Uncategorized
Dramatic stories of survival, endurance and escape reign as Ukrainian Jews mark 1 year of war
(JTA) — Most of the passengers on the flight from Chisinua, Moldova, to Tel Aviv earlier this month were subdued.
Some had just witnessed scene after scene of hardship on a tour of war-torn Ukraine organized by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. Others, about 90 in all, were Ukrainians in the process of moving permanently to Israel, talking in hushed tones about being on a plane for the first time, their uncertain future and the loved ones they left behind.
Alexei Shkurat was not subdued.
Bespectacled and bearded, he was standing in his seat, making wisecracks that caused the elderly woman in the seat next to him to guffaw despite herself.
“I like joking and communicating. It’s my life, why waste it being nervous?” Shkurat told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in English.
“And anyway, I’m happy, happy, happy I will soon see my sons again,” he added.
Switching to Russian, Shkurat’s brow furrowed and his voice lowered when he recounted how, on Feb. 28, 2022, he had risked his life to transport his sons, 14 and 12, to the border with Poland with their mother and grandmother. From there they would move to Israel.
Shkurat could not go with them. The borders were closed for military-aged men, so Shkurat was forced to drive back to his hometown of Odessa. What happened next, as he recounts it, was harrowing: As he passed an empty field near Lviv, he encountered two Ukrainian soldiers, their AK-74 rifles trained on him. Shkurat raised his hands and was told to step out of his vehicle. He knew that if he made one false move, he would be shot.
The soldiers searched the car and interrogated him, asking him why he was traveling alone after curfew and even asking if he was a Russian spy. Shkurat later learned that 40 Russian paratroopers had recently landed in the area and had stolen ambulances and police cars. He answered the soldiers in Russian, which only raised their suspicions. Ukrainian is the dominant language in western Ukraine, but as a Jew from Odessa, Shkurat’s native tongue is Russian.
“I was terrified. I know that they were only doing their job, but the situation was so scary. Everything I ever knew in life had changed,” he said.
Catch up on all of JTA’s coverage of the Ukraine War here.
By a considerable stroke of luck, Shkurat, a street artist, was able to prove his identity by showing the soldiers his Instagram page, filled with posts of his art in locations all over Odessa.
But according to Shkurat, the story was far from over. The next chapter of his life was far more hair-raising, he said. Pressed on the details, Shkurat grinned and switched back to English.
“I can’t tell you a thing,” he said. “I want to sell the story to Netflix.”
Whatever cinematic experience Shkurat might have had, his fellow passengers surely had made-for-the-movies stories of their own. They had made it through nearly a year of war before deciding to move to Israel, making them the latest of 5,000 new immigrants from Ukraine facilitated by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, working in collaboration with Israeli government entities such as Nativ and the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration. Approximately 15,000 Ukrainians in total have immigrated, or made aliyah, in the last year.
Ukrainian Jewish refugees who fled the war in their country wait on a bus upon arrival at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, on an airlift of medically needy passengers made possible by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, Dec. 22, 2022. (Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images)
According to the group’s vice president, Gidi Schmerling, if there is any upside to the war from Israel’s perspective, it’s that many middle-class Ukrainians — doctors, engineers and high-tech employees — who wouldn’t have otherwise made aliyah are now choosing to do so.
But IFCJ’s mandate also includes the Jews who stayed behind. Since Russian tanks first rumbled across the border a year ago, the group has raised more than $30 million dollars — primarily from evangelical Christians from North America and Korea — for the main Jewish organizations in Ukraine including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC, and Chabad. (Both groups do extensive fundraising of their own.) This week, the anniversary of Russia’s invasion, it announced another $4 million in planned spending.
In Odessa, more than 7,000 people currently receive aid from IFJC via local Jewish groups. The Jewish community, once 50,000 strong, now stands at 20,000, according to the city’s chief rabbi, Avraham Wolff. Seven thousand food packages are distributed every month in Chabad centers. Many of the beneficiaries are older — among them some 187 Holocaust survivors — but not all. Several hundred are people who were displaced from surrounding cities, such as Mykolaiv, which was hit much harder by Russian shells, and some are the so-called new poor, those for whom the war has plunged into poverty from loss of income and rising inflation.
Ala Yakov Livne, an 86-year-old widow, is one of many who lined up recently to receive a box with oil, flour and other basic necessities. For Livne, the part that stings most about the last year is the sense of betrayal.
