Why we need Jewish flavoured BDS ice cream

July 21, 2021 By Robert A. H. Cohen

Anyone for a scoop of “antisemitic ice cream”? It’s available worldwide, according to the Prime Minister of Israel who thinks that Ben & Jerry’s boycott against the treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank (“it’s inconsistent with our values”) is a blatant insult to Jews. Prime Minister Bennett’s ‘moderate’ coalition partner and foreign minister, Yair Lapid, was no less outraged by the ice cream maker’s preference for common decency, describing their decision as a “shameful capitulation to antisemitism”. At which... Read more

Speech for Nakba 2021: ‘A Jew in solidarity with Palestine’

May 14, 2021 By Robert A. H. Cohen

[This evening (Friday 14 May) I was invited to speak at a solidarity rally for Palestine organised by Lancaster Friends of Palestine in the North West of England. Around 250 gathered to hear inspiring speeches from Muslim and Palestinian students at the university and their allies. Thank you to Haddi Malik, Fabiha Askari and Julie Hearn for their powerful testimonies. Below is the short speech I gave. ‘A Jew in solidarity with Palestine’ I stand with you tonight as... Read more

Just as we need it most, the UK cracks down on BDS

May 13, 2021 By Robert A. H. Cohen

The timing is either perfect or perverse, depending on your point of view. At the very moment that the UK government has announced plans to ban boycotts, divestment and sanctions by public funded bodies, the very reasons for supporting non-violent strategies to achieve equality for the Palestinian people look more urgent and compelling than ever. As I write this post, Israeli Jews are being killed and maimed by indiscriminate Hamas rockets fired from the Gaza Strip and are now experiencing... Read more

We need to decolonise our understanding of antisemitism

March 6, 2021 By Robert A. H. Cohen

I don’t want antisemitism to be misunderstood. I don’t want Jews, Zionism and Israel to be conflated. I don’t want to be perceived as supporting an oppressive and undemocratic State, just because I’m Jewish. I don’t want to be associated with a one dimensional interpretation of Zionism which denies another people their history and identity. I don’t want the definition of racism against me to mean another people cannot protest the racism against them. But if I support the IHRA... Read more

B’Tselem, apartheid, and correcting the ethical grammar on Israel/Palestine

January 25, 2021 By Robert A. H. Cohen

B’Tselem’s new report describing all of Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories as a single ‘apartheid’ regime will have widespread and long-term implications. Not only does it change the acceptable vocabulary on Israel/Palestine, it also alters the ethical grammar which has created and sustained an injustice now in its eighth decade. How we speak and what we can say will shape the future politics of this conflict and change the ethical framework through which solutions are found and implemented. In... Read more

Hanukkah for Palestinians

December 13, 2020 By Robert A. H. Cohen

As I write this blog post, we’re halfway through Hanukkah and the darkness remains. The major cause for all the gloom is Covid-19 and the havoc it’s caused around the world. As ever, the most vulnerable and least secure have been hit the hardest by the crisis. That’s certainly the case for Palestinians living on the West Bank and in Gaza. The Palestinian economy has taken a battering according to the latest report by the World Bank, while in Gaza... Read more

Dear Vice Chancellor, don’t let Gavin Williamson bully you into adopting IHRA

October 17, 2020 By Robert A. H. Cohen

Dear Professor Schofield RE: The Secretary of State’s request that Lancaster University adopts the International Holocaust Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. I’m writing to you as a Jewish student studying at Lancaster University in the hope that you’ll resist the pressure being put on you by the government to adopt what I, and many other Jews in the UK and around the world, believe to be a flawed and deeply problematic document on antisemitism. First of all though, may I... Read more

From ‘Vision for Peace’ to ‘normalisation’ – 2020 has become the year of forgetting

September 18, 2020 By Robert A. H. Cohen

Memories are short these days. There used to be a something called the ‘Occupation’ which left nearly three million Palestinians disenfranchised and disadvantaged. But that must have been long ago. There once was a siege of Gaza where two million Palestinians were cut off from the outside world, surviving in a collapsed economy. But no one talks about that now. In the past there was a place called East Jerusalem, which people knew had been illegally annexed and where Arab... Read more

“History will judge us” – Have Progressive Rabbis reached the end of the road on Israel?

July 26, 2020 By Robert A. H. Cohen

Progressive rabbis in the UK have written to the Israeli embassy in London to express their concern over the Israeli government’s plans to annex parts of the West Bank. The letter has been sent from British Friends of Rabbis for Human Rights, an organisation which supports the work of Rabbis for Human Rights working in Israel and the West Bank. It draws its members from both Progressive (Reform and Liberal) as well as Masorti and Orthodox rabbis. However, the forty... Read more

Annexation (even when delayed) is the great truth teller on Israel/Palestine

July 1, 2020 By Robert A. H. Cohen

The July 1st deadline has come and gone, and annexation hasn’t arrived. But don’t celebrate yet. It’s delayed not cancelled. The Trump White House is divided on the details; the international protest is stronger than expected; and Israel has a renewed coronavirus crisis that ought to be getting its government’s full attention. But with Donald Trump’s polling numbers in the US tumbling and rumours that he may even drop out of the November election if he thinks he can’t win,... Read more