UK news

Britain asks EU to ban Hizbollah

Marcus Dysch — Tue, 21 May 2013 18:26:13 +0100

Britain has formally asked the European Union to outlaw Hizbollah as a terrorist organisation.

The move increases the likelihood of the EU taking action against the Iranian-backed group and follows months of pressure from Anglo-Jewish groups.

Prime Minister David Cameron requested that British Jews "make a noise" and help him persuade the EU to ban Hizbollah following a meeting with community leaders in January.

To proscribe Hizbollah requires consensus among all 27 EU members. The move would freeze the group's accounts and funding, hitting its European operations and terrorist activities.

It is understood that Hizbollah's increasing role in the Syrian Civil War led the Foreign Office to make the formal request.

A special EU working group is now due to discuss what steps to take against the group at a meeting next month with a ban on the organisation possibly being introduced by the end of June.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We are calling for Europe to respond collectively and robustly following the atrocious terrorist attack at Bourgas airport and in light of the recent conviction of an Hizbollah operative in Cyprus.

“We firmly believe that an appropriate EU response would be to designate Hizballah’s military wing as a terrorist organisation. This would be in line with our national proscription of Hizballah’s military wing.

“We continue to work closely with our European partners on this issue to reach a robust, collective EU position."

Middle East minister Alistair Burt said last week that the government was eager to see a “robust response” from the EU to the suicide bombing carried out by Hizbollah in the Bulgarian resort of Bourgas last July which killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver.

The EU currently classifies Hizbollah as a social welfare organisation. The US, Israel, Canada and the Netherlands are the only countries which currently list Hizbollah as a terrorist organisation in its entirety — both its political and military wings.

A delegation of British Jewish community representatives met Helga Schmid, deputy head of the EU’s external action service last month to push for a Europe-wide ban.

Foreign Secretary William Hague is due to visit Israel on Thursday.

Hague and Kerry due in Israel for peace talks

Marcus Dysch — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:03:07 +0100

Foreign Secretary William Hague is due to visit Israel this week during a short tour of the Middle East.

He is expected to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for talks on the peace process.

The trip has been planned for some time and is being made in an effort to support US Secretary of State John Kerry's work to encourage Israelis and Palestinians to return to negotiations.

Mr Kerry will also be in Israel - his fourth visit in two months as he works to turn around reluctance on both sides and looks to boost the Palestinian economy.

Mr Hague will attend a meeting of the core group nations in Jordan on Wednesday before travelling to Israel the following day.

He is also due to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.

Immigrant problem? We should be flattered they choose the UK

Jennifer Lipman — Sun, 19 May 2013 09:00:28 +0100

The British should be flattered that so many refugees and immigrants want to settle in the UK. That is the view of one of the country’s best-loved children’s authors, seven decades after she herself found refuge from the Nazis in London.

Speaking in the week that tougher rules on immigrants were included in the Queen’s Speech, Judith Kerr noted the growing public mood against new arrivals, but said: “It’s nothing to do with immigration, just to do with the number of people who all have to go somewhere, and it’s rather flattering that they all want to come here.”

She insisted that immigrants should not be deterred from coming to Britain but that they would do well to follow the example of the Jews who arrived in the 1930s and learn English and adopt British customs as quickly as possible.

Mrs Kerr is famous for her two classic works for children — The Tiger Who Came to Tea and the Mog the cat series, — and for When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, the fictionalised memoir of her Jewish family’s escape from Berlin to Switzerland, France and finally Britain. The book is considered a good way of introducing children to the events of the Holocaust.

The writer turns 90 at the start of next month and to mark the event, publisher Harper Collins is releasing Judith Kerr’s Creatures, a book bringing together her biography and hundreds of her illustrations, including early drawings that formed the basis of The Tiger Who Came to Tea and Mog.

Mrs Kerr was made an OBE last year, an honour she welcomed, “because I came here as a refugee and to put it simply, it’s very nice to know that nobody regrets having let me in.

“I keep coming across Jewish refugees [who got similar honours], and I’m terribly pleased because it means that we did good.”

The author quickly became fluent in English when she arrived in London and is adamant that all immigrants should learn the language.

She said: “You should learn it as fast as you can and you should abide by what is normal in the country, even if it is different from what you are used to, because it’s only polite.

“The people who came here in the 1930s were ready to follow the rules as it were. My father used to say: ‘We are guests in this country’ which is a good attitude.”

The new book chronicles the period from the Kerr family’s frantic departure from Germany in 1933 to her time as a BBC employee and her marriage to screenwriter Nigel Kneale in the early ’50s. It is, she says a chance to “put right” a previous depiction of her father, Alfred.

In the Bombs on Aunt Daisy trilogy, “Papa” is portrayed as inactive, even passive, a representation Mrs Kerr now knows to be untrue, having discovered his private papers.

