Published: 29 August 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Unlike Hungary, Turkey and many other countries, Israelis have not caved in before the manoeuvres of Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. They have stood fast and understood what is at stake.
Last month, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in the UK published a report about antisemitism in the UK in 2023 and included the question, “What do Jews in the UK think about Israel’s leaders and its future?” Comparable to Australia's Crossroads23 demographic analysis, its authors, Jon Boyd and Carli Lessof, honed in on Jewish attitudes towards Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the “judicial reform” controversy.
From those who gave an opinion, 79% of British Jews disapproved of Netanyahu. The findings for the far-right Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, reached stratospheric heights at 85%. Moreover, this was not a survey of just a few hundred souls but one answered by close to 4000 people.
Yet Jewish organisations seem to have ignored this valuable exercise. Sections of the Jewish press buried it in the bowels of that week’s edition. Rabbinical leaders of central Orthodoxy looked the other way.
Such silence heartened those supporters of “judicial reform” who had demanded a silence — no uproar and no outrage. Jewish organisations aligned themselves with the far-right in keeping tight-lipped on events in Israel.
There appears to be three strands of opinion in the Diaspora: a diminishing band of hardline supporters, a growing band of critics across the political spectrum, and a group which calls for unity and compromise in the name of consensus. While the latter is an honourable aspiration, it is worth recalling former president Rivlin’s comments about the prospect of compromise on judicial reform: “You can't have half a democracy!”
Central Orthodoxy and its synagogues purport to adhere to a studied neutrality and a desire for consensus, but history indicates that they too have their red lines.
More than 20 years ago, the then prime minister, Ehud Barak, floated ideas about administering the Temple Mount and the Western Wall to satisfy the needs of both Judaism and Islam. This possibility catalysed a rally in Jerusalem, attended by Netanyahu and Natan Sharansky, to protest against “any surrender of the Temple Mount”.
