The wrong target

Last week, our columnist, Geoffrey Alderman, wrote about Parrs Wood High School in Manchester. He attacked an article about Israel in the school magazine - for which the headmaster subsequently apologised - and two fundraising events at the school for Human Appeal International, a Manchester-based charity that, in the view of the US State Department, has links to terrorism.

You might think that this is exactly the sort of thing a JC columnist should focus on. But that is not the view of the President of the Zionist Central Council of Greater Manchester and other communal representatives, who took the extraordinary step of sending a round robin email denouncing Mr Alderman for daring to criticise the school.

"The situation is very much under control", they wrote, demanding that there be no further criticism of the school. A toned down version of that letter appears in the letters section. So under control is the situation that precisely nothing has changed; the next fundraiser is still due to go ahead next weekend. It is no wonder that our communal leadership is regarded by so many as spineless when, instead of attacking a headmaster who presides over such outrages, it is the man who brings them to the attention of the community who is condemned.