After emergency meeting, pro-Israel lobby group notifies all signatories of letter expressing concern at Gaza slaughter that they face disciplinary action
Zionist lobby group the ‘Board of Deputies’ (BOD) has suspended its vice-chair of its international division for daring to sign a letter expressing concerns about Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza – and has put all thirty-five other deputies who signed it, around a tenth of its membership, on notice of disciplinary action.
The open letter, published in the Financial Times, was unsurprisingly mealy-mouthed and equivocal in its criticism of Israel, but even this milquetoast expression of concern was too much for the BOD, which says that it exists to ‘advance Israel’s security, welfare and standing’ and last month demanded control of the BBC’s output on Gaza because the BBC’s one-sided coverage is not biased enough in favour of the occupation regime.
A statement today from the BOD announcing the disciplinary action reads:
Statement from the Executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews
Following the publication of the letter by 36 Deputies in the Financial Times last week that was not representative of the Board of Deputies’ policy on Israel, the Board of Deputies today convened an extraordinary meeting of the Executive Committee to discuss the ramifications and consequences of this act.
The Board of Deputies can now confirm:
Following multiple complaints by Deputies and the public, all 36 signatories of the letter to the Financial Times are now subject to a complaints procedure in accordance with Appendix C to the Board of Deputies’ Constitution.
A further Deputy is subject to the complaints procedure for an alleged GDPR breach.
All Deputies and under-35 Observers subject to complaints procedures have been informed of the complaints made against them and the process to be adopted. The complaints procedure is likely to take at least four weeks.
All members of the Executive eligible to vote, unanimously approved a motion temporarily suspending the Vice Chair of the International Division from that role and the Executive while they remain subject to the complaints procedure, having signed the Financial Times letter and given further media interviews on it.
Board of Deputies President Phil Rosenberg said: we take alleged breaches of the Code of Conduct very seriously. I am grateful to the Constitution Committee for the speed with which they have reviewed the initial complaints, and it is right that they are now given the time and space to review the cases with due process and impartiality. The Board of Deputies is clear: only our democratically-elected Honorary Officers and authorised staff speak on behalf of the organisation.
The renegade deputies did not, of course, claim to be ‘speaking on behalf of the organisation’. Instead, they signed simply as ‘members’ of it:
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.
This is what we see: the last 18 months of heartbreaking war have shown us that the most successful way of bringing the hostages home and creating a lasting peace is through diplomacy. By the end of the first phase of the second ceasefire and hostage release deal, 135 hostages had been released through negotiation, just eight by military action, with at least three tragically killed by the Israel Defense Forces.
America, Qatar and Egypt again stood as guarantors of the release of all remaining hostages in the second phase of this deal, in return for Israel withdrawing from the Gaza Strip. A strong plan for the reconstruction of Gaza was approved and supported by the international community, to be managed by a Palestinian leadership, which would be a viable alternative to Hamas, financed by the Arab League.
At that moment, the Israeli government instead chose to break the ceasefire and return to war in Gaza with the “Itamar offensive”, so-called as it was Itamar Ben-Gvir’s condition for returning to the coalition, thus enabling the Israeli government’s budget to be passed within the tight deadline needed to avoid an election. Since then, no hostages have returned. Hundreds and hundreds more Palestinians have been killed; food, fuel and medical supplies have once again been blocked from entering Gaza; and we are back in a brutal war where the killing of 15 paramedics and their burial in a mass grave is again possible and risks being normal. Such incidents are too painful and shocking to take in, but we know in our hearts we cannot turn a blind eye or remain silent at this renewed loss of life and livelihoods, with hopes dwindling for a peaceful reconciliation and the return of the hostages.
This most extremist of Israeli governments is openly encouraging violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, strangling the Palestinian economy and building more new settlements than ever.
This extremism also targets Israeli democracy, with the independence of the judicial system again under fierce attack, the police increasingly resembling a militia and repressive laws are being advanced as provocative partisan populism is bitterly dividing Israeli society. Israel’s soul is being ripped out and we, members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, fear for the future of the Israel we love and have such close ties to.
Silence is seen as support for policies and actions that run contrary to our Jewish values. Led by the families of the hostages, hundreds of thousands of Israelis are demonstrating on the streets against the return to war by an Israeli government that has not prioritised the return of the hostages.
We stand with them. We stand against the war. We acknowledge and mourn the loss of Palestinian life. We yearn for the “day after” this conflict when reconciliation can start. As we mark the festival of freedom with so many hostages still in captivity, it is our duty, as Jews, to speak out.
Nazareth-based British journalist commented on this phenomenon of a Zionist turning on its own members for daring to dissent even a little from the ‘Israel right or wrong’ line:
So now even the body claiming to represent British Jews is smearing its own members as Jew haters for criticising Israel. What chance the rest of us?
