Why we need Jewish flavoured BDS Ice Cream

My latest blog post: WHY WE NEED JEWISH FLAVOURED BDS ICE CREAM (including free recipe for how to make it!)

Read it here

Extract:

"The good news for the rising generation is that once you scrape off the veneer of 21st century Zionism, it’s not that difficult to reframe Judaism and Jewish identity as pro-BDS. After all, Judaism talks unswervingly, incessantly, and unendingly about justice. Our obligations towards the ‘stranger’ the ‘widow’ the ‘orphan’, those most vulnerable, marginalised and powerless within society, have been placed front and centre of Jewish concern for millennia. It’s all there, it stares us in the face, it calls out to us, it makes demands of us. Or at least it used to. And it can do again."

A Jew in Solidarity with Palestine

 

On Friday 14 May I was invited to speak at a solidarity rally for Palestine organised by Lancaster Friends of Palestine in the North West of England. Around 250 gathered to hear inspiring speeches from Muslim and Palestinian students at the university and their allies. 

Follow this link to read the short speech I gave 'A Jew in Solidarity with Palestine' 

Here's the opening:

I stand with you tonight as a Jewish Student at Lancaster University who is in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

I stand here tonight because what’s happening to the Palestinian people is a crime.

And I stand here tonight to honour the resistance, courage and steadfastness of the Palestinian people.

Despite what you may think, I am not a lone Jewish voice.

Read the speech here

Just as we need it most, the UK cracks down on BDS

 My latest available at Patheos

You may have missed it, as it was buried in the detail, but in the Queen's Speech this week, Boris Johnson's government set out its plans to ban BDS campaigns by any public funded body. After what we are seeing this week across Israel/Palestine, the need for a global, peaceful campaign for justice and equality could not be more obvious. As well as reflecting on how we've reached this point in the UK, I make the Jewish case for supporting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions in support of equality and human rights for the Palestinian people.

 
Here's an extract:

"The upshot is that when it comes to Israel/Palestine it’s become a zero sum game. It’s impossible to show concern about antisemitism and the security of Jewish communities while also advocating for Palestinian liberation in the way Palestinians have expressly asked the world to show its solidarity. This frustrating and self-defeating dynamic creates a Jewish road block on the path to Palestinian equality while at the same time impoverishing Jewish identity. According to the rhetoric in play, to be Palestinian, or in Palestinian solidarity, is to be antisemitic. While to be Jewish, or in Jewish solidarity, is to uphold or deny institutional, state sponsored discrimination. Thanks but no thanks. This is not the Palestinian people, nor the Jewish people. Please can we get that straight as a matter of urgency."

Read the full blogpost here

We need to decolonise our understanding of antisemitism

 My latest post at Patheos

Here are some extracts:

If the IHRA illustrations are now considered so central to defining antisemitism, then by implication they must also define what it is to be Jewish.

By that reckoning, to be Jewish is to deny the possibility that Zionism has played out in racist ways, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And to be Jewish is to believe that the State of Israel is a democratic nation like any other, despite Israel’s own constitutional laws defining it as the nation state of the Jewish people rather than the state of all its citizens. And that’s before we get to the not insignificant fact of an occupation of Palestinian land which has lasted for most of the State’s entire history.

So to be Jewish, according to the IHRA, is to deny the truth, ignore reality, and defend the indefensible. Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t need or want this colonised version of Jewish identity to define me or what it is to be Jewish. And nor should anyone else.

There’s no point in a definition of antisemitism which embeds within it another form of racism. So we urgently need to de-politicise and decolonise our formulation of anti-Jewish racism. To achieve that we need to decolonise mainstream modern Jewish identity too.

So, if you want a constructive and unifying debate about antisemitism; if you want to decolonise Jewish identity; and if you want to chart a route to a reconciled Israel/Palestine, then for the love of God, ditch the IHRA.

