Letters to the Editor, January 16 2025

Shimon Cohen,

London N2

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I am grateful to the JC once again for putting the Labour Party on record in these antisemitic times. Consider the tone Peter Prinsley MP takes in his swipe at a column that reflected on an awful year for British Jews. Personal, snippy, unsympathetic. And mostly wrong.

The Labour manifesto committed to recognising a Palestinian state “as a contribution to a renewed peace process”.

No such conditions prevailed in July 2025 when Sir Keir Starmer announced Labour’s intention to recognise Palestine, unless Israel met certain conditions. The prevailing conditions were pressure from his MPs. It was not a “diplomatic manoeuvre”, it was domestic politicking, a placatory gesture to worried MPs. Prinsley wrote of “identical action by our allies”, as if lemming-like behaviour was a policy to admire.

Break it down: a Labour MP trying to claim credit for a truce brokered by Trump.

There is zero evidence that Western governments’ recognition of Palestine was a catalyst for the ceasefire or release of hostages in Gaza. Nor was it a defeat for the still-extant Hamas. Just ask a Gazan.

It tells you much about the Labour Party that it sent a defiant message to a Jewish newspaper in response to a column that laid bare the anguish of Britain’s Jewish community.

It is bad enough that Labour backs the imposition on Israel of a mono-racial, religious and cultural state that is murderously hostile to Jews in a region already full of such states.

Thank you JC, it’s on record what Labour thinks of the worst year in living memory for Britain’s Jews: we don’t like you complaining, you’re ungrateful, and look what we’ve done for you.

Could it be more misjudged and condescending? Well, I’m not Jewish, I’m not happy, and I am complaining.

The truth is Labour has betrayed Jewish citizens while they are under mortal attack in order to shore up its vote.

Stephanie Bennett

Twickenham

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Leader on leaders

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The letter from Jeffrey Leader (Letters, JC December 26) bemoans the lack of vitality and urgency in the Jewish community’s response to antisemitism. The letter makes an eloquent appeal for strong leadership. On reading it, I was reminded of a letter I wrote to the JC almost two years ago arguing for a national conference on antisemitism. I suggested that every synagogue and Jewish body in the UK be involved. Shortly afterwards, I wrote to many of our national leaders, spelling out in more detail the need for and purpose of such a conference. I received one or two encouraging responses, but the most telling were, firstly, one which said that very reason they could not organise a national event was because they were already too busy fighting antisemitism and, secondly, one which lamented the lack of cohesion among the relevant players.

Since then, antisemitism has increased in both its reach and intensity and we are more set upon than ever. At the same time, one or two relatively small, though courageous, initiatives have been launched, such as the GPS network, which aims to combat the BDS movement at the level of local government and to enlist the support of the UK’s “silent majority” in the more general fight against antisemitism. Sadly, though, there are too few people actively engaged in these initiatives.

Surely, we have reached a time when we must put our internal disagreements and differences aside and unite in a far-reaching, sustained campaign against antisemitism. I still think a national conference would be a good starting point. However we begin though the important thing is to radically step up the fight. For that, as Leader says, we need strong leadership. Come on, CST, CAS, BoD, JLC, HMT and the rest of our leaders and key organisations: galvanise us!

Jeremy Jacobson OBE

Cornwall

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Brave women

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I have been left completely in awe and gratitude to all the women featured in your article (Faces of courage: the women healing the Jewish state, JC January 2). To go through unimaginable horrors, pain, and grief alongside an ongoing war while managing to help so many others is beyond remarkable. These women, and I’m sure there are many others, deserve to be recognised for the courage they have shown while fighting through their own personal battles.

I salute each and every one of them.

Caroline Dascal

London E8

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A message to Trump

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Rarely lacking in self praise, President Trump described the Venezuela raid as “like people have not seen since World War Two”. Perhaps on his next visit to Washington, his friend Benjamin Netanyahu might whisper one word in his ear, “Entebbe”.

Barrington Black

London NW3.

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Heroes remembered

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The splendid JC Archive extract on Israeli agent heroes of WW2 SOE, and the article on page 40 (The Jew who parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe JC, January 9) on Hannah Senesh, serve to remind us all of the essential part played by Israeli/Palestinian Jews in the Allied cause.

After intense lobbying by myself on behalf of AJEX, several years ago we finally achieved formal Commonwealth War Graves Commission official recognition of the unsung 23 heroic men of the Palmach and Haganah who died attempting to reach and destroy the Vichy oil refinery in Tripoli, Lebanon in May 1941 in an SOE Operation code-named Boatswain. Their names had been omitted for almost 75 years from the casualties listed, but are now inscribed on the famous Memorial to the Missing at Brookwood CWGC cemetery. Each September we now go and hold a service there to remember them all, attended by families from Israel, the Embassy military attache, AJEX and the Secret War Society.

In my book Fighting Back (VM Publishers, 2017) the long chapter on Jews in SOE recalls all the names of all Jewish agents and some of their long stories, but especially the Israelis who volunteered on what were the most dangerous of missions behind enemy lines where survival was very unlikely.

Jews from all over the Allied nations, including Israelis, served in all Special Forces such as the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), Popski’s Private Army (PPA – whose founder Vladimir Peniakoff was Jewish!), SAS, SBS, commandos and paratroopers, Small Scale Raiding Force (SSRF) and many others. Most are listed – participants and killed – in our AJEX Book of Remembrance, and is updated by me as new names emerge.

In these days of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist hatred, we need to shout this loud and clear and especially give our young people the ammunition to say “we were there too!”. Every Jewish home should have a copy of this book.

Martin Sugarman

(AJEX archivist and author)

London