In the wake of the Hamas pogrom on the 7th of October, I was asked by someone on Facebook how to work towards a lasting peace. Below is my response in full.
Please accept my apologies for taking so long to respond. I’m sure you’ll understand that this is a difficult time for all Jews, and I have been anxiously trying to confirm that my personal friends in Israel are safe. But also this is a much harder question to answer. I know a great deal about the current situation, and about the history, both ancient and modern, which led to this situation. Sadly that doesn’t mean I necessarily have answers on how to achieve peace, but I will share some thoughts here.
I, and most fellow leftist Jews, support a two-state solution. To that end I would like to see an immediate halt to Israeli settlement in the West Bank as a show of good-faith and willingness on the part of Israel. However, and this is important, I do not think that the existing Jewish residents there should be expelled, as they were from Gaza in 2005. Hebron is one of the Jewish people’s four holy cities (the others being Jerusalem, Safed and Tiberias). It has an ancient Jewish history, and its Jewish population long predates the Arab conquests of the 7th century that brought Arab Islamic hegemony to the Levant. Israel’s population today is roughly 20% Arab, so I see no reason why a future Palestinian state should not welcome a Jewish minority. Violence and vandalism by Israelis in the West Bank must be strongly and unambiguously condemned by Israel’s government, and the perpetrators must be brought to justice by Israel. It cannot be one rule for Jews and another for Arabs, as it so often seems today. Jewish offenders must be treated the same as Arab ones. I do not trust Netanyahu’s government to carry this out, but the work of Israeli human rights NGOs such as B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, and Tag Meir give me some hope.
In the western imagination ‘indigenous peoples’ are generally Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders, Polynesian peoples such as the Māori, and the pre-Columbian peoples of the Americas — all of whom were dispossessed of their lands by Europeans in the early modern period. Indeed, much of the terminology around indigeneity was coined to describe these peoples. But this doesn’t invalidate its use to better understand and protect other, equally applicable, peoples — including the Jewish people.
Indigenous peoples are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to people and the environment. They have retained social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live. Despite their cultural differences, indigenous peoples from around the world share common problems related to the protection of their rights as distinct peoples.
Indigenous peoples have sought recognition of their identities, way of life and their right to traditional lands, territories and natural resources for years, yet throughout history, their rights have always been violated.
For millennia, Jewish men, particularly Torah scholars, have covered their heads and/or necks with a woven cloth called a סודרא (sudra, sudara) or סודר (sudar). Jews in late antiquity routinely wore sudarin, and the garment is consequently mentioned frequently in the Mishnah — a written record of Jewish common law, and daily life in the Land of Israel, compiled in the first two centuries of the Common Era. The Jewish Encyclopedia, published in twelve volumes between 1901 and 1906, explains that ‘[t]he Israelites most probably had a head-dress similar to that worn by the Bedouins … a keffieh folded into a triangle, and placed on the head with the middle ends hanging over the neck to protect it.’
The encyclopedia also says that, in later times, Jews wrapped their headcloths around a small cap ‘to shield the other parts of the head-covering from perspiration.’ Even today, some Yemenite Jewish men still wear sudarin, usually wrapped around a central felt cap called a כומתא (komtah), to form a headdress similar to a turban.
A Yemenite Jew wearing a sudra wrapped around a komtah. c. 1898-1914
Charlie Kaplan believes that there is ‘scant evidence for the claim’ that ‘most of Britain’s 270,000-strong Jewish community have for some time felt that the Labour Party was not a safe place for them’. He is mistaken. In 2018 The Guardian published an open letter, written and co-signed by sixty-eight British rabbis, representing denominations spanning the entire spectrum of modern Judaism, in which they expressed their concerns, and the concerns of their communities, about antisemitism in the Labour Party. So diverse were the signatories that they even included the late Hasidic rabbi and former Labour Councillor, Avrohom Pinter. In 2019 Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, wrote an article in The Times, in which he stated that ‘the question I am now most frequently asked is: [w]hat will become of Jews and Judaism in Britain if the Labour Party forms the next government?’ In the same year a study by Survation, an independent research organisation, found that an estimated 86% of British Jews believe ‘that there are high levels of antisemitism among Labour Party members and elected representatives’. A further study, conducted by King’s College London and the Campaign Against Antisemitism, and published in 2020, reported that ‘British Jews feel that the Labour Party is more than twice as tolerant of antisemitism than any other political party’. Whether or not these feelings are justified may be up for debate, but it is resoundingly clear that the majority of British Jews do not feel welcome in the Labour Party, and have not for some time. Myself among them.
