing on social media shortly after publication of the letter following a meeting with Saar in London, Board President Phil Rosenberg wrote: 'Jewish leadership is standing up for peace & security in Israel & the Middle East… Unity is strength. Division serves only our enemies.' But other prominent British Jewish figures have continued to speak up in support of the dissident deputies, and in condemnation of the Israeli government's actions. In another letter to the Financial Times, 30 rabbis from Reformist and Liberal synagogues said they too could 'no longer turn a blind eye or remain silent'. Last week, Laura Janner-Klausner, the former senior rabbi for Reform Judaism, told Middle East Eye: 'There are many mainstream Jews who are seeing this as a complete moral and humanitarian disaster.' And on Sunday, Jonathan Wittenberg, the senior rabbi for Masorti Judaism, wrote that Israel's conduct of its assault on Gaza and withholding of aid 'contradicts what we have painfully learned from our long history as victims of persecution and mass murder'. Grossman's resignation was welcomed on Tuesday by Naa'mod, a British Jewish organisation that opposes Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories and is critical of the board. 'We commend his decision to resign - it was principled, urgent, and necessary,' it said in a statement on social media. Sunday's Board of Deputies meeting followed a visit to Jerusalem last week by a delegation including Rosenberg and Michael Wegier, the board's chief executive, to attend a meeting of the World Jewish Congress, an international organisation representing Jewish communities around the world. While there, Rosenberg and Wegier also met with Lapid and Ayman Odeh, the leader of the Palestinian-Israeli Hadash party, as well as foreign ministry officials. Addressing Sunday's meeting, Rosenberg described the Board of Deputies as a 'proudly Zionist organisation'. Acknowledging criticism of the Israeli government's conduct of the war, Rosenberg said that 'food should not be used as a weapon of war' and said board leaders had 'been clear to Israeli leaders that we need to see aid flowing into Gaza'. He condemned settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and described far-right government ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir as 'a stain on the Zionist project'. 'Let me be clear: We strongly oppose rhetoric and actions aimed at the permanent forced displacement of populations, including the civilian population of Gaza,' he said. But Rosenberg added that it had been a mistake for the British government to suspend free trade talks with Israel. The board has previously criticised the suspension of some arms export licences to Israel, and the withdrawal by the current Labour government of the objection against the prosecution of Israeli leaders at the International Criminal Court raised by the previous UK government. In a statement published on Tuesday by Naa'mod, Grossman said: 'It is imperative the board gains the courage to act as a truly representative and moral body for all of British Jewry.'
Daily Mirror
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Gary Lineker quits BBC live - MOTD host's reason for exit with announcement due
Gary Lineker had been due to leave the BBC after the 2026 World Cup but the long-standing Match of the Day host appears ready to bring an early end to his time with the broadcaster. Lineker, 64, has quit amid the backlash to a social media post on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The former England striker has been Match of the Day's longest-serving presenter, having first anchored the highlights show in 1999. He had been due to take charge of his final episode of the show on the final day of the current Premier League season, though he had signed a contract extension to continue working on live football coverage. Lineker, who hosted FA Cup final coverage on Saturday, was due to be the face of the BBC's coverage of the competition next season. He had been due to keep going until after the 2026 World Cup, held in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The offending post, which Lineker deleted, saw him share a post criticising Israel's actions in Gaza. The post included a rat emoji, which has been described as "egregious" by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and brought accusations of antisemitism against the ex-footballer. A statement from Lineker himself is expected later today. In the meantime, Mirror Football will have the latest updates from the story right here... 'Gary accepted his position at the BBC was untenable and he will not be hosting next year's World Cup," a source told The Mirror. 'He offered to step down at the end of the season and did not want the BBC – an organisation he still holds in the highest of esteem – dragged into any further controversy. 'He remains devastated by the recent turn of events and is deeply regretful about how his post was interpreted. 'His last Match of the Day will air on Sunday now and he won't be back. "Gary will continue to speak out about issues that he believes to be wrong. 'He will be able to comment freely without the shackles of the nonpartisan BBC and has already had a lot of TV offers to mull over. And, of course, he will be cheering on England like any other fan next summer.' Hello and welcome to Mirror Football's live coverage of Gary Lineker's BBC exit. The Match of the Day host is expected to issue an announcement on his future later today. The upshot is he is not expected to remain with the broadcaster for its coverage of the 2026 World Cup next summer.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Gary Lineker interview: If you are silent on Gaza, you are complicit
