ANALYSIS: The consensus view — Rosenberg lays out the Board’s stance on the Middle East

If tightrope-walking is a skill required of the president of the Board of Deputies, Phil Rosenberg’s ability to keep his balance has been put to the test amid growing divisions within the Jewish community over Israel’s war in Gaza.

The Board is still to conclude an investigation into whether 36 of its members, who fired off a letter to the Financial Times decrying Israeli policy in Gaza, had breached its code of conduct.

Different views were on display too at its plenary forum on Sunday. While some deputies wanted to know why the Board had not publicly reacted to Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s chastisement of Israel in Parliament the other week, one of the deputies for the Union of Jewish Students resigned over the Board’s failure to condemn Israel for its “genocidal assault” against the Palestinians.

Rosenberg, who has just completed the first year of his three-year term, told deputies that he aimed to maintain a “consensus position”.

So, it is worth dwelling on what he said about the conflict last week since it must reflect his judgement of where mainstream Anglo-Jewish opinion lies.

While the Board did not engage in “megaphone diplomacy”, it had made its views known to both the UK and Israeli governments, he told deputies. He and some of his officers were recently in Jerusalem for a World Jewish Congress assembly.

Britain’s suspension of free trade talks with Israel in protest at the ongoing military campaign in Gaza were “a mistake”, he said. It was the mildest of rebukes, though, indicative of a belief that, in this instance at least, behind-the-scenes advocacy would be more effective than rushing to social media.

From the comments made by deputies on the floor, concern about humanitarian aid for Gaza was apparent. Limmud co-founder Clive Lawton, who represents Bristol Hebrew Congregation, stressed that it was not just Progressive deputies but members of Orthodox synagogues too who thought it “reprehensible to use humanitarian aid as a weapon of war,” describing it as a Chillul Hashem, a profanation of God’s name.

Rosenberg assured deputies. “We have been clear to Israeli leaders that we need to see aid flowing into Gaza - not a basic amount but enough to feed the civilian population. And we have been clear to British leaders that Hamas must not steal aid when it gets there.”

He was also clear that the Board “strongly” opposed “rhetoric and actions aimed at the permanent forced displacement of populations, including the civilian population of Gaza”.

He felt confident enough to talk about the Middle East more widely, and in doing so, revealed the gap between the current Israeli government and UK Jewry’s main representative body.

October 7 had shown that the last 15 years of “conflict management” had failed, he said. “We need to move… to conflict resolution.

“The two-state solution is clearly not as popular as it was, but we are yet to hear a more convincing alternative,” he declared. “Until we do, we’ll be creating the space and making the case to give peace a new chance.”

He went further too, appealing to Israeli leaders to abandon policies that “needlessly divide the Israeli public” and suggesting that internal divisions in Israel had emboldened Hamas to attack on October 7.

The situation on the West Bank was “out of control”, he ventured. While Palestinian terrorism remained “a serious concern”, settler violence against Palestinians was “unacceptable and has to stop”.

Meanwhile, the hard-right ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, were a “stain on the Zionist project”, he said. “It seems that nearly every time they open their mouths, something appalling comes out. They need to be reined in – ideally, they ought to be kicked out,” he added - to applause.

He was also unimpressed with the reactions of some Israeli ministers to criticism from abroad. “There seems to be a bit of an attitude in some quarters of the Israeli government that echoes Millwall in the 1970s: ‘Nobody likes us, and we don’t care’.”

But when one veteran deputy suggested Smotrich and Ben Gvir deserved a modicum of respect as part of a democratically elected government, Rosenberg contended: “We make an exception for extremists.”