Mirvis speaks only for those Jews who deny Israel’s war crimes
JVL is appalled by the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis (who represents only a portion of Britain’s Orthodox Jewish community) claiming that “this announcement [of partial suspension of UK arms licences for Israel] feeds the falsehood that Israel is in breach of International Humanitarian Law, when in fact it is going to extraordinary lengths to uphold it.”
Such blatant denial of the evidence we all see daily on our television screens, powerfully reinforced by rulings of both the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice , does no credit to him or the wider Jewish communities he purports to represent. The same is true of the Board of Deputies of British Jews whose president Philip Rosenberg has protested about the government “castigating” Israel.
JVL regards the announcement of the suspension, not cancellation, of fewer than 10% of UK arms contracts with Israel as the very least a government that claims to uphold international law can do. It is welcome that, finally, the government seems to acknowledge that Israel has no respect for international law. The limited action it has taken is the minimum we might expect now that it has recognised the “clear risk that the items [exported] might be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law”. . The logic of such a recognition needs to go further. It should mean that Britain will speedily impose further effective sanctions including an immediate ending of all arms sales to Israel and purchases of Israeli arms and the closing of all Israeli owned arms factories in Britain.
The Campaign Against the Arms Trade has disclosed, for example, that the essential British components of F-35 fighters have been excluded from the suspension, despite clear evidence of the planes being used in attacks on so called ‘safe zones’
JVL will continue to join with all others working to intensify the campaign to end British complicity with Israel’s crimes.
Please be careful of language. The last part of your sentence
“Such blatant denial of the evidence we all see daily on our television screens…. does no credit to him or the wider Jewish communities he purports to represent”
is weak and should more accurately have read
“….exposes his bigotry and thereby imperils the well-being of the wider Jewish communities he purports to represent”.
Through a combination of blind ethnonationalism, arrogance and sheer stupidity, the Chief Rabbi and other Israelist “leaders” recklessly conflate Jewish identity with political support for the genocidal Israeli state. By this impious conflation they transgress and thereby render meaningless to the wider public a key example of genuine antisemitism which they themselves promote: “Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel”.
It is hard to imagine what greater gift could be given to fascists and antisemitic conspiracy theorists across the world than this unconscionable identification with genocidal criminality.
It is up to us in JVL to combine with other Jewish antiracists to denounce these Israelist Jewish “leaders” for their unconscionable betrayal of all that is of value in the ethical traditions of the most universally admired of Jewish thinkers.
The central tenet of zionism is an entirely spurious and fictional divine “gift” of someone else’s land from the depths of time, a fiction that for reasons largely based around guilt has been swallowed by much of what is laughingly called the “civilised world”. Rationality, common sense, empathy, so many qualities tell us that to base our lives and our political decisions on such fragile, indeed nonsensical notions will not end well.
Were it just a fairy tale, it would perhaps not matter. But it’s not: it’s grim reality. From 1948, the irrationalists have conducted a campaign based simply on theft. Theft and murder. With the connivance of the British state (Balfour, and the Palestinian mandate) A nation has been deprived, often at the point of a gun, of land, of livelihood, of life, and of hope.
This so blinkered – uneducated madness on the part of Rabbi Mirvis.
Is there any mechanism for presenting JVL statement as an open letter to the Interfaith leaders that could be signed and published in the main stream media?
I’m not
Official exports to Israel of weapons or weapons parts made by British manufacturers are minuscule in comparison to the UK’s accelerated logistical military and trade support:
ARMS FOR ISRAEL SECRETLY SHIPPED THROUGH UK AIRSPACE
https://www.declassifieduk.org/arms-for-israel-secretly-shipped-through-uk-airspace/
LABOUR ‘LASER-FOCUSED’ ON ISRAEL TRADE DEAL AMID ONGOING GENOCIDE
https://www.declassifieduk.org/labour-laser-focused-on-israel-trade-deal-amid-ongoing-genocide/
AMERICA’S SECRET SPECIAL FORCES FLIGHTS TO ISRAEL FROM UK BASE ON CYPRUS
https://www.declassifieduk.org/revealed-americas-secret-special-forces-flights-to-israel-from-uk-base-on-cyprus/
This morning, when the official JVL statement on this matter appeared on Facebook, I made a comment, which I repeat here for convenience. “It doesn’t seem to me that Mirvis cares a stuff about what Moses was told by God as to what his people could or could not do. Killing? Stealing? Not telling the truth?”