The key event in Gary Lineker's week should have been presenting Saturday's FA Cup final on the BBC, a week before he hosts Match of the Day for the last time. Instead he has found himself fighting for his reputation and career after sharing a pro-Palestine post on his Instagram account that featured a rat emoji historically used as an anti-Semitic slur. The backlash was swift; the Board of Deputies of British Jews called for him to be sacked rather than leave on his own terms, there was uproar among Jewish staff at the BBC and Lineker himself offered an unprecedented and unreserved apology after claiming ignorance over the symbol's meaning. When I met Lineker last Friday such a furore may have seemed unlikely but not impossible – after all, in the past few months he has reposted increasingly incendiary verdicts on the Israel-Hamas war. What Lineker has not done, until now, is explain why he acts as he does, making public comments on Gaza when many would argue he is ill-informed. This is his reason. 'We're seeing it live-streamed into our own phones – I've never seen that before,' he says when we meet at the Football Business Awards (where he collected an award for outstanding contribution to the game) three days before reposting the video featuring the rat emoji. 'It's beyond depraved, what they're going through, unimaginable. I've got kids. They're grown-up now, but every day people are losing their children, their brothers and sisters. I don't know how the world thinks this is OK. We still seem to be on the side of the people who are doing this. We're still supplying arms. And you think, 'Wow, how?' The vast majority of people see it for what it is now. Unfortunately, the Government's not doing much about it. It comes down to power and money. But what we're allowing to happen is beyond the pale.' Lineker risks being portrayed as having selective sensitivity, only reacting to one side of the story. For example, on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an attack of psychopathic brutality that ended in 1,141 deaths, the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, he apparently had nothing to say, his only tweet declaring: 'Super Spurs are top of the league.' Journalist Nicole Lampert later confronted him in person over this, reflecting that his failure to address the dozens of Israeli hostages in Gaza left her 'shaking with anger'. Some 19 months on from those atrocities, he is still in no mood to adjust the balance of his commentary. 'It has been completely out of proportion to what happened,' he says of the Israeli response. 'Obviously October 7 was awful, but it's very important to know your history and to study the massacres that happened prior to this, many of them against the Palestinian people. Yes, Israelis have a right to defend themselves. But it appears that Palestinians don't – and that is where it's wrong. Palestinians are caged in this outdoor prison in Gaza, and now it's an outdoor prison that they're bombing. Israel say it's self-defence, but really? Self-defence against what now? Yes, I understand that they needed to avenge, but I don't think they've helped their own hostage situation at all. People say it's a complex issue, but I don't think it is. It's inevitable that the Israeli occupation was going to cause massive problems, and I just feel for the Palestinians.' When I stress to him that he is bound to spark a backlash with these remarks, he shoots back: 'I don't really care about the backlash. I care about doing the right thing, or what I think is the right thing. Some people can disagree, that's fine. But I have to look at myself in the mirror. I think if you're silent on these issues, you're almost complicit.' What about the fury he had already unleashed within the Jewish community, even before this week? 'Well, even some of their people have changed lately,' Lineker says. 'The real heroes are the Jews who have spoken out against it. It's the Israeli government I'm critical of, not Jewish people. Most Jewish people recognise this for what it is now, that it's wrong.' And for Lineker, the subject of right and wrong is simpler than it may be for others. 'You either have empathy or you don't,' he says. 