The Board of Deputies rejected Smotrich yet embraces Hotovely – Why?
JVL Introduction
We missed this article a couple of months ago, but it is as pertinent as ever.
For, to some people’s surprise the Board of Deputies (BoD) of British Jews made it clear that right-wing Israeli politician, Bezalel Smotrich, was not welcome in Britain because of his “abominable views “and “hate-provoking ideology”.
All well and good – but utterly inconsistent.
As Neve Gordon points out, after taking us through a little of Smotrich’s ghastly history, he isn’t significantly different from many other Israeli politicians.
Including Tzipi Hotovely Israel’s Ambassador to Britain, with whom Smotrich shares many ideas and a platform or two of joint appearances on Israel’s far right. The BoD even invited Hotovely to address their plenary session
As Gordon argues, condemning Smotrich gives the BoD the appearance of being antiracist. Yet less than a week earlier, it had rejected the Amnesty report on Israel’s apartheid out of hand as “a preposterous slur”.
When it engages seriously with Hotovely’s politics and also with the Amnesty report Gordon will believe its anti-racism has some credibility.
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Reproduced with permission of Middle East Eye
This article was originally published by Middle East Eye on Wed 16 Feb 2022. Read the original here.
Why has the Board of Deputies decided to reject Smotrich yet embrace Hotovely?
Denouncing Smotrich might not be a reflection of a principled anti-racist stance, but rather part of a strategy to shield Israel and its racist infrastructure from criticism
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In denying that Israel is an apartheid society the Board of Deputies must be accepting that apartheid is a bad thing, which leaves it little option about condemning Smotrich. Even for people trained in failing to recognise the bleeding obvious it is a bit hard to deny that providing different maternity services for people of different races is apartheid.