“[The Russians] were our neighbors. Many of them were our friends,” she said.
“Times have changed but some things never change,” Livne went on. “Back then, we were under occupation under the Nazis, back then, they tried to kill us, and now again, we are under occupation and they are trying to destroy us.”
Yelena Kuklova survived the Holocaust by being hidden by non-Jewish neighbors. “We started our lives in war and we’re finishing them in war,” she said. (Deborah Danan)
It was a refrain that would be repeated several times over the ensuing days. In a trembling voice, 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Yelena Kuklova, who as a child was hidden by her non-Jewish neighbors in a suitcase in a closet, echoed the sentiment.
“They killed us then because we were Jews. They are killing us today because we are Ukrainian,” she said, a slow cascade of tears spilling over her cheekbones. “We started our lives in war and we’re finishing them in war.”
And so it was in battle-scarred Mykolaiv, 140 kilometers northeast of Odessa. “What the Germans never managed to do, the Russians did,” said Eli Ben Mendel Hopstein, standing in front of his building, pockmarked from the shrapnel of a Russian missile.
Inside his home, Hopstein rifled through decades-old photos of himself in the navy. “I know danger,” he said, “and I don’t feel it now.” He describes himself as a proud Jew. “First, I am a Jew, then I am Ukrainian, and I never once hid this from anyone.”
Mykolaiv, pro-Russia before the war and now a vanguard of the south, has become a source of pride for its residents because of Russia’s failure to occupy it. Even before the war, Mykolaiv was a desperately poor city. But now, following eight months of daily explosions, destruction is everywhere and the city’s critical infrastructure has been badly damaged.
Damaged buildings are a common sight in Mykolaiv, which Russian troops pummeled during the first year of the war. So are people lining up for potable water. (Deborah Danan)
Like Odessa, the city has no electricity for up to 22 hours a day. For more than half a year, large swaths of the city had no water at all. Today, residents can turn on the tap and get a murky brown liquid known as technical water, but it is far from potable. For drinking and cooking, they are forced to collect safe water in plastic gallon bottles at water stations all over the city, many of which were installed by the Israeli nonprofit IsraAID.
Scenes of people placing buckets outside their houses in the hope of catching rainwater became ubiquitous in Mykolaiv. For its Jewish contingent, Chabad provides truckloads of bottled water. Hopstein credits the IFCJ and Chabad for keeping him alive.
“If it wasn’t for their help, I would have nothing,” he said.
Across the road from Hopstein, 82-year-old Galina Petrovna Mironenko, who is not Jewish, is not so lucky. A Russian S300 missile that appeared to be targeting a nearby university missed its mark and struck Mironenko’s home, decimating her every earthly possession. Mironenko said the only help she gets is a weekly loaf of bread from the government. Standing in her charred kitchen, her red and blue checkered headscarf offering the only color, Mironenko’s expression is almost childlike — a jarring contrast to the words she utters.
Galina Petrovna Mironenko stands in the wreckage of her home in Mykolaiv, destroyed by a Russian missile. Her Jewish neighbor credits aid from Jewish organizations for keeping him alive. (Deborah Danan)
“I have died three times in my life,” she said. “Once when my father died, again when my son died and a third time after the 20 minutes it took for my house to burn.”
Back in Odessa, the sun has set and the city is cloaked in darkness, a cue that soon it will be time to head indoors for the nightly curfew. But first, a visit to the Orlikovsky family who are packing their suitcases ahead of their emigration the next day. On the couch in the tiny living room sit four generations of Jews: Alina; her daughter, Marina; her grandson Andrey; and Andrey’s wife and daughter Viktoria and Sofiya.
Andrey recalls Feb. 24, 2022. “I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears. I heard a terrible blast and grabbed my daughter and told my wife, ‘Let’s get out!’ I thought my house was going to collapse like a doll’s house.”
Participants of the Hanukkah celebration in Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, received a hot meal — part of the sustained aid that Jewish communities have distributed throughout the war there, Dec. 18, 2022. (Vyacheslav Madiyevskyi / Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
But it would take nearly a year to finally make the move, because of Viktoria’s late mother who was sick and because, in Andrey’s words, “you get used to the bombs.”
