Lawyer states his case
While I understand the JC’s role as a newspaper is to tell news, the sheer gratuity of your attack on me (JC online last week and this week’s p14) is both uncalled for and inaccurate.
The incident that you referred to took place while I was under sedation for a medical procedure. Of course, with hindsight I should not have had access to the internet but, regrettably, I did. The abuse to an 18-year-old was clearly wrong as recognised by me at the time and deleted as soon as I came around.
But the suggestion that this young man was hardly more than a child bares no scrutiny from his active defence at the time — it was a political argument in which he loudly argued that Jews should vote Labour. While the words I used under sedation were clearly wrong, I do not shy away from my opinion that voting Labour is and was very dangerous.
Full and public apologies to the 18-year-old were made within minutes of my coming round. Further private apologies were made and when I saw his father at the time of my giving a voluntary talk at Limmud in Manchester I made a further apology to him. Despite numerous public and private apologies for an action that was a recognised side-effect of medication, the father spoke to Private Eye about a story. The Eye recognised the tragedy of the situation and chose not to publish, passing on a further apology.
When I became aware that the complaint to the SRA (one part dismissed, the other no sanction or costs) had triggered the activation of a complaint by neo-Nazis, I had no alternative to fight that part of the complaint on the basis that I “would never apologise to neo-Nazis”.
If you had attended the hearing, you would have been able to tell your readership exactly what had happened rather than repeat a childish statement that “he’s not a nice person”. Frankly, life is not a popularity competition. As Churchill said: “You have got enemies? Good. It means that you stood up for something, some time in your life.”
Whereas the Law Society Gazette attended and reported accurately, you did not. Instead, you were played as a mouthpiece for an infantile vendetta.
I will continue to stand up for Jewish people and Israel. There’s barely an organisation that has not benefited from my pro bono work on their behalf, from all strands of the community whether I agree with their politics or not. I will continue to advise and represent them.
Mark Lewis, Eilat
‘She should be disowned’
I have been following with increasing astonishment the saga of Roslyn Pine, who was suspended from the Board of Deputies for her brazenly racist comments. The Board is now embroiled in arguments over the legality of her suspension, initially for not following due process and then over whether they even have the power to suspend one of their members.
These legalistic arguments have obscured far weightier issues. The comments that she was reported to have made (Former deputy refuses to apologise to shorten ban JC, December 14) were at least as offensive as those that a Labour supporter sent to two Jewish Labour MPs, which earlier this month landed him with a ten-week suspended prison sentence and 20 weeks’ community service.
I am sure that anyone who said of the Jews, as Ms Pine said of the Muslims and Arabs, that they were “the vilest of animals” and “so evil” would have been brought to book and received a similar sentence; the fact that she hasn’t smacks of double standards.
Whether or not the Board may suspend Ms Pine, she is a deputy representing Finchley United Synagogue, from whose honorary officers there appears to have been a deafening silence.
The only assumption that one can make is that they support Ms Pine. If not, they should be pressing the Board to amend its constitution, if necessary, to make a provision allowing any congregation to recall a deputy who, in the view of the honorary officers, brings it into disrepute.
After all, the Board is the legally recognised parliament of the Jewish community and British Parliamentary constituency parties have the power to deselect MPs and parliamentary candidates.
It hardly needs to be added that Ms Pine is not the sole, legitimate campaigner against antisemitism and anti-Israel activities, as she seems to believe, and she should be publicly and decisively disowned by our community.
Herbert Goldberg, Pinner, Middlesex
Ben Uri: the arty facts
The Ben Uri controversy (JC December 7 and passim) avoids defining Anglo-Jewish visual culture. Jewish art has often played an essential role in supporting the aspirations of sections of the community. Feminist art developed from writings in the 1970s and, similarly, Anglo-Jewish art initially developed in response to Zionism and later to the Holocaust, the diaspora and British culture.
Avram Kampf , Anthony Julius, and Juliet Steyn, among others, have made thoughtful contributions to the subject of Jewish art.
British Artists of Jewish birth held up as role models can become irritated by the idea that they are tethered to the anchor of Jewish art when they see themselves as citizens of the (cultural) world.
The Ben Uri’s “art museum for everyone” flies in the face of the contemporary identity politics prevalent in British cultural institutions. A Google search on the top ten Black British artists will produce a clarity of identity that a similar search of the top ten Jewish British artists is unable to replicate.
The Ben Uri’s current direction avoids the question of Anglo-Jewish identity. To shy away from Jewish art during a time of increasing antisemitism ensures that Anglo-Jewish visual culture will not be addressed by an institution ideally placed to do so.
David Aronsohn, Saffron Walden
Consult, name and shame
Alastair Falk (JC, December 14) writes about the 1917 letter to The Times, and quotes a phrase about the Jews as strangers in their native lands.
But you have already published this quite recently, in an article on Zionism on May 25, 2017 by Lianne Kolirin, who properly identified the writers as “the then president of the Board of Deputies, David Alexander, and Claude Montefiore, president of the Anglo-Jewish Association”, not Falk’s obscure “group of Jewish grandees”.
They were actually the joint chairmen of the conjoint foreign committee of the two bodies, and they wrote in that capacity; the committee had been set up in 1888, and disbanded as a result of this letter.
There were worldwide disagreements with the letter — your issue of July 27 1917 printed a report of a meeting in Cape Town and a letter from Professor Richard Gottheil of New York.
I suggest that your writers should consult your online archive when drafting their articles, and should give the names of people referred to, as Howard Cooper did in his review of Paul Hanebrink’s A Spector Haunting Europe (Books, November 23), where he named three of the writers of a 1919 letter to the press (again including Claude).
Bryan Diamond, London NW3
Heard the one about…
On reading the published “Behavioural Agreement” that comedian Konstantin Kisin was asked to sign by the student group Unicef on Campus at the School of African and Oriental Studies in compliance with their alleged policy of “zero-tolerance” of prejudice, I noted that, despite specifically prohibiting Islamophobia, the document made no mention of antisemitism in yet another example of the Left’s anti-Jewish double standards.
Steven R. Harvey, Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire
Split down under
I am delighted that, after 70 years, Australia has at last recognised “Western Jerusalem” as Israel’s capital.
I am likewise delighted to now recognise Western Canberra as the capital of Australia.
Naturally, in the spirit of solidarity, Eastern Canberra should now be put under UN control as the future capital of the native Australians.
Fair dinkum, cobber.
Jeremy Zeid, Kenton, Harrow
Private Mark Feld
AJEX Archives are seeking surviving friends and relatives of Pte Mark Feld — who died on duty in August 1946 in a Warwickshire army camp — with special regard to his childhood in East London.
He was born in 1925. If you were at school or cheder or youth club with him, please contact me on the email below.
Martin Sugarman, martin.sugarman@yahoo.co.uk
