Two Naked Emperors

In April 2025, 36 Members of the UK Board of Jewish Deputies (effectively the UK’s Jewish Parliament) co-signed a Letter to the Financial Times calling out the Israeli Government, and in particular its Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, for its behaviour in Gaza. This broke a mafia-style omerta of silence under which no mainstream Jewish diaspora leaders or organisation ever publicly criticised an Israeli Government. It also fiercely divided the Anglo-Jewish community into three camps: those who agreed, those who disagreed and those who, while agreeing, were uncomfortable with going public. Unsurprisingly the 36 signatories of the FT Letter were the subject of complaints to the Board. This book starts with two introductory chapters: the first about Judaism and antisemitism, and the second about both the Board and the United Synagogue (representing the Orthodox element in the community). It then examines in detail how the complaints were handled. The author, who was one of the 36, and also one of the five of them most heavily sanctioned for giving broadcast interviews on the day the letter was published, shows how the complaints procedure was procedurally flawed to an extent that reeked of the perversion of what should have been a quasi-judicial process into satisfying the bloodlust of the reactionary end of the Anglo-Jewish community. He has written the book because he strongly believes that people and institutions operating in the public domain should be accountable for their actions. This book does so by telling the story of what happened. As US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis memorably observed: “Sunlight is the best disinfectant”.