“We live without power, we live without heating, very often there is no hot water. We are living like insects,” Alina said. “My children told me, mama, we need to go.”
When the family finished speaking, the electricity came back and the lights turned on. Sofiya, 5 years old, laughed into her mother’s chest.
The first anniversary of the war marks two weeks since Alexei Shkurat and the other 89 new arrivals were greeted on the tarmac of Ben Gurion Airport by Israel’s new immigration minister, Ofir Sofer. Shkurat is on the lookout for a permanent home in a place where he can sell his art.
“I am getting to know the country and looking for new friends,” he said. “I want to do a lot of beautiful and bright projects. I want to draw a lot,” he said.
He deeply misses Odessa, which he called an amazing city, but being reunited with his sons has soothed the pain.
“Meeting with my children was the best event of the last year,” he said.
—
The post Dramatic stories of survival, endurance and escape reign as Ukrainian Jews mark 1 year of war appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
AOC urges Clavicular, who visited Tel Aviv, to ‘shed some light’ on the plight of the Palestinians
(JTA) — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the influencer Clavicular should be informing his followers about the plight of Palestinians, in a sign of how widely Clavicular’s trip this week to Tel Aviv has registered among both Israelis and Israel’s critics.
Ocasio-Cortez, who has been sharply critical of Israel, was asked about Clavicular by a reporter from TMZ, the celebrity news site, on Tuesday in Washington, D.C.
“We should be focusing on Palestinians and the fact that many of them have been displaced,” she told the outlet, adding, “I hope maybe he uses his platform to give also some light to that issue as well.”
Clavicular sharply divided pro-Israel influencers during his time in Tel Aviv, with some arguing that his presence was a boon to Israel at a time when the country faces global approbation over its military operations in Gaza and others saying that Israelis should not embrace a celebrity with a record of objectifying women and engaging in antisemitism. Earlier this year, Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Peters, was part of a group of influencers who sang along to the Ye song “Heil Hitler” at a Miami nightclub.
One Israeli who appeared in Clavicular’s livestream, which appears on the platform Kick that is known for allowing content prohibited by other services, has faced penalties for doing so. Shira Braun has lost her job in the army spokesman’s unit and has been given a suspended jail sentence by the military after posing as the influencer’s girlfriend on air, according to Israeli media.
The end of Clavicular’s trip has prompted a new round of social media posts about him. The Instagram account Olim in TLV, which appeals to young immigrants in Tel Aviv, riffed on the country’s missile alerts in a graphic published on Wednesday.
“The event has ended — it is possible to exit the Protected Space,” the graphic said. “Clavicular has left Israel.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post AOC urges Clavicular, who visited Tel Aviv, to ‘shed some light’ on the plight of the Palestinians appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Israel is dominating Democratic politics. How did we get here?
For decades, American politicians considering a presidential run have traveled to Iowa cornfields and New Hampshire town halls to introduce themselves to voters before launching their campaigns.
Last week, two potential 2028 presidential contenders chose a different route.
Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and Barack Obama’s White House chief of staff, traveled to Tel Aviv, where he delivered a speech defending the U.S.-Israel relationship but also cautioning about the growing erosion of Democratic support for the Jewish state in the wake of the Gaza war and amid settler violence.
A tiny fraction of the target audience was in the room. The majority was back home in the U.S., considering who in their party could possibly win as their party’s White House nominee — and more immediately how to use their votes this year to regain power.
Meanwhile, Rep. Ro Khanna, a leading progressive Democrat from California, took a high-profile trip to the occupied West Bank, where he was caught in an altercation with armed Israeli settlers who blocked his route to an elementary school that extremist settlers had destroyed. Khanna said he plans to share what he witnessed firsthand about the Palestinians’ “injustice” on the campaign trail if he runs.
The contrasting trips reflected a trend already reshaping Democratic politics. Graham Platner, the Maine Senate nominee who was forced to withdraw from the race following allegations of sexual assault, made opposition to Israel and AIPAC one of the defining themes of his campaign. His defiant parting message — in which he denied the allegations — included a vow to keep working to “end the genocide.”
On Tuesday, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, hoping to become speaker after the midterm elections, added his voice to the mix. In guidance issued to his members ahead of a vote to cut off aid to Israel — introduced by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie from Kentucky and co-sponsored by Khanna — Jeffries said that while he’ll oppose the measure, “given the strongly held views throughout the Caucus in this important area of foreign policy, we are not whipping this vote” against it. He added that going forward, “a meaningful change in direction is needed.”
