Israeli Minister Backs Chief Rabbi's Views and Warns of 'ethical Crisis'

An Israeli government minister yesterday warned of a "deep Jewish ethical crisis" as he sided with Britain's chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, in a row over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The deputy foreign minister, Michael Melchior, himself a former chief rabbi of Norway, criticised those, especially from the Israeli right, who ignored the moral dilemmas posed for Israel each day by the conflict and who pretended that everything Israel did was right.

"If the Palestine situation continues, then this is something that will be tragic for all the peoples here," Rabbi Melchior said.

There was almost overwhelming support, too, in a straw poll of British rabbis now living in Israel conducted by the Israeli daily, Ha'aretz.

One of them, Rabbi Michael Marmur, dean of the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, said: "I agreed wholeheartedly with (Dr Sacks's) opinions as expressed in the article."

He added: "Occupation and terror are brutalising us. It behoves him to say what he thinks in a responsible way. His criticism is appropriate and if we can't bear to hear it, the problem is ours."

The support for Dr Sacks came as the row gathered momentum, with views for and against being strongly expressed in Israeli dailies and in the Jewish press in Britain.

Much of the venom was directed at the Guardian, which was frequently described as anti-Israeli.

The row was sparked by an interview in the Guardian on Tuesday. In it, Dr Sacks argued that conflict risked corrupting Israeli culture.

Rabbi Melchior, who is from a small, dovish, religious party, lined up wholeheartedly behind Dr Sacks. He told the Guardian: "If I did not believe that Israel, in this situation, was basically right, I would not be sitting in the government. But those who say it is black-and-white and there is no dilemma and everything is clear, I do not think they are serving the cause of Israel." He admitted Israel had made mistakes.

Rabbi Melchior, whose party shared the same platform as Labour at the last election, said the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza "could go on for some years but after a certain amount of years this becomes a deep Jewish ethical crisis".

The chief rabbi has kept a low profile since the row broke but his official spokesperson, Jeremy Newmark, in a statement released yesterday, dismissed as "absurd" that his remarks in the interview should be taken as criticism of Israel.

Dr Sacks, in a letter to the chief rabbi of Israel, Yisrael Lau, parts of which were published in Ha'aretz yesterday, adopted a more robust tone. He accused the Guardian of putting "sensationalist headlines" on his interview. But he did not withdraw any of the statements attributed to him.

The Guardian headline was "Israel set on tragic path, says chief rabbi". The Times headline reporting the same interview was: "Tragic conflict is corrupting Israel, says Sacks." The Daily Telegraph used the headline: "Tragic conflict is corrupting Israel, says Britain's chief rabbi."

Britain's Jewish Chronicle, which contained a mixed bag of letters for and against, also carried an editorial saying the chief rabbi had made an important point in the interview: that the events in Israel which so distressed him were forced upon Israel by a failure of Palestinians to negotiate a peace settlement.

In the London Jewish News, Rabbi Shaul Rosenblatt, director of Aish UK, expressed surprise that Dr Sacks had given the interview to the Guardian, "the most anti-semitic daily newspaper".