The Reaction of British Jewry to Suez, 1956 / by Raphael Langham

from each other, that Israel could not be regarded as an aggressor, that the British government had failed to establish legal grounds for its use of force and that the vote of confidence in the House of Commons did not deal with the Israel situation at all.
This was heavily applauded and clearly swung the meeting.
In the event the motion of confidence was passed without opposition with an added proviso that the resolution was not to be taken as an expression of opinion of the Board either in favour or in opposition to action taken by the Government. It is this proviso that indicates that the views of the community were indeed split on the British action.

The Jewish Press

Let us move on to the Jewish Press and let us start with the doyen. The Jewish Chronicle.
The Chronicle devoted pages to news stories and feature articles on Suez. Its views were consistent and unequivocal throughout the crisis. It supported the British government's policy, and it did not discuss the rights or wrongs of the Israeli attack, and one can assume that its support for this was a given. It supported the stance of the Jewish Labour MPs
The events were well covered by all the other Jewish papers. In general they supported the British government and the voting actions of the Jewish MPs.
The Manchester Jewish Gazette and Jewish Telegraph spent most of their ire attacking the Manchester Guardian and fully applauded the Anglo-French intervention. Not so a lot of their readership judging by the subsequent letters that they published opposing this view.
In fact in Manchester the argument in the Jewish press was less about the rights and wrongs of the actions but a parochial political one. A Conservative councillor wrote to all the Jewish papers attacking the views of the Labour party and how the Jewish MPs had voted.. He was Counsellor Mellor, who was not Jewish but a great supporter of Israel, possibly because there were many Jews in his constituency. There followed a torrent of letters from readers attacking him and supporting the Jewish MPs.
One exception to the rather common thread of the Jewish papers was the Jewish Observer and Middle East Review No doubt reflecting the views of its editor Jon Kimche, it tended to adopt a different and more critical line. Whilst not criticising Israel's attack as such, it set out the alternative options to Israel with a hint that perhaps one of these alternatives might have been preferable. It was not in favour of the Anglo-French intervention as it considered that this had probably saved Nasser who would not have survived the ignominy of defeat by Israel. They also supported the Labour MPs, considering that abstention was the coward's way out.

The Silent Majority

So much for the leaders of the community and the Jewish press. What do we know of the views of the 450,000 or so other Jews in Britain? What did the proverbial Jew at the back of the Clapham, or should I say Golders Green, omnibus think.
Unfortunately there were no surveys of Jewish opinions. We know that the major charitable appeal for Israel, the Joint Palestine Appeal, advanced the launch of its spring 1957 appeal to November 1956 and raised double the amount of the