Ahead of next month’s General Election, The Board of Deputies of British Jews has launched its Jewish Manifesto designed to ensure that all the political parties take the concerns of Britain’s 300,000-strong Jewish community into account when setting out their own proposals for government, the BoD announced this week.
The Jewish Manifesto is a comprehensive policy document for the community covering policy areas including antisemitism, Israel, education, religious freedom issues like Shechita and Brit Milah, and much more besides. As well as containing detailed information on each of these areas, the policies have once again been summarised into ‘Ten Commitments’ to give politicians an overall flavour of the community’s priorities. It has been updated to reflect policy developments since the last manifestos, with a new section on Brexit.
The proliferation of antisemitism in politics, and particularly within political parties, is an ever-growing concern among British Jews. The Manifesto calls on political parties to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism in full. That is to say, with all its examples and without caveats. It also calls on political parties to take steps to eradicate antisemitism by outsourcing disciplinary processes to an independent provider to eradicate any risk of systemic partisanship and factionalism.
The document will be sent to all parliamentary candidates and we will be asking them to sign up to the Ten Commitments on social media.
Beyond this election, the Board of Deputies will use this manifesto in its engagement with Government, parliamentarians and other decision makers and it is hoped that communities will use the document, which will be available online and in hard-copy, in their own engagement with their local MPs.
Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl said: “The Jewish Manifesto election presents candidates with a clearly thought out and agreed set of policy requests. We call on all candidates to sign up show support to their local Jewish community. We would also encourage all members of the Jewish community to engage proactively in the election. Reach out to candidates and ask them to support the Jewish Manifesto’s ‘Ten Commitments’.”
Read the Jewish Manifesto here.
