The Jewish former mayor of Bournemouth has said the coastal town’s Jewish community has “found its voice” after a motion to de-twin the town with the Israeli city of Netanya was dismissed this week.
The Green-led motion was due to be debated on Wednesday during a meeting between Bournemouth Charter Trustees in Bournemouth’s Civic Centre, attracting support from local pro-Palestinian groups and sparking outrage from the city’s sizeable Jewish community.
Councillor Anne Filer, who was the Dorset town’s mayor last year and is now Deputy Mayor, would have been the main responder to the motion and, had it been discussed, would have had to justify the twinning.
A tense standoff took place outside the town hall while the council session was underway as hundreds of pro-Israel objectors to the motion staged a counterdemonstration directly across the parking lot from a large pro-Palestinian gathering.
Following legal advice and consultation with the Standing Orders, the Bournemouth Charter Trustees, a group of councillors, ruled that the motion would not be heard as it fell outside the rules governing the meeting.
Certificate of the twinning between Bournemouth and Netanya (Photo: Daniel Ben-David)
During the proceedings, the Mayor of Bournemouth, George Farquhar, said the group was a non-political body and was there to promote the historic and ceremonial duties of the town.
Speaking to the JC, Filer said she was “mightily relieved” to not have had to defend the twinning on Wednesday. “It was a daunting prospect to have to justify what I knew to be a positive thing,” she said. “I’m not used to so much hate, and hatred being thrown at me. I know in London you’re used to these marches, but we’re just not used to it here. This is a relaxed, genteel seaside university town, everyone’s relaxed.”
The twinning of Bournemouth with the west-central Israeli city was established in 1995 by Councillor Filer’s husband, Alderman Michael Filer, himself mayor of Bournemouth in 1984 and a freeman of the borough. Michael continues to serve as chair of the twinning committee.
Councillor Filer has taken around 20 different mostly non-Jewish groups of councillors and other VIPs from Bournemouth to Netanya over the years, and they’ve all returned with “very positive” things to say about the experience, some of whom “quickly come to realise that the word apartheid doesn’t apply at all”, she said.
Deputy Mayor of Bournemouth Anne Filer said that the Jewish community in Bournemouth had found its voice (Photo: BCP Council)
She said: “We’ve built so many bridges on a people-to-people level, built friendships and relationships, exchanged scout groups and school groups. Even the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus went to Netanya for a festival. It’s always been a very positive and reciprocal exchange, and a source of so much success.”
Despite the positive track record, she said that “the experience of the last few months has just been horrible, and I’ve been surprised by the level of hatred. We have our local controversies, planning permissions and other local dramas, but there’s never been anything that has felt threatening, until now.”
Never had she witnessed the rhetoric surrounding a proposed motion to be “so vitriolic and personal” before. She said: “It sounds absolutely ridiculous, but I felt the defence of Israel on my shoulders, and I didn’t know if I was going to be up to it or not.”
Councillor Filer said she had never received such “toxic, hate-filled” emails from one side of the debate about an issue while receiving “such lovely and uplifting” emails from the other.
The town has been rocked in recent months by a number of stunts by anti-Israel campaigners. Large, “disruptive and intimidatory” pro-Palestinian demonstrations have become a regular feature in the city’s centre on weekends. One march had recently planned to go through a very Jewish area of the city on Manor Road, where “visibly Jewish people walk around everywhere,” but which was later cancelled.
“That was really scary,” Councillor Filer said. “There was no reason for it to be there besides pure provocation.”
Pro-Israel demonstrators in Bournemouth outside the Civic Centre, where the motion to de-twin Bournemouth and Netanya was dismissed (Photo: Daniel Ben-David)
In February, between 60 and 80 activists demonstrated loudly outside the home of the former MP of Bournemouth East, Tobias Ellwood, for several hours, accusing him of “complicity in genocide”. In April, metal plaques acknowledging the twinning with Netanya were allegedly stolen from the main “Welcome to Bournemouth” signage.
Wednesday’s motion was “never” going to pass even if it had been discussed, Filer said, because of the “strength of feeling the other way” on the part of the other councillors. The motion reportedly did not even have the full support of all Green Party councillors, and none from the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives or Labour councillors, some of whom have been to Israel as part of the twinning scheme.
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council in the Civic Centre, Bournemouth, July 17, 2024 (Photo: Daniel Ben-David)
And had the motion somehow passed, the most the council could have done was to recommend to the town’s twinning committee that the town de-twin, and two seats out of five on the committee are occupied by Filer and her husband.
