British Jews Condemning Far Right Racist Bezalel Smotrich Is Just the Beginning

T. Belman.  This isn’t about Smoltrich. Its about you and me and our right to demand that Israel be the nation-state of the Jewish people  rather than a state of all its citizens. Rather than uphold diversity of thought it is an attempt to place right wing views beyond the pale.  Of course, Haaretz agrees with them.

I expect more of this from the American Jewish community. It has already started, There is a constant drumbeat of Jewish establishment voices that place right wing views beyond the pale , as not being respectable and not being allowed into polite society.

British Jews rightly, and very explicitly, told Israeli politician and Jewish supremacist Bezalel Smotrich to get lost and go home. For Diaspora Jews, the era of sitting on the fence, and not just about Israeli racists, is ending

Far right MK Bezalel Smotrich speaks during a conference in Jerusalem, Israel last yearCredit: AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner

By Anshel Pfeffer, HAARETZ

Some organizations are boring by their very nature. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. If their function is to create a broad sensible consensus from a wildly disparate cacophony of opinions, then blandness is exactly what’s needed.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews is by necessity one of those boring organizations. As Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner wisely says, there is not one Jewish community in Britain, but hundreds of them.

The Board needs to somehow represent all those hundreds of communities and Jewish organizations which are affiliated with it, bridging the differences in their religious outlook, political persuasions, their wildly different sizes and geographic locations across the British Isles. It also tries to represent the interests of Jews who are not affiliated with it.

So yes, for the past 262 years of its existence it has tried and invariably succeeded at being boring. That’s its job.

So when on Wednesday the Board suddenly tweeted Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the “Religious Zionism” party who had just landed in Britain to fuck off back to Israel, followers of the Board’s Twitter account wondered if it had been hacked. Further enquiries which elicited that it was legit didn’t dispel the astonishment.

OK, they didn’t actually say fuck off to Smotrich, but in many ways the wording of their tweet, which appeared in Hebrew, was even more offensive, calling him to “get back on the plane Bezalel, and be remembered as a disgrace forever.” This isn’t how the Board of Deputies is supposed to make its pronouncements.

Smotrich is of course worthy of such treatment: A Jewish supremacist who boasts that his wife didn’t want to give birth with Arab mothers in the room, says that Arab Israelis are “citizens, for now,” threatens ethnic cleansing and states that it’s a pity David Ben-Gurion didn’t “finish the job” with them back in 1948.

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But Smotrich is not the first Israeli politician with similar opinions to visit Britain. The current Israeli ambassador to Britain, Tzipi Hotovely, espoused views which were arguably only one click away from the far-right (though to Hotovely’s credit, since becoming ambassador, she has shied away from anything remotely controversial), and she has cordial relations with the Board.

So why protest now? The Board could have simply ignored his presence in London. It would have been much more in character.

From what I gather, it was actually a tweet from Smotrich which sparked off the furore. Upon landing, he tweeted that he was in London for “a series of meetings with rabbis, community leaders and Jewish organizations.” For some reason, the Board’s leadership felt that it needed to make very clear that they were not going to be meeting him. And they could hardly have made it clearer.

In interviews with the Israeli media, Michael Wegier, the Board’s CEO, insisted that it had been necessary to tweet Smotrich for the sake of “consistency.” That as an organization that opposes antisemitism and all forms of racism and which stands up for Israel, they couldn’t allow the impression that they tolerated Smotrich and his views in any way. He mentioned how the Board only last week was part of the campaign against Amnesty International’s report accusing Israel of apartheid.

He could also have mentioned another recent, much longer campaign undertaken by the Board along with many other Jewish communal organizations against the wave of antisemitism within Labour, Britain’s main opposition party, during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. That was another period during which the Board felt compelled not to be boring and actually say controversial stuff.

Protesters hold placards and flags during a Jewish community demonstration against antisemitism in the Labour Party. Parliament Square, London. March 26, 2018Credit: \ HENRY NICHOLLS/ REUTERS

During the Corbyn years, small groups of Jews from the far-left who supported him would often try attack and delegitimize the Board for not representing all British Jews. It has been fascinating to see, in the aftermath of the Smoltrich tweet, Jews on the far-right making exactly the same claim.

Smotrich himself has jumped on the bandwagon and hit back, accusing the Board of being “taken over by a progressive left-wing minority” (which much have caused wry smiles to the progressive left-wing minority on the Board, which rarely manages to make itself heard) and representing only “two and a half people.”

Of course, Smotrich didn’t have to get on the first plane back to Israel. There were plenty of Jews in London, including leaders of Jewish nationalist organizations, who were more than happy to be seen meeting with him.

Open gallery view‘The nation of Israel lives’ vs ‘Kahane lives’: Kahol Lavan billboards in Ramat Gan, March 17, 2019Credit: AFP

It didn’t do Smotrich any harm back at home either. His allies in the opposition were quick to back him up. Likud tweeted that “Of course [the Board] wouldn’t treat post-Zionist MKs from the left who deny Israel’s existence as the nation-state of the Jewish people in such a fashion,” while Shas Leader Arye Deri said that “The shameful tweet by [the Board] spits in the face of the Jewish Diaspora, lovers of the Torah and the land of Israel.”

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid commented: “I wouldn’t have used those words but we’ve warned in the past many times that allowing racist elements into the Knesset would harm us abroad.” Other Israeli politicians from the center-left were less diplomatic, welcoming the condemnation of Smotrich. In fact, we learned more from the reactions to the Board’s tweet than from the tweet itself, which is likely to be a one-off occurrence.

If this saga proves anything, it’s that there isn’t a split between Israel and the Diaspora over the occupation of the Palestinians, at least not in the way it’s usually portrayed. Jewish communities abroad are divided, over Israel and their own issues, just as much as Israel is.

But if a boring pro-Israel and quite conservative organization like the Board of Deputies feels the need to make such a clear distinction between the values it stands for, and those of an Israeli politician, who was only recently a minister in Netanyahu’s government and, for a while, also a political ally of Israel’s current prime minister Naftali Bennett, it proves that the divide is a much more fundamental one: About basic values.

Open gallery viewFar right Religious Zionism head Bezalel Smotrich (R) and Otzma Yehudit head Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrating the exit poll results for the 2021 elections  Credit: Rami Shllush

Sometimes the divide manifests itself over the Palestinian issue, but more often it’s a much more basic conflict which exists both in Israel and in the Diaspora: about the capacity to tolerate others and whether you insist that there is only one legitimate version of Judaism.

In this sense, Smotrich is in many ways low-hanging fruit. It’s easier to condemn him because he positions himself so clearly as an extremist, not only in his racism towards Arabs but in his contempt for the non-Orthodox Jewish streams and his homophobia. But Smotrich, whose list of neo-Kahanists and other assorted supremacists received only 5.1 percent of the vote in Israel’s last election, is only a small part of the problem.

There is a much wider coalition of intolerance, currently manifested in the “Netanyahu bloc” of parties who see Smotrich as a legitimate ally and embrace their Diaspora counterparts who, ideologically, are more than willing to fete him: The million American Jews who voted for Donald Trump, like-minded Jews in Britain and next week in France, Smotrich’s next stop. Jews who admire such leaders as Netanyahu, Trump, Vladimir Putin, Eric Zemmour and Viktor Orban and what that they stand for.

That is the deeper divide within the Jewish people across the world. It’s not a specifically Israeli, British or American problem. While many individual Jews, and Jewish organizations like the Board of Deputies, would prefer not having to choose sides, it is becoming increasingly difficult to remain boring and consensual and pretend it doesn’t exist. And if current trends continue, soon it will be impossible.