Posts by Geoffrey Alderman

When hypocrisy met vanity

Geoffrey Alderman — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:20:37 +0100

Coincidence is a funny thing. Take last Wednesday. I had reserved that morning to prepare a lecture on the intellectual origins of Nazism. I intended asking why so many apparently sane academics saw fit to endorse Nazism, and indeed promote it. I proposed examining several German men of science and letters, including the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the physicists and Nobel Laureates Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark.

It was Stark who, in 1907, asked the comparatively obscure Albert Einstein to write an essay on the principle of relativity. The essay launched Einstein on to the world stage. But, much later, as proponents of "German Physics," Stark and Lenard denounced Einstein and became fanatical flag-carriers for the Nazi state.

Well, there I was, busily researching these individuals, when I received a call asking me to comment on the startling news that Stephen Hawking, the world-renowned theoretical physicist, had reportedly acceded to requests from Palestinian-Arab academics and rejected an invitation from Israeli President Shimon Peres to attend the Presidential Conference in Jerusalem.

After some confusion, stemming from a highly misleading statement from Cambridge University suggesting that Hawking's decision had been prompted merely by the state of his health, it became clear that the underlying motive was indeed political.

The previous Friday, Hawking had told the conference organisers: "I accepted… with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a peace settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank. However, I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference. Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster."

On hearing this, I reminded the reporter of the words of my late father: "You can't teach common sense at a university."

I observed that the attributes of scholarly brilliance and political idiocy were not, alas, mutually exclusive and recalled that several renowned physicists had espoused Nazism.

I also pointed out that the Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter had openly supported the Serbian murderer Slobodan Miloševic. And that Hawking himself, while clearly determined to boycott Israel, had in 2007 seen fit to grace Iran with his presence - despite Iran's comprehensive abuse of basic human rights - and had also visited China, a brutal totalitarian state in which the suppression and torture of political dissidents are (especially in Tibet) everyday occurrences.

I observed that in boycotting the event Hawking was denying himself the platform he had apparently sought - to denounce Israeli policy (which of course he is entitled to do).

But I then had some less than generous words for those who had extended the invitation to him in the first place.

The Presidential Conference is not an academic event. Over three days, a gathering of some 5,000 celebrities - including Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, Prince Albert of Monaco and Barbra Streisand - will meet in solemn conclave to debate "Facing Tomorrow" - and will "engage the central issues that will influence the face of our future: geopolitics, economics, society, environment, culture, new media, and more".

The idea that any concrete good can come from such an assembly is fatuous nonsense. The first such conference took place in 2008. The conferences stem from an initiative of Peres and - to be blunt -their purpose is simply to enhance the international image of Peres. They have no other rationale.

Of course, if Hawking were not such a hypocrite he would - in the interests of the boycott he clearly supports - forego all the technology, originating in Israel, that enables him to cope and function in spite of the motor neurone disease from which he has suffered for the past half-century.

But if Shimon Peres were not so conceited he would never have summoned the "Presidential Conference" in the first place.

One small step, not a giant leap

Geoffrey Alderman — Mon, 13 May 2013 09:56:21 +0100

The election of Mrs Karen Appleby as the first female chair of a United Synagogue shul (St Albans) is certainly a landmark. The question is, precisely what sort of a landmark is it?

The role of women within Orthodox synagogal structures has been a matter of debate and contention for an exceedingly long time. The apparent prohibition on women holding positions of authority within the synagogue is of purely rabbinic origin, and can be traced back to a particular rabbinic interpretation (the Sifrei) of Devarim 15:17, which speaks of kingship but not queenship.

From this interpretation, the dictum was inferred that women should not wield any authority over men. We might object that the chairmanship of a shul board is a far cry from the right to sit on a throne, and we might ask whether, in any sense, the office of synagogue "chair" can be equated with that of a head of state.

We might also note that simply because the verse addresses kingship, that does not mean that the Almighty has necessarily vetoed queenship, and that, indeed, some later rabbinical commentators argued the verse this way. Be all that as it may, until recently the precise wording of the relevant text in the Sifrei - "A man may be appointed leader over the community, but a woman may not" - has remained one of the cornerstones of normative Jewish Orthodoxy.

But what does this text mean? The book of Kings refers to the rule of Queen Athalia and, more famously (Judges 4:4) we are told that the prophetess Deborah "judged Israel."

A succession of medieval rabbis drew a distinction between a king being imposed (or imposing himself) upon a people and a community voluntarily accepting the authority of a queen - or, if you prefer - a female synagogue "chair". As Rabbi Gideon Sylvester remarked in the JC last year, this was indeed the thinking adopted - controversially - by Ben Zion Uziel, Sephardi chief rabbi of Palestine/Israel between 1939 and 1954; Rabbi Uziel added that the laws of modesty were not infringed by this. And since Mrs Appleby was clearly voted into office, the halachah would appear to be satisfied.

But the interpretation and reinterpretation of halachah has never taken place in a political vacuum. Important sections of the Orthodox world never accepted the arguments advanced by Rabbi Uziel. Perhaps for this reason, the gradual entry of women into the shul boardroom, and, by stages, into the chair normally reserved for its president, has (to be blunt) been comprehensively fudged.

It seems likely that the success of Karen Appleby at St Albans - and Rosalind Goulden at Cockfosters - will be followed by others, and that before very long the incidence of a woman "chair" of a US affiliate will be nothing out of the ordinary.

The abominable no-men of Stamford Hill, Golders Green and Gateshead will doubtless wag their fingers and solemnly shake their heads. The US will be able to answer, truthfully, that the status quo is alive and well. The argument will be put that no synagogue in membership of the US is truly independent: at best (the argument will go), women can be elected to preside over subsets of a monolith, the headship of which is reserved to a male of the species.

The same fudge can be observed at work in the Federation of Synagogues which, as I reported last year, is changing its constitution to permit women to become full members of (as opposed to observers at) its governing council. But ultimate power within the Federation is being removed from that council to a much smaller, male-dominated body.

Don't get me wrong. Fudges have an honourable part to play in any socio-political system, since they enable all sides to claim a victory. Nor do I wish to be thought at all disparaging. I offer my congratulations to Mrs Appleby and to all the other women who may be elected chairs of synagogues within the family of the US.

But we need to be realistic. A citadel has been stormed and, for a time, Jewish women may be satisfied with this victory. Then, one day, one of them will surely ask why women can't be trustees or presidents of synagogues, or president of the United Synagogue itself. The fudge will be seen for what it is. The battle for true gender equality will then begin in earnest.

It’s not necessarily good to talk

Geoffrey Alderman — Tue, 07 May 2013 09:50:45 +0100

In 1906 a portentous meeting took place between Chaim Weizmann and the Conservative leader Arthur Balfour. Weizmann expounded to a shocked Balfour the broad principles of Zionism. Balfour was shocked because these unashamed nationalistic aspirations did not reflect the views he was accustomed to hearing from the highly assimilated Anglo-Jewish establishment whose company he enjoyed. Weizmann admonished him, bluntly: he had been meeting "the wrong kind of Jews".

I was reminded of this reprimand as I pondered the remarks of Baroness Warsi on the subject of anti-Jewish prejudice amongst British Muslims. Warsi, who is currently minister for faith and communities in the coalition government, was the guest of honour at the recent opening of an exhibition celebrating the work of "Righteous Muslims" who saved Jews during the Holocaust. An adherent of Islam, Warsi used the occasion to speak frankly about Islamic antisemitism. And she pointed out that anti-Israel sentiment "can sometimes be a cover for antisemitism". She added with remarkable candour that the relationship between Britain's Muslim and Jewish communities was "not an easy subject to tackle".

This was not the first occasion on which Warsi has addressed this most sensitive issue. In November 2011, speaking at a lecture at the House of Commons, she drew the attention of her audience to anti-Jewish utterances that had been mouthed by an Anglo-Islamic group subsequently banned by the Home Secretary. "If you can't live by our values (she declared), get off our island."

Warsi is by no means the only British Muslim courageous enough to confront - publicly - the reality of Islamic-inspired anti-Jewish prejudice. Last February the JC reported on a debate that had taken place at Friends' House, asking "Interfaith Dialogue: Does it work?" Martin Bright, who chaired it, subsequently reported: "Heated doesn't come close to describing some of the exchanges. But the most moving account of the evening came from Dr Muhammed Al-Hussaini, a fellow in Islamic studies at Leo Baeck College, who had been urged by some Muslims not to attend."