The episodes in the past week highlight how quickly and powerfully the U.S. relationship to Israel — which has been receiving $3.8 billion annually under a 10-year memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Israel, which runs through 2028, plus additional billions in arms sales — has come to dominate Democratic Party politics.
A stew of different factors are in the mix — ranging from President Donald Trump’s fateful decision to wage war on Iran alongside Israel, the success of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America in showing how to mobilize voters on the issue, and voter backlash against massive spending on elections by U.S. supporters of military aid to Israel, all against the backdrop of the Gaza war and Israel’s continued military action in the region.
Sudden shifts
Israel’s role in Democratic politics this year signals a major shift — especially after a wave of insurgents who made condemning Israel central to their campaigns beat mainstream Democrats in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Colorado primaries.
The Democratic revolt is not entirely new. In the 2024 presidential race, the conflict in Gaza spurred some voters to stay home rather than cast ballots after the “uncommitted” movement blamed President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for civilian deaths — missing voters who may have swayed the results in Michigan, a swing state with a large Arab-American population. Activists said Democratic National Committee officials acknowledged that the Biden administration’s support for Israel contributed to Harris’ loss to Donald Trump.
But the protest movement has since swelled to include a bigger constituency — one not content to sit out elections or confined to moments of war. For many progressive candidates, challenging the U.S.-Israel alliance and advocating for Palestinian rights have become a marker of ideological identity and the party’s future.
Bill de Blasio, who himself evolved from a staunch supporter of Israel and an ally of AIPAC after he left office as New York City mayor and mounted an unsuccessful campaign for Congress, said in an interview that the shift reflects a deeper emotional connection to the conflict that is driving the engagement and organizing. Disaffected voters feel personally implicated by U.S. support for Israel, de Blasio said: “It’s a sense that this was done with our weapons and our money.”
In some districts with entrenched incumbents, such lines of attack by challengers went nowhere in Democratic primaries. But in some districts where the grassroots Democratic Socialists of America endorsed candidates and mobilized voters, they have scored significant upsets.
The result is a growing wave of democratic socialists and progressives winning Democratic primaries, portraying support for Israel as incompatible with progressive values.
Matt Duss, a former senior foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, said Gaza became a breaking point for many Democratic voters because of its human toll, but added that the political shift runs deeper. “It has come to stand for an issue of the establishment versus the insurgent populist left,” Duss said. Gaza, he added, “created this breaking point” where the “floodgates opened” to challenging the pro-Israel consensus that has dominated American politics for so long.
The Mamdani model
Zohran Mamdani’s left-field victory last year as New York City mayor showed candidates nationally that running against Israel could energize voters even in a local election. Mamdani, a young democratic socialist, rose to power by embracing pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activism in a mayoral campaign otherwise focused on economic justice and progressive reform. Mamdani defeated establishment candidates despite refusing to scale back on his support for boycotts and declining to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada” even as many Jewish voters heard it as a call to violence. Public opinion polls showed that Mamdani’s unapologetic criticism of Israel resonated with a majority of New York City voters.
The wins of three candidates endorsed by Mamdani in congressional primaries last month reinforced running against Israel as a winning strategy in progressive-leaning districts. Brad Lander, the former city comptroller allied with Mamdani, defeated two-term incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman by labeling Goldman as insufficiently activist on Israel, even as both — identifying themselves as liberal Zionists — touted similar views on addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Lander was the first Jewish candidate to call for an end to U.S. aid to Israel.
In Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, lost to Darializa Avila Chevalier, a former organizer of the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia. Avila Chevalier drew backlash for inflammatory comments about Israel and for attending a Times Square rally on Oct. 8, 2023, widely condemned for celebrating Hamas — but won anyway.
And in Brooklyn, Assemblymember Claire Valdez beat the establishment favorite for an open House seat. Her supporters condemned her opponent, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, for refusing during much of the campaign to call the Gaza war a genocide and for taking a 2015 trip to Israel.
The AIPAC factor
The trend is not limited to New York. Across the country, Israel has become a defining issue, even in races with relatively small Jewish electorates or where foreign policy would once have played little role. In Colorado, Melat Kiros, a democratic socialist, unseated a 15-term incumbent using Israel as a wedge throughout the campaign.