Filer was keen for it to be reported that Labour had been “fantastic” throughout the last few months. She was highly complimentary of Bournemouth’s current mayor, Labour councillor George Farquhar, who had, in the face “of probably more pressure” than most Bournemouth mayors are used to, been “absolutely wonderful throughout” in lowering the temperature and ensuring due process.
She said: “I’m sure the mayor’s never been to Israel, but he’s ex-army, so I think he understands military action and the complexity of conflicts a bit more broadly.
“I hope I would have had the strength to do what he did and dismiss the motion if I were still in the role. If this had happened during my mayoral year, it would have put me in an impossible position because I definitely would have been seen as bias. I likely would have had to step aside and excuse myself from that meeting.”
Pro-Israel demonstrators in Bournemouth outside the Civic Centre, where the motion to de-twin Bournemouth and Netanya was dismissed (Photo: Daniel Ben-David)
Bournemouth’s two new Labour MPs, Tom Hayes and Jessica Toale – the coastal town’s first non-Conservative leaders in its history – ran campaigns focusing on local issues only.
Hayes and Toale have both been “incredibly supportive in their first two weeks as MPs. They’ve got to stick their necks out in the face of all this local opposition, knowing they would step on peoples’ toes or receive angry letters, but they did it,” Filer said.
Chants shouted through megaphones from the Palestine Solidarity Movement group outside the town hall included “Free, free Palestine” and the repeated yelling of “F*** Israel”. One sign, scrawled in red paint, read: “Some say the devil isn’t real but he Israel”.
Anti-Israel protesters in Bournemouth, demonstrating against the town being twinned with Netanya (Photo: Daniel Ben-David)
The pro-Israel side, which was approximately double the size of the Palestinian group, danced, sang the Hatikvah and chanted to release the hostages. Their signs read, “Future friendships, not feuds”, “Free Gaza from Hamas” and “Bournemouth & Netanya: Better together. Keep twinning protected and stay connected”.
Filer estimated that of the 200 or so pro-Israel attendees, “a good third” were not Jewish and came from local churches or bodies that support Israel.
“Today, something has changed in the local Jewish community,” Filer said. “We normally shy away from being so visible, under the assumption that it is better to keep quiet, but now that we know we can gather like this safely and be heard, we will do it more often. Today has given us a voice.”
Mara, an Israeli-born protester who has been living in Bournemouth for 14 years, said it was “about time” that Bournemouth’s sizable Jewish and Israeli communities and allies gathered in this way.
She said: “[The pro-Palestinian side] think their mean signs and distasteful chants are going to intimidate us into being silent, but they won’t.” Motioning to the other side of the courtyard, she asked: “Why don’t they mention the hostages? Why don’t they condemn Hamas? Why do they cover their faces and shout obscenities while we dance and sing and call for unity?”
Israel supporters in Bournemouth outside the Civic Centre, where the motion to de-twin Bournemouth and Netanya was dismissed (Photo: Daniel Ben-David)
Another local resident, who was not part of either demonstration and who wished to remain anonymous, said: “Some weekends now it feels like a civil war is brewing here in Bournemouth. I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never seen such animosity on the streets.”
After learning the motion had been dismissed, he said he was “pleased” with the result. “There was no tangible benefit to de-twinning that I could see. It just felt like a hollow gesture and mainly symbolic, divisive and hurtful,” he said.
Pro-Israel and anti-Israel demonstrators outside the Civic Centre in Bournemouth, where a motion to de-twin Bournemouth from Netanya was dismissed this week (Photo: Daniel Ben-David)
Greens’ councillor Joe Salmon, who brought the motion forward for the Bournemouth Charter Trustees to consider, told the JC that it was both a “disappointment” and a “failure of democracy” that the meeting would not be taking place.
He said the “atrocities” currently being committed against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip “cannot be justified by the horror of October 7”.
He believed it was right for Bournemouth to move to protect its reputation and de-twin with the mediterranean city until certain conditions were met, which included Israel “no longer being an apartheid state or in breach of any UN resolutions”.
He said the debate about whether Israel was really an apartheid state or was guilty of wilfully carrying out a genocide “cannot be reduced to soundbites” and that he was pleased to personally receive phone calls from Bournemouth residents “on both sides of the debate” about the issue.
He admitted that he was “by no means a political analyst; I do what I think is right, I say what I think and mean what I say.”
Posting to the group’s Instagram account after Wednesday’s demonstration outside the civic centre, the Palestine Solidarity Movement’s wrote that the motion was “undemocratically removed” from the agenda.
The post added: “We understand that watching Z/on/sts (sic) dance and sing while holding Israeli flags was deeply painful, especially for those of you who have lost family members to this genoc/de.
“History will look back on demonstrations like today, and your bravery and resilience will be remembered. Once again, we stood on the right side of history.”
