Letters to the editor, January 17, 2025 - The Jewish Chronicle

Stay home

The JC’s view is that “Modern Jewish life in the UK has never felt less secure” (Leader column, January 10).

Supporting this is the statistic that in 2023 aliyah was made by 336 British Jews, in the first 11 months of 2024, the figure was 633. The Jewish Agency acknowledges that, prior to October 7, “the vast majority” of olim were “mature”, looking for better weather, sea and sun.

Given that the Jewish population of the UK is around 285,000, both the above figures for olim are minuscule and the 2024 level is likely to be transient.

Why would we leave our dynamic community and peaceful home in the UK, when Israel is relentlessly at war while many thousands of Israelis reside permanently in the UK?

British Jews are overwhelmingly Zionists, but they know where their families are safer. They also have a duty to remain and strengthen their own Jewish and wider UK community where, for centuries, they have thrived.

A strong diaspora strengthens Israel when, as now, our community is a powerful advocate on Israel’s behalf. While that is a consequential benefit, our primary obligation is to our own communities, where we lived for millennia, before a Jewish state was reborn.

Stuart Goodman

Brentwood CM14

Latkasy

It’s a no-brainer that a healthy diet and lifestyle are important and that one should take steps to recover from festive bingeing, as recommended by Rob Rinder (My tips for a healthier new you? No late noshes and a daily walk, January 10).

But one shouldn’t underestimate the benefits of eating latkes at Chanukah. Potatoes, eggs and onions are nutritious foods, and celebrating the eating of latkes with others is enormously beneficial to one’s mental wellbeing, inducing a feeling of “Latkasy”.

Happiness is good for you. Latkes evoke feel-good memories of childhood. Apparently the consumption record is 46 latkes in eight minutes, set in a Long Island deli in 2008. Perhaps we should instigate an annual latke eating contest similar to the Coney Island celebration of Nathan’s hotdogs? Does anyone remember “Latka” Gravas from the 1970s sitcom Taxi? The latke party at my local shul is one of the spiritual highlights of the year.

Stan Labovitch

Windsor

Standard practice

I am not surprised that the BBC had to apologise for its ambushing a rabbi live on air (BBC apologises after “ambushing’” rabbi on air with hostile questions, January 10).

Attacking spokesmen for Israel seems to be standard practice at the BBC, which still, wrongly, believes itself to be unbiased.

Just after the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, Mark Regev was “interviewed” on the Radio 4 Today programme by Mishal Husain. It was not an interview; but a verbal attack on him. She fired very aggressive questions, framed as accusations, and as he calmly replied she angrily interrupted him with more accusatory questions, even fading him out as he was speaking. The result was that the listeners heard her accusations in full, but little of his answers.

The programme’s producers must have known the approach she would adopt to the interview and allowed it to be broadcast, so it was not just Husain, but all the BBC staff who were involved with that day’s programme who were culpable.

Geoffrey Bernstein

Harrow HA3

Learn from history

Michael Grenfell’s thoughtful letter about the peace process (Right but wrong, Letters, January 10) makes important points that deserve an answer.

First, self-determination cannot be the moral basis for the State of Israel – let alone a State of Palestine – because most of the world’s peoples are quite properly denied self-determination in the form of statehood. The reason for creating and preserving a Jewish state, with a Jewish army, is the fact that Jews are massacred when defenceless.

Second, the inability of the Palestinian Authority’s subjects to vote in Israeli elections no more renders Israel an apartheid state than does the inability of Puerto Ricans to vote for US presidents or citizens of the Cayman Islands to elect British MPs render these respective countries apartheid states.

Finally, there is no case that future Israeli withdrawals will have any result other than more bloodbaths and wars. Not one of Israel’s retreats from heavily populated areas has advanced the cause of peace. The precedents in the West Bank, in Gaza and in southern Lebanon are beyond dispute. We all know what would have happened if the Golan Heights had been surrendered to Syria. The only Israeli territorial concession still defensible with a straight face is the return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. That too would have ended in calamity for Israel but for the Egyptian military coup against Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood regime.

To prevent future disasters befalling the Jewish people, we need to learn from history, not take refuge in the ideological make-believe of a liberal golden age that appears to be coming to a sad end.

Paul Bogdanor

Bournemouth BH1

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