In California, State Sen. Scott Wiener, a candidate for Congress who is one of the leading Jewish Democrats statewide, has found himself navigating intense pressure and confrontations from progressive activists even after he capitulated to demands that he characterize Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a genocide.
According to data compiled by Milan Singh, a fellow at The Argument, a liberal opinion-focused media publication, insurgent progressive candidates for Congress mentioned Israel in 48% of their fundraising emails.
Opposition to AIPAC and criticism of the Israeli government have increasingly become shorthand for challenging “entrenched power, big money politics and the party establishment,” said Democratic strategist Lis Smith.
Nowhere is the changed climate being tested more vigorously than in Michigan’s open Senate race. The Aug. 4 primary between Rep. Haley Stevens and former Wayne County health director Abdul El-Sayed has become one of the most expensive races in the country this year.
Like other candidates who have run campaigns with Israel front and center, El-Sayed has focused heavily on condemning AIPAC, the campaign group backing congressional candidates who support U.S. military aid to Israel.
AIPAC has returned the favor with massive spending to attempt to defeat El-Sayed. Its super PAC, the United Democracy Project, has already spent $14.9 million backing Stevens. AIPAC also raised several million dollars for Stevens by directing its donors to online portals that funnel money directly to the candidate’s campaign.
Until this year, AIPAC was obscure to most voters. But its massive spending to support favored House and Senate candidates has been matched by progressive opponents using it to rally voters to shun those candidates.
In primaries this year, AIPAC and -aligned groups are pushing back against candidates who made Palestinian rights and support for restricting offensive arms sales to Israel a theme of their campaigns. AIPAC is also spending heavily to defend a seat in St. Louis, Missouri, that it helped win in 2024.
Duss said the politics surrounding Israel increasingly functions as a broader test of credibility for candidates seeking to dislodge Democratic Party leaders seen as holding back progress — not just on Israel, but also on such goals as Medicare for All. “It’s become an issue that you could speak out on if you want to demonstrate your anti-establishment bona fides,” he said.
In Michigan, voter scrutiny has broadened beyond just Israel to the question of why powerful interests are aligned with Stevens.
The changing politics is beginning to impact how incumbents are voting in Washington. In April, 40 Senate Democrats voted to block $295 million for the transfer of bulldozers — used by the Israeli military to demolish homes in the West Bank and Gaza — and 36 of them also supported a measure to block the sale of 1,000-pound bombs to the Jewish state. Those counts shattered a previous high of 27 Democrats who backed a similar pair of resolutions last year.
The governing challenge
The electoral victories may only be the beginning. The real test will come should the Democrats regain control of the House in November.
Matt Bennett, executive vice president at the centrist Democratic group Third Way, said that Israel “has exploded as a divisive issue in democratic politics” at a moment when Democrats have no power, as the minority in both the House and Senate, to shape the foreign policy of the United States. “It’s remarkable how anger is being directed at people who have no agency over these questions.”
If they win back the House, he said, those divisions will become much harder to avoid.
Whether driven by outrage over Gaza, frustration with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or broader resentment of political institutions, Israel has become a defining issue — something few Democratic strategists expected even a few years ago.
Smith, who advises political organizations Majority Democrats and the Bench, called the events of the 2026 primary seasoin a “turning point” in the Democratic Party’s stance toward Israel. “I think that relationship is going to be strained for the foreseeable future,” she said.
The combination of Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank, and Trump’s actions in the war on Iran, are going to have a “lasting impact on our politics,” said de Blasio. “I don’t think that it can be put back in the bottle.”
Israel’s election crossroads
Throughout the debate over Israel, mainstream Democrats have tried to direct their criticism at Netanyahu and his far-right partners. Even Bernie Sanders, the elder in the progressive caucus, framed the charge for ending U.S. military aid as opposition to the “extremist Netanyahu government.”
Israelis will get a chance to change leadership in the upcoming Oct. 27 Knesset election. Recent polls show that Netanyahu, seeking a seventh term in office, is trailing an opposition bloc led by two contenders for premier — former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot.
If Netanyahu loses, some centrist Democrats believe a different Israeli government will help ease tensions.
