A Tale of Three Declarations

Jewish values.

As I wrote in my last article here on Substack, ‘What Is Israel For?’ -

‘Israel, because it is a Jewish state, should definitely hold itself to a higher standard than other countries. Israel should hold itself to the standards of Judaism.’

The meaning of these standards has been exemplified by three competing declarations published since the October 7th (Simchat Torah) pogrom.

First a group of left-wing actors, writers, artists and musicians calling themselves Artists for Palestine issued a letter demanding an immediate end to Israeli attacks on Gaza, which they described as a ‘war crime’. They made no reference at all to the reason for Israel’s action. None.

They did not seek to apportion part of the blame for the October 7th pogrom on to the Israeli government for having knowingly failed to prevent it, as I have done (in my most recent Substack article). Nor did they claim that the Israeli government had actually killed its own people or that the massacre had never actually happened, as I have seen suggested in some of the more extreme corners of social media. They didn’t mention the pogrom at all.

Yes, they did mention in passing that they condemned any act of violence against civilians, but since they did not specify the horrific mass murder of some 1,500 civilians in Israel that started the latest episode in this apparently endless cycle of recrimination and violence, one has to wonder whether they consider these civilians to be victims at all, or whether they believe them to have been morally culpable in their own deaths because they were (most of them) Israeli citizens - not something these Artists would have thought about the citizens of any other country.

Clearly the signatories of this letter - some of them Jewish - do not hold themselves to the standards of Judaism, since these would require them to show equal respect for all human lives, which they evidently do not.

A few days later, partly in response to the Artists for Palestine letter, a very different group of writers, politicians and artists, many but by no means all from the political Right, issued an ‘October Declaration’ in which they said that they stood in solidarity with British Jews, referring in particular to the hostility that had been shown towards the latter since the October 7th pogrom.

As a British Jew, I share the anger of the authors of the October Declaration at the hateful anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish chants by protestors who have been taking part in the large pro-Palestinian marches and demonstrations in London on Saturday afternoons. I suspect that many of those involved in these demonstrations should be categorised as ‘useful idiots’ - a Communist phrase to denote people who think they are supporting a moral left-wing cause but are actually being manipulated to promote another project altogether.

It is for a similar reason that I refuse to allow myself to be governed by my anger at the London protests, because I know that is precisely what the instigators of this latest political crisis have intended. Just as the COVID narrative was designed to pit people against each other by playing on their fears, so the new Middle-East-war narrative is intended to turn people against each other by exploiting the emotions of anger and hate.

Divide and rule.

I am a little surprised that the authors of the October Declaration have fallen for this psychological operation, given that the lead author is Laura Dodsworth, who in 2021 published the seminal book ‘A State of Fear’ which exposed the means by which the British government deliberately weaponised fear in order to persuade the public to submit to its COVID measures. Another example of someone who has not read their own book, perhaps (a subject discussed in my first Substack article).

Unlike the Artists for Palestine, who made no reference to the murder of Israeli civilians, at least the pro-Israel October Declaration does refer to ‘the tragic deaths of many Palestinian civilians’, but it mentions them only in passing and lays the responsibility for these deaths entirely upon the actions of Hamas. In the eyes of the authors of the October Declaration, the State of Israel is as much a victim of the terrorist attack as the Israeli people, and they see no reason to colour the actions that the Israeli government has taken in response to the terrorist atrocity in the light of the possibility that it might have seen the atrocity as more of an opportunity than an outrage.

I know that my life would be much easier if I sided with the majority of British Jews who see the pogrom as a consequence of Israeli state failure rather than of Israeli state complicity, but it is a principle of Judaism that one should follow one’s conscience regardless of the consequences (Tzedek).

It’s also a commandment (mitzvah) from the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) that you should reprove your neighbour for wrongdoing or else you too will bear his sin (Leviticus 19:17).

Following two one-sided declarations which I fear may have contributed more fuel than water to the flames, now has come along third declaration which says what surely needs to be stated if we are ever to see a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Entitled ‘Our Jewish Values’, it reflects the perspective of several rabbis from different denominations.

I have been waiting a long time to see a public statement of Jewish ethical principles as they relate to current political events. It is the reason why I founded my campaign group Jews For Justice two years ago, to uphold Jewish values in the face of the subservience of the majority of Jews (including most rabbis) to state tyranny imposed under the pretext of combating the spread of an upper-respiratory tract infection.

For the last two years I have felt that I - and the other members of my Jews For Justice group - have been fighting for true Jewish principles pretty much on our own, and now at this latest time of crisis we find that at last we have company.

Sure, the authors of Our Jewish Values have no more understanding of psychological warfare operations than do the authors of the October Declaration, but they do recognise that all acts of violence take us a step further away from a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are also well aware of the diversity of opinion among British Jews, so they have made a general and universal statement of Jewish principles and left it to others to decide how to apply them in practice.

They state that Judaism places a supreme value on the pursuit of peace, which necessarily requires compromise; and that all lives are of value because were are all created in the image of G_d - not a conclusion one could easily have drawn from the two earlier declarations.

They also remind us of the complexity of the issues at hand. I would say from my own perspective that the more one learns about the background to the present crisis, the less clear and more complex the picture becomes.

I actually think the rabbis could have gone further in describing the Jewish values that should be influencing our response to the present crisis - such as the Jewish understanding of the meaning of ‘justice’, which is not the same as the Anglo-Saxon one - but they do say they will be adding to their declaration, and it’s certainly a start in the right direction.

I would recommend everyone to read Our Jewish Values and I would urge all Jews to sign it, as I have done.

Once one places the principles of Judaism at the forefront of one’s thinking, it becomes easier to answer some of the big questions of the moment.

For example, the question is often posed, both by Jews and by right-wing non-Jewish commentators, ‘Why should it always be the Jews who are the ones who are expected to show forbearance?’ I think the best answer is that such an attitude reflects the values of Judaism.

And to those people who say that they have compared the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza with the actions of Hamas in Israel, and have found the Israeli government much less culpable, I would respond that no-one should ever be comparing the conduct of a government which should be acting according to Jewish ethical principles with the behaviour of depraved murderers: it should not be possible to make any such comparison.

I cannot avoid ending an article for a second time in succession by citing the commandment expressed in Exodus 23:9: ‘And a stranger shalt thou not oppress; for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.’

Artists for Palestine are at https://artistsforpalestine.org.uk

The October Declaration is at https://britishfriendsofisrael.org

Our Jewish Values is at https://www.ourjewishvalues.org.uk