In a chapter titled “Senatus Populusque Judaeorum,” a term he borrowed from the historic emblematic phrase of the Roman Republic, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, writing in his The Jewish War Front (1940), promoted our own Senate and People of Judea. It was to be a supra-Jewish “world-Kehillah.”
Jabotinsky had been warning of the buildup of a lethal antisemitism for years and sought Jewish unity. The paramount instrument of that unity would be a single headquarters that would democratically represent and enable the Jewish people’s response for mutual assistance as well as mutual defense. Yet he admitted that the establishment of such a body “is perhaps the hardest of all points of resistance on the road to Jewish redemption.”
Getting Jews to work together, to coordinate, and to cooperate is a yeoman’s task. As Jabotinsky wrote in that chapter, acceptance by one group of an idea or method of another group, or “even one single new phrase, may sound to them like an invitation to apostasy.”
The situation today
Today, some 85 years after Jabotinsky made his suggestion, we have a sovereign State of Israel, with a Knesset of 120 members. They are elected democratically. At last count, there are 14 political parties represented in the Knesset. Unity, then, is far from reality.
And we still have the Diaspora.
The British Diaspora establishment had a fit recently after UK far-right activist Tommy Robinson was feted as an official guest of Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli.
I am acquainted with the Jewish community of Great Britain. I was a youth movement emissary there, visited several more times, including interviews with the Foreign Office, was twice a speaker at Limmud (where I was an object of intense jeering from radical leftists there), and still have many friends and acquaintances from that isle.
Inviting British Jews to discuss the Israel-Hamas War, the UK UnHerd Club newsletter viewed the British Jewish community as follows: While “seem[ingly] united in solidarity with the Israeli victims of Hamas,” it allowed “a wedge between the supporters and condemners of Israel’s actions” to split the community.
I do trust they will have also dealt with the question of murder, mayhem, and madness directed against English Jews. But, indeed, has there truly been solidarity?
Zionism and British Jewry
Over the past two decades various groups such as Jewdas, Independent Jewish Voices, Yachad and now Na’amod have been making inroads, significantly decreasing the Zionist quotient factor of British Jewry, the likes of which haven’t been witnessed since Lord Edwin Montagu became anti-Zionist, calling Zionism “a mischievous political creed,” and opposed the Balfour Declaration of 1917 over a century ago.
This summer came the publication of a letter, signed by nearly 2,000 prominent Diaspora Jews, urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza. Among them were Trevor Chinn and Mick Davis of England. According to a report in this paper on August 6, the initiative was helmed by Davis “in an effort ‘to reverse the direction’ of the State of Israel.”
Davis, who has made aliyah, used sharp language in last January’s issue of the BICOM journal Fathom, asserting that “Netanyahu governments have represented an increasingly unbridled assault on all the essential elements” of Israel’s Declaration of Independence.” This, he felt, has been “a deeply painful and destructive period that has tarnished Zionism.”
At the October 2024 Haaretz Conference in London, Davis spoke out, saying “Israel’s existential threat is entirely internal and not external,” adding, “The issue is not 7 October but the relationship to the Palestinian people.” Already back in November 2010, when he was chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council, Davis was outspoken, declaring that Israel risked becoming an apartheid state unless a two-state solution could be reached.
Is the outrage over Chikli’s invitations to Jordan Bardella, a leader of France’s National Rally; MEP Charlie Weimers of the Sweden Democrats Party, among others, to a conference called to fight antisemitism, to be but a one-way street? Or can Diaspora figures be raked over coals? Can Israel, on the other hand, assertively insert itself into Diaspora communities the way some of these communities’ leader assume they can do so in protest of Israel’s policies?
Tension with the Jewish community
The anger of the British Jewish establishment made its way into the Knesset. Chikli was instructed by a Knesset committee, chaired by an opposition MK, to issue a formal apology to leaders of the UK Jewish community for not consulting with them before inviting Robinson to Israel on an official visit recently.
The demand was included in a resolution that passed in which Chikli was rebuked not only for circumventing the main representative body of British Jewry, but also for apparently not consulting with the Foreign Ministry before bringing Robinson to the country.
“Robinson’s visit was a slap in the face to British Jewry,” said MK Gilad Kariv, the Committee for Aliyah, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs chairman.
The committee did deliberate other worthwhile matters, such as who knew what about Robinson’s trip and the need to formulate clear guidelines for extending invitations to persons with whom local Jewish communities somehow feel uneasy. Of course, those same principles should apply in the other direction.
As an example, the American IfNotNow Jewish group is pushing a new campaign. On its Instagram account, I read it is supporting the Refuser Solidarity Network to support the refusal of Israelis to serve in the IDF “and participate in its genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza – despite facing prison and public backlash.”
On Sunday, October 26, the group was to “hear directly from some of these courageous refusers about the growing resistance movement and discuss how Jews in the US can support it.” Perhaps some of the Diaspora Jews should be found to be persona non grata?
Cannot Israel set for itself an agenda that, while sitting uneasy with the left-of-center protagonists, could perhaps not only strengthen Israel’s diplomatic standing but form alliances that may assist Jews abroad in their campaign against antisemitism? Does it not possess that right?
The writer is a researcher, analyst, and commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.