BBC branches spoke against the motion, and the Guardian branch was also a vocal opponent.

After being alerted, UK Labour Leader Ed Miliband spoke out against the boycott proposal during his Israel visit last week. The motion was opposed by the Union’s National Executive Committee. NUJ’s General-Secretary made a strong speech against the motion which might have swayed many delegates. NUJ’s own report of the debate can be read here

A spokesman for the Fair Play campaign said:

“We welcome the decision by the NUJ’s General-Secretary, Executive and Delegates to overwhelmingly reject a boycott of Israel. Seven years ago, the NUJ voted to boycott Israel, provoking a major backlash from serious journalists in Britain and around the world. Today, the Union has renounced this path and has chosen another, better way that’s true to the journalistic values of neutrality and fairness.”

Sir Tom Jones this week spoke out against the campaign urging musicians to boycott Israel – and revealed that talks are already underway for him to return to the country where he performed just last month, writes Justin Cohen.

In a fresh blow for those advocating a boycott, the Sex Bomb singer told the Jewish News he was fully aware of the online clamour to cancel his October gigs in Tel Aviv but insisted he never considered giving in to the pressure that have caused other performers to stay away.

He said in an exclusive interview: “I was in Israel two weeks ago where a lot of singers won’t go (because of the boycott campaign). I don’t agree with that. I think entertainers should entertain. They should go wherever, there shouldn’t be any restrictions. That’s why I went there. I did two shows in Tel Aviv and it was fantastic.” He added: “I wanted to go because the Israeli people have asked me. They would like me to go and sing and I don’t see any problem in doing that. I don’t see why anyone would mix up the two things – entertainment and politics.”

Sir Tom Jones performing with disability band The Autistix at Norwood’s annual dinner

The legendary Welsh crooner went ahead with his first visit to Israel in more than a decade at the end of last month, despite the Cardiff Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s petition urging him to cancel garnering 2,000 signatures . “Please don’t whitewash Israel’s apartheid policies against Palestinians,” the petition read. “A performance in Israel today is akin to a performance in apartheid South Africa.”

In August, former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters wrote an open letter calling on “my brothers and sisters in the family of Rock and Roll” to join a culture boycott of Israel by refusing to perform or exhibit there or accept any “funding from any institution linked to the government of Israel, until such time as Israel complies with international law and universal principles of human rights”.

While acknowledging that “not all entertainers are the same and some feel strongly about certain politics or countries”, with decisions on whether to perform being down to those individuals, he said: “I believe entertainment should be for everyone and there shouldn’t be restrictions.”

Saying he was “so glad I went”, Sir Tom revealed he’d “definitely” like to perform there again. “They’re already talking about it. The promoter that took me out there said we’d like you back next week if we could.”

His comments to the Jewish News came during Monday’s Norwood annual dinner in central London, when he joined rock and roll band The Autistix– featuring three autistic young adults – for an impromptu performance that brought the house down. “It’s a great charity and whatever I can do I will,” he said before his surprise invitation to join the band on stage. “I live in Los Angeles and over there the Jewish community do much for charity. Of course I’m from Great Britain and I started seeing Jewish charities first hand in the 60s. I’ve always been supportive.”

Greenbelt – where faith, arts and justice meet. Unless, of course, you happen to be Israeli or Jewish or sympathetic to Zionism or cognisant of the historical quest for a Jewish homeland. Greenbelt used to be primarily an arts festival: it has become acutely political, and those politics obsessed with demonising Israel – even to the point of getting young children to ‘Embrace the Middle East‘ and play an interactive floor game called Occupation! – A Game of Life ”to give a glimpse of the challenges faced by ordinary Palestinians living under Israeli occupation… Roll the dice and make your way through checkpoints and challenges, permit denials and poverty”.

It is insidious propaganda – quite outrageous indoctrination-by-play – which poisons the mind of young Christians and delegitimises the State of Israel. And this year the Festival also hosts the launch of Kairos Britain – an anti-Semitic/anti-Israel mis-information and propaganda network which condemns Israel at every turn as oppressive and racist – with no mention of its right to self-defence against acts of terrorism and rocket bombardment, or even of its right to exist at all.

