The mum who spoke to the PLO

In some ways June Jacobs has led a deeply conventional life. Born into a moderately affluent middle-class family, she married soon after leaving school and never had a career, but was rather a full-time mother who spent her time doing volunteer work for charities and communal organisations.

However, there is another, maverick side to Jacobs, who was awarded a CBE for her contribution to human rights and interfaith work in the Queen’s Birthday Honours last month. While delighted with the award, she admits that she turned down an MBE several years earlier.
“Maybe it was out of snobbery. I didn’t think it was terribly important,” she says. “Anyway, they asked for an immediate reply and I didn’t open the letter until 15 days later because I had been abroad. So I just left it.”

Since the early 1970s, Jacobs has campaigned with a fierce independence, and without worrying too much about whose feathers she ruffled. As the Board of Deputies foreign affairs spokesperson, her meeting with PLO representative Bassam Abu Sharif in 1989 threatened to tear the community in two. At the time, contact with Yasir Arafat’s organisation was banned by the Israeli government and the meeting was deeply controversial within British Jewry. Jacobs, now in her 80th year, recalls the time “when I got myself into trouble”.

“It was the right thing to do. How else can we attempt to bring peace if we don’t talk? That’s how you start the process going. I would speak to Hamas now if they would speak to us.”

Her actions received national press attention and prompted calls for her to resign. She refused. “I was up for trial at the Board meeting and it was a big one. I remember defending myself by saying that I was doing what 50 per cent of people in Israel thought we should be doing. It did not go as far as a vote that day, and in the end I stayed on until I was ready to leave the Board. When I left, I didn’t leave in protest — just because it was enough already.”

She says it has been her love for Israel which has prompted her to fight so hard against the occupation. “When my children were young and had friends around for birthday parties, I was never that worried when their friends misbehaved, but I hated it when my children did. I feel like that about Israel. Because it is so important to me, I want it to live up its high ideals. On the other hand, I do think that Israel is judged by different standards to that of other countries just because the Palestinian issue seems to unify people who can’t agree about anything else.”

Jacobs has certainly not been confined to a single issue — indeed, she seems to collect committees like others collect stamps. As a young mother, she was persuaded to join the Jewish Child’s Day Charity. Then her passion for the fate of Soviet Jews led her to join the National Council for Soviet Jewry, and she has also been associated with the International Council of Jewish Women (she was president of the ICJW for six years), the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, the New Israel Fund and many more. She threw herself into campaigning after the untimely death of her husband, Basil, in 1973. “I don’t think he was completely comfortable with my getting about of bed at 2am to attend demonstrations or protests. Afterwards I was more free to pursue my interests.”

This she did with huge vigour — visiting refuseniks in the Soviet Union and campaigning for their release, until the Soviet authorities tired of the bad publicity and began to allow them to emigrate.
She seems happy with her contribution but is contrite on one matter. “I’m glad we managed to help so many Soviet Jews to leave, but I’m sorry about Avigdor Lieberman [the right wing Israeli Foreign Minister]. It’s a shame they didn’t keep him there.”

Jacobs did not stop campaigning. Rather she turned her attention to the “political hegemony of Orthodox men” and in particular the agunot — so-called “chained women” whose husbands have refused to grant them a get (religious divorce). She says: “I don’t know what the religious authorities are so frightened of. Men can marry again even if they don’t have a get, whereas women are trapped. I don’t think we are shouting loudly enough — we should be out on the streets.”

Although this kind of militancy sounds incongruous coming from a 79-year-old lady in the genteel sitting room of her Georgian terraced house in north west London, it is very much in character. Jacobs accepts that, while, she is on the surface an establishment figure, she does enjoy agitating from within. “I don’t think I chose that role, but I’ve never been worried about speaking out. My job is not at stake, so I have the freedom to say what I want.”

Despite her huge impact, she does regret the fact that she was never able to pursue a career. “I failed. I wanted to get into the London School of Economics as my sister had done but I didn’t make it. I was spoiled. I married when I was 20 and I stayed at home to look after my three children. If I had a career I might have earned some money.”

Jacobs admits that the word retirement is not in her dictionary. “I think you should carry on for as long as you can. I like to be busy. What I don’t want is to be one of those old ladies suffering from dementure in an old people’s home. I told my children that if that happens I’d like a quick shot. Will they do it? We’ll see which one volunteers,” she says with a wry smile.