Al-Hussaini is certainly not your average Anglo-Muslim. He used the occasion of the Friends' House discussion to condemn the "interfaith industry," claiming that on the Muslim side its private purpose was merely to provide the cloaks of respectability to interests that seek political influence rather than genuine interfaith dialogue. In 2009, in an essay in the Middle East Quarterly (a highly respected peer-reviewed journal published by the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum) Al-Hussaini argued that the Arabic text of the Koran suggests that the Almighty awarded the Holy Land to the Jews in perpetuity. "Although the Jews come in for severe criticism in the works of Muslim apologists and theologians (he explained), there are no grounds in [Muslim] religious law to entertain the conceit that God's promise to the children of Israel has been broken, and none to support the view that Israel is now the property of the Muslims."

My inexpert guess is that Al-Hussaini's challenging interpretation of the Koran is not shared at all widely (to put it mildly) within the world of Islamic theology. But that's not why he interests me. According to one member of the Friends' House audience (blogging at Point of no return) he "reduced the audience to tears as he threw away his prepared statement and talked with emotion about how his very appearance on the panel had exposed his family to threats and harassment. Interfaith dialogue, he claimed, was an industry funded by petrodollars whose function was to manipulate genuine people of good-will for 'PR advantage' and confer legitimacy on extremists."

This accusation must be taken seriously by all those in leadership positions within Britain's Jewish communities. To take one example, I have from time to time debated in the media with spokespersons from the Muslim Council of Britain. The MCB is a body whose relations with the British government have blown hot and cold. Three years ago senior Jewish communal leaders reacted furiously to the government's decision to restore a dialogue with the MCB, which both the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council rightly condemned for its "deep-seated ideological Islamist bias".

Should we not, therefore, be concerned that the self-styled "authoritative" Council of Imams & Rabbis is supported by the MCB, and is the recipient of its official hechsher - conferred, apparently, as recently as March 2012? Or, to revert somewhat a-historically to Weizmann's caution, are we talking to the right kind of Muslims?

When segregation is acceptable

Geoffrey Alderman — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:17:52 +0100

Recent media reports have focused on instances of gender segregation at events arranged by Islamic societies at British universities.

One concerned University College London, the "godless" establishment founded in 1826, when no one who was not, at least on paper, a communicant member of the Church of England, could enter Oxford or Cambridge. UCL, by contrast, advertised that it would admit students without any religious test.

In March, this godless college was the setting for a debate ("Islam or Atheism? Which makes more sense?"). Speaking in favour of atheism was the eminent American cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, who features in Wikipedia's list of "Jewish American physicists".

I'd always imagined men of science to be tolerant and open-minded. Not so Professor Krauss. On observing that the seating arrangements provided separate places for men, for women and for a mixed crowd, the good, godless professor threatened a walk-out, and could be prevailed upon to desist only when the voluntary seating arrangements were abandoned.

A week later, at the University of East London, a meeting featuring controversial Islamist presenters was suppressed by the university authorities. Although the major grounds for this appear to have been the unashamedly extreme, public, past utterances of the speakers, it seems that the organiser's apparent insistence on gender segregation at the event was also a concern - with claims that this contravened its equal opportunities policy.

Meanwhile, the University of Leicester has launched an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding a public lecture last February organised by the university's Islamic society and featuring a popular speaker who addressed a packed meeting on the subject of whether God existed. Segregated seating was certainly offered at the event (part of Islamic Awareness Week); there were in fact separate entrances signposted. But a university spokesperson explained: "[We] will not interfere with people's right to choose where to sit. If some people choose to sit in a segregated manner because of their religious convictions, then they are free to do so. By the same token, if people attending do not wish to sit in a segregated manner, they are free to do so. To our knowledge, no one was forced to sit in any particular seat. If there is evidence of enforced segregation, that would be a matter the university and students' union would investigate." These sentiments strike me as admirable, reflecting as they do a balanced view of an issue that it is vital not to get out of proportion.

In 1954, the US Supreme Court held that, "in the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." This celebrated judgment struck at the heart of the so-called "Jim Crow" laws, manufactured by bigoted politicians in America's Deep South so as to confer legal status on policies designed to perpetuate mandatory racial segregation.

I do not believe that separate educational facilities are always - necessarily - unequal (if I did, I would oppose faith-based education). Be that as it may, however, it is vital in a liberal democracy to uphold freedom of choice. If, at the events I've described, attendees were compelled to segregate themselves by gender, that was clearly wrong. But if the opportunity was merely offered to segregate themselves by gender on a purely voluntary basis, it seems to me that the organisers were behaving entirely properly.

And we must differentiate between equality of opportunity and identity of opportunity. No sensible person would argue (surely?) that the provision of separate public toilets for women and men is a breach of "equal opportunities". In our public hospitals, the wards are generally - and by public demand - segregated by gender. Public pools frequently offer women-only sessions. Gender segregation in sport is of course widespread.

In matters of gender segregation, as in so many other matters, a test of reasonableness has to be applied. If male and female students at any of my lectures wish to sit separately, I am certainly not going to stop them. Neither am I going to blackmail them into sitting together by threatening to down tools.

Fit for a king, but not for a rabbi?

Geoffrey Alderman — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:35:08 +0100

The tragedy of Gilles Bernheim is symptomatic of a wider hypocrisy where issues of intellectual dishonesty are concerned.

In 2009 Bernheim became chief rabbi of France. He ought to have served seven years. Last week he tendered his resignation, triggered by revelations relating to instances of plagiarism and an accusation that he acquiesced in the incorrect public characterisation of his academic credentials.

I need to make it crystal clear that plagiarism - passing off the writings and ideas of others as one's own - is nothing more or less than intellectual theft. So far as the world of scholarship is concerned it is also, unfortunately, a growth industry, facilitated by technologies that permit the unscrupulous, without attribution, to "copy and paste" written material stolen (there is no other word for it) from the writings of others.

In its simplest form this type of academic deceit is now reasonably easy to spot: there is software that can facilitate detection, but I routinely demonstrate to my students how a simple Google search can often suffice. Less easy to recognise is the bespoke essay-writing service. Where I suspect this has been used (perhaps because an essay is of a quality far higher than I would have expected) I reserve the right to conduct an oral examination of that student, in the presence of an academic colleague. But these methods of detection are not fool-proof.

At the beginning of April a blogger, referring to Rabbi Bernheim's 2011 book Forty Jewish Meditations, accused him of having reproduced, without attribution, a statement made by the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard and published in 1996. Then another blogger declared that Bernheim had also plagiarised text in a book he had published in 2002. Worse still, accusations surfaced that a pamphlet authored by Bernheim last October - in which he declaimed against the French government's intention to legalise gay marriage - had also contained instances of plagiarism. And a French magazine revealed that he had not actually earned (by passing an exam known as the aggregation) the title of professor that publicity for his books reportedly claimed he possessed.

By resigning, Bernheim appears to have acknowledged his guilt. I am certainly not going to defend him. But I am going to place before you certain facts related to another theologian, and then ask you to ask yourselves why one serial plagiarist has been exposed and disgraced, while another has been - to all intents - canonised.

That theologian is Martin Luther King Jr, the celebrated civil rights activist who was infamously assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, 45 years ago this month.

King, in whose honour a national holiday is celebrated in the US, was not just a plagiarist. He was an habitual plagiarist. His Boston University PhD, awarded in 1955, contained numerous plagiarised passages - a conclusion endorsed by a board of inquiry established by that university some years later. To those of you interested in learning more about this I recommend Plagiarism & The Culture War, a meticulous exposé of King by Theodore Pappas from 1994. Pappas reproduces, side-by-side, passages from King's PhD and from the work of a fellow Boston University student, whose doctoral dissertation had been approved in 1952.

The evidence is irrefutable. Armed with his dishonestly earned doctorate, King went on to publish articles and books that incorporated - without attribution - passages lifted from the works of others. His celebrated 1963 oration ("I have a dream… "), which has been described as the "defining moment" of the American civil rights movement, climaxed with the invocation "let freedom ring". King failed to acknowledge that these very words had been used by another black preacher - Archibald Carey - at the Republican National Convention 11 years earlier.

Boston University has obstinately refused to revoke King's doctorate, while his supporters have actually sought to explain - and even to justify - his acts of intellectual dishonesty. Bernheim, whom Nicolas Sarkozy awarded the Legion of Honour in 2009, has been banished, in disgrace. Is this - I wonder - because King was the hero of the left, while Bernheim was an icon of the right?

Where next after UCU ruling?

Geoffrey Alderman — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:53:41 +0100

In 2011, the University College Union repudiated the "working definition" of antisemitism promulgated by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism. This definition, while permitting criticism of Israel as of any other state, nonetheless included among its examples of antisemitic conduct, "manifestations" that "target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity."

It declared that, among those modes of conduct worthy to be characterised as antisemitic, is the denial of the right of Jewish people to self-determination by (for example) claiming that the very existence of a Jewish state is a racist endeavour.