According to reports, Greenbelt has refused to allow any speakers – Jewish or Christian – to challenge the premises of Kairos. Young Christians will leave the Festival believing that Israel is a pariah state. This appears to accord with policies and agendas of previous years, which have been variously described as ‘Israel bashing‘, ‘Israel-hating’ and portraying ‘an awful image of Israel‘.

Thousands of UK Christians leave Bible Weeks and Christian festivals fired up with a resolution to campaign for justice and human rights. This is a good thing. Sadly, at Greenbelt, much of what they hear targets the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish homeland. Since Greenbelt is unlikely to invite His Grace to redress the imbalance, by way of response, here follows a guest post from Fran Waddams of Anglican Friends of Israel:

When Revisionism leads to Rejectionism

This week’s Greenbelt festival sees the launch of yet another group hostile to Israel, Kairos Britain. Kairos Britain is the latest offshoot of Kairos Palestine, whose replacement theology is widely criticised as bordering on anti-Semitic and whose polemic has aroused concerns that delegitimising the Jewish state is as high on its agenda as support for Palestinians.

In fact it seems to many Christians broadly supportive of Israel, that the focus of opposition to Israel, is shifting from criticising Israeli policies and actions to questioning the very existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East. For example, a friend told me that a volunteer on Embrace the Middle East’s stall at a recent New Wine festival admitted in conversation, to wondering whether Israel’s creation had not been a mistake.

And at New Wine in Newark earlier this month Embrace the Middle East’s CEO Jeremy Moodey, who has welcomed the formation of Kairos Britain, said “I affirm the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, but that right cannot come at the expense of another nation’s equivalent right, which is what has happened in Israel/Palestine since 1948.”

Whilst Moodey affirms the Jewish right to self determination, the rest of his statement raises a serious question. As Israel only became a state in 1948 (having accepted the 1947 UN Partition Plan when Arab leaders rejected it) are we to infer that from its very inception, Israel has in some way compromised Palestinian rights?

A reading of the contributions and linked articles on the Kairos Palestine website might lead an uninformed reader towards such a conclusion. One is left with the impression that Kairos views Israel as a colonial insertion in the region and her Jewish citizens as alien interlopers.

Yet this narrative in which thousands of years of Jewish history in the Middle East is airbrushed out and the circumstances surrounding the birth of the modern State of Israel are fudged is not just skewed but revisionist. Israel’s friends believe that history demonstrates that Jews have a right to self-determination on their ancient homeland.

There has been a continuous Jewish presence in the Middle East and North Africa, including the Holy Land, for thousands of years. Most Jews were expelled from Jerusalem by waves of persecution – an injustice that Israel’s critics, Christian and otherwise, tend to skim over. Even the more distant Diaspora communities of Europe and Russia retained powerful links to the Holy Land through the scriptures and daily worship.

The Old City of Jerusalem had a majority Jewish population from the 1840s until 1948, a fact that might surprise Christians who have only heard a narrative that erases the Jewish presence in the city prior to 1967.

From the late 19th Century on, Jews began arriving in Ottoman Palestine from Russia and Europe, buying land from Arab landlords to build new lives far from persecution. The region began to prosper and that prosperity attracted other immigrants from all over the region and beyond – Arab, Armenian, Egyptian and others.

After the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of WWI, the 1920 League of Nations conference at San Remo laid the foundations of the Middle Eastern nations we recognise today –Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq etc were founded. Delegates recognised that Jews too were indigenous to the region and had a right to national self-determination alongside other ethnic groups.

Using the Balfour Declaration for guidance, the Conference set aside some of the territory on which Jews created a nation state and penned the scriptures, for a Jewish national home. The rights of others living in that land were to be protected, and Britain was granted a Mandate to oversee the League of Nations’ provisions.

