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Board of Deputies plans emergency meeting to discuss situation in Gaza
‘We need your insight more than ever,’ Rosenberg tells Deputies ahead of special meeting on humanitarian crisis
July 25, 2025 16:56
‘We need your insight more than ever,’ Rosenberg tells Deputies ahead of special meeting on humanitarian crisis
July 25, 2025 16:56The Board of Deputies will host an emergency meeting on Tuesday in response to "the scenes of human suffering and desperation in Gaza”.
In a notice to all deputies, Board president Phil Rosenberg said: “The last few days have been some of the most challenging in our community’s memory.
“The scenes of human suffering and desperation in Gaza are hard for anyone to bear. The collapse of negotiations yesterday by Hamas has severely dented our hopes for a hostage-ceasefire in the near-term.”
Rosenberg also referred to daily reports of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the UK.
“With the new circumstances we need your insight and support more than ever,” he said.
The “special meeting”, called in response to what Rosenberg described as an “extraordinary situation”, will take place on July 29. It is intended to “advise and guide” the Board’s activity over the coming weeks and months.
Shortly after planning the special meeting, Rosenberg received a letter from dozens of Deputies concerning the humanitarian situation in the strip.
The letter called on the Board to appeal to the Israeli government to “end this suffering.”
“Nothing could be more damaging to the British Jewish community than staying silent in this moment,” the letter stated.
On the same day that the Board announced the special meeting, former president Marie van der Zyl, wrote in Jewish News that “Hunger and human suffering, on this scale, are incompatible with the core values of our faith”.
“We must now lend our voices to calls for increased humanitarian access and urgent action to alleviate the conditions affecting civilians in Gaza. That includes support for practical steps that can facilitate the delivery of aid where it is needed, while continuing to call for the safe and immediate return of the hostages,” van der Zyl wrote.
She added, “This is not a time for silence. It is a time for compassion.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of rabbis from around the world, including Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, have signed a letter calling on the Israeli government to cease what they describe as “the callous indifference to starvation.”
The letter describes “the severe limitation placed on humanitarian relief in Gaza” and “the policy of withholding of food, water, and medical supplies from a needy civilian population” as being in conflict with Jewish values.
The challenges to Israel’s strategy in Gaza from within the Jewish community come in the wake of a World Health Organisation (WHO) claim that large sections of Gaza’s population are now “experiencing starvation”.
Israel stopped aid deliveries to Gaza in early March following a two-month ceasefire, citing factors including Hamas stealing the aid supply. It has since established a new aid system run by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Israel has denied it is responsible for shortages of food and other supplies and claims that it does not have a policy of starvation in Gaza.
In a statement on Thursday, Israeli Colonel Abdullah Halabi, head of COGAT’s Coordination and Liaison Administration for Gaza, said that approximately 1,000 trucks’ worth of aid are awaiting collection by the United Nations and aid groups.
Halabi blamed a “lack of cooperation from the international community” for the limited aid reaching Gazans and dismissed the “famine narrative” as a tactic used by Hamas “to improve their standings”.
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