'It's more important now than ever before that people raise their voices, because we live in dangerous times. I'll definitely continue pushing humanitarian issues. Sometimes they cross over with politics, although I've never been overly loud with my politics. Nobody knows who I vote for – I've voted for lots of different parties over many years. You feel sometimes like you're fairly helpless, like you can't really do anything. But you have to live with yourself. That's the important thing.' This sharp binary means he is sometimes seen, I put it to him, as posturing as some moral arbiter. 'Oh, that's the Daily Mail,' he snorts derisively. 'What do they know about morality?' Well, James O'Brien, the radio presenter and fellow high priest of London's bleeding-heart liberals, christened his book How to be Right. 'James can speak for himself,' he grins. 'And he does it very well.' Is Lineker confident he absorbs the fullest range of beliefs, even those that contradict his own? 'Definitely. That's very important, when all we hear now is one side or the other shouting loudly. Most of us are somewhere in the centre.' There is little doubt that the latest furore will overshadow Lineker's exit from Match of the Day, a show he has helmed since 1999. Perfecting this laconic shtick has made him comfortably the BBC's highest earner, on £1.35 million a year, even if he is not quite sure how. At the age of 64 he has negotiated a curious half-in, half-out epilogue to his BBC career, which involves him relinquishing MotD but staying on as host for next season's FA Cup and the 2026 World Cup. But is he truly happy about departing at all? He stirred much intrigue when, speaking to the BBC's Amol Rajan last month, he said people within the organisation ' wanted me to leave'. Who did he mean? Was he referring here to Alex Kay-Jelski, the BBC's director of sport? Unlike his predecessor Barbara Slater – so gushing in her praise of Lineker that she told MPs in 2023: 'We love Gary and Gary loves the BBC' – Kay-Jelski, former editor-in-chief of The Athletic, has offered no such lavish endorsement of the star man since his appointment in April last year. Has it seemed a dramatic change of regime? 'I think it has, and that's what I was alluding to,' Lineker confirms. 'He has his reasons, he wants to change Match of the Day a bit. Ultimately, I don't think they will, because I don't see how you move a highlights show away from being about highlights. I think he wants more journalists – he has come from that background. He has got no television experience.' At one stage, a radical career change was mooted by his employers. 'It's funny, when I was talking to the Beeb and they told me they didn't want me to do another three years, they said, 'We think you could do a cooking show',' he recalls, rolling his eyes. 'Are you kidding? I thought it was hilarious.' Lineker is desperate to protect the brand he has so meticulously created. When I ask if MotD should retain the elements he has introduced – the blokeishness, the badinage with his fellow pundits, the folksy asides to the camera – he says, with a wry chuckle: 'I suspect, for all the thoughts of change, that the show will pretty much stay as it is. That's my gut feeling. I think they'd be mad, absolutely mad, to mess around with Match of the Day. It has taken years and years to get the right balance. I would be nervous if they fiddled with it too much. It's that old adage, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'.' While amiable to the point of insouciance, Lineker has an acute sense of his own worth. Over 26 years, he has turned MotD into a ratings juggernaut, watched by more than five million viewers across BBC One and iPlayer. 'The sort of numbers,' he says, proudly, 'of which Sky would dream.' This explains why Lineker, protecting the sense of leaving on a high, will not countenance any equivalent role beyond his final major tournament next summer. 'Once I've done the World Cup, I won't be a football presenter again,' he reveals. 'I'll focus more on my podcast empire.' He emphasises the word 'empire', relishing his position as undisputed doyen of digital audio. Lineker's production company, Goalhanger Podcasts, boasted more than 400 million downloads last year, while live shows at the Royal Albert Hall with The Rest Is Politics hosts Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell sell out within minutes. As he enters his imperial phase, Lineker has acquired a reach so vast that it appears sometimes as if he is dictating the news agenda all by himself. On The Rest Is Football, where he has belied his squeaky-clean BBC image with the odd profanity, he described England's performance against Denmark last June as 's--t'. The remark dominated headlines for a week, stirring even captain Harry Kane to defend his team's honour in the face of ex-player critics. 'There's an obsession at one or two newspapers with me, which I've always found slightly bizarre,' he says. 