A motion to officially end the twinning of London Borough of Hackney and Israel’s third-largest city, Haifa, has been rejected after it was deemed not “necessary or helpful” by the borough’s mayor and council.

In a debate at Hackney Town Hall on Wednesday evening, Jewish Labour councillor Michael Desmond branded calls for de-twinning an “appalling, abusive tirade,” adding that the twinning was to “promote cultural values, religious freedom, tolerance and peaceful coexistence”.

Councillor Zoë Garbett addresses Hackney Council during a debate on a motion to end the twinning of Hackney and Haifa

Outside the Town Hall, pro-Palestinian demonstrators chanted and held anti-Israel banners calling for divestment and accusing Hackney of “funding” genocide.

Inside, activist Norma Cohen, a longtime Hackney resident, said she was addressing the council on behalf of four thousand alleged signatories of a petition organised by Hackney Palestine Solidarity Campaign calling for an end to the twinning.

She erroneously claimed “20 per cent” of Haifa’s residents live as “second class citizens, facing systematic, racist discrimination due to their status as Palestinians in Israel.”

Cohen said that despite Hackney Council having no official foreign policy, twinning with Haifa “lends legitimacy to a state accused of war crimes and guilty of a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system, according to the UN”.

She said there was a “clear implication” that Hackney Council felt it has a “duty” to continue to twin with Gaza “for the sake of Hackney’s Jewish community”.

She added: “As a Jew, it is in the honourable Jewish tradition of struggle against segregation that I speak this evening.”

She claimed that “Hackney isn’t divided between Jews and non-Jews,” but is rather divided between all those who “stand against apartheid” and those who “betray this borough’s proud history of antiracist struggle by continuing with an insupportable relationship”.

Cohen called on Mayor Caroline Woodley to end Hackney’s twinning with Haifa, arguing that this would “live up to the principles you claim this council stands for”.

In response, Labour and Cooperative councillor Michael Desmond criticised Cohen’s speech as an “appalling, abusive tirade”.

He noted that Haifa, which he has visited, is a liberal city which as well as having a large Muslim and Druze population is home to the Baha’I Gardens.

“Twinning is about bringing people together, not separating them,” he said. “It’s not about enmity and bitterness, it’s about peace, diversity, understanding, and trust.”

Labour councillor Christopher Kennedy added that it “was exactly the point” of twinning to encourage people “connecting at a personal, individual level”.

He said: “I want to see people from Hackney able to visit Haifa and see the realities of life there.”

Green Party councillor Alastair Binnie-Lubbock replied: “During an ongoing genocide and an apartheid state, having that kind of relationship is wholly inappropriate. We wouldn’t have had a twinning relationship with apartheid South Africa.” 

The Hackney-Haifa Twin Cities Treaty, the borough’s oldest twinning agreement, was signed in September 1968, initiated by then Mayor of Hackney Stanley Clinton Davis, who passed away last year.

Since 1995, one of the major focuses of the partnership has been medical team exchanges between Homerton Hospital and Rambam Hospital in Haifa, northern Israel’s largest medical centre.

Green Party candidate for Mayor of London, councillor Zoë Garbett, who leads the Green Party in Hackney Council, said she initially voiced her support of twinning relationships when asked last year about them by the Hackney Palestine Solidarity Campaign while she was running to be Mayor of Hackney.

“But over the last year,” she said her decision has shifted due to “the power of the camp outside [Hackney’s town hall], speaking day after day after day to residents, informing them and having discussions about what this relationship means to Hackney residents.”

An online petition organised by Hackney PSC to de-twin was allegedly signed by over 4,000 people, which Garbett said demonstrated “the strength of residents’ feelings in this borough.”

Labour councillor Ifraax Samatar said that people have a “moral duty” to speak out against Israel’s “brutality”, which was “aimed at Hamas but instead schools, churches, homes, hospitals and various other places are destroyed”.

She added: “This petition, however, isI’m sorry to say, is an example of an action we should not take.

“It’s about fostering dialogue and human connection. Keeping this relationship allows us to continue campaigning for justice and peace without isolating those who share our values and take practical action elsewhere.”

Also speaking in favour of Hackney’s long-standing civic twinning, Labour councillor Ben Lucas, requested all members to assess the debate through two tests:
“First, does this petition do anything to promote community, unity and reduce divisions here in Hackney? And secondly, does it promote the peace that we all want to see in the Middle East? And the answer on both these accounts is a categorical no.

“I’m afraid that to pin the actions of the Israeli government in prosecuting their campaign in Gaza on the people and communities of Haifa, as this petition seeks to do, sends a deeply problematic message. These are not Hackney’s values.”

Hackney’s relationship with Haifa, he said, is one that is “international, non-political, non-sectarian and multifaith”, which is something “to be celebrated, not shunned.”

He added: “If we truly want to promote dialogue with the region and peace, these are the ties we should be promoting,”

Labour Councillor Sam Pallis also opposed the motion to de-twin. Quoting Palestinian activist Sally Abed from Arab-Israeli peace movement Standing Together, he said there “are many Israeli progressives who desperately want dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. And the way forward is dialogue”.

The Labour mayor concluded that the council “acutely understands” the attention that this petition has attracted and “the strength of feeling on all sides of this debate.”

But she argued that formally untwining “would not be necessary or helpful at such a difficult and sensitive time.”

Mayor Woodley said: “We remain committed to twinning, and once the conflict is resolved, we will consider future twinning relationships brought forward by the Hackney community, where meaningful and sustainable connections are in place between communities in Hackney and overseas, including, I hope, in Palestine.

“At the beginning of this year, this council called for an immediate ceasefire, humanitarian aid, and the release of all hostages, this continues to be our position.”

Hackney Council

Councillor Binnie-Lubbock said Woodley’s “warm words on Gaza ring hollow without de-twinning and divesting,”

“We think it’s outrageous that a council continues a twinning relationship with an apartheid state,” he said.

Located in the country’s north, Haifa is the Jewish State’s third largest city after Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, with a population of some 287,000.

In July, a motion brought forward by local Green Party councillors to de-twin Bournemouth from Netanya in Israel sparked strong feelings within the coastal town, but was ultimately dismissed.