Outdated as this process may appear today, no one questions the right of, say, Syria or Jordan, also conceived then, to exist. Why then should we not call objections to Jewish national self-determination alone, ‘racist’?

Under the Mandate, Britain committed herself to facilitating a Jewish homeland, and Jewish immigration. But many British officials opposed it because Arab opposition. Some British officials even encouraged Arabs to demonstrate against the Jews, resulting in violence, for example, the attack in 1929 on the 4000 year old Jewish community of Hebron where 67 Jews were slaughtered by their Arab neighbours, many other maimed and the community ethnically cleansed from the town.

Throughout the Mandate years the British severely limited Jewish immigration to Palestine before and during the war – resulting in millions of Jews being trapped in Europe to be slaughtered by the Nazis. After WWII Britain’s inhumane treatment of thousands of holocaust survivors, now homeless refugees, turned away in old, rusting ships from Haifa and Jaffa in full view of the world’s press made sickening viewing and reading worldwide.

The Mandate years were shameful, and ought to make any British Christian think twice before lecturing Jews about justice and human rights.

Jewish people needed a home in which they could live safely. That much was clear from the Holocaust and subsequent mistreatment by the British Government. In 1947 the newly created UN took up the provisions of the San Remo conference and made a partition plan that divided up the land allotted for Jewish settlement by the League of Nations Mandate (again) into a Jewish and an Arab state.

Jewish leaders accepted the Partition, whilst Arab leaders vowed that there would be no Jewish state (and no Jews) permitted in the region. So began a pattern which continues to this day of Arab leaders rejecting any plan which would acknowledge the right of the Jewish state to exist.

Arab attacks on Jews began after the Resolution was passed and the day after the British slunk out of Mandate Palestine on 14 May 1948, 5 Arab armies invading the new state of Israel.

Prior to the Arab attack, many Arab community and national leaders urged Palestinians to leave their homes and villages just until the Jews had been expelled and their property taken. Many thousands took their advice despite being begged to stay by Jewish community leaders.

When Arab invasion began it seemed to spell the end of Jewish hopes for a homeland. The world looked on, expecting the Jewish forces to be overwhelmed by vastly superior numbers and weaponry. The Jordanian Arab Legion was even led and trained by British officers.

Miraculously the Arab nations failed. Jewish forces triumphed, even taking some of the land that had been allocated to the Arabs by the Partition Plan. The ensuing 1949 ceasefire line (Green Line) is often wrongly termed ‘the 1967 borders’. But they were not borders. Those have never been worked out, and can never be until Palestinian and other Arab leaders recognise the right of Jews to a national home on part of ancient Jewish lands.

About 700,000 Palestinians were displaced as a result of the conflict. Some had left on the advice of their leaders, expecting to return after the defeat of the Jewish forces and some were forcibly displaced because their continuation in Israel was perceived to be a threat to Israeli security. Arab nations refused to absorb them, preferring instead to use them as leverage against the Jewish state.

Many of Israel’s critics now clamour for the right of not only these displaced people but also of their descendants to return and reclaim houses and land. The ensuing Arab majority would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish national home; and given the endemic anti-semitism in the region, the suggestion by some Christians that the resulting ‘One State’ with Arab and Jew living side by side in a peaceful democratic state seem irresponsibly naïve at best.

In any case, where is the precedent for people displaced by a war started by their own leaders to return en masse to a country governed by those whom they treat as enemies? 8 million people were displaced during the partition of India and Pakistan 1948. No one seriously suggests that India or Pakistan should give these refugees and their descendants the right to reclaim land and property lost during Partition. Yet in some eyes, the Jewish state should be held to a different standard. Where is the justice in this?

150,000 Arabs did remain within Israel after the War of Independence, were granted Israeli citizenship and today enjoy far superior human rights than their brothers and sisters in Arab lands. On the other hand, no Jews were permitted to remain within areas taken by the Jordanian forces including the Old City of Jerusalem.

Jews were forced from land they had owned for generations or had purchased from Arab landlords was expropriated, for example, in Gush Etzion, and were denied access to Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem and Hebron during the entire questionable Jordanian annexation of the West Bank.

