On September 3rd, the First Minister of Scotland made a statement supporting recognition of a Palestinian state and calling for the prohibition of imports from the Occupied Territories. The chair of the Jewish Council of Scotland (JCoS) responded by accusing the First Minister of “fuelling ‘antizionist’ – and antisemitic – hatred and discrimination against Scotland’s Jews and our institutions and symbols”. An Edinburgh PJJIP member has written the following reply to JCoS:
Dear JCoS,
I am writing to you to express my disgust at the JCoS response to the First Minister’s measured, humane, and carefully pitched parliamentary statement on the genocide being perpetrated on Gaza by Israel. How dare you claim to speak for the Jews of Scotland, and then say that.
Your scolding over the appropriateness of the FM’s use of the term “genocide” is astonishing. Many officials, Jewish and not, described the attack by Hamas on 7th October 2023 as a genocidal attack at the time. Hamas have certainly expressed genocidal intentions toward Israelis. That attack was a crime against humanity, and to respond by becoming precious about the legal definition of genocide would have been ridiculous. Do not, now, become ridiculous.
I have heard too many of my own family members, former teachers, Jewish community leaders and so-called representatives of the Jewish community express openly genocidal sentiments about Palestinians to believe these thoughts only exist on one side of this discussion.
Unlike most Scottish Jews, I can read and speak Modern Hebrew fluently, and have both family and friends in Israel. A quick glance at Israeli media or social media on any given day reveals no shortage of Israeli government officials announcing their intention to wipe out all Palestinians, to never permit a Palestinian state, and to cleanse the land of Palestinians completely. This is all said openly, gleefully, in the secure knowledge that most non-Israelis can’t understand it, and won’t bother to check. To equivocate on this would only prove that you’re not able to check for yourselves.
You’re also out of step with the Israeli public. When 2.5 million Israelis took to the streets to demand an end to the war on Gaza, an end to the genocide, and the return of the hostages, were they all antisemitic? Or were they, as Netanyahu characterised them, all Hamas sympathisers? We should be helping our fellow Jews to resist the far-right government that puts them in constant danger, makes them complicit, and abandons their family members as a pretext to destroy Gaza.
If, as you say in your response, only a competent court can determine whether the conditions of genocide have been met, this suggests two courses of action for people of conscience to take, neither of which I have seen from JCoS.
On one hand, you might use all your institutional power to try to stop Israel before it pushes so far that it unequivocally meets the criteria for genocide. That’s what many Scottish Jews have been doing for the past 23 months, in spite of hostility and attacks from our so-called community leaders and growing antisemitism. Backing FM Swinney’s statement would be an excellent place for JCoS to start, and we are lucky to have a leader who is so careful to reject antisemitism in his condemnation of Israel’s actions. Many could learn from him.
On the other hand, you could call for an expeditious free and fair hearing of Israel before the ICC. That would determine if it’s legally genocide or not, and then whatever it is can be stopped with all urgency, as it is undeniably an ongoing crime against humanity.
You have done neither, as far as I can tell, and your craven and vapid response to the FM’s statement in the face of his courageous and principled stance, while you do not object to the atrocity being perpetrated in our names, shames us all.
I, for one, am glad that action was taken in WWII before the determination was made that the Shoah constituted a genocide. I am shocked to hear my fellow Jews so glibly undermining the very international laws and human rights frameworks that our grandparents pushed to have put in place to prevent anyone ever going through what they did again.
Your assertion that ignoring the atrocities being committed by Israelis on the people of Palestine, with full support by the Christian West, will keep Jews safe is clearly false. Antisemitism has markedly worsened since 2023 while world leaders have been silent, and silenced others. Rather, it is the brazen denial of observable facts, crackdown on dissent within the Jewish community, and collaboration with authoritarian elements by our communal leadership that puts the Jews of Scotland in danger, both from growing conspiracist thinking and from direct antisemitic attacks.
My brother wasn’t beaten on his front step for having a mezuzah because John Swinney used the word “genocide”. It was because over and over, as the situation has worsened beyond all modern comparison before the eyes of a horrified world, every mainstream Jewish organisation has announced to anyone who will print it that all Jews agree on this and that to criticise the Israeli war machine is to criticise Jewishness. Further, organisations like the Board of Deputies and the ADL have cosied up to open fascists and antisemites who support Israel for their own cynical ends, and those fascists aren’t popular. This is what endangers Jews in diaspora. What did you think was going to happen?
When measured, rational interventions aren’t heard or dealt with, people use aggressive and irrational ones.
Contrary to your assertion that the First Minister of Scotland’s position is unlikely to affect the situation in Gaza, Israel is a highly connected economy and has shown itself to be very reliant on the UK (and Scotland) as a trading partner, and strongly affected in its actions by economic sanctions. Israel has responded well to economic incentives in the past, and likely would again. Such interventions are much better-placed to effect change in Israel now than political approaches within Israel, with its unicameral system, fragile and corrupt coalition, and weakened supreme court. The country was hardly democratic before, but even that veneer is crumbling. FM Swinney is joining a growing crowd of world leaders who can actually push Israel to enact meaningful change, and I hope they can do so with the support and blessing of the world’s Jews.
I am heartened to hear of your support for a two-state solution, and look forward to your campaign to ensure the UK recognises the Palestinian state this month as it has promised to. Recognition for the state of Palestine, along with meaningful sanctions, a ceasefire, the return of the hostages and a just transitional government in Gaza, can’t come quickly enough.
I have no patience for your claim of fear, anxiety, and trauma to dampen this needed discussion. You know so little of our culture that you cling to an image of an Israel that never existed rather than engage meaningfully, you take refuge in assimilation while exposing those of us who don’t to danger, and you insist in an official capacity that your feeble sense of Jewishness is the whole picture. You endanger us without understanding the danger, you disrespect the memory of our ancestors, and you neglect your responsibilities as human beings and as Jews.
I hope that Elul gives you much to think about, and I am sure mine won’t be the only critical letter you receive on this subject. FM Swinney has my respect and my gratitude, and I can only dream of such leadership in my own community.
PJJIP member, Sukkat Shalom