RUTHFULLY YOURS

I have just spent a weekend at Lichfield cathedral for a conference “on the Israel/Palestine Conflict and the prospect of peace”. And what a weekend it was! A naïve Dean, antisemitism, conspiracy theories, global control, blood sucking Jews, child kidnappers, Arabs in 100ad. and of course, Jesus the Palestinian.http://david-collier.com/?p=2328
Lichfield Cathedral is breath-taking. A Gothic structure that dominates the local horizon, the unique fixture of the three spires can be seen long before signposts welcome you to the city. The current masterpiece was started in 1195. The work was to take over a hundred years to complete.

Just 5 years before this work began there had been brutal massacres of Jewish people in London and York in 1190. As Lichfield Cathedral grew and began to dominate its surroundings, persecution of Jews grew as a fever and swept through England. The Nave was started in 1260, just as the Jewries in places such as London, Canterbury and Winchester were looted.

Long before the last bricks were placed on the ‘Lady of the Chapel’ in 1330, the entire Jewish community had been dispossessed and expelled from England.

History is a major passion of mine. The placing of events into perspective and context. So I wonder what a cathedral such as Lichfield would have looked like to Jews in the 13th century? As they saw the cathedral grow, as they felt the persecution begin to strangle their livelihoods and freedoms, did one come to symbolise the other? How terrifying to the Jews then, a display of power such as Lichfield Cathedral must have been.

I personally grew up in a different England. We had jumped almost 700 years since the expulsion, 300 years since the return of Jews to these islands. As a young adult I visited cathedrals as places of beauty. Stunning buildings of history that were to be cherished and adored. National treasures.
The church speaks

lichI had not been to Lichfield before. There had recently been an unsavoury anti-Israel exhibit at Hinde St Methodist church that had drawn much anger. I understand that the Church desires to help when it sees suffering. When this suffering is being registered in the birthplace of Christianity, that urge becomes an irresistible compulsion. With this I have no quarrel. However there remains a gulf between charity and pointing a finger of blame. One requires compassion, the other reminds us of darker days in Christian history.

Following the Hinde Street incident, many voices were heard from within the church community that denounced the exhibition. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord George Carey criticised the stunt as ‘demonising and singling out Israel’ in its defensive fight against terrorism.

In light of rising Jew hatred in the UK, the current Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby recently called antisemitism ‘an insidious evil’. He remarked that it “latches onto a variety of different issues” including discourse about Israel. Given what was about to occur to me personally in Lichfield, his reference to the conspiracy, “the perverted and absurd argument that a small group runs or plots against our society and manipulates international affairs” is particularly poignant.
The Lichfield Cathedral event

Encouragingly, with one eye on the event in the cathedral, the Bishop of Lichfield Michael Ipgrave also delivered a statement on antisemitism. This an extract:

“To me there seems no question that denying the right of Israel to exist, failing to take seriously the claim of its citizens to security and recognition, viewing the complex situation in the Holy Land as an unparalleled example of injustice when it is fact surrounded by egregious instances of oppression and unsettlement, adopting a one-sided view which fails to recognise the legitimate interests and real anxieties of all sides – all these can be manifestations of, or excuses for, real antisemitism.”

If this is what he truly lichfield speakersbelieves, he will be absolutely horrified to hear what was relayed inside the walls of his cathedral.

I had little doubt I was walking into a hate-festival. One of the ‘secrets’ of such an event is that the range of speakers is always skewed. People such as Ilan Pappe see sharing a stage with Zionists as ‘normalisation’. Jewish self determination, the right of a ‘Jewish home’, these are positions too ‘dirty’ for anti-Israel activists to accommodate. Therefore if Pappe is present, you know their views have been ideologically protected by the structure of the event itself. The building has been cleansed of all support for the Jewish national movement.

If Jewish Israelis are present, they must be those that come bearing 1000 apologies for ‘Israeli crimes’. Thus reinforcing the imagery of Israel the oppressor. (See Daphne Anson for a breakdown and analysis of the speakers).

The original deal called for a “mutual exchange” in which Romania would build a new Orthodox Church in Istanbul, while Turkey would build the mosque in Bucharest. In July 2015, however, Prime Minister Victor Ponta revealed that the Romanian government had abandoned the Istanbul church project because it is “not allowed under Turkish law.” Ponta approved the Bucharest mosque project anyway, saying it was a multicultural symbol of Romania’s acceptance of the Muslim community.

Ponta’s decision to approve the mosque, which will mimic Ottoman-era architecture, was greeted with outrage in a country that was under Ottoman Turkish domination for nearly five centuries until 1877.

“This plan is not about worship, it is about marking the territory of their authority through a monument.” – Ozgur Kazim Kivanc, a Turkish activist opposed to Erdoğan’s destruction of public commons to build mosques.