Then, there were the ‘Silent Refugees’, the 800,000 Jews forced out of ancient communities across the region by pogroms and forced expulsion. Their losses in money and property far outweigh Palestinian losses. Where is Kairos’ or their UK supporters’ concern for their rights of return or calls for compensation for their huge losses?

Then there is the question of the circumstances leading to Israel’s taking of the West Bank in 1967. Again, it would be hard to understand from reading Kairos Palestines’s website along, that this would never have happened had Arab nations once again believed that they could oust the Jewish state by force.

Arab aggression continued after 1949. In 1964, 3 years before the 6 Day War, Yassir Arafat launched the Palestine Liberation Organisation whose Charter states that “Palestine with its boundaries that existed at the time of the British mandate is an integral regional unit” and sought to eradicate “.. the existence and activity” of Zionism.’ In other words, Arafat wanted the whole of the Holy Land – including Israel.

In 1967 Egypt’s President Nasser precipitated war against Israel as he expelled UN peace keeping forces in the Sinai and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. The circumstances leading up to this war are usually glossed over by Christian critics of Israel. And desperate attempts at revisionism have tried to shift the blame for the War onto Israel.

But there was no question of such revisionism during the Spring and Summer of 1967. I well remember newspaper, radio and TV reports of Nasser’s belligerent, anti Jewish rhetoric, and the build up of troops in the Sinai newspapers throughout May of that year. There was no doubt then in anyone’s mind what Nasser intended and what would happen to Israel if he were to succeed.

Once again aggression from Israel’s neighbours backfired spectacularly, as Israel outmanoeuvred Egypt, Jordan and Syria, defeating them in the 6 Day War of June 1967. After the 6 Day War, Israel offered to return all lands captured in return for recognition, The answer from her warlike neighbours came in the Khartoum Declaration of September 1967 – No recognition of Israel, no conciliation with Israel, and no negotiations with Israel. So another chance to build a Palestinian state was lost.

Israel therefore gained land in the West Bank in a war of self-defence in 1967, and is entitled to retain ultimate control over that land until its inhabitants stop waging war against Israel from it. Which they have not.

So why isn’t there a State of Palestine? There’s been plenty of opportunity, beginning with the Peel plan of 1937, any time between 1949 and 1967, post 6 Day War, and again in 2000 and 2008. Palestinian leaders ‘never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity’ to have their own state. Why?

Maybe there was no will to create another Arab state for Palestinians prior to 1967? Or perhaps – as statements from Arab leaders suggest – the price – which would be to accept the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East – is a step too far? Neither Kairos Palestine nor her UK supporters seem to want to address this question, particularly as it applies before 1967. One wonders why.

History shows that heaping blame on Israel alone for the failure of the Palestinians and their allies to create a viable state prior to 1967, with all the ensuing consequences, while ignoring Arab aggression and rejectionism is grossly unjust. Yet this is exactly what Kairos Palestine and its Christian UK supporters do.

Revision of Middle East history is leading to a gradual ‘creep’ of Christian thinking on Israel towards a position way beyond criticism of Israel’s actions towards undermining the very legitimacy of her existence – drawing ever nearer to the position of some of Israel’s and the Church’s most vicious enemies. This is deeply worrying.

This creep has the potential to go far beyond the much vaunted position of Christians being ‘critical friends’ of Israel into unjustly singling out Israel’s Jews as perpetrators of a unique sin against justice and human rights. Such Christians are part of the problem, not the solution

The petition, reportedly initiated by the ex-Tottenham Frederic Kanoute, also featured the former Chelsea striker Didier Drogba and Newcastle midfielder Yohann Cabaye.

Or did it?

News emerged today that in fact neither of these players actually added their name to the petition. Drogba took to twitter to deny that he was involved and Yohann Cabaye posted a message to his website stating that he had never agreed to his name being attributed.

