Enthusiastic new PM could find herself in need of a rabbi if Bibi returns
Politicians — particularly in America — are often referred to as having a “rabbi”, usually meaning their closest adviser on relations with the Jewish community.
I am curious who might fill the role of rabbi to Liz Truss, though judging by her address to the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) in early August, she doesn’t need one.
Brought up first in Paisley in Scotland and then Leeds, Truss sits for a Norfolk constituency not remarkable for its high number of Jewish voters. She may have mixed with Jewish friends at school in Leeds and later at Merton College, Oxford, but she seems to have drawn much of her apparent genuine philosemitism from her own observations.
Her CFI speech offers much food for analysis, and my thanks to Bicom’s Toby Greene for highlighting many of the key pointers. Greene says Truss’s mental map of the world pits “decent, honest, sovereign free-trading nations against aggressive authoritarians”. As Foreign Secretary, Truss was an enthusiastic supporter of Israel, even overruling Foreign Office civil servants on backing Israel in the United Nations.
She clearly got on well with Prime Minister Lapid, with whom she co-authored a Daily Telegraph op-ed declaring “Israel and the UK are the closest of friends, and today we become even closer. Together we ensure the future is defined by liberal democracies who believe in freedom and fairness.”
Truss told the CFI Israel was Britain’s greatest ally and Israel had no better or stauncher friend than the UK. She made the right noises about continuing financial support for the fight against antisemitism, though attacking “a woke civil service culture that occasionally strays into antisemitism” was not perhaps her smartest move.
Look, she was speaking to CFI as she was running for prime minister. Candidates at hustings, as we all know, will often say pretty much anything to win votes. So telling the CFI that she would be ready to “look at” moving Britain’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was, it seems to me, a populist, shoot-from-the-hip response with no possible basis in reality.
What intrigued me more about Truss’s CFI speech was her somewhat overlooked admission that Britain wanted to be more involved in the next phase of the Abraham Accords.
What intrigued me more about Truss’s CFI speech was her somewhat overlooked admission that Britain wanted to be more involved in the next phase of the Abraham Accords. It is known – and Truss’s interlocutor Lord Polak pointed out – Britain was not only not at the table when the Accords were hammered out, but not even in the same room. Britain felt, as a long-time mover in the Gulf, it had more to offer and Truss clearly believes Britain was being sidelined and is determined it won’t happen again.
And let’s not forget Israel’s pending elections in November, where Lapid, with whom Truss got on so well, risks having his rainbow coalition run over by Benjamin Netanyahu, much more supportive of his “friend” Putin.
Will Prime Minister Truss, ardent in her backing for Ukraine, be as enthusiastic a friend of Israel if Bibi makes a comeback? Strikes me if that happens, Mary Elizabeth Truss is going to need a rabbi.