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I must ask is it just America and Israel that are now ruling the world? How does the Board of deputies have the right to dictate what can and can’t be broadcast on the BB C? I am astonished at the amount of power this group of individuals appears to wield over Britain. How does our government allow this to happen?
Very good question, Deane. All I can suggest in answer is, well, money talks, if you get my drift…
I don’t believe the reason is money. On the contrary I believe Israel and by extension the BoD are puppets for the US, it allows the US to keep a grip on the Middle East.
Israel is a settler colonialist enterprise that helps to disrupt the political balance on the Middle East and help the US to keep its world economic and political hegemony.
The US is not longer the first economy, China is, the GDP is only one indicator and in all others China outperforms the US already.
China has not interest in supporting the settler colonialist project that is Israel. Hence as soon as the ICJ emits a judgement that Israel has committed genocide and War Crimes, Israel as we know it will be gone.
I hope sense prevail and the Jewish population now living in Israel is allow to stay put rather than expelled. However, the right of every Jew to claim is Israeli nationality and migrate to Israel would be gone and the Palestinians allowed to return or to claim Palestinian citizenship and allowed to vote in the election of the new formed State whatever its name would be.
Democracy for Some ‘Is No Democracy at All,’ Writes Mahmoud Khalil From ICE Detention
Common Dreams – Julia ConleyApr
For the second time since his abduction by immigration agents last month, former Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil published an open letter Thursday—urging the U.S. public, which has been confronted in recent days with a flood of news stories about President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign and disregard of numerous court orders, to understand that their country is “a democracy of convenience.”
Although he has spent the last several weeks in a detention facility on a remote road in Jena, Louisiana—a situation most Americans likely can’t picture themselves in—Khalil warned that his life since Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents accosted him and his pregnant wife and took him away in an unmarked vehicle illustrates a basic fact about the United States.
“Rights are granted to those who align with power,” he wrote in the letter published in The Washington Post’s Opinion section. “For the poor, for people of color, for those who resist injustice, rights are but words written on water.”
You can read Khalil’s poignant letter in full below:
It’s 3 am as I lie sleepless on a bunk bed in Jena, Louisiana, far from my wife, Noor, who will give birth to our baby in two weeks. The sound of rain hitting the metal roof masks the snoring of 70 men tossing and turning on hard mats in this detention facility run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Which ones are dreaming about reuniting with their families? Which ones are having nightmares about becoming the Trump administration’s next”administrative error”?
Last Friday, I sat in a courtroom as animmigration judge determined that the government could deport me despite my status as a legal permanent resident and despite that the government’s claims against me were baseless — much of its”evidence” lifted directly from sensationalized tabloids. The decision won’t result in immediate deportation—aspects of my case are pending in other courts.
Earlier that day, I sifted through letters from supporters. Two postage stamps displayed the American flag, one stating “liberty forever,” the other proclaiming “justice forever.” The irony is stunning, especially regarding what I’ve learned about how the administration exploits immigration law to enforce itsrepressive agenda. I think about the breakneck speed with which my case was heard and decided, running roughshod overdue process. On the flip side, I think about those I am locked up with, many of whom have been languishing for months or years waiting for their “due process.”
During Friday’s hearing, the government asserted on behalf of Secretary of State Marco Rubio that my beliefs, statements and associations compromise its “compelling” foreign policy interests. Like the thousands of students that I advocated with at Columbia—including Muslim, Jewish and Christian friends—I believe in the innate equality of all human beings. I believe in human dignity. I believe in the right of my people to look at the blue sky and not fear an impending missile.
Why should protesting Israel’s indiscriminatekilling of thousandsof innocent Palestinians result in the erosion of my constitutional rights?
My lawyers have mentioned that acase called Endo might bear on my own. Days later, in my research at a law library, I uncovered the human story behind the legal abstraction. Mitsuye Endo, a Japanese American woman incarcerated during World War II, challenged her captors and brought her case to the Supreme Court. Her victory helped secure the release of thousands of others.
The incarceration of 70,000 American citizens of Japanese descent is a reminder that rhetoric of justice and freedom obscures the reality that, all too often, America has been a democracy of convenience. Rights are granted to those who align with power. For the poor, for people of color, for those who resist injustice, rights are but words written on water. The right to free speech when it comes to Palestine has always been exceptionally weak. Even so, thecrackdown on universities andstudents reveals just how afraid the White House is of the idea of Palestine’s freedom entering the mainstream. Why else would Trump officials not only attempt to deport me but also intentionally mislead the public about who I am and what I stand for?
