Purge or replace Board
When Isaac Herzog, the popular, respected president of Israel, a former Labour politician, takes the unprecedented step of publicly criticising the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the UK’s foremost representative body, it means that Anglo Jewish leadership needs serious scrutiny.
In a widely reported speech this week earning a standing ovation in Israel (Israel President slams ‘deeply inappropriate’ Board of Deputies statement on controversial MK Smotrich, 28 February, thejc.com), he condemned the Board for refusing to meet MK Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the Religious Zionist Party, criticising its tweets justifying its decision as “deeply inappropriate” and the Hebrew version as “downright insulting”.
He was at pains to say that he didn’t agree with Smotrich’s views.
Calling for dialogue, not division and hatred… “We cannot allow ourselves another rift in the Jewish People”, and “just as Jewish communities correctly expect their leadership to be respected in Israel, similarly I would expect Israeli leaders to be respected in the Diaspora”, he ended by calling for people to “come together, talk together and respect each other.”
In contrast, the Board’s leadership over recent years has been authoritarian, unpopular and divisive, ruthlessly removing by any convenient pretext any Deputy who refused to toe the “party line”.
It has taken the President of Israel to draw attention to this.
The Board needs to be purged and made democratically accountable to its deputies who actually represent us. If that proves impossible, it should be sidelined or replaced by a new organisation which would be supported by the mainstream, for whom fighting antisemitism, protecting Jewish life and robustly supporting Israel would be its priority.
Warren S Gross
London E11