'But they were giving us incredible publicity, so I'll be eternally grateful.' Lineker is not quite sure what he will do next, or where he will go. He discusses a wish to travel to India to watch cricket, and to return to Mexico for the first time since the World Cup in 1986, where he won the Golden Boot for England. He also promises to resist any inclination to move into the political sphere. 'I won't get involved in politics, I never really have. Apart from the Brexit vote, because I did a lot of research on that and decided, 'This could be worse than we think'. I never back a government. I might criticise Sir Keir Starmer on Israel. But nobody knows my politics.' One other area where Lineker has been noticeably silent is a subject where centrist-dad equivocations are difficult: men masquerading in sport as women. This has been front-page news in his own realm, with the Football Association forced this month to ban males from all levels of the female game, honouring the Supreme Court's ruling that the definition of a woman was based on biological sex. And yet Lineker has consistently swerved it. When his podcast, The Rest Is Football, tried a public question-and-answer experiment last November, Martina Navratilova, Sharron Davies and hundreds of other women asked him what he thought of the FA banning a teenager – revealed by The Telegraph last weekend as Cerys Vaughan – for asking a transgender opponent: 'Are you a man?' Even under pressure from a nine-time Wimbledon singles champion and a celebrated Olympic swimmer, he neglected to engage. Why? 'Ugh,' he sighs, slumping so far forward in his chair he nearly hits the table. 'You can't cover that subject properly in a post. It's too nuanced. I don't actually think, in terms of sport, that it will ever be a real issue. Sport, as it's already doing, will sort it out and work out rules. Like they did in boxing, when they realised they couldn't have heavyweights against little fellas.' Is it not blindingly obvious, however, that sport will not simply 'sort it out'? It has taken many determined female campaigners a punishingly long time to undo the damage of gender ideology, compelling sports to prioritise fairness for women rather than vacuous mantras about inclusion. Amid broad acceptance that the rights of half the population should trump the view of a small, vocal minority of men that they are entitled to colonise women's sport, Lineker makes it clear where his sympathies lie. 'They're some of the most persecuted on the planet, trans people. You've got to be very careful not to have bigoted views on that. I genuinely feel really badly for trans people. Imagine going through what they have to go through in life. Is there even any issue? It's the same swimmer, the same weightlifter, the same boxer. They're the only people I ever see.' Lineker's perspective here is myopic. The three examples he raises – American swimmer Lia Thomas, New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, and Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, not transgender but permitted to win gold as a woman at the Paris Olympics despite sex tests indicating the presence of male chromosomes – are indeed well-publicised. But they are far from the only ones he could cite, with a recent report by Reem Alsalem, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, documenting how governing bodies' failures to act had led to more than 600 female athletes around the world losing 890 medals in 29 different sports. In his eyes, only cases at elite level matter. 'We've got the Women's Euros in the summer. Let's see if there's one issue – I don't think there is. Are you telling me that there are many people who pretend to be women just so they're going to be good at sport?' The desire of some males to receive affirmation as female can be a powerful motivating force, I argue. 'It's so complex,' Lineker says. 'I see both sides to a degree.' An irony of Lineker's latest storm is that he had been talking to me days before about how he had moderated his posts on Twitter/X, previously his platform of choice, in response to the coarsening of the platform under the stewardship of Elon Musk. 'I was open-minded at the start,' he says. 'But now it's like you've got Bond villains in charge of America.' You wonder if Lineker will be so bold as to say that for his swansong, when he leads the BBC's coverage of the World Cup from the US. 'Yes,' he says. 'If they let me in.' He has form, after all: at the last tournament in Qatar, in 2022, he opened with a monologue decrying the Gulf state's draconian laws on homosexuality and its record of human rights abuses. The one imponderable, after the firestorm he has ignited this week over his Gaza post, is whether he will still be in position to deliver the speech he intends. Either way, Lineker seems implacably committed to going down in flames. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Middle East Eye
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Rabbis call on UK to step up pressure on Israel to end Gaza blockade