I pick up my copy of Viktor Frankl’s”Man’s Search for Meaning.” I feel ashamed to compare my conditions in ICE detention to Nazi concentration camps, yet, some aspects of Frankl’s experience resonate: not knowing what fate awaits me; seeing resignation and defeat in my fellow detainees. Frankl wrote from the lens of a psychologist. I wonder whetherHussam Abu Safiya, a renowned hospital director who was abducted in Gaza by Israeli occupying forces on Dec. 27 and, according to his lawyer from the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, has endured beatings, electric shocks and solitary confinement, will write about his ordeal from a medical perspective.
It’s almost 4 am. Thunder crashes. A few rows away, one man hugs a bottle of hot water in a sock for warmth. His prayer mat serves as a blanket, and his head rests on his shoes. A detainee who was praying all night finally lies down. He was caught crossing the border with his pregnant wife and has never seen his baby, now nine months old. I try to convince myself that this will not be my fate, though Friday’s ruling makes that possibility more real than I want to admit.
I write this letter as the sun rises, hoping that the suspension of my rights will raise alarm bells that yours are already in jeopardy. I hope it will inspire your outrage that the most basic human instinct, to protest shameless massacre, is being repressed by obscure laws, racist propaganda and a state terrified of an awakened public. I hope this writing will startle you into understanding that a democracy for some—a democracy of convenience—is no democracy at all. I hope it will shake you into acting before it is too late.
Because they bow down to the few
The present government allows it to happen because their Prime Minister is a self avowed Zionist (and many members of the Government are members of Labour Friends of Israel).
On the very day of his election to LOTO Starmer wrote a sycophantic letter to the Board of Deputies, can’t remember the words now but the writing was on the wall that the right of the Labour Party would continue, indeed reach new heights in their weaponisation of anti semitism.
However, it is a mystery to me too how things have reached this stage, with the State of Israel now apparently holding so much power in the world.
I believe it is a mirage, Israel is the US’s and the West puppet. Easy to be dismantle when convenient to the puppet master.
It had happened before: Spain 14th Century, the Sephardi community held great influence in the politics of all the Christian kingdoms in Spain to the point that many noble Castillian and Aragonian families married their sons to Jewish women because of their dowries. The great great grand mother of King Ferdinand of Aragon (husband of Queen Isabella was a Jew)
By the end of the 15th Century the Sephardi were expelled from Spain. Ironically, it was Sephardi money that helped Castille to defeat the Muslim kingdom of Granada and 6 months after Granada’s defeat the Spanish Jews were expelled.
The Zionist believe their economic muscle will protect them it would not. Right now Trump is expelling foreign pro-Palestine students from the Ivy league universities. This young men are called to be the next political and economic elites in their countries. More importantly, most under 25 years old US students in Ivy League Universities are pro-Palestinians, their are by default the next political and economic brokers in the US. Some of them are Jews but, Jews that are anti-Zionist.
May I suggest a quick search. Rothschild pokes Charles. Jump to images. It’s been going on for a long time.
Should have added that finger pokers dad only voted in the HoL twice. Once for the creation of the state of Israel and the other was for the pasteurisation of milk…
Great stuff nvla! “…it was Nathan Meyer Rothschild who had stated, “I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.” We have all heard of the Great Reset by now. The WEF describes it as an economic recovery plan drawn up in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The WEF has got those witchy one-liners like you’ll own nothing and be happy. The media has gaslit everyone who questioned this, calling them conspiracy theorists….”
“The other side of British royalty – what should the masses be reminded of when it comes to King Charles III? (5)”.
https://maricamicallef.com/2023/11/the-other-side-of-british-royalty-what-should-the-masses-be-reminded-of-when-it-comes-to-king-charles-iii-5/
Pity that was a still photo.
Cos I reckon it’s that school bully trick… when Brian looks down at rothchilds finger, rothschild brought his finger up to flick Brian’s snout
Would make a great gif.
Remember the past o Israel remember the past has whot you do will bring it down on your reign
From Hikma History:
History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Respect PW!
Tariq Basharat with his ‘Hikma History’ video, here, provide incisive historical analysis, love it! (fwiw, Albert Einstein (a socialist hero of mine) also referred to Israel’s 1947 “war of independence” as the “Nakba”. Many Jews living in Palestine did.). Zionism is the enemy, not Judaism.
Hamas should immediately change its name outside Palestine to “The PLO” and promote itself as an anti-zionist/anti-apartheid democratic organisation. It could then affiliate with democratic socialist and ‘green’ parties across the world against zionism’s occupation, land-theft and apartheid, not Israel per se.
It’s great to see the Zionist bastards tearing themselves apart.
More of the same – Please.
I’m not sure who I’m quoting, the BoD are dastards, bastards are only born bastards, dastards have to work at it.
Who elects them?
Who do they deputise for, and in what capacity?
Personally, I couldn’t give less of a f**k about their cabal if my life depended on it.
Oh….I said cabal…
Toffee – This page from the BoD website will answer most of your questions. 🌞
https://bod.org.uk/who-we-are/