“I’ve found out a lot of things since I wrote the book about my father, which worried me, because I totally misrepresented him. I thought I must write about what really happened.”

One letter she found was Alfred Kerr’s plea to Albert Einstein in 1936. “My father said: ‘There’s going to be a war in Europe, I must get my children out’. So he knew then what was at stake,” said Mrs Kerr.

She puts her continued popularity as a writer down to “luck”, although she wishes people would remember her for more than Tiger. “It’s the first thing I ever did and I worked terribly hard to get better,” she said.

Gefiltefest 2013 - 'biggest yet'

Zoe Winograd — Sun, 19 May 2013 06:00:57 +0100

Gefiltefest, the annual celebration of Jewish food, takes place today, with around 600 people expected to attend.

The event includes cooking demonstrations, learning sessions, hands-on activities and a children’s programme.

It is the fourth time the event has been run and promises to be the “biggest yet", according to founder Michael Leventhal. Highlights are an Ashkenazi versus Sephardi cook-off, hands-on challah baking and the Gefiltefest Food Awards 2013 , which recognise the public's favourite kosher shops and restaurants.

More than 75 volunteers from across the community have been involved in preparing the kosher festival , which takes place at the London Jewish Cultural Centre's Ivy House, in Golders Green.

Mr Leventhal said: “Food is one thing that can unite people . There are very few things that can do that – food can bring people together.”

Heroic spy was inspiration for Bond girl Vesper Lynd

Jennifer Lipman — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:28 +0100

The daring exploits of a Jewish-born secret agent who was parachuted into France during the Second World War have been celebrated at a ceremony in London.

Krystyna Skarbek, whose mother was from an assimilated Jewish family, left her home in Poland after the Nazi invasion and made her way to Britain. She volunteered to work as an agent from British intelligence, returning to Poland on numerous missions to recruit couriers.

Towards the end of the war she was dispatched to France to gather intelligence and boost the Allied war effort, for which she was decorated with the George Medal for bravery.

Known in Britain by the name Christine Granville, she mixed in glamorous circles and allegedly had an affair with James Bond author Ian Fleming, reportedly even inspiring the character Vesper Lyn in Casino Royale.

But in 1952 she was stabbed to death by a man who had become obsessed with her, and was buried in relative anonymity in Kensal Green, west London.

On Friday, 61 years after her death, her courage was saluted at an event organised by the Polish Heritage Society, which is planning to renovate her grave and restore her name to prominence.

Mazeltov! Sitcom to feature a wedding under the chupah

Jennifer Lipman — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:30:28 +0100

A Jewish wedding is on the cards for British television audiences next year after Channel 4 announced that a third series of the hit comedy Friday Night Dinner has been commissioned.

The sitcom, starring Tamsin Greig and Simon Bird, follows the Jewish Goodman family at their weekly Shabbat meals. A spokesman has confirmed that an episode will feature a wedding with a Jewish bride and groom, although he declined to reveal who the family might be wishing mazeltov to under the chupah.

The third outing of the Bafta-nominated series will be filmed on location in north London over the summer and is scheduled to air next year.

Writer Robert Popper has admitted drawing on his own family life in creating the series, which draws much of its comedy from awkward and often uncomfortable situations, and from troublesome visitors to the Goodman home.

Storylines in the new series will involve sex education lectures, inappropriate admirers and tattoos.

Mr Popper, whose previous credits include Peep Show, Bo’Selecta and South Park, said: “I’m so excited to be making a new series with such a fantastic cast once again. I really could not be happier,” he said.

Nerys Evans, deputy head of comedy for Channel 4, said: “Roberts’s created such a brilliantly warm and funny world, and the cast are just sublime.”

The man putting the cycling into recycling

Zoe Winograd — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:00:44 +0100

Every year, over 27,000 bicycles are abandoned in London. Most are turned into scrap metal but, thanks to a former Habonim Dror member, some are now being salvaged as part of a scheme to help refugees.

Twenty-five-year-old Jem Stein runs The Bike Project — a group which collects abandoned bikes from around London, fixes them at a workshop in Hackney and donates them to a drop-in centre for asylum-seekers.

He relies on police and councils to report abandoned machines. Since the project started, he and his team of volunteers have repaired over 300 bikes.

Mr Stein was inspired by two brothers from Darfur who he mentored at university. The brothers — who had sought refuge in the UK after their parents were killed — lived on the outskirts of London and could not afford to use public transport. Mr Stein, an enthusiastic cyclist himself, found them two bikes which, he said, “changed their lives”.

Asylum-seekers also come to the workshop and fix their own bikes, allowing them to develop skills and a sense of self-worth, according to Mr Stein.

“These people come from terrible circumstances. Fixing the bikes can feel quite empowering and offers a real sense of hope,” he said.

Facebook rabbi voted in as Sephardi leader

Simon Rocker — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:30:28 +0100

Britain’s oldest Orthodox community has at last found a senior rabbi after a search that began more than three years ago.