Read the full post at Patheos 

B’Tselem, apartheid, and correcting the ethical grammar on Israel/Palestine

My latest blog is published at Patheos

Here's an extract: 

The use of the word ‘apartheid’ will challenge Jewish intuitional thinking around the world (whether those institutions publically acknowledged it or not) and cause dilemmas across the entire spectrum of Zionist support (Jewish and non-Jewish) from hawks to liberals to progressives.

It also has the potential to shift global media reporting on Israel; undermine the adoption of the contentious IHRA definition of antisemitism; and give the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) a welcome boost of legitimacy.

Read the full post here.

 

Hanukkah for Palestinians

My latest blog is published at Patheos


Here's an extract:

When our children were young, I used to be invited into their local primary school to give a talk each year about Hanukkah. Today I ask myself, how I would teach Hanukkah to Palestinian school children, or indeed to their parents? How comfortable would I find it to tell this story of Jews denied the right to express their culture, identity and history? What would go through the children’s minds as I explained our annual celebration of an armed Jewish revolt against an occupying power? And could I convey convincingly the idea of on-going Jewish vulnerability in Israel, the United States, or anywhere else?

But this is exactly the self-awareness we need today when we celebrate Hanukkah.

Read the full post at Patheos

Dear Vice Chancellor, don’t let Gavin Williamson bully you into adopting IHRA

MY LATEST AT PATHEOS:


Extract

Dear Professor Schofield

I’m writing to you as a Jewish student studying at Lancaster University in the hope that you’ll resist the pressure being put on you by the government to adopt what I, and many other Jews in the UK and around the world, believe to be a flawed and deeply problematic document on antisemitism.

...this is far from being a purely academic debate. If you’re a Palestinian student studying at a British university this is about your right to express your lived history and that of your family and people. Denying the expression of that experience would seem to go against any ambitions to be truly diverse, inclusive and welcoming institution...

...Understanding of Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel cannot be the exclusive right of Jewish people. For a rounded understanding of what Zionism has meant, and what it means today, you need to include Palestinian testimony and Palestinian academic writing. I can’t imagine any serious educational institution, especially Lancaster, to expect anything less.

READ THE FULL LETTER HERE

From ‘Vision for Peace’ to ‘normalisation’ – 2020 has become the year of forgetting

 My latest blog is published at Patheos

Some ironic reflections on Trump's peace plan, this week's Abraham Accords, and the Jewish New Year which begins tonight.


Here's an extract:

"Memories are short. But when did the world start forgetting? Or perhaps everything that was once strange and abnormal is now normal and unremarkable. Thanks to Covid-19, we’re all learning to live in a ‘new normal’. And now there is the new normal for Israel/Palestine too. And we call it ‘normalisation’.
In both cases things are not what they used to be, and may never go back to how they were."

Read the full post here.


Shanah Tovah to my Jewish freinds and readers

“History will judge us” – Have Progressive Rabbis reached the end of the road on Israel?

My latest post published at Patheos

Extract:

This month’s letter to the Israeli embassy in London starts to look like Progressive rabbis are finally confronting the Jewish implications of the entire Zionist project. Although the layers of denial and ethical dissonance are still on display, it’s the strongest and most despairing expression of criticism I’ve seen.

Read the full post here. 

Annexation (even when delayed) is the great truth teller on Israel/Palestine

My latest published at Patheos

Extract:

What’s been notable over the last few months, is the way in which even the prospect of annexation has revealed so much about the nature of the Israel/Palestine situation. There is a parallel to be drawn with how Covid-19 has also been an exposer of truths about the unfairness and inequalities of societies around the world. Perhaps, annexation is just a subset of the surfacing of injustice which we’ve seen across the globe in 2020 and which has stirred locked-down populations to question their tolerance for institutionalised immorality.

Read the full article here. 

As Jews, we’ll never address racism while clinging to Zionism

MY LATEST BLOG POST: "AS JEWS, WE'LL NEVER ADRESS RACISM WHILE WE CLING TO ZIONISM"

A reflection on some of the responses to the murder of George Floyd from the Jewish community and its lack of self-awarness on issues of racism.