“The intense emotion surrounding the issue could lessen somewhat,” said Matt Bennett of Third Way. Though the next Israeli leader will not dramatically break with Netanyahu’s policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or Gaza, “not having Netanyahu there would matter a lot because he has become he has inserted himself into partisan politics in the United States to such a degree that he has become the face of these campaigns,” he added.
Progressives are less convinced. They see the shift and generational reassessment of the U.S.-Israel relationship as a larger challenge. “If you had a different figure, one who is not so odious, that would give an opportunity to change the relationship,” Duss said. “But I don’t think it’s going back because the differences here are not just about one person; they are systemic.”
The post Israel is dominating Democratic politics. How did we get here? appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
UK lawmakers press government on why West Bank imports haven’t yet been banned
(JTA) — British lawmakers from across the political spectrum are pressing the government to ban imports from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying that explanations for why such a ban has not yet been imposed were inadequate.
During a three-hour House of Commons debate on Thursday, lawmakers argued that Britain’s long-standing position that the settlements are illegal under international law means it should fall in line behind other countries advancing bans, particularly at a time of rising settler violence and efforts to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
The debate — the latest in a number of formal discussions about a potential ban in Parliament — was led by Abtisam Mohamed, a politician from the governing Labour Party who is the first Arab woman and first Yemeni member of Parliament. She was denied entry into Israel in 2025, a year after being elected.
“I want to pose a simple question to the government today, a question that sits at the heart of this debate,” Mohamed said in opening the session. “If settlements are illegal, why have we not made an outright ban on trade? What exactly is it that we’re waiting for?”
Lawmakers from other parties piled on.
“There is no excuse that we have to wait for other countries to move because they’ve moved ahead of us,” said Ellie Chowns from the left-wing Green Party, which has made opposition to Israel part of its platform. “There is no excuse that this is too technically difficult because the legal framework already exists.”
And a member of the Conservative party, which has traditionally favored strong ties with Israel, said he was unconvinced by the argument, made recently by a government official, that other measures that are potentially less complicated to administer could achieve the same pressure on Israel.
“We’ve done everything except the obvious, which is just the ban,” said the lawmaker, Kit Malthouse. “The question I’m left asking is, why? Why the reluctance? Why the hesitation? Nobody’s buying the complexity argument.”
On Monday, EU foreign ministers met to discuss a ban on products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, in order to gauge if there is enough support for the move. The EU’s foreign minister said a ban on imports was the most popular option under discussion and said she expected that the conversation would soon advance.
The discussion in the House of Commons comes as the British Labour government is in flux, with a new prime minister set to take over from Keir Starmer next week. It also comes as the government is taking steps to reassure a Jewish community that has been rattled by a number of violent incidents. This week, the government both allocated more than $300 million in security funding for Jewish institutions while also formally declaring Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, seen as tied to many of the attacks, to be a terrorist group, in a move that enables more intense prosecution.
In an appearance before the Foreign Affairs Committee earlier in July, the government’s top Middle East minister fended off allegations that the Labour government was slow-walking pressure on Israel. Hamish Falconer also noted that British Jewish leaders are urging against an import ban.
“There are legitimate and reasonable concerns from the British Jewish community that if we were to take steps which were crude, which were untargeted, could have unintended consequences on the lives of the community who are already under considerable pressure,” he said. “I do take that seriously for obvious reasons.”
The Board of Jewish Deputies, an umbrella organization for almost 200 Jewish groups in Britain, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that it was reluctant to comment on a potential ban on West Bank imports before a new prime minister is installed. But the group has previously weighed in strongly against efforts to boycott Israel, arguing in a 2017 report that “to hasten a solution to the settlements would be to assist the chances of negotiations through promoting peace, rather than the problematic boycott campaign.”
Falconer also signaled that all bets could be off if the Israeli government moves forward with a settlement project known as E1, telling the Foreign Affairs Committee, “I have said repeatedly that no one should benefit from a profit made on land that has been unlawfully procured.”
The E1 initiative would expand Jewish settlements on a stretch of land east of Jerusalem, bisecting the West Bank, and is seen by both its proponents and critics as a bid to undercut a potential future Palestinian state. The current right-wing Israeli government has moved the E1 project significantly toward actualization, approving it formally.
If the project proceeds further, Falconer told lawmakers, “then we and our friends and allies would take tangible action in response.”
The post UK lawmakers press government on why West Bank imports haven’t yet been banned appeared first on The Forward.
