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The following article was published in the JC yesterday:

Please also comment on the CiF Watch site.

Guardian’s flagship blog reeks of antisemitism

The Times yesterday had a picture of penguins waddling through Hadassah Bay, near Stanley, in the Falkland Islands.

The BBC this morning reported that the winner of the women's snowboarding competition at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver was a blonde, blue-eyed Australian named Torah Bright.

What's going on here. I think we should be told....

Professor Geoffrey Alderman (persona non grata at The Guardian, for writing for CiFWatch) spells it out in today's JC. But he doesn't tell the whole sorry story about the descent of British academia into the darkness of bigotry and blind hatred for Israel, for what that country stands for ...... and therefore for Jews.

Yesterday Israel's Deputy Ambassador had to pull out of a speaking engagement at Machester University, due it seems to concerns about her security in the face of a mindless mob. I am told that the Students' Union has caved in to mob rule and has effectively banned all Israeli speakers from events.

This follows the shameful capitulation to pressure by Cambridge Israel Society President Jake Witzenfeld who revoked their invitation to Benny Morris.

"If you will it, Dude, it is no dream."

I open my one hundredth posting to melchett mike with a quote from my all-time favourite movie character, The Big Lebowski's Walter Sobchak.

This Polish-Catholic American convert to Judaism – the brilliant creation of the Coen brothers and John Goodman – was, however, quoting some other dude with a long black beard.

Pope Benedict's forthcoming visit to the UK is bound to stimulate discussion about Christian-Jewish relations in the UK. The fact of the matter, here as almost everywhere else in the world. is that contacts on the Jewish side with Christian partners in dialogue are almost entirely handled by Reform and Liberal rabbis and lay leaders. Such Orthodox contacts as there are remain little more than tentative, despite the visits by Israel's Chief Rabbis to the Pope in Rome, the ubiquitous presence of the Orthodox Rabbi David Rosen at international Christian-Jewish gatherings and the Chief Rabbi's joint patronage of the Council of Christians and Jews with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the (Catholic) Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols.

Why Orthodox Jews hold back from this dialogue with Christians, specifically Catholics, who have made historic changes in their deicidic and other attitudes to Jews, was examined intensely in a recent contribution to an Italian Jewish journal by the Israeli Ambassador to the Vatican, Mordecai Lewy, which was picked up and republished in full by the Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano. It makes for a good and challenging read in any language.

Ambassador Lewy recalls that the late and great Rabbi Soloveitchik resented any inter-religious dialogue that lead to discussing principles of faith with Catholics but he didn't mind Jews and Christians talking together about "soft" topics, such as bioethics, ecology, violence, etc. But, Ambassador Lewy notes, "the Catholic Cburch initiated in the Sixties a radical change towards Jews. Conversion is banned to a distant and unknown eschatological horizon. The survivability of Judaism is guaranteed with the establishment of the Jewish State. Their hand is stretched out to us. It would be unwise not to grasp it, lest we mortgage our future in continued animosity with the Catholic world. The first 2000 years do not warrant repetition. Both of us deserve better."

http://www.oxford-union.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/3941/Daniel_Ayal...

Statement from the Oxford Union

9th February 2010

" .... the JC has spoken to several government sources who have said Mr Straw was “playing dirty” to delay an announcement."

For those who have been asleep for the last four months, this refers to the legal change needed to stop Israelis being vexaciously arrested when they come to England.

You've heard of "Taking the Mick", well this is "Taking the Jack" .... of course getting the meaningless "Alternative Vote" through Parliament is much more important, they've only had 13 years to warm to the idea of PR.

What exactly do you tell a charedi (ultra-Orthodox Jew) when your dog has chewed your tefillin?

Dexxy had experienced, it would seem, a troubled first year. When I found her, nearly three years ago, lying on the grass outside my workplace in Or Akiva (Caesarea's poor neighbour), she was at the doors of doggy heaven.

There was something in Dexxy's eyes, however, which told me that she was worth saving, that she would make a far more loyal and stable companion than the Turkish woman who had given me the boot earlier that same week. And so it has proved.