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We at JCORE, along with many in our community, are shocked and bewildered that one of the first pieces of proposed legislation of the new government appears to be directed at one of the most vulnerable groups in society: young refugees who are desperate to be reunited with family members appear to be having their rights, proposed in legislation before the election, removed.
It is important that we make the Government aware of the depth of our feeling within our community. We need to ask why the Government has introduced this apparent measure to scrap a scheme designed to enable refugee children and young people the opportunity to be reunited with members of their family here in the UK.
This proposal adds more confusion and uncertainty to an already confusing situation. It will not stop young refugees from trying to come to Britain but is likely to result in them taking increasingly dangerous routes to do so, putting them at the mercy of traffickers and people smugglers. This certainly feels like an extension of the hostile environment that we had hoped was a policy of the past.
We call upon the government to immediately reverse this decision and put into place safe and legal routes for these young people seeking to rebuild their lives in the UK. This surely would be a mark of a compassionate and forward-looking society.
Dr Edie Friedman Executive Director, The Jewish Council for Racial Equality (JCORE); Adam Rose Chair, JCORE; Samantha Cozens Trustee, JCORE; Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner Senior Rabbi, Reform Judaism; Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg; Rabbi Alexandra Wright; Rabbi Oliver Joseph
You reported on the failure of Ateres Girls’ High School in Gateshead to pass its Ofsted inspection, due to its objection to teaching its students about LGBT lifestyles. Ateres fulfilled almost every other one of the 98 independent school regulations. It performed well across the board, providing a “broad and rich curriculum” and achieving well at GCSE, outperforming national standards in some areas. Pupils’ behaviour and attitudes were praised, their work ethic recognised.
When is Ofsted going to drop its obsession with sex? There are nine protected characteristics enshrined in the 2010 Equality Act, including age, disability, marital status and religion. Two relate to LGBT but there are seven others. A few months ago, during the inspection of the charedi school where I work, the headteacher made it clear that the inspectors could not ask pupils any LGBT questions. Inspectors then didn’t bother asking about any equality issues, the responses to which could easily have given them sufficient evidence to tick the discrimination box. Does that mean the other forms of discrimination are not important? Or simply not juicy enough?
In their final judgment, inspectors graded the school as “good” in every area. However, because it doesn’t teach about LGBT, they said they had to downgrade it to “requires improvement” on the basis of that single point.
Schools are broad institutions. Their efficacy is judged via a multitude of aspects, including the quality of their education, management of staff, pupil behaviour, personal development, work ethic, respect. Even the teaching of middot (good character traits), which many Jewish schools excel at, is now part of the new Ofsted framework.
So how is it that the evaluation of charedi schools — some, previously judged “good” or “outstanding” — has been narrowed down to a solitary point?
Mrs Reva Goldschmidt
London N16
David Toube, Director of Policy, Quilliam, has left me with two queries after reading his illuminating article, (Deadly fantasies threaten Jews and Muslims, JC, December 20).
Firstly, he has, surprisingly, not used the term anti-Zionist when acknowledging that “antisemitism is rife within the Arab world and within Muslim communities. No sensible person doubts that.” So I wondered if he has reservations about Muslim anti-Zionism being considered antisemitic.
Secondly, and more controversially, he concluded: “Bad ideas drive out good ones. We must maintain the dams that have held conspiracism out of public discourse.”
Surely, it is not bad ideas, per se, that drive out good ones, but that good ideas are not pursued with sufficient vigour in public and private debate that allows the bad ones to flourish.
Moreover, selective democratic suppression might morph dangerously into totalitarian suppression. Some European countries may already be on that track.
But, to take David Toube’s own example, the pernicious rise of antisemitism and Marxism in the Labour Party, in our recent election, the successful clashes in British and Jewish politics that decimated Labour surely demonstrated the clear value of openly confronting bad ideas rather than suppressing them.
However, I admit there’s always an exception to the rule. Giving public oxygen to Holocaust denial may be one such, being as it is a malevolent provocation solely designed to denigrate a historical event against the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
If there may be rare cases of genuine ignorance, then the way through is education not declamation.
Finally, there is a disturbing existential implication in Toube’s view that bad ideas drive out good ones and hence need public suppression. By extension, it suggests that “evil” (or its modern analogues) is naturally more powerful than good — a concept not supported by religion, or most philosophies, or even the bumpy upward trend of human progress.
Dr Stanley Jacobs
London SW18
Jonathan Freedland (Relief, yes — but Jews’ presence in Britain now feels more conditional than before, JC, December 20) quite rightly takes to task those “celebrities, commentators and others” who, despite the anti-Jewish racism within the Labour Party, chose to cast a vote that could have put Jeremy Corbyn into No 10.
Might I respectfully remind Jonathan that his newspaper, the Guardian, the one that very many Jews, including myself, had deserted long before their decision to do likewise with Labour, also came out in support of a party steeped in anti-Jewish hatred.
This was something Jonathan chose not to mention in an otherwise useful contribution.
This is a pity, since it is, I believe, reasonable to aver that the Guardian’s egregiously unbalanced reporting and commentaries on the Israel/Palestine dispute provided helpful motive for those seeking cover for their visceral anti-Semitism.
The mote in one’s eye comes to mind.
Michael Lazarus
Northaw, Herts
Years ago, I was on a crowded bus in the Negev and a very young child at the back of the bus needed the toilet.
The mum shouted to the driver to stop and the little child was tenderly passed from passenger to passenger over the top of their heads to the front and a stranger took the child off the bus and then returned him the same way over the heads of passengers, one to the other.
The charm and uniqueness of Israeli society is still present in Israel today. Last week, the sea was grey, rough and angry with a red flag: “No swimming”. The next day, the sea was blue and as calm as a millpond, no waves and no wind.
The red flag was visible on the flag-pole. I wanted to swim. I was puzzled. I asked the lifeguard: “Why the red flag? “Oh,” he said nonchalantly. “The white flag is in the washing.”
Ann Korn
mrs.ann.korn@gmail.com
I learned much from, and was moved by, Gloria Tessler’s appreciation of the life of A Alvarez, (Obituary, December 20). There is one other point of particular Anglo-Jewish interest that might have been made.
Alvarez’s novel, Day of Atonement, contains the only scene, so far as I am aware, in a work of fiction, set in the Ambassador Hotel in Bournemouth.
Roger Cohen
London NW7