Admittedly the campaign to prevent Israel hosting the tournament next summer has been a bit of a damp squib but did the organisers really have to stoop this low? To borrow a football cliché, it’s a real head in the hands moment.

But there’s an even more serious edge to this tale.

How many of the other footballers had their names added to the petition without consent? And how much of the BDS strategy in general relies on inflation, exaggeration and, dare we say, outright falsehood?

Suddenly a petition which appeared to have finally given some exposure to a failing campaign has become a laughing stock, its credibility shot to pieces.

Culture and sport should unite rather than divide. It should form bridges between people so that difficult issues such as the Middle East Peace Process can be tackled in a constructive way.

This sort of petition can only ever be destructive, and even more so when it is full of lies and half-truths like the ones uncovered today.

Israel demonstrated patience and restraint in the face of regular rocket fire for months, but the enormous increase was too much to bear. For the past week, Israel conducted operation Pillar of Defence, a biblical reference to the pillar of cloud that guided the Children of Israel through the desert when they left Egypt and protected them from the Egyptians’ arrows and slings.

These rockets are aimed at Israeli towns, houses and schools. They are weapons used almost exclusively to hurt civilians. Using them against Israel is a breach of International Humanitarian Law – in other words, a War Crime. Officially, at least, the major Human Rights NGOs recognise this. In 2008, Human Rights Watch said

Hamas rocket attacks targeting Israeli civilians are unlawful and unjustifiable and amount to war crimes.

This Monday, a report from Amnesty International said that rocket fire by Hamas and other groups against Israeli towns

violates international humanitarian law.

Others have pointed out that launching such attacks from civilian areas (thus creating human shields) constitutes a double war crime. You’d never know it to watch the behaviour of some of these selfsame NGOs, with their staff taking to Twitter and the traditional airwaves to strongly attack Israel with only a cursory mention of Hamas (and in one case making arguably antisemitic jokes at the expense of Jewish Members of Parliament).

UNITE, one of the UK’s largest trade unions and the biggest funder of the Labour Party, released a 500-word screed, which condemned the

illegal Israeli assassination

of Hamas terrorist leaders but didn’t once mention Hamas rockets or Israeli victims, even dismissively. The failure of institutions like UNITE to even acknowledge Hamas war crimes is shameful, and demolishes any pretense that they are interested in international law, justice or a lasting peace.

This time, though, these groups are the more marginal. The British Government demonstrated balance and understanding from the outset. Both Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague backed Israel’s right to self-defence and are absolutely explicit that the primary responsibility for the escalation lies with Hamas itself.

Of course, the Government was also very clear that it feared a ground offensive – something that Israel’s Government was also clearly trying to avoid. This combination is a mature and developed approach which Israel’s leaders are much more likely to heed than the immediate condemnation that we’ve sometimes seen in the past.

This approach was echoed in Parliament, with many MPs rising to speak in support of Israel and condemn Hamas. The perennial knee-jerk critics like Sir Gerald Kaufman were in a clear minority. Reasonable and constructive comments came from all sides of the house with supporters of Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel ensuring their voices were heard in both the Commons and the Lords.

One reason for this support is that Israel’s story is being told better than it has been for many years. During previous conflicts, Hamas and Hezbollah got their messages out more effectively and faster than Israel. Supporters of Israel in the UK were left without the information we needed to respond. Things seem to have changed dramatically. Finally Israel has mastered social media. The IDF’s Facebook graphics, rapid responses and YouTube videos mocking Hamas’s almost-comical boasts meant that lies have been debunked before they can spread. In the UK, we are especially lucky to have Daniel Taub. As Israel’s Ambassador to Britain he is a powerful advocate and effective communicator who has also helped get Israel’s message across in the media and to politicians. The quality of analysis and output from BICOM was also world class.