Extract:

It’s impossible for even liberal Jewish supporters of Israel to recognise the structural and institutional racism they inhabit while they cling to the idea that only an exclusive Jewish sovereignty in Israel/Palestine can guarantee Jewish security. The longer this idea is treated as a universal law of nature rather than a sorely overrated political ideology, the longer it will take to recognise and then shed a racist mind set.

While America has spent decades struggling to acknowledge and rectify its past, Israeli Jewish society remains locked in a state of denial, with no hint of even beginning the struggle to re-evaluate its foundational stories. The same goes for the communities around the world who’ve placed Israel and Zionism at the centre of their Jewish identities. And that means the racism goes on, hard wired into Jewish institutions and culture around the world.

Until we drop Zionism as the lens through which we see the world, and our place within it, we will not understand why our project of national liberation has been, and remains, a racist endeavour for another people.

Read the full post at Patheos

Dear Marie, claiming the Board is neutral on West Bank annexation should fool no one

My letter to the President of the Board of Deputies, Marie van de Zyl, in a week that's seen her organisation under fire from all parts of the UK Jewish commuity.

Here's an extract:

Saying nothing at this critical moment in Israeli/Palestinian history only helps Israel to manage the global negative reaction that will surely happen if annexation takes place (even if it leads to little in the way of meaningful sanctions). Saying nothing proves that you and the Board care little about democracy or international law if it means having to say a critical word to Jerusalem or risk a very public debate about the role of Israel in British Jewish life.
Wanting to stand above the fray so that you can continue to “hold the community together” also begs difficult questions. What exactly are you trying to hold the Jewish community together for? What are the unifying Jewish values you want to promote? Looking the other way when a crime is committed is not a Jewish value I remember being taught in my Hebrew classes. Striving for a non-existent Jewish unity in the UK turns out to be little more than political expediency in Israel’s favour.

Read the full post at Patheos 

Edgy Jewish reflections on a Covid-19 exit strategy

My latest at Patheos

Here's the opening:

The last blog post I published was sent from a world which no longer exists. It was written in a pre-Covid, pre-lock-down’ United Kingdom, composed in a place we now call ‘normal times’. It was a review of a theatre play in London’s West End, which itself feels wildly bizarre. There I was sitting inches away from strangers for two hours. Such crazy times, in those far off days.

I’ve found it hard to write about Covid-19 for this blog. It’s an immense event that touches everything and everyone. It’s hard to get your head around it. It can generate a mental paralysis. Even the language that’s entered our everyday vocabulary already operates at the extremities of expression. “Unprecedented”, “exceptional”, “unimaginable”. But where do you go when our language has already run out of track? The human mind is forced to hunker down until the virus passes over us, or through us, or does us in.

Read the full post here 

Tom Stoppard’s first Jewish play leaves Zionism offstage

My latest at Patheos: 

There've been plenty of rave reviews for Sir Tom Stoppard's new West End play 'Leopoldstadt' but they've all left out the most interesting aspect - its lack of Zionism.

So here's my non-Zionist reviewer's take on the production which I saw this week.

EXTRACT: "Jewish 20th century history is so often presented as one long justification for the project of Jewish national renewal. It’s a narrative which today dominates mainstream Jewish community life and deeply influences political attitudes towards Israel by Western countries. So it was curious to see such a major artistic telling of Jewish experience leaving Zionism offstage. I expected to see it waiting in the wings as a potential redemptive finale or at the very least an answer to the human costs of being Jewish. Instead, Stoppard chooses his own tragic reading of the Jewish predicament keeping his characters locked within their own family tragedy." 

Read the full post at Patheos 

Orla Guerin’s report shows what’s wrong with Holocaust remembrance

My latest blog post is published at Patheos 

As we begin what could be a highly significant week for Israel/Palestine, here are my extended thoughts on the controversy surrounding the Orla Guerin BBC report and what it says about how we remember the Holocaust. Here's an extract:

"The undeniable truth is that Palestinians are part of the post Holocaust story too. Their history and current situation cannot be separated from Auschwitz any more than the Jewish story can. In fact, they have become the same story because the Palestinians paid the price for Europe’s failures and the rest of the world’s indifference. What’s really offensive is the attempt to disconnect the relationship between these two peoples. Whether we like it or not, we are now bound together in our post Holocaust experience."

