Yesterday ‘The Great Israeli Real Estate Event’ took place at Edgware United Synagogue and was marked by protests. The attempts to mischaracterise the protests as being solely about antagonising Jews at a time of rising antisemitism are wrong, and run the risk of undermining the very real fight we as a community are facing.
The event organisers – My Home In Israel – have a history of selling properties in the West Bank and even advertised the sale of properties in Gush Etzion (a West Bank settlement) for this specific event before removing it from their advertising due to public scrutiny. The website for the event still shows a map of Israel from the river to the sea with no lines demarcating the West Bank or Gaza.
The fact that the event organisers released a statement saying they would not be advertising homes for sale in the West Bank does not mean that the companies involved should have been given a platform. We know of at least four companies at the event which are involved in selling homes in West Bank settlements which are illegal under international law.
Not only that, but one of the companies involved, Harey Zahav, has publicly proposed plans for new residential projects in Gaza. When asked about these plans Harey Zahav’s owner, Ze’ev Epstein, said this: “It’s a joke, it’s a joke. We’re a private company—we don’t make these kinds of decisions. It was meant to boost morale. It’s a dream—if Israel ever returns and issues tenders, of course, we’d build there. But that’s not up to us. Call it a wink at the future.”
In a week where the UK government has announced a toughening up of UK Business Risk Guidelines in relation to the settlements, stating that ‘businesses should not engage in economic and financial activities in Israeli settlements’ and that ‘UK citizens…should be aware of the clear evidence of possible human rights abuses associated with Israeli settlements and the risk of involving themselves in Israel’s serious breaches of international law,’ it is absolutely right that this issue has been raised by many MPs and politicians.
We should not be allowing companies into our synagogues that profit from selling homes in the occupied territories or joke about the possibility of being able to reoccupy Gaza. It draws Jewish communities in the UK into their orbit and the inevitable backlash they trail in their wake. It makes us less safe in a time when our identity is under consistent threat.