There has been sharp reactions from some quarters in the Jewish community here to Michael Sacher’s letter to the Jerusalem Post last Thursday, in which he called on Israeli Premier Menachem Begin to seek a new mandate for his foreign policy. (See Aug. 14 Daily News Bulletin, P.4.)
Lionel Bloch, a leading member of the London Jewish community and legal advisor to the Israeli Embassy, sent a letter to the Jerusalem Post in which he attacked Sacher whose views on this matter, Bloch, said, did not represent those of the Jewish rank and file.
Bloch accused Sacher of irresponsibility for publicly criticizing the Israel government at a time when silence was required before the delicate summit talks at Camp David next month. “The note struck in his letter will be seen as symptomatic of the malaise that is rife in a particular section of the Anglo-Jewish establishment,” Bloch wrote. The reference was to the attitudes of British Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobowitz and Sir Sigmund Warburg whose letters criticizing Israeli policies have recently appeared in the British press.
Commenting on Sacher, Bloch told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “I don’t think that political counseling is Mr. Sacher’s forte–the slice served up in the Jerusalem Post was half-baked.” There has been no official reaction from the Zionist Federation to Sacher’s letter but it is no secret that it caused considerable discomfiture, and in the case of the Herut faction in the Federation, even resentment.
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