The Jewish community in Wales has expressed outrage following Plaid Cymru’s call for a boycott of Israel on Yom Kippur — the holiest day in the Jewish calendar — and just a few days after the anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack.
Members of the Welsh National Party backed a motion which branded Israel an “apartheid state”, guilty of “genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes”, during its autumn conference on Saturday.
Ahead of the motion, the Palestinians’ top envoy to the UK, Husam Zomlot, called on Wales to put pressure on the UK government over Israel.
The South Wales Jewish Representative Council (SWJRC) said it was “deeply disturbed” by the vote and has accused Plaid Cymru of “pandering to extreme positions”, alienating the Jewish community and undermining “the pursuit of genuine peace and understanding”.
In a statement issued in both Welsh and English on Monday, Laurence Kahn, the chair of the SWJRC, criticised Plaid for drawing a “false equivalence” between Israel and Hamas, by accusing the former of genocide.
“Despite Plaid Cymru’s accusations of genocide, it was Hamas — not Israel — that deliberately targeted civilians on and after October 7,” said Kahn.
“This false equivalency is not only unjust but dangerously misleading. The low ratio of civilians to combatant deaths in Gaza, in an urban area where terrorists make intentional use of civilian cover, highlights the absurdity of this libel.”
Plaid Cymru MP Ben Lake proposed the motion, calling for a boycott of Israel and for the UK to expel the Israeli ambassador (Getty Images)
By accusing Israel of genocide, Kahn said Plaid was disregarding the many moves that the country had made for peace, including returning Sinai to Egypt, conceding Israel’s holy sites to Jordan, the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and the 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon, as well as engaging in the 1993 Oslo Accords and subsequent efforts.
“Each of these moves demonstrated Israel’s commitment to peace,” he said. “Yet Plaid Cymru ignores these gestures and places the blame for the ongoing conflict squarely on Israel, while excusing the actions of those who deliberately target civilians and refuse to negotiate for peace.”
The statement also condemned the timing of the vote, which took place on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, and following the anniversary of October 7, “the worst atrocities committed against Jews since the Holocaust”.
The motion, proposed by Ben Lake, MP for Ceredigion Preseli, called on the UK government to expel the Israeli ambassador, and ban arms sales to Israel.
It also called on all Plaid members as well as Welsh national sporting and cultural bodies to support “an economic and cultural boycott” of Israel.
The vote followed Zomlot’s address to the party’s conference, where he said Israel must be “compelled” to comply with international law.
By inviting Zomlot to speak, the SWJRC has accused Plaid of platforming extremist views.
“In hosting Mr. Zomlot, who shockingly claimed that ‘Israel knew that this was coming their way’ in response to the October 7 attacks, Plaid Cymru has aligned itself with voices that refuse to unequivocally condemn terrorism,” Kahn said in his statement.
“By doing so, Plaid fails to uphold the basic moral principle that deliberately targeting innocent civilians is always indefensible, regardless of the political context.”
Kahn also criticised the party for “pandering to extreme positions that not only alienate the Jewish community but also undermine the pursuit of genuine peace and understanding”, casting doubt on the party’s commitment to values it claimed to represent.
He said it was ironic that Plaid, a party dedicated to the rights of the Welsh people in their ancestral homeland, would deny the “same right to the Jewish people in Judea—their ancestral homeland”.
The statement ended by calling on Plaid to reconsider its stance which encourages “terrorism” and to engage in “meaningful diaologue that upholds upholds the principles of peace, human life, and mutual respect”.