This portrayal was not at all to the liking of a cadre of UCU activists pledged to the boycott of Israel (and even to its destruction) and, having persuaded the UCU to ditch the working definition, they proceeded to use their new-found freedom to relaunch, via the union, a vicious propaganda war against Israel and those who identified with it.

There was a predictable exit of members (both Jewish and non-Jewish) from the union - further, that is, to previous exits occasioned by the UCU's ongoing obsession with the demonisation of the Jewish state.

Mathematics lecturer Ronnie Fraser began a legal action against the UCU, which he alleged was guilty of harassment in terms of a catalogue of incidents relating to Israel and debates about Israel that had apparently taken place under UCU auspices. Such cases - a complaint by a union member against his union - are heard before an employment tribunal. That tribunal has now issued a sweeping judgment, finding against Fraser on all counts.

More than that, it has declared that "a belief in the Zionist project or an attachment to Israel cannot amount to a protected characteristic. It is not intrinsically a part of Jewishness…" More than that, it has in its judgment publicly rebuked Fraser and his legal team for wasting the tribunal's time.

The tribunal has openly berated Fraser for using litigation to pursue what it has declared to be a private political agenda.

Two things have happened in the wake of this astonishing verdict. The first is that, inevitably, anti-Zionist campaigners around the world have made merry. The second is that Fraser has come in for a verbal battering from within the Jewish world. As the JC last week reported, Jonathan Goldberg QC, for instance, commented: "This enormous but legally flawed lawsuit was an act of epic folly by all concerned which will negatively impact our community for a long time to come. You only bring such showcase litigation if you are certain to win."

Well, I'm not a lawyer and I was not called to give evidence on Fraser's behalf (though I certainly would have had I been asked). As to the preparation and conduct of the case by Fraser's legal team, I cannot comment. Nonetheless I cannot agree with Goldberg, and those (and there are clearly many) who think like him on this issue. I do not believe that bringing this case was "an act of epic folly." I think it was the right thing to do, and that some good may yet come of it.

Let me put it this way. An employment tribunal is pretty low as lower courts go. The Fraser judgment is not (I am advised) a binding precedent. But it has cleared the air. The argument that "an attachment to Israel… is not intrinsically a part of Jewishness" is so manifestly absurd (I had only to consult my daily prayer book to reassure myself on this point) that I cannot believe any higher court would accept it. But if, indeed, at least for the moment, this ridiculous argument holds centre stage, it is blindingly obvious that it must be challenged - if not in a court of law then in some other public forum.

Here, surely, is work for the Board of Deputies to do. The Board did not feature much in the Fraser case: its silence was (to be rather frank) little short of deafening. Its moment has now come. The Board should publish its own definition of antisemitism - to include a repudiation of the employment tribunal's warped reasoning on this topic - and should then launch a very public campaign to have its definition enshrined in law.

Westminster governments are for ever reversing by statute the rulings of courts of law. Is it too much to ask that David Cameron's administration amend relevant legislation so as to confirm that anti-Zionism is intrinsically racist, the finer feelings of the UCU notwithstanding?

Rescuing a refugee was her ‘great achievement’

Geoffrey Alderman — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:30:03 +0100

Margaret Thatcher was arguably the most philosemitic Prime Minister this country has ever had. The daughter of a Grantham grocer who was also a Methodist lay preacher, her strict religious upbringing instilled in her a deep respect for the Jewish people.

She admired the determination of Jewish immigrants to Britain to become British while retaining a distinctive ethnic identity. She abhorred anti-Jewish prejudice. She talked approvingly of the Jewish capacity for innovation and hard work, and of the success of British Jews in improving themselves economically without the help of a welfare state. She liked the company of Jews and she surrounded herself with Jewish advisers.

This deep reverence for Jews was cemented when she became Member of Parliament for Finchley — the only constituency she ever represented in the Commons, from 1959–92. But as a youngster in 1938 she had had to share her bedroom with an Austrian Jewish refugee, Edith Muhlbauer. Thatcher (then aged 12) had helped raise the money that made it possible for Edith to come to the UK, and she later insisted that it was this act of rescue, rather than any of the great national and international achievements of her political career, that constituted her greatest accomplishment — saving a Jew from the Nazis.

It is often forgotten that Thatcher was not only the first woman to become British Prime Minister. She was also the first scientist, having read chemistry at Oxford before turning to law. This scientific background led to her employment, as a chemist, in J Lyons & Co — a Jewish-owned firm in which she worked alongside other Jews.

So having to meet and make friends with the considerable Jewish electorate of Finchley held no terrors for her.

During the 1950s there had been a series of scandals in north-west London involving Tory-party dominated sports clubs that either limited the number of Jewish members or excluded them entirely. Thatcher would have none of this. She ordered a purge of the local Tory party leadership. She made it quite clear that the self-made, mutually supportive Jewish suburbanites of Finchley were her kind of people.

“In the 33 years that I represented [Finchley],” she later wrote, “I never had a Jew come in poverty and desperation to one of my [constituency meetings].”

She was a founding member of Finchley’s Anglo-Israel Friendship League, and famously joined in singing the Hatikvah at Finchley in 1975.

It is also often forgotten now how very problematic had been the history of the Jewish relationship with the Conservative Party when Thatcher inherited the Finchley seat. She changed all that too. She welcomed Jews into the party and as Leader of the Opposition from 1975, and as Prime Minister four years later, she ostentatiously promoted Jews to senior advisory and ministerial positions.

Her friendship with Keith Joseph was of pivotal importance here. Following the Tory defeat in 1974 she and Joseph set up the Centre for Policy Studies, a think-tank charged with the task of developing a new, free-market Conservatism. At its head was another Jew — Alfred Sherman, the Hackney politician who had fought for the Communists in the Spanish Civil War but later embarked on a political journey that ended with his becoming speech-writer to both Joseph and Thatcher. To this trio — Thatcher, Joseph and Sherman — should be attributed a primary responsibility for rolling back decades of socialism that had underpinned the British state since the end of the Second World War.

But Joseph was far from being the only Jew in her Cabinet: at one time it included no fewer than five Jews (Keith Joseph, Nigel Lawson, Leon Brittan, Malcolm Rifkind and David Young) — a record which has never been equalled.

And when Thatcherite social policies came under attack from the bishops of the Church of England, Thatcher had no hesitation in putting into the House of Lords her friend and admirer, the then Chief Rabbi, Immanuel Jakobovits — the one cleric on whom she could rely to savage the welfare dependency culture which she and he agreed was an unmitigated evil.

Thatcher was a staunch supporter of Soviet Jewry and a firm friend of Israel, though not an uncritical one. But as to her basic support for Israel’s right to exist, and to flourish as a Jewish state, there was never any doubt.

Her death will be widely mourned in the UK. She deserves to be mourned in Israel, and throughout the Jewish world.

Hatred that needs no ‘context’

Geoffrey Alderman — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:50:00 +0100

For the past 14 years, there have been two debating chambers used by members of the House of Commons. The first is the one we are all accustomed to seeing on our television screens, with government and opposition members facing each other confrontationally, their exchanges moderated by the Speaker. The other is a much smaller room - the Grand Committee Room adjacent to the magnificent Westminster Hall.

Since 1999, this has been used by the Commons as an additional debating chamber, and the dialogues held there are known as Westminster Hall debates. MPs are seated in a U-shape around the chair, an arrangement that is supposed to signify that the proceedings are non-partisan in nature.

The subject-matters of Westminster Hall debates are generally more wide-ranging than those that take place in the Commons. On February 25, the Conservative MP Gordon Henderson used the opportunity of a Westminster Hall debate to raise "the issue of hate incitement against Israel and the west by the Palestinian authority". A number of MPs - Labour as well as Conservative - spoke in support of his contention that "a culture of hate has wormed its way into the very fibre of Palestinian society. Incitement to hate is pervasive in Palestinian school textbooks, on television programmes and at cultural and sporting events. Palestinians have been consistently and unremittingly taught to hate Jews, Israel and the west."

The evidence for this is so incontrovertible that I will not waste time in repeating it in any great detail. In any case, some of it was cited by Mr Henderson during the debate. He reminded MPs that "during the Palestinian application for statehood at the UN in September 2011, the PA's official TV channel broadcast a map that depicted all of modern Israel and the Palestinian territories wrapped in the Palestinian flag with a key through it… at a time when President Abbas was telling the UN that he sought two states living side-by-side, residents on the west bank were being shown a map carrying an unmistakable message of Palestinian sovereignty over the whole area…

"Last summer, a PA TV broadcast showed a painting depicting Israel as an ogre with a Star-of-David skull-cap that impales and eats Palestinian children in Gaza."