Read the full post here.

How (not) to tackle antisemitism in the Age of Boris

My latest at Patheos


Extract:

God on your side

The rabbinic leader of the UK’s Sephardi community, Rabbi Joseph Dweck, had his own take on the outcome of the election, telling the Jerusalem Post: “I believe that it was a divinely inspired result”.
Was the rabbi being ‘tongue in cheek’ when he said this? I sincerely hope so. Otherwise it begs too many painful questions about God’s lacklustre performance in Jewish affairs. Personally, I find it difficult to believe that the Almighty was at work in Blyth Valley but not at Buchenwald.

Read the full post at Patheos 

Archbishop Justin, you need some new Jewish friends

MY LATEST AT PATHEOS


Following the Archbishop of Canterbury's support for the Chief Rabbi's condemnation of Labour; and the publication of the Church of England's new landmark report on antisemitism in the Church, I suggest to Archbishop Justin that he needs to find some new Jewish friends that will better help him to navigate Israel/Palestine as well as understand the uses and abuses of #antisemitism.

This is the final part of my trilogy of General Election commentary.

Extract:

"It made me wonder though, does the Church of England have a bigger problem with antisemitism than the Labour Party? After all, I’ve seen and heard over the years how hymns, liturgy, scripture, and teaching can still create a ‘hostile environment’ for even the most sympathetic Jew who happens to be present. However, I’ve never felt the need to call for a boycott of the Church of England, or for the Archbishop of Canterbury to be condemned for a failure of leadership or held personally accountable for enabling a tradition of antisemitism. Instead, I welcome the efforts that have been made over the decades to address the problem and build reconciliation. I wonder why the same generosity of spirit has not been applied by the Chief Rabbi to the Labour Party considering the action it has taken in just a few months? Am I so wrong to think that a bigger political agenda could be at play?"

Read full letter at Patheos 

Chief Rabbi, we need a better way to fight antisemitism than attacking Labour

My latest at Patheos

Extract:

What is the clear and present danger presented by the Labour party to Jews? Perhaps you can give me a rough idea of what I should expect, so I know whether to be ready to pack my bags when the election results come through.

Will kosher meat be outlawed? Will circumcision be banned? Will I be forced out of my job and my children thrown out of university? Will I be attacked on the street by gangs of roaming Corbynistas? Will synagogues be burnt down and Jews rounded up?

I’m not being flippant here. I genuinely want to understand the nature and severity of the threat which has created the “anxiety” you say is “gripping” most of my fellow Jews. If I can’t grasp what you mean, how can I make an informed and proportionate response?

Read the full post at Patheos

As a British Jew I'm not fearful of a Corbyn government but I'm horrified at how antisemitism is being used against him

My latest post at Patheos

Extract:

With a General Election campaign now in full swing, Labour candidates and Labour activists, and indeed Labour voters, are being told they are actively promoting antisemitism or at least ignoring the concerns of the Jewish community in Britain. It’s no longer just Corbyn that’s being vilified. It’s half the country. Meanwhile, Jewish families have become fearful under entirely false pretenses. This is not good Jewish leadership. This is a dangerous failure of leadership.

Read the full post

Extinction Rebellion has shown me the way forward for Jewish solidarity with Palestine

My latest blog post is published at Patheos:


Here's an extract:

There are parallels between how Extinction Rebellion has analysed the politics of climate change and where we now stand with Israel/Palestine within the Jewish world. Both situations have those who deny the facts, look to others to blame, or think minor reforms will fix things. As a Jew who wants to ‘sound the alarm’ on Israel/Palestine, I’ve realised in the last two weeks of global climate protest that there’s a lot to learn from XR’s strategic agenda if you want to escalate the debate and make people recognise the crisis we are facing:

Tell the truth,
Declare an emergency
Plan for radical change
Work for a just transition for all

Read the full post at Patheos