I have been asked to set out what I said today at the Board.
In January the Oxfam tie-up was approved with the following safeguard:
We will discontinue our involvement if OXFAM GB:
1.Supports a boycott of any type of Israeli goods.
2.Partners with or supports any organization that promotes or condones violence.
3.Partners with or supports any organisation that calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.
To ensure that these parameters are rigorously maintained with regard to the Grow Tatzmiach project, the Board will create an oversight committee to monitor Grow Tatzmiach on a continual basis, whose members are to be chosen by the Executive from Deputies who volunteer for this role.
If in the opinion of the monitoring committee the connection is being exploited in any way to the detriment of the State of Israel then the project will be terminated.
Should the monitoring committee (of which I am a member) have ruled on 7 May that one of the three 'red lines' has been crossed, it would be entirely contrary to both the letter and the spirit of the motion passed in January for the Executive to do anything other than abandon the tie-up, without hesitation. Moreover if the monitoring committee has so ruled, surely Deputies after over two weeks have a right to know!
Gary Mond (Deputy for the JNF), speaking in the debate, referred to the many Deputies who had only voted in January for the Oxfam tie-up because of the assurance of the red lines. For those red lines to now be ignored, he said, would turn the Board in general and the president in particular into laughing stocks.