Of course, such anti-Jewish propaganda is pretty much routine throughout the Islamic world. I'm sorry to say that I found none of it, as described by Mr Henderson, at all shocking. But what I did find shocking was the speech made by the minister for the Middle East, Mr Alistair ("Friend of Israel") Burt, in reply to the debate.

Mr Burt sought neither to deny nor to minimise the nature or the extent of anti-Jewish propaganda in the Palestinian media. But, although he did not - at least not in so many words - justify such propaganda, he urged his audience, several times (seven by my reckoning) to be mindful of "the context" in which such hate-speech was aired.

This "context", he explained, was the continuing military conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. "To neglect any sense of any activity that may have been perpetrated by Israelis during the occupation as any part of popular anger against Israel misses an important part of the context. That is not to minimise the damage done by incitement, but not to mention that and not to feel that it is part of the context is, in my view, simply wrong."

Later in his speech, Mr Burt said: "To place it all in terms of the rhetoric and not to understand the wider context will not help us to get to where we need to be."

I had to scan these words several times in order to assure myself that I was reading them correctly. And if I was reading them correctly, here we had the spectacle of a British government minister saying publicly that Judeophobic propaganda of the crudest sort, while thoroughly deplorable, must be contextualised, and that such contextualisation can help us comprehend - at least to some extent – how it is justified in the eyes of those who spread it.

Let us be clear about this. Anyone who attempts (from whatever motive) to contextualise antisemitism is playing - however innocently - into the hands of antisemites. It's a dangerous game. I hope Mr Burt will never again play it.

The great mini-latke conspiracy

Geoffrey Alderman — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:00:22 +0000

There’s something deeply sinister behind the current mini-latke crisis.

The word “latke” is of Yiddish-Ukrainian origin, and means “a patch” (as in “cabbage patch”). This is rather confusing because, to the untrained ear, the English translation can easily be confused with the Yiddish-Ukrainian word “putch”, which means a smack — though it can also signify a blow to one’s self-esteem.

As a small but somewhat precocious child, I was warned by a Jewish shopkeeper that if I insisted on continuing to reveal to customers the behind-the-counter location of his post-war black-market stock (no questions asked, no ration coupons necessary!) “ich will sie giben a putch — I’ll give you a smack.”

I thought he meant that he was going to treat me to a latke, so naturally I urged him on, but was saved by my maternal grandmother, who told him (in Yiddish phrases so choice I dare not repeat them) that, if he did indeed administer a putch, she would do something that would certainly wound his self-esteem, and much else besides.

A latke is in point of fact a fried cake, which can be made from a variety of vegetables but which, in the Alderman house (and in the houses — my late father once assured me — of the Latvian-based Alderman forebears going back countless generations), has traditionally been made from grated potatoes. Latkes are a delicacy that was once served only during Chanucah — the oil in which they were cooked symbolising the oil with which the lamps were lit in the second temple. They have long since been a staple diet of Ashkenazi Jews, and I have even known Sephardim to eat and enjoy them.

In theory, a latke can be of any size: my mum once fried some that were 16 inches across, though the world record for a latke is held by a kehillah in southern California which, in 2008, baked one 36 inches in diameter. This was clearly a vintage year for latkes because, a month or so later, at the National Potato Latke Eating Championship held in the US, a 23-year-old bodybuilder from Toronto broke the world record for consuming the most latkes in one sitting: he ate 46 standard-sized latkes (weighing in total seven pounds) in eight minutes.

A mini-latke is bite-sized. It is habit-forming. And addicts of the mini-latke will know that, for decades, we in this country were able to feed our addiction courtesy of Messrs Rakusen, whose “Mister Rak’s” range included circular mini-latkes and triangular large latkes. Last year, Rakusen’s announced that it could no longer supply either its mini-latkes or its triangle latkes due to “issues with the manufacturer”. Worse still, managing director Alan Pridmore said it was unlikely that the brand would be resurrected with another manufacturer: “We obviously make decisions with our rabbis and commercially, and for a wealth of reasons it was not possible to continue with the latkes.”

Now I ask you. What could this possibly mean? The manufacturer in this case is McCain Foods of Scarborough, where “every batch of potatoes delivered… comes with its own passport (boasts the McCain website) — allowing us to track exactly when they were harvested, which farmer grew them for us, and even which field they were grown in.” The company used to produce Rakusen’s latke range, but the arrangement ended last year “for commercial reasons”.

I’ve heard this before. Frankly, I’m incredulous. A product as popular as mini-latkes could not possibly have been sold at a loss; in any case, we addicts would have continued buying no matter what the cost.

Many years ago, the supplier of a popular kosher luncheon meat, to which I was likewise addicted, also stopped production. For years, my wife and I enjoyed a stir-fry made with “chicken style” vegetarian ingredients, produced under an impeccable hechsher. The manufacture of this product suddenly came to a halt. Other products that we used to enjoy — but can no longer, because their production has mysteriously ceased — include kosher oat crackers, heat-and-serve flavoured rice, and kosher vegetarian ravioli.

The pattern here is unmistakable. Kosher products that I enjoy are being withdrawn from the market. And they are being withdrawn from the market because I enjoy them.

Need I say more?

My dear, put-upon Lord Ahmed

Geoffrey Alderman — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 10:03:21 +0000

An Open Letter To The Lord Ahmed of Rotherham in the county of South Yorkshire, c/o The House of Lords:

As-salamu 'alayka!

Greetings from your Lordship's Humble Servant, Professor Geoffrey Alderman.

I take the liberty of writing to your Lordship to express my gratitude to your Lordship for having displayed such commendable courage and admirable frankness in the remarks your Lordship was pleased to make in Pakistan last year on the subject of your Lordship's most unfortunate contretemps with the British legal system, when your Lordship was imprisoned for having allegedly sent and received text messages while driving along the M1 motorway.

Your Lordship has incurred a certain amount of opprobrium for having revealed that the Jews were to blame for your imprisonment for dangerous driving. Although I am ashamed to admit that I am not fluent in Urdu, we have it on the authority of The Times that you made known during an Urdu-language TV broadcast in Pakistan that the judge who imprisoned you was specially appointed for this task after having assisted a "Jewish colleague" of Tony Blair, and that, more generally, your imprisonment was the result of pressure placed on the court by Jews "who own newspapers and TV channels."

Had you made this declaration on a British TV channel you would no doubt have been obliged to refer to "Zionists" rather than "Jews," on account of the repressive restrictions on true freedom of expression that are - alas - a hallmark of the British, Jewish Zionist-controlled state. But in freedom-loving Pakistan, breathing the pure air of a liberal state, where all (or almost all, excluding women - naturally - and Christians but no doubt including a great many others) are permitted to speak without restraint on the subject of the Jews, you were able to tell the truth - or at any rate the truth as you saw it.

You are, after all, entitled to your view. And if your view is that you were the victim of a Jewish conspiracy, so be it. We are not here concerned with facts (so-called by the Zionist-controlled press). Even if it was true that there was no Jewish plot against you following your most courageous visit to Gaza in support of Palestinians, even if it was the case that there is not a shred to evidence to support the theory of a plot, you are entitled (are you not?) to put forward an alternative version of events, more attuned to the unique prejudices of your Pakistani audience.

And as for all this Zionist-fomented fuss - stemming as we all know from a report in a newspaper of which the executive editor is a Jew (one Daniel Finkelstein) who even writes shamelessly for the Jewish Chronicle! - how were you to know that some busybody would translate your impeccable Urdu into equally impeccable English for the world to read? After all, your views were not meant for an English audience, were they? After all, didn't the British Chief Rabbi write a controversial book (Dignity of Difference) that was not meant for a Jewish readership? If Jews didn't like what he wrote, serves them right for having read it, say I. No one was forced to watch your TV exposé of the Jewish plot against you, were they? And if they were misguided enough to watch it and to read about it, they've no one but themselves to blame if they contracted indigestion as a result.

So now your Lordship has been suspended by the Labour party, and rumour has it that you might be expelled. I need hardly remind your Lordship that this party is headed by a Zionist - or at least (there appears to be confusion on this) by a Jew who claimed he was one until he was reportedly told it might be politically inadvisable to reveal this truth, just at this moment. The point is, the Labour parliamentary party is led by a Jew. The sooner you make this known - preferably in Urdu - the better for all concerned.

