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http://thejc.com/news/uk-news/33742/two-more-brighton-activists-cleared-...

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6117164/the-hellish-histrioni...

The acquittal of the seven who admitted causing £180,000 of criminal damage in the EDO factory in Brighton is an utter disgrace. This Judge George Bathurst-Norman - who reportedly effectively directed the jury to the 'not guilty' verdict - is a sick joke.

I am delighted to announce that we have been able to arrange a gig at NPLS, with Avital Raz an Israeli musician who is currently somewhere in Wales mid-way through a UK tour of the summer folk festivals. She will be with us with her sound artist, Amos Ungar, weaving their magic influenced by a wide range of sources Judah Ha'Levi to Indian Druphad, opera to piyyutim with a tad of blues and rock thrown in for good measure. Do come and join me for what will be a cracking event.

In Doss vs. Chiloni: Two Sides of the Same Shekel, written during a slight down period (with Tel Aviv especially), I expressed my despair at the ultra-Orthodox/secular polarisation of Israeli society and my longing for the mutual tolerance and respect – relative, at least – which I had known in the Jewish community in the UK.

While I snapped out of that downer some time ago, and am once again certain that I much prefer being a Jew here than anywhere else, I am again feeling the deep, often ugly, religious – and even racial – chasm within even the purely Jewish constituency of this country.

Firstly, there has been the shocking – at least to idealists, like me, who believed (or wanted to) that they were living in a modern democratic Jewish state – case of the charedi (ultra-Orthodox) Ashkenazim (Jews of European origin) segregating their daughters from charedi Sephardi/Mizrachi (of North African/Middle Eastern descent) girls, at a school in the West Bank town of Immanuel.

The documents prove, among other things, the attempts by Free Gaza to conceal the aid to Hamas - since Hamas is designated as a terrorist organisation in the US.....

The New Israel Fund has sent an email to its supporters to tell them it is organising a

"special 1-day Study Tour on Sunday, July 18, for rabbis and rabbinical students spending time in Israel. Please forward this email to a rabbi you know. This is a unique opportunity to connect rabbis with NIF so that they can help educate their congregations and communities about the challenges of promoting social justice in Israel. The program will explore issues including Jewish-Arab equality, religious pluralism, and the threats facing Israeli democracy today. It is our hope that participants will use this experience to energize their congregations and peers. The day will include breakfast with Avrum Burg."

Burg is a former Knesset speaker who now lives in Paris. In an infamous interview with Ha’aretz’s Avi Shavit last year, Burg admitted that he is no longer a Zionist and claims that Israeli “fascism” is pervasive and comparable to Germany prior to World War II. He has taken French citizenship (he brags about voting against Nicholas Sarkozy: “Sarkozy is in my eyes a threat to world peace. That is why I went to vote against him”), seeks to amend Israel's Law of Return, and encourages all Israelis to obtain foreign passports.

At some point last year, at the height of Hasmo Legends mania, I was contacted by Rabbi David Meyer, the Executive Headteacher of Hasmonean (Boys’ and Girls’). “Dave”, who was in the year above me at Hasmo, was concerned at the damage the series might cause to the careers of the few teachers – in particular, a Bissli-scoffing one whom I had not yet documented – still at the school.

At the end of our conversation, Dave – who has taught at Hasmo for around 15 years – invited me back to the school on my next visit to Blighty. Dave probably forgot the offer the second after he made it . . . but how could I?! In fact, not only did I not forget it, but, straight from Heathrow, on that sunny late-March afternoon, I caught the Tube to Mill Hill East and, then, the 240 up Holders Hill Road.

As I approached the front gate, one of the few Hasmo landmarks still in the same place since I left the nuthouse almost 25 years ago, I was half expecting to be confronted by a crude East End hunchback effing and blinding about DJ (“the facking cant”). Instead, two young Eastern Europeans – folk known to excel in guarding Jews – now manned Jack Rose’s former position. They took my suitcase, and instructed me to report to the school reception just inside the main entrance (beneath the headmaster’s office, adjacent to the hole allocated to the aforementioned Benippled Forehead when he, so shortsightedly, was appointed Deputy Head in the early Eighties).

Sir

You published a letter (4th June) concerning the ZF’s successful, peaceful rally on Wednesday night in support of Israel (which despite being arranged at very short notice was attended by over 700 people).

The 20 signatories say that supporters of the English Defence League were at the event.
Many of the signatories are regular defamers of Israel and here they attempt the crude tactic of “smear by association”. However as always from these usual suspects, the mud fails to stick. Before the event the ZF alerted its supporters by email and on Facebook to the possibility that EDL supporters might be present, disassociated itself from the EDL and said that they would be allocated their own area.

Dear Mr. Kiniklioğlu,

I write in response to your op-ed article, This Israeli Government Has Gone Too Far, in last Wednesday’s International Herald Tribune.

“It makes yer sick . . .” So a dear, late uncle of mine would commence his not infrequent tirades against the hypocrisy and double standards of the international community and media in its treatment of Israel. And, after reading your ill-thought-out piece, I have not been able to get Uncle Stanley’s words out of my head.