Rabbi Joseph Dweck, 37, of New York, was endorsed as the new rabbinic leader of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation by a massive majority of 270 votes to four in a ballot of its members last week.

Adam Musikant, a member of the executive, said; “I doubt whether in the history of Anglo-Jewry any elected rabbi has had a 98.5 per cent vote.

“He is exceptionally dynamic and a breath of fresh air. He will be a great representative on the ambassadorial stage of our community.”

Rabbi Dweck, who was born in Los Angeles to parents of Syrian roots, has seen his Sephardi congregation, Shaare Shalom, increase from a few dozen members to some 800 over the past 14 years.

He has also been head of a Jewish school for two- to 13-year-olds, Barkai Yeshivah, for four years.

He and his wife Margalit, who is the granddaughter of the world’s leading Sephardi rabbi, Ovadia Yosef, have five children, aged from six to 15.

“I am not going to move my family officially till July 2014. But I will be coming in and out periodically over the next year,” he said, with his next visit likely to be shortly after the High Holy Days.

“I’m looking forward to upholding the traditions of the ‘S and P’ which I have a tremendous respect for,” he added.

The 1,250-strong Spanish and Portuguese community in London offered a unique combination of the warmth and passion of the Sephardi tradition derived from the experience of living in the West for nearly 400 years, he explained.

“To me, it’s an amazing confluence of culture and it creates a unique philosophy, which is a fantastic approach to the world and to Judaism that I’d like to cultivate and to publicise,” he said. “I think the ‘S and P’ approach is one that hasn’t been capitalised upon enough.”

But while “a stickler for history”, he also sees the benefits of new social media.

“Facebook, Twitter, internet communications need to be used, first of all to be able to reach out to the youth in their arena.”

One of his ambitions is to create “a young ambassadors programme, where we’ll have young people from all of the different shuls in the kahal [community] to be able to work with me directly and plan events.

“That will give them an incentive to feel there is something they can do personally to affect the kahal and to have a hand in developing what they’d like to see happen.”

But new media is not only for the youth; he also hopes to use it to “try to create a cohesiveness among the entire community”.

Sephardi leaders began their attempt to recruit a successor to Rabbi Abraham Levy — who retired as spiritual head last July — early in 2010.

But their efforts floundered when their chosen candidate pulled out early last year with the community split and the election result contested. They went back to the drawing board, resuming the search this time for a “senior rabbi” rather than “spiritual head”.

After a week-long visit ahead of the vote, Rabbi Dweck said he and his wife had found “a warm and welcoming community, which was excited about the future”. He added: “I was in the UK during a week when the skies were blue. It was a nice feeling — even though people told me not to get used to it.”

Melanie Phillips sets up her own media empire

Jennifer Lipman — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:30:28 +0100

Journalist and political commentator Melanie Phillips has launched her own media company publishing high-brow books as well as selling branded tote bags and mobile phone covers.

Ms Phillips, a high-profile columnist for the Daily Mail and the JC, and a prolific author, has set up EM (short for Electric Media) in an effort, she said, to stand up for the little guy.

The company will bypass traditional publishers to release books on digital platforms, as well as producing a range of merchandise.

Topics being covered by EM publications include the parenting of teenagers, royalty and the scapegoating of intellectuals.

The company will publish Ms Phillips’s own work — top of the list is her autobiography, Guardian Angel, My Story, My Britain — as well as work by her husband, legal journalist Joshua Rozenberg.

She said: “ EM books will have broad appeal over a wide variety of topics, all aimed at the centre ground of public opinion — and the Middle East will have a place within that”.

Ms Phillips explained that the aim of the company was “speaking truth to power, standing up for the little guy and giving voice to those on the decent, commonsense, middle-ground who find themselves marginalised by the gatekeepers of public discourse”.

No bullying allowed, says Board of Deputies

Marcus Dysch — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:00:28 +0100

It is the representative body of British Jewry, with more than 250 years of democratic debate and defending religious liberties to its name.

But the Board of Deputies has felt the need to issue its first code of conduct — warning deputies they must not engage in harassment, bullying or “unreasonable discrimination” during meetings.

The code has been compiled in a bid to put an end to “unacceptable behaviour” and will apply to all deputies, honorary officers and past presidents.

Board leaders acted after years of disruption to debates and verbal attacks on deputies and officials.

The code — currently in draft form — warns deputies that “the way in which they conduct themselves reflects on the Board and the community as a whole. For this reason it is essential that they do so according to the highest standards expected of those in public life.”

New London Synagogue deputy Tony Leifer chaired a special sub-committee which drew up the guidelines, covering issues such as conflicts of interest, complaint procedures and grounds for a deputy’s “permanent exclusion from participation in the Board’s affairs”.

Deputies will vote on the new rules at a special meeting in July.