If your Lordship is perchance expelled from the Labour party, may I commend to you the Respect party led by Mr Galloway? I believe that Respect will give you the respect you clearly deserve, and I shall deem it an honour to provide you with the second-class postage stamp to affix to your letter of application.

wa'l-salaamu 'alayka

Gershon ben Shmuel

Don’t mourn Hugo the wicked

Geoffrey Alderman — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:10:30 +0000

Two years ago I caused a certain amount of controversy with my reaction to the death of a Palestinian activist. I was told it was not the done thing for a Jew to express pleasure at the death of another human. Well, we have just celebrated Purim, on which we are expected to make merry at the deaths of hundreds of Jew-baiters in ancient Persia. We shall shortly celebrate Pesach, on which we are enjoined to rejoice at the deaths of Egyptian soldiers pursuing the fleeing Israelites. It is true that the Almighty berated those angels who wanted to celebrate, in song, their drowning. But this was because they - the angels - had not suffered at the hands of the Egyptians. He did not berate the Israelites, who were understandably overjoyed at their deliverance. May I also point out that according to rabbinic tradition the Judean king Hezekiah was reproached for refusing to celebrate the deaths of thousands of Assyrian soldiers who were intent on destroying Jerusalem (circa 701 BCE)?

With that point settled, I invite you to join me in welcoming news of the death of Venezuelan president and Jew-hater Hugo Chavez.

On the "progressive" blog site Left Foo Forward, the Labour MP Grahame Morris (chair of the Labour Friends of Venezuela and my MP) wrote of Chavez as a true democrat whose economic policies had transformed the country and "dramatically" improved "the lives of the overwhelming majority".

The facts of the matter are that Chavez enthusiastically presided over a corrupt, repressive military dictatorship: in violation of Venezuela's constitution, the country is virtually run by army generals. He ruthlessly trampled on freedom of expression, suppressed those sections of the trade-union movement that declined to offer him uncritical support, and led his oil-rich country to the brink of economic disaster, with inflation currently around 22 per cent. But on this, and on Chavez's friendship with the Jew-hating head of the Iranian state, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Morris was strangely silent.

The truth also is that Chavez built his populist power-base, in part, on the foundations of an explicit anti-Jewish (not merely anti-Israeli) discourse. He likened Jews to pigs. He claimed Jews controlled the largest businesses in Venezuela and were intent on stealing its national wealth. In one Christmas speech he declared that "the descendants of those who crucified Christ control the world's wealth." Jews and Jewish buildings suffered from a campaign of public vilification and physical harassment carried out by the police and the army at the behest of Chavez and his government. In one attack, on a Caracas synagogue in 2009, police officers were numbered among those who took part, in which religious artefacts were desecrated and antisemitic slogans were daubed on the walls. Little wonder that since Chavez came to power much of Venezuela's Jewish population has fled.

I can well understand that to the poor and dispossessed, brought up on a diet of unadulterated antisemitism served up by the Catholic church all this was (if you will forgive the metaphor) manna from heaven. But it was manna garnished with a visceral rhetoric aimed at the Jewish state. Having broken off diplomatic relations with Israel following Operation Cast Lead, Chavez increasingly identified himself and his regime with the anti-Zionist racism of Iran. He castigated Israel as a "genocidal state". He claimed there was an Israeli plot to kill him, that Israel was financing the Venezuelan opposition. In 2011 he excoriated Israel for having (in his view) caused the deaths of nine Turkish nationals in the Mavi Marmara incident. In a televised diatribe, Chavez referred to these nine Islamist terrorists as "pacifists," and claimed that their humanitarian mission was to provide Gazans with the necessities that Israel was depriving them, including water. "Damn you, State of Israel!" was his broadcast response.

I am glad that Chavez is dead. I rejoice at his passing. And as for Jack Terpins, head of the Latin America section of the World Jewish Congress, who conveyed his condolences to the Chavez family on learning (no doubt with great sadness) of the passing of Hugo, I can only wish him (Terpins, that is) a Refuah Shlema. Get well soon!

Storm in a Zionist teacup...

Geoffrey Alderman — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 09:55:30 +0000

Should we be concerned that the national council of the Zionist Federation has declined to approve an application for ZF membership that had been lodged several months ago by an organisation calling itself Yachad?

If the Anglo-Jewish media is to be believed, the answer has to be in the affirmative, for this story was front-page news, quite apart from having generated an inordinate amount of internet traffic.

At one level, I believe this was an overreaction and that the story would have merited no more than a paragraph or two tucked away on an inside page. Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the ZF's decision, the great fuss made about it says something about the sad state of communal priorities.

Yachad (the Hebrew word for "together") is less than two years old. At the time of its foundation, its director Hannah Weisfeld explained that it was being established to provide a voice for the "silent majority of British Jews who believe the best way to safeguard Israel's future is through a negotiated settlement and the end of the occupation".

Let's leave aside the question (important though it is in other contexts) whether the "silent majority" of British Jews do in fact believe that (as Yachad's website insists) a lasting peace would be achieved if Israel were to return to its 1949 armistice borders (with minor land swaps), if Jerusalem were to be repartitioned, and if Palestinian refugees were to be offered compensation as an acceptable alternative to the so-called "right of return." The fact is that such a package has not a hope in hell of laying the foundations for a lasting peace. It may lay the foundations for a hudna (Arabic for "truce"). But not for a peace.

Tantalisingly, while Yachad asserts that "there are certain sections of Palestinian society and their supporters around the world that will need to adopt a lasting religious and political commitment to non-violent dispute resolution", it does not identify where these sections might be found. I do not know of a single, legitimate, representative body of Palestinian Arabs that is currently prepared to commit itself, unequivocally, to the "non-violent" resolution of this particular "dispute" - other, that is, than by Israel agreeing to dissolve itself.

The fact is that, from an early age, Palestinian children are taught to hate Jews, Judaism and the Jewish state, that Palestinian parents willingly and enthusiastically offer their children as human sacrifices in furtherance of these hatreds, and that countries around the world pander to these mind-sets.

The adherents of Yachad seem unwilling to face these facts. Or perhaps they are eternal optimists, hoping that "something will turn up". If so, they are living in a fool's paradise. Still, even fools are entitled to their views.

I can agree with Yachad supporters that in rejecting its membership application the ZF made a blatantly political decision. But what else did they expect? It's not the rejection that puzzles me. What passes all understanding is why Yachad wished to join the ZF in the first place. Several explanations have been voiced to me. One is that, in rejecting these advances, the ZF walked into a carefully laid trap: Yachad is now (so the argument goes) free to denounce publicly the ZF as a biased and unrepresentative organ. But, dear friends, it was never anything else.

Readers of this column will know that, historically, I have been somewhat less than overly impressed by the activities of the ZF, which in my view ought to have been wound up following the re-establishment of the Jewish state in 1948. I say this without wishing to deny the positive value of the work - or rather, some of the work - in which the ZF engages. Since 1948, however, its main function seems to me to have consisted in providing a communal platform for the hind legs of those whose hind legs would otherwise have no communal platform upon which to perch themselves.

As for Yachad, if its members have the courage of their convictions they surely have no need of any imprimatur that ZF membership might confer. And if they seriously think that admission to the ZF family would enable them to convert other family members to their views they are naive at best and, at worst, gold-plated nincompoops.

Madoff, Nolan and Israeli funds

Geoffrey Alderman — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 10:54:27 +0000

Two decades ago I supervised a doctoral student researching aspects of corruption in British public life. This research coincided with mounting public concern over "cash for questions".Prime minister John Major asked Lord Nolan to chair an inquiry into the conduct of public life and "to make recommendations on how best to ensure that standards of propriety are upheld." My student and I were invited to give evidence to this inquiry, out of which came what are now known as "The Seven Principles of Public Life": selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.

I like to think that my student and I played some small part in the formulation of these principles, which are now applied widely throughout British society.

Core to this expectation is the belief that when someone in public life is accused of a serious offence they should step down from the office or offices they hold whilst a court of law or similar tribunal comes to a determination.

To do so is in no sense whatever an admission of guilt - far from it. It is simple common sense. For how can the duties of the office be properly discharged whilst the person discharging them faces serious allegations that may turn out to be true? The office is more important than the individual, and in a spirit of selflessness and integrity the individual should step aside until his or her innocence is established.

I remind you of the Nolan Principles as I invite you to consider some disturbing developments at Ben Gurion University, Israel.

BGU is a fine institution of higher education, one of the jewels in the crown of the Israeli university system. It has had its problems, chiefly (hitherto) concerning its troubled department of political science, about which Israel's Council for Higher Education issued a damning report in 2011.

But the matter that I now bring to your attention reaches far higher up the executive chain of command than a mere academic department. It touches upon BGU's board of governors, and in particular upon the man who currently chairs the executive committee of that board, Israeli lawyer Yair Green and Mr Green's alleged relationship with the infamous American-Jewish financer Bernard Madoff.

