UK’s Largest Jewish Organization Urges Israel to Allow Unrestricted Gaza Aid
The UK’s top Jewish organization has called for a rapid and unrestricted flow of aid to Gaza, condemning the use of hunger as a weapon of war.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews has called for a “rapid, uninhibited, and sustained increase in aid” to the Gaza Strip, marking a rare implicit rebuke of the Israeli government amid growing concern within the UK Jewish community over the scale of the humanitarian crisis.
In a statement issued following an emergency meeting on Tuesday, Board President Phil Rosenberg acknowledged that recent steps taken by Israeli authorities to allow limited humanitarian relief into Gaza were “essential if long overdue.”
“The suffering we are witnessing in the Gaza Strip demands a response,” Rosenberg said, adding that “food must not be used as a weapon of war, by any side in this conflict.”
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The intervention, reported by the British newspaper The Guardian, comes as images and testimonies from Gaza — of starving children and desperate parents shot while trying to access food — have triggered deep unease within the British Jewish community.
Rosenberg’s statement also signaled frustration over delays in action: “We need to see a rapid, uninhibited, and sustained increase in aid through all available channels, and we need to see all agencies cooperating in this endeavour.”
The emergency meeting followed a letter sent by dozens of Board members urging leadership to speak out. “Nothing could be more damaging to the British Jewish community than staying silent in this moment,” the letter read.
Former Board President Marie van der Zyl also weighed in last week, writing in Jewish News that “hunger and human suffering, on this scale, are incompatible with the core values of our faith.” She added: “This is not a time for silence. It is a time for compassion.”
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More than 400 rabbis worldwide have also signed a joint letter warning that “the Jewish people face a grave moral crisis,” calling on the Israeli government to end what they described as “callous indifference to starvation.”
Among the signatories was Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, senior rabbi of Masorti Judaism in the UK. Their statement declared: “We cannot condone the mass killings of civilians, including a great many women, children, and elderly, or the use of starvation as a weapon of war.”
The Board also condemned what it called “appalling rhetoric and unacceptable proposals” by Israeli officials, including calls for the forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and settler violence in the West Bank, which it said are “in complete contradiction to our values.”
Since Israel’s reneging on the ceasefire on March 18, it has killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians throughout the Gaza Strip through a bloody and ongoing aerial bombardment.
On October 7, 2023, following a Palestinian Resistance operation in southern Israel, the Israeli military launched a genocidal war against the Palestinians, killing over 60,000, wounding more than 145,000, with over 14,000 still missing.
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Despite habitual condemnation by many countries around the world of the Israeli genocide, little has been done to hold Israel accountable.
Israel is currently under investigation for the crime of genocide by the International Court of Justice, while accused war criminals — including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — are now officially wanted by the International Criminal Court.
The Israeli genocide has been largely defended, supported, and financed by Washington and a few other Western powers.
(The Palestine Chronicle)