By Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO — It is no surprise that one reads in today’s international headlines: “Leading candidate in Egypt presidential race calls Israel peace accord ‘dead and buried.’” [The New York Times]. Amr Moussa, running ahead in the polls, spoke to a large rally in southern Egypt. He took the opportunity to declare that that the Camp David Accords with Israel should be “consigned to the shelves of history.”
So here is the harvest of the Arab Spring: new leaders in Egypt kill peace; old leaders in Syria kill children; same leaders in Saudi Arabia enslave women while raking in more billions on oil. Okay, no surprises here. But even with its long colonialist tradition, one is still taken aback by another headline: “U.K. union bars Israeli expert from conference on conflict resolution.” [Ha-Aretz Israel News]. Building upon the academic and professional anti-Semitism that has infected Britain for decades on end, the British National Health Service informed Moty Cristal, a world-renowned expert on arbitration and negotiations, via email, that his services were not needed after all at an imminent gathering to discuss the topics of conciliation and crisis-management.
This, besides being ugly and nakedly anti-Semitic, is just another intellectual manifestation of the current Egyptian refrain of repugnance with Jews and the Jewish State. It is also stupid; Mr. Cristal, who is neither a politician nor a military man, is called upon all over the globe to share his skills and experience in favor of business and institutional reconciliation. And the excuse for the British union’s canard is laughable: Cristal’s lecture was revoked “on the grounds that it is [the union’s] policy and also that of the Trades Union Council to support the Palestinian people.”
It just so happens that Moty Cristal, a private citizen who has been widely successful in helping people solve their problems (and the British health system has huge personnel, management, follow-through, and administrative tensions), has often worked with Muslim and Palestinian groups, including human rights agencies that are trying to improve the lot of Palestinians. He is among many Israelis who feel compassion for the Palestinians and one of very few who has addressed the Muslim Council of Britain. So maybe the snub—only the latest in a series of such British insults—is not about the Palestinians. Maybe it’s really about the British.
This writer happens to share the landmark sentiment revealed by civil rights leader Andrew Young long ago. While Young served as the US Ambassador to the United States, he declared that “Britain invented racism.” Was Bette Midler just joking when she called Queen Elizabeth “the whitest woman in the world?” Great Britain has historically practiced colonial racism for centuries—from Singapore to India to the region of Palestine. Rather than helping the indigent Jews and Arabs of Palestine resolve their disputes during the royal occupation of the territory that began therein 1917, the British just left in 1948.
No more glaring practice of colonialism has ever existed than what Britain practiced right here in North America—leading to the American Revolution in 1776 and to the establishment of Canada in 1867. This is not to negate the uncommon sacrifices of the British people, English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish, who actually held off the Nazis daringly and heroically until the US stopped vacillating and got into the fight in 1941. Nor does it smudge the exceptional achievements of Britain in the categories of the arts, exploration, and democratic legislation. The world is better off for the Magna Carta and Shakespeare. So why this British hypocrisy and ugliness when it comes to the Jews?
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Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer based in San Diego He may be contacted at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com