Sections

EST 1917
Advertisement

News Brief

A group of 100 Jewish Britons published a letter decrying Israel’s policies.

A week before Israel’s 60th Independence Day celebrations, the statement appeared in The Guardian newspaper with the headline “We’re not celebrating Israel’s anniversary.”

“We will celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East,” the signatories wrote in their statement, which accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing, violating international and “deny(ing) Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations.”

The letter said Israel was “founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land.”

It said that the state’s founding is “understandable in the context of centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust,” but that “it is now time to acknowledge the narrative of the other, the price paid by another people for European anti-Semitism and Hitler’s genocidal policies.”

Academics, artists, celebrities and attorneys signed the statement.

Reporting the stories that define our era. When history unfolds in real-time, the Jewish world turns to JTA. Your support ensures we can document the complexities of war and the resilience of Jewish communities with integrity.

Choose an amount to donate

Recommended from JTA

Advertisement