Several progressive British rabbis on Wednesday expressed support for the sanctions on West Bank settlements announced by UK Foreign Minister Ed Miliband this week.

While British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis charged that the announcement was a “dark day for Jews,” other senior rabbis emphasized the necessity of taking action against the extremist settlers committing daily violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Miliband on Tuesday announced that Britain, France and Canada would end all dealings with Israeli settlements, denounced the “unlawful occupation” of the West Bank, and accused “settler terrorists” of “ethnic cleansing,” indulged or supported by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The new “comprehensive sanctions regime” is expected to take effect within six to nine months, with what he called “appropriate religious exemptions.”

Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, a senior rabbi of Masorti Judaism UK and rabbi of the New North London Synagogue, said in a post on his Substack that he was in the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair during Miliband’s speech, where he had witnessed “the results of settler violence with my own eyes.”

Wittenberg noted that he shared “concerns of many Anglo-Jewish leaders” over antisemitism and wanted to know that the government would take action against extremist slogans and behaviors against Jews and Israel.

But he added: “The village is under siege. Mere meters from the home in which I stand, the army has declared ‘a military zone.’ This means that families who’ve lived here for decades can’t enter parts of their own land, can’t reach their livestock (except 5 minutes a day to feed them) or even access their toilet. Yet the settlers hang out on that very land with impunity, and mock.

“This is the place where they kidnapped a British activist, whom the police had to free, then promptly deported. (That could be me next time),” he wrote, referring to an incident last month in which armed settlers detained........

© The Times of Israel