The UK Jewish Community is united in its support for Israel’s right – Israel’s need – to stop the rocket fire. Leaders from across the community wrote to Ambassador Taub to express this support and to ask him to convey it to Israel’s leaders. This support also exists at the grassroots level. Members of the Jewish community have been actively organising and joining protests outside the Palestinian mission against rocket fire and counter-protests at the Israeli Embassy to ensure that anti-Israel protests are answered. They have used Facebook and Twitter to show their support and spread the message that the rockets must stop. They’ve made sure that the Batsheva Dance Troupe, an Israeli group touring the UK, was welcomed with Israeli flags and smiles in sharp contrast to the boycotters who greeted them with hate.

Israel worked hard to avoid sending ground troops into Gaza, with Israeli leaders doing everything they could to reach a ceasefire agreement that will stop the rockets through negotiation. The ceasefire deal announced by US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohmed Kamel Amr will be tested immediately. Will Hamas and the other groups keep to the agreement? How should Israel respond if they don’t? Will Hamas attempt to re-arm? Will Israel be forced into ground action anyway?

We pray and hope for peace for Israel – especially Southern Israel, which hasn’t been free from rockets day-to-day for years. We hope that the model of positive activism seen in the UK will be an enduring example for the future. The region needs a lasting solution to this conflict. The only viable solution remains a two state solution. A safe and secure Israel alongside a Palestinian state. And we also hope that the positive model of communication and activism seen in Israel and the UK can be a model and inspiration for the future.

In light of the continuing rocket attacks on Israeli towns from Gaza, and the ongoing Operation ‘Pillar of Defence’ response, Jewish community leaders from a broad cross section of major organisations have sent an open letter of support and solidarity to the Government of Israel via Ambassador Daniel Taub. The full text of the letter can be found below.

A number of our member organisations have been responding to the situation over the past twenty-four hours. For authoritative real time information and analysis about the situation we would also encourage you to visit the special ‘spotlight’ session on the BICOM website which was launched earlier today. This can be found here.

CST have warned that the escalation of the conflict may lead to an increase in antisemitic incidents. Their latest guidance for the community can be found here.

The latest statement from the Board of Deputies is available here.

To see a blog article on the current situation written by JLC CEO Jeremy Newmark for The Times of Israel, click here.

—————————————————————————————–

HE Daniel Taub
The Israel Ambassador
Embassy of Israel
2 Palace Green
London
W8 4QB

Mick Davis – Chair of the Board of Trustees, The Jewish Leadership Council (JLC)  & Chairman, UJIA
Vivian Wineman – President, Board of Deputies of British Jews & Chairman, JLC
Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks – Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth
Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner – Movement Rabbi, Movement for Reform Judaism
Rabbi Danny Rich – CEO, Liberal Judaism also on behalf of Liberal Judaism Rabbinic Conference
Jon Benjamin – CEO, The Board of Deputies of British Jews
Jeremy Newmark – Chief Executive, The Jewish Leadership Council
Frank Baigel – President of Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester & Region
Kate Bearman – JLC Political Oversight Group & Former Director of Labour Friends of Israel
Bill Benjamin – Member, JLC
Linda Boxer – Chief Executive, WIZO UK
Alex Brummer – Vice-President of Board of Deputies (Chair International Division)
Paul Charney – Chair, Zionist Federation
David Chinn – Member, JLC Political Oversight Group
Sir Trevor Chinn CVO – Vice President, JLC & Chair of  JLC Political Oversight Group
Adrian Cohen – Chair, London Jewish Forum & Member of JLC
David Cohen – Vice President, JLC
David Dangoor – President, Board of the Spanish & Portuguese Jews’ Congregation
Judith Flacks – Campaigns Director, UJS
Nick Gendler – Co-chair, Masorti Judaism
Jonathan Goldstein – Chair, PaJeS
Lord Young of Graffam – Chairman, Jewish Museum & Member, JLC
Alex Green – Chair, Union of Jewish Students and Member, JLC
Henry Grunwald OBE QC – Vice President, JLC & Past President, Board of Deputies
Robert Halfon MP
Andrew Heller – Chairman, Executive Board of Conservative Friends of Israel
Lucian J Hudson – Chairman, Liberal Judaism
Jeremy Jacobs – CEO, United Synagogue
Lord Janner of Braunstone – Vice-President, JLC
Isaac Kaye – BICOM & JLC Political Oversight Group
Dermot Kehoe – CEO, BICOM
Brian Kerner – Co-chair, Fair Play Campaign Group & Member of JLC
Debbie Klein – Chairman, JCC for London
Douglas Krikler – Political Oversight Group, JLC
Nigel Layton – Chairman, LEAD
Howard Leigh – Vice President, JLC
James Libson – Trustee, JLC
Howard Miller – CEO, Spanish & Portuguese Jews’ Congregation
Edward Misrahi – Vice Chair, BICOM & Chairman, ‘We Believe in Israel’
Leo Noé – Vice President, JLC
Stephen Pack – President, United Synagogue
Jenny Pizer – Chair, Movement for Reform Judaism
Stuart Polak – Director, Conservative Friends of Israel
Ben Rich – CEO, Movement for Reform Judaism
Jo Rosenfelder – Board Member & Trustee, Tzedek & Member of JLC Political Oversight Group
Jill Shaw – Chair, WIZO UK
Clive Sheldon – Co-chair, Masorti Judaism
Rebecca Simon – Board Member, Labour Friends of Israel
Gavin Stollar – Chairman, Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel
Nick Viner – CEO, JCC for London
Michael Weiger – Chief Executive, UJIA
Joy Wolfe MBE  - Chairman, StandWithUs UK & President, Manchester Zionist Central Council
Poju Zabludowicz – Chairman, BICOM