You may recall that three years ago Madoff pleaded guilty to eleven charges involving a variety of felonies, including fraud, money laundering and perjury. In the biggest "Ponzi" scam in history, Madoff operated schemes in which investors' money was simply moved around to create the illusion of huge profits. In reality the only profits that were made were those creamed off by Madoff and his associates. The frauds totalled almost $65 billion. Madoff is now serving prison sentences totalling 150 years.

But the Madoff scandal is far from over. Many people and many charities (including, it must be said, Jewish institutions and charities) lost huge amounts of money because of the frauds committed by him and by those who willingly assisted him in his crimes. The American authorities are determined to track down the criminal profits these frauds generated, so that - perhaps - some recompense can be made to Madoff's hapless investors. A court appointed "trustee," Irving Picard, has been authorized to unravel Madoff's schemes.

And in furtherance of his mandate, Picard has indicted Yair Green. Green has been a generous benefactor of Ben Gurion University. The fact that he sits on its board of governors should therefore come as no surprise, nor is this fact of itself troubling. But questions are now being asked about the ultimate source of the moneys he so charitably disbursed. Some months ago Channel Ten aired a disturbing documentary focussed on Green, his friend Madoff and their financial dealings. But he has so far rebuffed every call for him to resign his governorship of BGU. Scarcely less shocking, BGU is supporting him in his obstinacy.

Yair Green is innocent unless and until a court of law finds him guilty. Meanwhile, he should show us all that he is a man of integrity and selflessness and do the decent thing by retiring from BGU so that he can concentrate on preparing his defence.

The wrongs of a rights council

Geoffrey Alderman — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 13:58:04 +0000

Last month, a joyous event, unprecedented in the history of the UN, took place in Geneva. Under what is known as the “Universal Periodic Review”, every UN member state has agreed to submit itself to a five-yearly inquisition by the UN’s Human Rights Council (HRC). On January 29, it was Israel’s turn. The government of Israel did not refuse to undergo a review, nor did it formally ask for a postponement. It simply indicated that it intended to delay its participation. But even this small gesture caused an immediate fluttering in the diplomatic dovecotes.

Feverish efforts — notably by the USA — are now being made behind the scenes to persuade Israel to change its mind. If the Israeli government has an ounce of self respect it will rebuff these entreaties and tell the HRC exactly where to go with its UPR and what to do with it when it gets there.

Some frankly ludicrous arguments are being used to get Israel to change its mind. But before I deal with these I need to paint the wider picture within which Israel’s action needs to be set. The HRC was established in 2006 as the successor body to the Human Rights Commission, a spiteful and time-wasting conclave composed of representatives of 53 states, many with poor-to-appalling human rights records. The HRC consists of representatives of only 47 states but, as successor to the commission, it has demonstrated in ample measure that it is nothing more than a spiteful and time-wasting conclave of states, many of which boast poor-to-appalling human-rights records.

Current members include such beacons of humanity and loving-kindness as Saudi Arabia (public executions; oppression of women and gays); Kyrgyzstan (systematic state-sponsored oppression of the Uzbek minority); and the People’s Republic of China (suppression of freedom of expression; secret trials). That the duly appointed representatives of such regimes should be afforded the privilege of sitting in judgment on liberal democracies strikes me as perverse — even wicked.

More than that, however, the HRC has permitted itself to become the willing instrument of those intent on demonising the Jewish state, just as its predecessor was wont to do. In June 2006, the HRC bowed to a demand from the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation and agreed that alleged human rights abuses by Israel should be a standing item on the agenda of every council meeting. Israel is the only state to have been singled out by the HRC in this way — a decision that was condemned even by secretary general Ban Ki-moon, who was moved to proclaim his disappointment “at the council’s decision to single out only one specific regional item given the range and scope of allegations of human rights violations throughout the world”.

Unashamed, the HRC has relentlessly pursued Israel at every opportunity. This persecution culminated a year ago, when it published a report damning settlements as “war crimes” and demanding that the West Bank — and even parts of Jerusalem — be ethnically cleansed of their Jewish inhabitants. Evidence that had been presented to the HRC arguing for a contrary view, including a submission made by me, was ignored.

What is to be done? Is the council to be permitted to continue its campaign of hate against the rights of Jews and of the Jewish state, while ignoring or downplaying human rights abuses in Islamic societies? Or is it to be called to account?

The decision of Israel’s government to delay its participation in the UPR might therefore be regarded as a small but necessary step in the direction of calling the HRC to account. Some Western observers are arguing that, unless Israel is made to relent, the precedent set is sure to be exploited by acknowledged totalitarian thuggeries such as Zimbabwe and North Korea, where respect for human rights is unknown. In that case, why are North Korea and Zimbabwe not standing items on the council’s agenda.

Ideally, Israel should just walk away from the council and all its works. At the very least, it should make its participation in the council’s work dependent on a modicum of fair play and — I must add — an end to its scandalous exclusion from full membership of any of the UN’s regional groups.

A Scarfe won’t Ward off the cold

Geoffrey Alderman — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:02:01 +0000

Look, I know we're all supposed to be beside ourselves with anger over That Cartoon. I know That Cartoon has given rise to a communal uproar - a rare instance of almost total communal unity, our righteous outrage dutifully articulated by the Board of Deputies, the JLC, CST and so on. I know that these worthy bodies strained every muscle and (I'm told) uttered every prayer with a view to bringing down upon Gerald Scarfe (the mischief-making drawing master in question) and the Sunday Times the wrath of God Almighty (not to mention the potent Press Complaints Commission).

I'm well aware that they have in large measure succeeded: that the Sunday Times issued a suitably unctuous apology; that its owner, Rupert Murdoch, did everything short of actually donning sackcloth and spreading ashes upon his troubled brow in an effort to make us all believe he really was very sorry for the hurt That Cartoon had caused; and that even Scarfe felt constrained to confess, on reflection, that whatever the artistic merits of his depiction of Benjamin Netanyahu constructing a brick wall using Palestinian-Arab blood as mortar, the timing of its publication, on Holocaust Memorial Day, was unfortunate to say the least.

But let me be honest with you. If Scarfe wants to go down in history as a purveyor of the Blood Libel, he should surely be free to do so. If he wishes to pen a cartoon critical of Israel, so be it. If the Sunday Times' acting editor (not to mention the assistant editors or sub-editors) see fit to approve it, let them publish and be damned.

My point is that the Murdoch press was an easy target. What with the hacking super-scandal, the demise of the News of the World and the Leveson inquiry, the very last thing Murdoch could have wished for was another public excoriation, this time at the hands of the Jews. Of course there was going to be a climb-down. An apology. Diverse acts of heartfelt contrition. Fellow Jews, this was an easy victory. But Scarfe is not the target I would have chosen. And the Sunday Times is not the body corporate that I would have sought to bring low.

The public utterances of MP David Ward were much more serious. But even more serious still, and sinister, was the reaction to them by the Liberal Democrats, the party which - I need hardly remind you – is a partner in the coalition government that presently governs us all in this United Kingdom.

Ward, the duly elected MP for Bradford East, wasted little time in signing, in the House of Commons, the Holocaust Educational Trust's "Book of Commitment". But after so doing he unburdened himself of the sadness he apparently felt "that the Jews who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could… be inflicting atrocities on the Palestinians… and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza."

After suitable huffing and puffing from sundry Anglo-Jewish quarters, Ward announced, via Sky News, that he had not meant to damn all Jews, only those who were actually involved in persecuting Palestinians. And, after further huffing and puffing, the LibDem chief whip, Alistair Carmichael, agreed to give Ward a formal written warning (as I might give a student who I judged not to be pulling her or his weight). But Ward remains in the party; he refuses to give an undertaking that he will never again draw an analogy between the Nazis and Israel; and his offensive remarks (made on January 25) remain on his website.

Well of course they do. Look at it from a cynic's point of view. He has a majority of 365. His constituency is a LibDem marginal if ever there was one. He probably owes his 2010 election victory, in part at least, to tactical anti-Labour voting by Muslim constituents. So not only is his apology (if it can be called that) insincere. Perhaps it was never meant to be anything else.

What concerns me is the gutless reaction of the LibDem leadership. Here is an MP who has openly equated Jews with Nazis and the Jewish state with the Nazi state. Yet he is sanctioned only with a formal written warning, and his odious remarks remain published for all to see. Nick Clegg must be made - somehow - to understand that this is completely unacceptable.

Winner in the eccentricity race

Geoffrey Alderman — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 09:56:55 +0000

I was saddened to learn of the death of Michael Winner, whose passing formed the subject of retrospectives throughout the media. I never knew him personally. I found his films vulgar and second-rate - though most were box-office successes. I had little enthusiasm for his claim to be a connoisseur of non-kosher foods and of the restaurants that served them. There were aspects of his lifestyle that I found gross and boring in equal measure. But one aspect of his character struck me as quite endearing He was not merely an eccentric. His eccentricity was not simply (as Louise Mensch tweeted) "something splendidly British". It was something splendidly Anglo-Jewish.

