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BBC Radio 4 “Today Programme”

2nd January 2003

JOHN HUMPHRYS
It has been a difficult year to be a Jew. Israel has made more enemies because of the way it has dealt with Palestinians and the violence in the Holy Land; anti-semitism is on the rise in Europe and indeed in this country. That is the view of the Chief

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
who's with me for another of our end of the year, or start of the year I suppose I should say, interviews:

What's the evidence of the increase in anti-semitism?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS

Well we've had synagogue desecrations in North London in Finsbury Park, in Swansea. We've had a lot of quite intimidating behaviour of Jewish students on campus. But I think in Britain it hasn't yet reached the level at which we take alarm but I know that the French Jewish community has suffered much worse and there I think it is quite serious.

JOHN HUMPHRYS
And in the United States. I see that someone was saying they're facing a threat as great as, if not greater, than they faced in the 1930s - the threat to the safety and the security of the Jewish people that is:

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
I think that's an exaggeration but yes, we're dealing here with global phenomenon and one thing that's happened with technology is that hate can be communicated very fast across the Internet and it becomes a global phenomenon.

JOHN HUMPHRYS
And is this happening in your view because of what has happened in Israel in the last year?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
No. I think this is a fundamental opposition to the very existence of Israel as such for the right of the Jewish people to have a collective home. So it's not political. It's kind of absolute and that's what makes it frightening.

JOHN HUMPHRYS
But the opposition to the right of the Jewish people to have a home as you put it is not anti-semitism is it? It's anti-Zionism but it's not anti-semitism. It's not the same thing, is it?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
No, anti-Zionism is not anti-semitism, but when Jewish students are attacked on university campuses, when the American journalist Daniel Pearl was killed for being a Jew, when there are attacks on synagogues throughout Europe then we see anti-Zionism shade into anti-semitism and that's when the danger signs start flashing.

JOHN HUMPHRYS
And all of that does have to do with what is happening in Israel and the politics and the policies of the Israeli Government:

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
I don't think so. I think the Israeli Government, and I think all the Israeli Governments since 1991 in Madrid and Oslo in '93, all of them have taken as their mandate from the Israeli public the search for peace with security and that peace and that security are just proving very hard to find.

JOHN HUMPHRYS
Does it look to you as though Sharon is concerned with peace or concerned with the supremacy of Israel in that part of the world?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Of course Israel is facing general elections at the end of this month and what struck me very forcibly - I've just come back from there - is that Ariel Sharon has made it clear that he will not accept as a member of any future government that he heads anyone who is opposed in principle to the creation of a Palestinian State.

So I don't think Ariel Sharon is the 'hawk' that he's portrayed in Western media. He, like the rest of Israel - and this transcends party politics, is looking for an honourable way for Israelis and Palestinians to co-exist.

JOHN HUMPHRYS
What did you mean when you said to The Guardian last year that Israel was adopting a stance - and I quote now from The Guardian interview: ' ... incompatible with the deepest ideals of Judaism' and the current conflict with the Palestinians was - and again I quote: '... corrupting Israeli culture' ?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
You know what I actually said was this: I said prolonged conflict can be corrupting to a culture and then I went on to say - and these were my exact words: 'However after 54 years of unremitting war and terror Israelis remain humane, compassionate and committed to human-rights.' Unfortunately the newspaper didn't publish those remarks until three days later.

JOHN HUMPHRYS
But did you say that the stance they were adopting was incompatible with the deepest ideals of Judaism ?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
No, I didn't. I made a purely general remark that any country - and no other country ever has - that faces 15,000 terrorist attacks in just over two years - and that is the official figure. Any country like that is going to go through terrible stresses and strains and I don't think we in this country have any idea of how fraught ordinary life is for Israelis and how disastrous this whole policy has been for the Palestinians.

JOHN HUMPHRYS
But is there no sense in you at all that to some extent Israel has brought this upon itself? Ariel Sharon's walk on the Temple Mount for instance which was the beginning of the intifada:

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
I believe that between 1991 and 2001 something quite remarkable happened in Israel from a point at which the PLO was an organisation with whom it was illegal for Israelis to have any contact to the culmination of Ehud Barak's process at Camp David and at Taba which offered the Palestinians a State of their own on 97% of the West Bank with East Jerusalem as its capital. Now that leap from hostility to peace took France and Germany 300 or 400 years to reach. Israelis reached it in ten years. So I ...

JOHN HUMPHRYS
But from / it's a very very different base. You'd have t accept a new nation such as Israel can't be compared and a new nation that came into existence in the way that Israel came into existence can't be compared with the settled states such as France and Germany:

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Absolutely, and that makes the Israeli situation even more remarkable; that the State that came into being on its first day of existence by being attacked by five neighbouring armies. For that State to seek peace, to have the courage to stick with it against all odds, that to me is the mark of an admiral nation.

JOHN HUMPHRYS
But is it your view - taking the long view of this and the short view I imagine you'd agree is immensely bleak - but is it your long view, and it certainly was your view - I've read some of what you said about it in the past - that Israel should return to the pre-1967 borders?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
I think the precise drawing of borders here is putting the cart before the horse. What is clear ...

JOHN HUMPHRYS
You did say that:

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
What is clear ...

I said that in 1967 - that was my view. In 1967 that was the view of the Israeli Government.

JOHN HUMPHRYS
But you've repeated it since haven't you?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
I do believe, and I repeat here - this is not controversial; 95% of Israelis believe it too - that there must be in the fullness of time a Palestinian State; that there must be a settlement that is seen to be just on both sides; that our concern is as much for the future of Palestinian children as for Israeli children. That's my view. It always has been. It always will be.

JOHN HUMPHRYS
But that's pretty uncontroversial most of that. What matters is the question of what constitutes that Palestinian State, the territory that they hold. That is key isn't it and you know that ...

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
John, that is not the issue. The issue is trust between the two sides. With trust you can ...

JOHN HUMPHRYS
That's rhetoric if I may say so. What matters is what land the Palestinians end up with:

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
It seems to me that the kind of offer that was on the table at Taba in 2001, which most of the Palestinian delegation wanted to accept and which they are somewhat disappointed with Yasser Arafat for not accepting, show that what is really at stake here is not the precise drawing of boundaries; that agreement can be reached if there's trust and goodwill on both sides. And I really believe that. That's not rhetoric. That is the reality.