"Indeed" - Bibi Mk4 and the unraveling of the British Jewish consensus

The night before the election there was this exchange with Benjamin Netanyahu.

Interviewer: "If you are prime minister, a Palestinian state will not be established?" Netanyahu:  "Indeed".

One word and the British Jewish consensus was blown to pieces.

Three days later, after winning a comprehensive victory for his Likud party and a fourth term as prime minister, Netanyahu had this apparent clarification for American television viewers:

"I don't want a one-state solution. I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution, but for that circumstances have to change."

In Britain, if you are a pro-Israel lobby group like We Believe in Israel, or BICOM or the Zionist Federation you have a tricky time ahead. If you are leading our religious or communal bodies from the United Synagogue to Liberal Judaism and of course the Board of Deputies, then you are now in a very serious fix.

Here's why.

Bibi is back and this time he's telling the truth.

And don't be fooled by any apparent discrepancy between the two interviews.

When Bibi says "circumstances must change" he is in the realm of messianic times, that distant horizon when the moon and stars are aligned and all the Middle East is at glorious peace with itself. What Bibi means is that it ain't gonna happen on his watch. It's all of a piece with the stumbling blocks he put in front of John Kerry for a year but now Bibi is being honest about it.

Over the last few years it has been possible (just about) for Jewish communal leaders around the world, including Britain, to maintain the illusion that the Israeli government wanted to see peace and reconciliation with the Palestinian people.

Broadly speaking, this would be achieved through a two-state solution. Two states for two peoples, side by side.

This is what the British government wanted, what the rest of the EU wanted, what the United States wanted, what the United Nations wanted and what most Palestinians wanted. It's also the position supported overwhelmingly by British Jews.

That consensus has allowed the Board of Deputies to develop a policy on Israel that they can comfortably ask every parliamentary candidate standing in Britain's General Election in May to sign up to, so maintaining a broad cross party agreement on the issue.

The pro-Israel lobby groups in Britain have maintained the same two-state line. It makes everyone sound reasonable and fair and progressive and allows comfortable alignment with the Israeli government, all of the Westminster political parties and the vast majority of British Jews.

In reality things are not quite so straight forward.

When you scratch the surface of all this unanimity you quickly discover that there are vastly different ideas about what these two states should look like. Where would the capital of a Palestinian state be? What should happen to the Jewish Settlements and the exclusive resources that service them on the West Bank? How much control would a Palestinian state have over its own borders, airspace and internal security?

But to enable the consensus to hold together our communal and religious leaders (and the lobby leadership too) have deliberately avoided taking a clear public position on issues like the annexation of East Jerusalem, the expansion of the Settlements and the rights of Palestinian refugees. Instead of framing these issues as moral questions they have opted for tribalism. They have for decades abdicated ethical responsibility by saying that the brutal reality of a 50-year occupation is just detail to be negotiated by an Israeli government.

It's a strategy that has created the appearance of community cohesion even if it lacks moral backbone and disregards Jewish ethical tradition.

But with Netanyahu's new found honesty over the two-state solution the consensus in Britain is about to unravel. David Cameron might be happy to congratulate Netanyahu on his victory and overlook the racist tone of his campaign but Likud's return to power has just sparked a huge crisis in British Jewry.

The Board of Deputies' election manifesto is now at odds with what will soon be the official Israeli policy - no to two-states, or at best, 'sometime never'. The same crisis goes for the current positions held by our main religious denominations and even the British pro-Israel lobby groups.

The question they must all face is whether to acknowledge the difference and adopt a critical stand against the Israeli government or realign with Bibi and open divisions with the British government, the opposition parties and indeed most British Jews.

So expect to see turmoil in the ranks of the Jewish establishment, some soul searching among the rank and file and a clear fracturing of publicly voiced Jewish opinions on Israel. And about time too.

However, if you have not locked yourself into uncritical support for Israel and you have preferred to follow a Jewish tradition that has informed universal human rights and international law, then Netanyahu Mk.4 leaves everything looking very much clearer.

The next few years will be easy to navigate.