I add a postscript now, this evening. I understand that Mirvis was brought up in South Africa, which was then under Apartheid. He must be quite comfortable with what is now going on in Apartheid Israel. He has been known to participate in a demonstration where a key slogan has been “Kill the Arabs”.
Mirvis was trained in a settlement, Alon Shavut I believe. As Anthony Sperrin says he took part in and encouraged the March of the Flags pogrom in East Jerusalem.
But we also have to be honest with ourselves. There is no outcry amongst British Jews. A large proportion if not a majority go along with what Mirvis has said. Jewish identity today is not what it was 90 or 80 years ago. Jews have moved to the right and all too often keep company with those whose political ancestors campaigned against them coming here.
This is Zionism allied of course to the changing socio-economic fortunes of British Jewry which is no longer based in the East End. It is playing a role that Jews played in the Middle Ages when Jews were the agents of the nobility and monarchs until the peasantry erupted in fury.
Hiring themselves out as an alibi for imperialism may be comforting but in the long run it won’t end well
I have to strongly disagree with the following sentence in the above JVL report, paragraph 3: “JVL regards the announcement of the suspension, not cancellation, of fewer than 10% of UK arms contracts with Israel as the very least a government that claims to uphold international law can do.” It’s not enough.
Every government that claims to uphold international law should have cancelled ALL arms contracts and all other relations with Israel as soon as the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court ruled that Israel was and is violating international criminal law, international humanitarian law, and international human rights law.
Moreover, no government should ever have vetoed any UN resolution condemning Israel’s multiple violations of law in the UN Security Council or General Assembly, as the UK has done alongside the US until very recently. These failings have all given Israel a green light to continue committing crimes against humanity with impunity that began long before it became a state.
Even worse, for the longer term, these failings greatly weaken the ability of the United Nations itself to enforce international law and court rulings to stop the genocide and destruction that is taking place, allow humanitarian groups to bring in and distribute food, clean water, medicines and other aid, and take a leading role in ensuring an immediate, permanent and just ceasefire — let alone enforce the peace and build reconciliation.
Lastly, I believe the JVL web team’s incredible effort to share important news with us on a daily basis, news that few others are reporting, should be shared so as to reach a far wider national readership and thus have more influence. I hope it is possible and that others will agree.
Surely it’s time for Israel-critical Jews to act collectively, in our numbers, to publicly condemn the CAA, BOD, Chief Rabbi and more, as part of a week sustained campaign to delegitimise these bodies and the people who inhabit them. Yelping protest from the sidelines is insufficient.
Thank you for the link Alfred. Sorry I don’t know your last name. I will be sharing.
When we read that Israel has dropped over 80.000 tons of Missiles and Bombs on Gaza, there isn’t any excuse for this, it’s pure Genocide/Ethnic Cleansing and it’s also happening in the West Bank but it’s not being broadcast by the MSM including the BBC.
Replying to Tony Greenstein’s comment, it is probably true that a large proportion of Jews “go along” with what Mirvis has said; yet I think Tony’s seductive marxisant explanation is false – and counterproductive because it wrongly suggests that the phenomenon is irremediable. This is important because a major rift in UK Jewish support for zionism would provide an enormous boost to the Palestinian cause.
That so many UK Jews “go along” with Mirvis’s vile bigotry is probably less related to the fact that the median socio-economic status of UK Jews has improved over the last 80 years, than to the fact that the UK financial elite, both Jewish and non-Jewish, have for more than half a century been totally committed to the Zionist colonial project. Such vocal dissidence as exists amongst UK Jews to the present horror appears to be more related to educational level (including self-education through union activism) than to proletarian status. This is scarcely surprising since in the absence of the intellectual tools to unmask ideological chicanery, and after half a century of essentialist indoctrination by Jewish ‘leaders’ supported in recent years by the fraudulent antisemitism mongering of the British élite, many UK Jews – disoriented victims of the zionist cult – face the current ideological implosion with a real existential dread.
Zionism is intellectually and morally bankrupt. For the sake of the Palestinian people, the idolators who lead its UK branch must be challenged, exposed and shamed: that is a prerequisite for the psychological liberation of their followers.