It is unfortunate that such adverts were placed on buses, and we trust that TfL will ensure that similarly offensive materials do not appear on the network in the future.

You can read our original letter of complaint here and TfL’s response here.

Jeremy Newmark                                                                           Jon Benjamin

Chief Executive                                                                            Chief Executive

Jewish Leadership Council                                                     Board of Deputies of British Jews

The pages also have some details of each country: capital city, population, size and languages.

This is where the problem starts, because the Palestinian Authority has an Olympic Committee, allowing it to enter athletes as “Palestine”.

The BBC lists the capital of Palestine as “East Jerusalem” (see bottom-left corner below)

BBC Olympic Website - Palestine page

What about Israel? The website doesn’t list any capital at all for Israel. We think this is unique – only Israel isn’t allowed a capital city at all.

BBC Olympics Website - Israel Page

If this sounds familiar, it’s because exactly the same thing happened in April on the official Olympics website. Almost certainly the BBC’s Sports team just copied their data from the Olympic website without checking it. We don’t believe that this is evidence of malice or bias, but it’s a bit lazy. Certainly after the story about the Olympic website erupted, someone in the BBC somewhere should have asked “Hang on, what do we have on our own site?”

Will the BBC change its site? If so, how?

The BBC’s corporate position (and that of the UK Government) is to deny that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. The BBC usually picks another city in Israel – Tel Aviv – and decides to call it the capital instead, which is pretty weird. The Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, is in Jerusalem. So is the executive office of the Prime Minister and the Supreme Court. The UK’s embassy to Israel isn’t even in Tel Aviv – it’s in the city of Ramat Gan. Quick correction: The Embassy moved to Tel Aviv a couple of years ago but the BBC also used to say that Israel’s capital was Tel Aviv before the move.

But the BBC’s corporate position is also to consider Ramallah – and not Jerusalem or East Jerusalem – as the capital of the Palestinian Territories.

The Olympics website first added Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, then changed its mind and then took down ALL capital cities after the news coverage. Let’s see what the BBC does now.

You can complain to the BBC here
(original hat tip to David Century)

We Believe in Israel will include inspirational plenary sessions with top-level speakers, and sessions that will include updates and analysis on the situation in the region, training in skills that can help you in your political activism, and sessions that will allow you to grapple with the complex ethical and philosophical challenges that underpin the Jewish state.

We Believe in Israel is a BICOM event that is supported by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, the Zionist Federation, the Union of Jewish Students and many others. Fair Play is proud to support the Conference.

BOOK NOW – and we’ll see you there!