Winner was the latest - though hopefully not the last - in a line of great Anglo-Jewish eccentrics. The earliest I can recall was Gerard Hoffnung, born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1925, who came to Britain as a refugee in 1938. Hoffnung was a splendid cartoonist, a moderately accomplished tuba player, a brilliant broadcaster and a dazzling speaker; his 1958 address to the Oxford Union ("The Bricklayer's Lament") is - in terms of the timing of each sentence and of the deliberate cadences he introduced into his naturally rasping voice - a classic of the genre. Hoffnung was, in fact, a serious scholar and activist: he was a hard-working prison visitor and campaigned on a variety of issues then considered controversial, such as race relations. But, above all, he made it his business to cultivate a public façade as an oddball: the quintessentially crusty, ageing musician (He actually died, tragically, at just 34) who was known to whistle entire symphonies and who commissioned Malcolm Arnold to write an overture dedicated to Herbert Hoover, featuring various domestic appliances including vacuum cleaners.

While Hoffnung was entertaining us, another great Anglo-Jewish eccentric was, with equal deliberation, making a name for himself as a pompous English politician and TV personality. Sir Gerald Nabarro, a maverick Tory MP who sported a handlebar moustache, was responsible for what became the Clean Air Act, and, as part of a long campaign against anomalies in purchase tax, once had the chutzpah to exhibit a chamber pot in full view of the Speaker during a parliamentary debate. But the façade of an English country squire was just that: he was in fact born into a financially challenged Sephardi family in London and had left the local school to become, after army service, a machine-hand, factory manager and (eventually) the successful owner of a saw-mill.

One eccentric I did have the pleasure of knowing personally was the late professor Sir Geoffrey Elton, whose research into 16th century history revolutionised our understanding of Tudor government and politics.

Although he was a Cambridge man and I was at Oxford we became friends - a relationship cemented by our mutual hostility to Marxist pseudo-history and postmodernist claptrap. Elton was a plumpish, neatly dressed man with a small moustache who cultivated the exaggerated image of the English gentleman: he liked nothing better than to down pints of beer in a traditional pub, smacking his lips as he did so. Did other customers, I wonder, whose heads turned as they heard this knight talk loudly and unashamedly about English values, know that his real name was Gottfried Rudolf Ehrenberg and that he and his Jewish family had fled from Czechoslovakia to Britain in 1939?

Two years before he died, Elton published a slim volume entitled, simply, The English. A careful reading of this affords a clue as to the impulse that led the Jewish refugee to reinvent himself as the cranky English gentleman scholar. It was the obsessive desire to achieve acceptance and legitimacy in the eyes of the host community. Elton over-projected his "Englishness" not so much to obscure his true origins as to endear him to those among whom he had chosen to dwell. And what better way to endear oneself to the English than to play the eccentric?

So it was with Nabarro, Hoffnung and - I believe - with Winner. Winner was (one site proclaimed) "infinitely eccentric." Bumptious and super-opinionated, he lived to shock, but in a thoroughly English manner. What's more, he was born a Jew and now lies, appropriately, at Willesden, among the good and the great of the Anglo-Jewish circus.

Why let Obama call the shots?

Geoffrey Alderman — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 10:02:01 +0000

This week has witnessed two events of supreme importance for Israel's future. First, Barack Obama was sworn in as US president. Second, Israelis went to the polls. And Benjamin Netanyahu is set to head a new coalition government.

So, in one sense, it is "business as usual". Obama remains in the White House; Bibi remains Israel's prime minister. The two know each other well, or at least as well as two international leaders of fundamentally different outlooks can ever do. But the signs are that, so far as the dynamics of Israel's relationship with the US is concerned, the next four years may not resemble the previous four at all.

Obama is in his second, final term. He faces no re-election hurdle. Whatever restraining factors might have modified his behaviour towards Israel over the past four years will not apply in future. He is, therefore, much freer to pursue now the strategy that he probably wished to pursue in the past, but felt he could not.

The key features of this strategy are likely to include: forcing the Jewish state to abandon plans for the expansion of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria; extracting from the Israeli government a promise to evacuate most - if not all - of these existing communities; and cajoling or compelling Israel to reverse its annexation of east Jerusalem so that it may be offered to the Palestinian Authority as the capital of a Palestinian state. It is also likely that Obama will demand Israel lifts its blockade of Gaza, or even that he'll insist on Israel ceding a corridor across its own territory linking Gaza to the West Bank.

Having extracted these concessions, Obama will confront the Palestinian leadership with them, and demand in return that this leadership recognise Israel (more or less within its 1967 borders) as a Jewish state and acquiesce in (if not accept) the legitimacy of its re-establishment.

There will be no general "right of return" for Palestinians who claim their ancestors were displaced but there may be a token relocation of a few hundred families. Once all the details have been worked out, Obama will prevail upon the two sides to meet under his beneficent patronage and sign a solemn-and-binding covenant, thus bringing what the media term "the Middle East conflict" to an end.

Outlining this scenario to an American colleague, I was told that I had allowed my imagination to run wild. Obama (I was told) has certainly made no secret of his intense irritation with Bibi and Bibi's sponsorship of Jewish community development in Judea and Samaria. But, for example, he has said nothing dramatic about the status of east Jerusalem. This is true. Yet it's also true that fierce statements about east Jerusalem have emanated from the EU, and, in particular, from the British Foreign Office and its chief Middle East spokesperson, Alistair "friend of Israel" Burt. Burt shares with Obama the view that the Anglo-American alliance knows what is in Israel's best interest. I find it inconceivable that Burt would publicly insist that it is in Israel's best interest that Jerusalem should be re-partitioned unless he was certain of Obama's support.

What is Israel to do? Whatever political configuration finally results from the Israeli elections (and in spite of some clumsy attempts by White-House apparatchiks to influence their outcome) Netanyahu is likely to have a clear mandate to defend the reunification of Jerusalem and the rights of Jews living in Judea and Samaria. So the relationship between Jerusalem and Washington could become very sour indeed, even openly confrontational. But there is one step that Netanyahu could take to redefine this partnership. He could make an early public commitment to phase out Israel's reliance on the $3 billion worth of aid (all of it military) it receives annually from the American taxpayer.

As Canadian scholar Lawrence Solomon recently argued, Israel, a highly industrialised state with the best performing economy in the developed world, can now do without US aid: "a freed Israeli military economy, the single biggest factor in Israel's phenomenal economic growth, would only propel its economy to new heights." The sooner this is made clear to Washington (and London, and Brussels), the better for all concerned.

Care needed on rushed move

Geoffrey Alderman — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:02:31 +0000

Sometimes, as we all know, the road to hell can be paved with the best of intentions. Recent events at the Morris Feinmann Home in Didsbury provide a perfect illustration of this dictum. Everyone appears to be acting through the noblest of motives. But not everyone is pleased at the way things are turning out.

The Morris Feinmann Home originated as a care-facility for Jewish refugees from Nazism. It now provides residential, nursing, dementia and respite care services for the Jewish communities of north-west England. It was established over a half-century ago in a converted Victorian house that has been enlarged and modified over time. Now it is said to be “increasingly… not fit for purpose.” The trustees have therefore decided it must be rebuilt. And while this happens, residents are to be moved into the Allingham House care home in Altrincham, a few miles away, where Jewish residents will occupy “specifically designated floors” and will continue to enjoy “the full “Jewish” experience” (including a kosher kitchen) currently provided at Morris Feinmann. At the same time, the hard-working staff of the Home will (or such is the intention) transfer en bloc to Allingham House, and become employees of its owners, New Care Projects. In 2015, when the rebuilding has been completed, those residents that are still alive will be moved back — presumably with the staff who have cared for them.

Well, you may say, nothing could be simpler — or more desirable. An old Victorian structure has outlived its usefulness. It is going to be replaced with state-of-the-art facilities. A certain amount of disruption is inevitable. But, surely, all will be well that ends well. Yet in the Anglo-Jewish world nothing — alas — is ever that simple.

There was no consultation whatsoever with residents or their families — or, apparently, the care staff or administrative officers — prior to a public announcement in early December. This statement was annexed to a letter sent to next-of-kin, inviting them to meet with the trustees five days later. It was in this manner that an acquaintance of mine first heard about the planned temporary relocation of a resident, and that this temporary relocation was to take place early in the new year (this month, in fact).

