Communal leaders in the UK have added their voices to Jewish outrage in the US over the killing of a black man by a white Minneapolis police officer last week — and have expressed solidarity with those staging non-violent protests.
George Floyd’s death — after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes as he told them “I can’t breathe” — has sparked a wave of protests both in America and around the world over the past week.
The President of the Board of Deputies Marie van der Zyl said she felt “haunted and also traumatised about this cold blooded racist murder”, adding that Jews “must show solidarity against hate and such vile racism”.
In a statement, the Community Security Trust (CST) said: “The killing of George Floyd, the dehumanisation that underpinned it and the varying reactions to these events, are stark evidence of the power that racism continues to wield in our societies.’’
Noting the death of the 46-year-old last week was “the latest in a long and awful list of African-American people who have died in similar circumstances’’, the communal group added that combatting antisemitism and racism “is central to CST’s mission”.
Meanwhile, Rabbi Nicky Liss, Chair of the United Synagogue’s Rabbinic Council, said: “We stand in solidarity with black communities in America, in the UK and around the world. The dream of Martin Luther King — that one day his children will ‘live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skins rather than by the content of their characters’ — is yet to be realised.
“It is our duty, wherever we live, to turn this dream into reality. Racism has no place in society and we should be at the forefront of confronting it. I urge everyone to support organisations involved in fighting this evil.”
The Jewish Labour Movement said: “The Jewish community in the UK can and must do more to stand in solidarity with black Jews and the black British community.’’
The Union of Jewish Students released their own statement saying: “As Jewish students, as community members, as citizens of this world, we need to recognise the role we must play in the fight for equality, not be a bystander, not to be silent, not to enable this oppression.”
The Jewish Leadership Council and the Reform and Liberal Judaism movements all offered their own messages of solidarity.
The Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said in a statement released on social media: “We cannot stand idly by as it [racism] takes hold of our societies. However, it is also not enough for us to simply join in with a superficial chorus of disapproval.
“Real change calls upon us to find the courage to challenge racism wherever we come across it: on social media, in the streets, in our communities and in our hearts."
