Prominent British Jews form group that does NOT support Israel

Good on them! Perhaps this could rub off here in Australia, where the Jewish community appears to be rabidly pro-Israel.

The groups website appears to be: http://jewishvoices.squarespace.com/ 

From The Age:

More than 100 prominent British Jews have formed a breakaway group in response to a perceived pro-Israel bias among the country’s major Jewish organizations, it was reported today.

According to The Independent daily, Independent Jewish Voices’s (IJV) founding declaration reads: “Those who claim to speak on behalf of Jews in Britain and other countries consistently put support for the policies of an occupying power above the human rights of the occupied people”.

Among those who have signed IJV’s declaration are the Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, the prominent historian Eric Hobsbawm, the film director Mike Leigh, the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Bindman and actor Stephen Fry, according to The Guardian.

“It is important for non-Jews to know that there are Jews … who do not agree with the apparent consensus within the Jewish community that the only good Jew is one who supports Israel,” Hobsbawm told The Independent.

A spokeswoman for the group told The Independent that it hopes to create an opportunity for Jews to express opinions “without being accused of disloyalty or being dismissed as self-hating”. “The idea is to create a platform for critical debate about the situation in the Middle East that until now has not existed,” she said.

Source: British Jews split over Israel – World – theage.com.au

Technorati tags: israel, Jews, IJV