We might or might not conclude that his description (“cruel”) of the proposal to move a group of extremely elderly and vulnerable people at such short notice was a tad excessive. But, totally supportive as I am of the need to upgrade substandard facilities, the lack of prior consultation and the unseemly haste to transfer the residents, do strike me as — at best — clumsy and insensitive.

I’m also bound to ask whether the upgrade is all that it seems. A careful reading of the press statement reveals that the Home is not actually being rebuilt, but that what’s really intended is that the site should be redeveloped by “Belong Villages,” which is part of the CLS Care Services Group, a non-Jewish provider that runs (no doubt very well) more than 30 care homes in the north-west. Morris Feinmann Home will be replaced by something called “Morris Feinmann Belong Village”. There are vague promises that the Trust that currently runs Morris Feinmann will continue to raise funds to support residents who cannot afford fees, and will “work to maintain the Jewish ethos” at the new privately-owned facility. “Jews in necessitous circumstances” will be given priority in the allocation of residential units. But make no mistake. This facility will not actually be “Jewish.”

I have not myself visited the current Home. Those that have insist that it is by no means in a state of irredeemable disrepair. A lift (they report) needs servicing and there are, as one might expect, a limited number of non-critical structural issues that need attention. If new requirements relating to the care of dementia patients are likely to cause problems, then by all means put a modernisation plan into effect.

But the most recent inspection (in October) by the Care Quality Commission painted a very positive picture of the home and of the services it provides. And a spokesperson for CLS has confirmed that a contract with the Morris Feinmann Home trustees has yet to be finalised. If that’s the case, why the hurry to move the residents out to Altrincham?

Israel’s ‘Soviet’ prayer police

Geoffrey Alderman — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 10:39:53 +0000

Last month, Israeli police arrested worshippers at the entrance to the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The worshippers had committed a heinous crime: they had tried to pass through the gates leading from the plaza to the Wall itself wearing tallitot.

I should explain that they were all women. Their declared object was to join that section of female worshippers identified with the "Women of the Wall," an organisation that has for the past two-and-a-half decades held or attempted to hold monthly Rosh Chodesh services in the women's section.

Since last summer, women daring to participate in these services have been arrested practically every month, either for wearing tallitot or tefillin or, less explicitly, for "disturbing public order".

The arrests have generally not been followed by the laying of criminal charges. But, last October, Anat Hoffman, chairwoman of Women at the Wall (who was fined in 2010 simply for holding a Sefer Torah at the Wall) was arrested for the crime of singing at the Wall.

She was strip-searched, held overnight in police custody, and then issued with a restraining order banning her from visiting the Wall for 30 days.

According to Hoffman, the Jerusalem constabulary "checked me naked, completely, without my underwear. They dragged me on the floor 15 metres; my arms are bruised. They put me in a cell without a bed, with three other prisoners, including a prostitute and a car thief."

The constabulary has not contradicted this account, nor denied rumours that women are now searched at the entrance to the Wall, to make sure that they are not carrying tallitot or tefillin. This is of course precisely the sort of behaviour that one associates with the worst excesses of the Soviet era when Jewish visitors to the USSR were routinely searched for ritual objects, which were often confiscated.

Just in case any of you suppose, having read thus far, that I am therefore minded to side wholly with the Women of the Wall and wholly against the Jerusalem constabulary, let me assure you that I am not. Before I explain why, let me draw your attention to another arrest, not at the Wall itself but on the Temple Mount a couple of hundred or so yards away.

This arrest took place on January 1. On that day a man - Moshe Feiglin - was alleged to have attempted to engage in prayer on the Mount. Had he been a Muslim, or a Christian (or even, perchance, a heathen) the likelihood is that nothing untoward would have happened. But Feiglin is a Jew. He was followed on to the Temple Mount by an undercover security officer. And for the crime of attempting to engage in prayer (he was apparently spotted bowing his head) this Jew - not for the first time – was arrested. And this too, of course, recalls precisely the sort of behaviour that one associates with the worst excesses of the Soviet era when Jews in the USSR were routinely arrested simply and solely for the crime of engaging in Jewish religious worship.

Feiglin is a Likud activist. Some call him an extremist. His reported views on Hitler and Nazism do indeed leave me cold and, some years ago, he was banned from entering the UK. But even extremists have rights. His foray on to the Temple Mount was not his first and I daresay will not be his last. At the beginning of December, he was reported to have led a full prayer service on the Mount, without incident. Good for him.

The Women of the Wall are also extremists. They have a gender agenda, not all of which I (an Orthodox Jew) find palatable. But, again, even extremists have rights. I cannot in all conscience understand why wearing a prayer-shawl should amount to a crime. If Anat Hoffman and her colleagues wish to don tallitot and tefillin, then that is surely their business.

The arrest of Feiglin for praying and of Hoffman for wearing were gross violations of freedom of worship. Prime Minister Netanyahu has asked Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky to find a solution for non-Orthodox women's groups wishing to pray peacefully at the Wall. He should also be asked to investigate the prohibition on Orthodox men wishing to pray peacefully on the Temple Mount.

Making light of a meaty issue

Geoffrey Alderman — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 10:53:58 +0000

In November I participated in a debate held at the London Jewish Cultural Centre and billed as "a thought-provoking and provocative evening about the relationship between Jews, meat and shechitah (ritual slaughter)". The evening was undoubtedly thought-provoking and certainly provocative. It provoked me to think seriously about the phenomenon of Jewish vegetarianism, and about the underlying motives of those who propagate this dogma.

I was not invited to this debate: I invited myself (and paid the fee). Not to learn about vegetarianism, or to be told what I already knew - that a number of rabbinic luminaries (including Rav Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Mandate Palestine) - have voiced their sympathies with vegetarianism, or have indeed been vegetarians themselves. I went, primarily, to test my suspicion that an attempt is being made by Jewish vegetarians worldwide to ally the philosophy of vegetarianism to the precepts of Orthodox Judaism. In recent years I have noted this mésalliance with increasing concern.

True Orthodox Jews (it has been said to me) must be vegetarians. For reasons to which I shall allude, this strikes me as nonsense. I was to some extent prepared for this nonsense to be mouthed once more at the LJCC debate. But what I wasn't prepared for was the shameless manner in which those who purveyed it went about their work.

The evening began with the screening of the notoriously divisive propaganda film A Sacred Duty, made in 2007 by the South-African/American Emmy-award winning vegetarian Lionel Friedberg. The LJCC billed this as a "documentary" but, believe me, such a description is a travesty. Sacred Duty is certainly a slick production, professionally pandering to the obsession with imminent man-made environmental catastrophe that is one of the hallmarks of contemporary "green" politics. There's certainly a debate to be had about the extent to which global warming (which is a fact) is man-made. In teaching my own students about environmental politics I'm careful to present a balanced argument - pointing out (for example) that there was a period of equally undoubted global warming some 10,000 years ago, but that this could hardly have been due to fossil-fuel emissions (it was in fact the inevitable result of a periodic "wobble" in the rotation of the earth).

Friedberg will have none of this. His film blames all the environmental problems of the world on the evils of humankind. And the film leads, inexorably, to the "evil" of meat-eating, climaxing with scenes shot inside various slaughterhouses.

Those who have seen the Nazi propaganda film Der Ewige Jude will know that this Goebbels-inspired masterpiece of 1940 climaxes its denigration of Jews and Jewish values with an attack on shechitah. While I am not for one moment accusing Friedberg of being a copy-cat I'm afraid that I could not help bringing this to mind as I watched Sacred Duty. In one respect, indeed, Friedberg has stolen a march on Goebbels. Goebbels could not include in Der Ewige Jude statements by Jewish religious authorities agreeing that Jews were a sub-human pestilence worthy only of eradication. But in Sacred Duty we have interviews with Orthodox rabbis who not only refrain from eating meat themselves, but who tell us that keeping kosher can only mean being vegetarian. "I am a vegetarian," declares Rabbi David Rosen, CBE, "precisely because I am a believing Jew… I am vegetarian because I am a religious Jew."

Well, it's precisely because I'm a religious Jew that I am a meat-eater. I cannot speak for Rabbi Rosen, but when I say my daily prayers I pray for the restoration of the Temple and of all its rituals - including the slaughter of animals for sacrifice and their consumption after slaughter. I believe that when the Temple is restored we will - all of us (including Rabbi Rosen if he's still around) - be obligated to eat the Korbon Pesach - the Passover Sacrifice, just as did Jesus the Jew.

You won't find this view, which is the normative Orthodox view, in Friedberg's film. When I articulated it in the informal discussion that followed its screening at the LJCC I was - alas - met with derision that can only have been born of comprehensive ignorance as to the authentic tenets of Jewish religious Orthodoxy.