Prominent rabbis in the UK have launched a campaign calling on the British government to step up pressure on Israel to lift its two-month total blockade preventing food and humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. Demanding 'an end to starvation in Gaza', the rabbis accuse the Israeli government of using the denial of food as a 'tool of warfare', and of abandoning Israelis still being held hostage by Hamas. The SOS - Sending our Selfies - campaign is being led by Laura Janner-Klausner, the former senior rabbi for Reform Judaism, and Warren Elf, a rabbi at Southend and District Reform Synagogue. They are calling on rabbis and religious leaders from other faiths, and others who choose to take part, to send messages to British Foreign Secretary David Lammy every Tuesday at 6pm with photographs of themselves citing a line of scripture in English, Hebrew or Arabic from the Book of Psalms which reads: 'To save their souls from death, and to keep them alive in famine'. Both Janner-Klausner and Elf are highly regarded figures who are regularly involved in interfaith and community cohesion work. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters In 2019, Elf was awarded an MBE in recognition of his former role as a community leader in Manchester, where he earned praise for reassuring communities in the aftermath of the deadly 2017 Manchester Arena bombing. In a statement, the rabbis said: 'We call on the Foreign Secretary to convey to the British and Israeli governments that there are religious leaders here who reject the cruelty of the denial of food and humanitarian aid to Gaza as a tool of warfare: and who are distraught at the desertion of the hostages there. This blockade must be broken.' Speaking to Middle East Eye, Janner-Klausner said she hoped the campaign would convey the message that a majority of British Jews opposed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the resumption of the war in Gaza, and the denial of food and aid to Palestinians. She said there was a growing sense of urgency felt by many in Jewish communities of the need to express their outrage at the situation. 'There are many mainstream Jews who are seeing this as a complete moral and humanitarian disaster,' she said. 'What matters is that the Foreign Secretary and his team see what he already knows, which is that the Jewish community is not represented by the voice that says there is unity and we must all support the Israeli government, whatever it does'. UK: Board of Deputies of British Jews suspends vice-chair for Gaza protest letter Read More » The campaign comes after the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which describes itself as 'the voice of the British Jewish community', last month launched disciplinary action against 36 members who condemned the Israeli government's conduct of the war in a letter published in the Financial Times. That was followed by a further letter to the newspaper by rabbis mostly from Reform and Liberal Judaism backgrounds, voicing support for the dissident deputies and also condemning the war. Support for the deputies has also come from prominent members of Israel's anti-government protest movement, including Ami Ayalon, the former head of the Shin Bet intelligence agency. Janner-Klausner said the SOS campaign had so far been backed by a number of rabbis from the Reform and Liberal Judaism movements - which are currently in the process of a proposed merger into a single movement known as Progressive Judaism - but said she hoped others from other backgrounds would join them. 'What is happening in Gaza is completely against core democratic values and what I would call Jewish values that we are all made equal in the sight of God,' she said. 'My Orthodox rabbinic colleagues are people of integrity and I'm hoping that they will step up.' Israeli forces continued their assault on Gaza on Wednesday with at least 60 people killed in overnight strikes, according to local media reports. More than 52,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry, since the start of the war in October 2023, following the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel in which about 1,200 people were killed and hundreds taken hostage. On Tuesday, an international hunger monitor used by United Nations agencies warned that Gaza was on the brink of famine and said about half a million people were at risk of imminent starvation.
Times
28-04-2025
- Politics
- Times
I'll always be an instinctive Zionist but I have a limit
Once again, I find myself standing firmly with the Jews. I am one of them, after all, even though I go to church on Sundays (if you haven't read the column, google it, because I'm not explaining that one again) and so it is only right and proper that I should. Indeed, I find myself standing foursquare alongside not only the Jews but the Board of Deputies of British Jews itself. Although not with all of them. Or, indeed, most of them. The ones with whom I find myself, well, sympathising if not quite standing (I try not to stand for things, as far as possible, but only to write about them) are the 36 elected deputies (roughly 10 per cent of the total) who