Without considerable external pressure, both political and economic, Israel will not stop Settlement expansion, will not dismantle the separation wall, will not give up an inch of the Occupied Territories, will not end the siege of Gaza. It certainly will not sit down and negotiate a peace deal that looks remotely just to Palestinian eyes. Why should it while the rest of the world allows its behaviour to continue without cost or consequence? And God help the children of Gaza if Hamas dares to fire any more home-made rockets in the general direction of the most powerful army in the region.

But with Netanyahu finally putting the two-state solution six feet under, that necessary pressure is on the way.

It will come from European governments and it will come from grass roots activists. The pressure will undoubtedly include boycotts, divestment and sanctions. And those activists will increasingly include Jews. Not self-hating Jews but profoundly disillusioned Jews. It will come from Jews looking for a new kind of Jewish leadership and hoping to protect their democratic and ethical ideals and rescue what's left of their Jewish heritage.

Mr. Netanyahu, thanks for showing us the way forward.

Now is the time! - A prophetic call to action

To the Assembly of Reform Rabbis in the United Kingdom,

I believe we are reaching a defining moment in the history of the State of Israel and your collective voice might just make a difference.

I call on you because it was from within the Reform Movement that my Judaism was nurtured and encouraged and from where I continue to take inspiration.

I call on you because I see an ethical hesitancy born of political expediency that brings you no merit and that must be challenged.  

I call on you because you taught me to honour the Hebrew prophets

I call on you because now is the time.

Last week we witnessed the almost total isolation of the Jewish State in the United Nations General Assembly. The United States was the only country of significance to back Israel. Even Germany chose to abstain. 

Government after government rejected the idea that a make believe peace process would somehow be jeopardised by giving the Palestinians upgraded observer status in the General Assembly. 

The very next day, the Israeli government carried out its threat to punish the Palestinians for their audacity in appealing to the international community for the most modest of support. A West Bank zone, known as E1, is to have 3,000 homes built for Jewish settlers. 

Rabbis of the Reform Assembly, you know that these new homes will have Jewish only roads connecting them and Jewish only buses and cars driving to and from them. You know that these homes, when joined to the existing settlement blocs, will cut the West Bank in two and prevent East Jerusalem from ever becoming the capital of a Palestinian State. You know these homes will be built on land that is, at the very least, disputed territory, land that the international community believes belongs to the Palestinian people. 

Now is the time for you to take courage and to speak out. 

Not only is Israel on the brink of ending all possibility of a just resolution to a 100 year old conflict, it is also committing itself to Jewish hegemony in preference to Jewish democracy. 

Now is the time for you to take action.

There can be little doubt that we are looking at the first moves towards the unilateral annexation of Area C of the West Bank - approximately 60% of the territory that the Oslo Accords earmarked for a Palestinian State. 

If Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-Beitenu party wins the Israeli election on January 22nd with a secure majority (and that’s looking by far the most likely outcome) this is the course they will set for themselves.   

Now is the time for you to move beyond calls for mutual understanding and respect and beyond a theology that elevates ‘balance’ to a religious virtue.  

On Tuesday 20 November 2012, as the death toll in Gaza continued to rise, you issued a statement on the Reform Judaism’s website. This is what you said:

“Torah commands us 'do not stand idly by while the blood of your neighbour is being shed' and two verses later 'love your neighbour as yourself'. These verses apply to everyone in this fearful situation, both Israelis and Gazans, however hard this is to recognise in a time of war.” 

Empathy for ‘the other’ is vital and much welcome - especially when it is in such short supply elsewhere in the Jewish community. 

But if the religious thought process stops there, it fails the test of the Jewish prophetic. It ignores where the real power lies and where the real oppression falls.

Undoubtedly, there is pain and suffering to be found on both sides. But let us be honest with ourselves, and others. 

There is no balance. 

Acknowledging this is the next important step that takes us beyond empathy and towards the moral and redemptive power of the Hebrew prophets. 

Now is the time to make an unequivocal statement that draws on our ethical heritage and says to the State of Israel, in a word borrowed from our annual liturgy of freedom: ‘DAYENU!’ Enough! 

May these words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who put righteousness, not tribal solidarity, at the heart of Judaism, ring in your ears: “In a democracy some are guilty but all are responsible.”

Now is the time to be brave and to be bold.

Now is the time to speak truth unto power. 

Now is the time.