Ukraine silence
How fitting that, as the nation falls silent for Remembrance, it should also have fallen silent about Ukraine.
Last week Russia pounded Ukraine’s power grid almost every night, the better to freeze its civilians into submission before winter. In Komyshuvakha, in Zaporizhzhia, Russian aircraft bombed a former school twice while humanitarian aid was being handed out. The death toll stands at 55 and is still rising. I must have missed the emergency Commons debate.
Nor has the Foreign Secretary found much to say about the Council of Europe’s finding of “grave, systemic and far-reaching” abuses in the occupied territories. These include torture and sexual violence, civilians snatched from the street, and more than 2,600 held without legal basis in occupied Ukraine and in Russia. Perhaps he is awaiting an independent inspection. He may wait some time. UN monitors have no access, and the Red Cross is not even present in Russian-held Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Meanwhile, London’s streets are curiously quiet. Where are the Saturday marchers, the megaphones and the flags draped from every lamp-post? Where, for that matter, is the Ukraine poppy? It seems outrage, like Russian gas, is a seasonal commodity, delivered only to certain addresses.
The explanation is simple enough: no Jews, no news.
Shimon Cohen
London
Ajex pride
Last week I watched the second instalment of Escaping Idi Amin on BBC 2 about the forced expulsions of Asians from Uganda in 1972.
The similarities with the murder and harassment of Jewish people in the Holocaust are clear and obvious. Many of Amin’s sordid actions against innocent Asians are being replicated today by Hamas. The Jewish community in the United Kingdom must remain vigilant, forceful and pro-active on all fronts in fighting antisemitism whatever the source, certainly if the Jewish community in this country has a future. Many of my contemporaries are now making aliyah to Israel as they no longer feel comfortable here.
Do not forget that anti-Israel rhetoric from any source merely encourages and fuels more antisemitic behaviour which has the effect of unsettling the community.
It is against this backdrop that we approach the forthcoming AJEX weekend where the Jewish community is given the opportunity to stand up for itself, its identity and its commitment to the United Kingdom at both synagogue services and the traditional march in Whitehall the following day. Let us hope that the community comes out in force at this fundamentally important event.
Jonathan Metliss
London W1
NHS questions
Your unnamed writer (‘I did not want to tell the doctor I am Jewish’, JC November 6) asks if Jewish patients should be nervous of NHS hospital staff.
I think NHS hospital trustees should be publicly held to account, so I recently wrote to the trustees of the Royal Free Hospital NHS Trust asking whether they accepted the Mann Report in full (a copy of which I provided) and whether they had adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism. I pointed out politely that the deadline for reporting on this had already expired on July 31 and asked if this deadline was met and if not why not?
I also asked about their plans for antisemitism training and investigation policies and whether they consider their Jewish patients as both an ethnicity and a religion?
I followed this up with a reference to an (unsigned!) leaflet handed out to patients at the hospital, on the very day I write this letter, accusing Israel of genocide. I asked the Trustees to clarify their views on the dissemination of such leaflets and what action if any will be taken if this action is repeated. I also asked if they agreed that every NHS hospital should be a political free environment for all patients (and staff carrying out their normal professional and clinical duties).
They replied by stating they would treat this as a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
However they have still not replied to the original issues raised, despite a reminder, and are now themselves in breach of the time limits stipulated under the FOI Act for replying to requests.
Such disregard for the rights of their Jewish patients is unacceptable. When will these Trusts be held to account?
Julian Pollard
London NW4
Reparations due
Further to Shimon Cohen’s letter about Britain paying reparations for the slave trade, (Letters, November 6) might I suggest that the government considers apologising and paying reparations to the families of those who were denied asylum in Mandate Palestine before, during and after the Holocaust. Whilst we’re at it, how about paying the descendants of the traumatised survivors who were then imprisoned for three years in inhumane conditions in Cyprus and Germany?
Ruth Leveson
London NW11
How Jewish am I?
I have just very belatedly seen an article from about seven years ago. (Brexit schmexit. How Jewish are Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt?, July 5, 2019) in your pages and write in a spirit of pure curiosity rather than complaint to find out why you say I am only five per cent Jewish when my grandmother’s father Elias Avery Lowe (my great grandfather) was wholly Jewish – which would make me one eighth or 12.5 per cent Jewish by my maths. Or am I misunderstanding some key algorithm of Jewishness known only to the Jewish Chronicle?
Boris Johnson
London
Happy memories of Grimsby
Thank you for John Bowers’ article about the history of the Grimsby Jewish community (Staying power of Grimsby’s destination synagogue, October 30). My parents and my brother came to Grimsby from the East End of London in 1947. My father, together with his business partner, were offered the lease of a shop in The Old Market Place. I was born in 1949 and my earliest childhood memories of life in Grimsby are very happy ones, even the bracing Sunday afternoon walks along the sea front in Cleethorpes.
I can remember going to the shul with my family and that they were involved with the vibrant community that existed then. We left Grimsby when I was six years old to return to London. It is heartwarming to know that the shul is being supported and maintained.
Melanie Olivestone
Shenley, Herts
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