British rabbis back UK sanctions on Israeli settlements, denounce BDS

Several leading British rabbis have backed the UK's new sanctions on Israeli settlements, amid protests from prominent Jewish groups and leaders against the measures.

A day after the sanctions were announced by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, senior Masorti rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg took to X to express his support for the sanctions.

"What is taking place today in the West Bank is a Chillul HaShem, a violation of God’s name of the worst order. We cannot stay silent. This is terrible for Palestinian people who want to get on with their lives in peace. It is terrible for Israel,” Wittenberg wrote on X.

The rabbi highlighted that he had been in the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair when Miliband's announcement was made, where he witnessed the horrors of settler violence with his "own eyes".

“We must speak out. We must do so out of deep concern for what is human and just, and for the sake of Israel and Judaism. We cannot turn away."

Wittenberg expressed his opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, while also describing Israel as his "family".

Elsewhere, Rabbi Alexandra Wright of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London said that the "occupation and escalating violence are harming Palestinians and Israelis".

"The sanctions are the UK’s commitment to a two-state solution. The Anglo-Jewish community is committed to a Jewish state that is founded, not on oppression and violence, but, in the words of Israel’s declaration of independence, ‘on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel’," Wright said.

The rabbi also urged the Jewish community to “not hold back any progression towards a two-state solution”.

Other rabbis who came out in support of the measures include Jeremy Gordon of the New London Synagogue, and Lev Taylor of Kingston Liberal Synagogue.

Their statements came as prominent Jewish leaders and groups attacked the sanctions against illegal settlements.

UK Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said on Tuesday, the day that the sanctions were announced, that it was a "dark day for British Jews".

"The measures announced amount to little more than political flag-bearing for mendacious anti-Israel rhetoric and those who harbour a dangerous obsession with the Jewish State. These measures will succeed only in bolstering the very extremism they seek to target. On the eve of Rosh Hashanah and at a time when our community is more vulnerable than ever to the wave of extremism that has been building over recent years, these sanctions do nothing to advance the cause of peace," Mirvis said.

"Gesture politics of this kind feeds into an increasingly hostile discourse about Israel, and the cumulative effect of such punitive policies is to further embolden those, at home and abroad, who use hatred as a weapon against Jews," he added.

Mirvis, who has at least one child who took part in the Israeli war on Gaza, has frequently expressed support for Israel, including calling the country's genocide-accused army "our heroic soldiers".

The announcement was also slammed by the Jewish Leadership Council and the Board of Deputies for British Jews, which said it viewed the measures with "deep regret".

While British Jewish groups have come out with contrasting statements on the sanctions, there is currently no definitive polling on the broader community's attitudes towards Miliband's announcement.

A survey conducted by YouGov on Tuesday found that 52% of a sample of over 4,000 members of the public expressed support for the sanctions. Of that figure, 33% said they "completely approve" of the measures. 

Seventeen percent said they disapproved of the sanctions, while 33% said they "don't know".

The measures announced by Miliband on Tuesday will see the UK ban all goods from illegal Israeli settlements -- a move which supporters say underscores the UK's commitment to upholding international law. 

Pro-Palestine critics of the sanctions, however, have said the move does not go far enough, particularly as Britain continues to supply military hardware to Israel.