glasgow | Bright blue signs screamed “Yes” while red ones urged “No, thanks” in the streets of Scotland’s largest city just days before the Sept. 18 vote on whether to secede from the United Kingdom.
The campaign proved a divisive one, with pre-election polls showing the country split nearly evenly on the question.
Supporters of independence believe that Scotland would be better able to allocate resources to the local population as a separate country while leaving a smaller military footprint than the United Kingdom. Opponents argue that the country is better served by the U.K.’s greater global influence and worry about the financial and political uncertainties of independence.
Most of the affiliated Scottish Jewish community appears to want to remain part of the United Kingdom. Many Jews said they were wary of secession, citing anti-Israel statements by the Scottish government, historic and family links to the United Kingdom, and the potential economic risks of independence.
“The Jews in Scotland have been well received,” said Malcolm Livingstone, chairman of the Glasgow Jewish Community Trust. “It’s only in recent times that extreme Palestinian groups have upset that. The Scottish Parliament has shown serious signs of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish attitudes.”
Scotland’s 2011 census counted fewer than 6,000 Jews — about 0.1 percent of the population — most of them living in and around Glasgow. Including unaffiliated Jews, the total could be more like 10,000, according to the director of the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, Ephraim Borowski.
The community hadn’t been polled and Borowski’s group had no official position on the referendum. But he said official condemnations of Israel during the war in Gaza this summer may have pushed some Jews to oppose independence.
During the war, the Scottish government released eight statements criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza. On Aug. 5, it called for an arms embargo against Israel to protest civilian deaths in Gaza. Glasgow’s City Hall flew the Palestinian flag for a day in August.
“I do know of people who have said explicitly that they intended to vote yes and now intend to vote no, and that’s connected with the much more explicit obsession with Israel and the Mideast,” Borowski said.
The anti-Israel resolutions in Scotland have come alongside a spike in anti-Semitism. More than 35 anti-Semitic acts occurred in July and August, according to Borowski’s group, compared with 14 in all of 2013. While the Scottish National Party, which is leading the independence charge, has condemned anti-Semitism, some Jews worry that nationalist feeling has encouraged it.
“Nationalism in Europe has not done well with the Jews,” Livingstone said. “I’m not suggesting for a minute that the SNP is like the nationalist parties in Germany, but within nationalist politics there’s always an element that tends to blame minorities for things that go wrong.”
Some Scottish Jews says they feel more of a connection to Britain as a whole than to Scotland. Unlike Scottish families who can trace their lines back to the country’s ancient clans, many Jews came here from Eastern Europe only a century ago, 200 years after England and Scotland formed a political union in 1707.
Jews who support independence cite parallels between the Jewish and Scottish stories. Scottish nationalists have desired independence since the earliest rebellions against English rule in the 1200s, much as Jews longed for Zion for centuries of exile.
Joe Goldblatt, a native Texan who moved to Scotland six years ago, was passing out fliers supporting independence last week in Edinburgh.
“What’s the basis for all Jewish thought? Freedom,” said Goldblatt, a professor at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh. “It surprises me when my fellow Jews want to be shackled to the old political tissue, as if saying, ‘The pharaoh has been pretty good so far. Let’s not rock the boat.’”