“Once Islam enters a land, that land becomes Islamic and Muslims have the duty to liberate it someday. Spain, for example, is Islamic land, and so is Eastern Europe: Romania, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia…” – Omar Bakri Muhammad, a prominent Sunni Islamist cleric.

“We consider the disposal of free land which, ironically, belonged to the family of Prince Constantin Brâncoveanu, who was beheaded by the Turks on August 15, 1714, to be a betrayal of the Romanian people.” – Pending lawsuit calling on the court to annul the government’s grant of free city land for the mosque project.

Opponents of a proposed Turkish mega-mosque in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, have filed a lawsuit against the government in an effort to halt the project. The court is set to begin hearing the case on October 14.

The lawsuit seeks to reverse a June 2015 decision by the Romanian prime minister at the time, Victor Ponta, to approve construction of what could become the largest mosque in Eastern Europe — second only to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul — on a large tract of city-owned land in northern Bucharest.

The property, valued at more than four million euros ($4.4 million), is being provided for free by the Romanian government, while the construction costs, estimated at three million euros ($3.3 million), are being paid for by Turkey.

Ponta said the mosque will reap economic benefits for Romania because Turkey is the country’s leading non-EU trading partner. The mosque’s critics, including an array of Romanian academics, historians, politicians, anti-immigration groups and even some Muslims, counter that not only will it increase Turkish influence over Romania, it will also encourage Muslim immigration to the country.

There are an estimated six million Muslims living in Latin American cities, who provide a fertile terrorist recruiting environment.

“Iran has opened up more than 80 cultural centers in Latin America in order to export its toxic brand of political influence and serve its interest, focusing on partnering with nations well known for their anti-American rhetoric including Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.” — US Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, in testimony for the House Sub-Committee on the Middle East and North Africa.

Amidst the unspeakable economic distress facing residents of Venezuela today, security experts have identified yet another major cause for concern emanating from this once prosperous, oil-rich nation: Iran is moving in, partnering with Venezuela’s prosperous drug traders and creating a foothold there, as well as in other “friendly” Latin American countries. Iran is laundering money in Latin America and presumably secretly plotting to accomplish a strategic long-term goal to penetrate the Western hemisphere.

Iran’s terrorist activities, its partnership with Venezuelan drug traffickers and the general criminal atmosphere affects the citizens of Caracas so much that people reportedly are fearful of even going to the store to wait in the endless lines for food.

In Venezuela, security analysts say, the corruption starts at the very top with President Nicolas Maduro himself, who is looking frantically for money in every crevasse to keep the nation and his presidency afloat. Reports estimate that in Venezuela one police officer dies every day and the number of homicides per capita in Caracas is the highest in the world.

National crime statistics, however, seem to be just the start: deeper and more alarming than the Venezuelan homicide toll, there appears to be an imminent threat to the entire Western hemisphere from partnerships between Venezuelan drug traffickers and terrorist networks like Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups that act a proxies for Iran.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013
The new antisemitism has mutated so that any practitioner of it can deny that he or she is an anti-Semite. After all, they’ll say, I’m not a racist. I have no problem with Jews or Judaism. I only have a problem with the State of Israel. Have we forgotten how the hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews?

Below is a transcript of a speech by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks at “The Future of the Jewish Communities in Europe” Conference at The European Parliament on September 27, 2016, in Brussels.

The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. That is what I want us to understand today. It wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Hitler. It wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Stalin. It isn’t Jews alone who suffer under ISIS or Al Qaeda or Islamic Jihad. We make a great mistake if we think antisemitism is a threat only to Jews. It is a threat, first and foremost, to Europe and to the freedoms it took centuries to achieve.

Antisemitism is not about Jews. It is about anti-Semites. It is about people who cannot accept responsibility for their own failures and have instead to blame someone else. Historically, if you were a Christian at the time of the Crusades, or a German after the First World War, and saw that the world hadn’t turned out the way you believed it would, you blamed the Jews. That is what is happening today. And I cannot begin to say how dangerous it is. Not just to Jews but to everyone who values freedom, compassion and humanity.The appearance of antisemitism in a culture is the first symptom of a disease, the early warning sign of collective breakdown. If Europe allows antisemitism to flourish, that will be the beginning of the end of Europe

And what I want to do in these brief remarks is simply to analyze a phenomenon full of vagueness and ambiguity, because we need precision and understanding to know what antisemitism is, why it happens, why anti-Semites are convinced that they are not anti-Semitic.First let me define antisemitism. Not liking Jews is not antisemitism. We all have people we don’t like. That’s OK; that’s human; it isn’t dangerous. Second, criticizing Israel is not antisemitism. I was recently talking to some schoolchildren and they asked me: is criticizing Israel antisemitism? I said No and I explained the difference. I asked them: Do you believe you have a right to criticize the British government? They all put up their hands. Then I asked, Which of you believes that Britain has no right to exist? No one put up their hands. Now you know the difference, I said, and they all did.

Antisemitism means denying the right of Jews to exist collectively as Jews with the same rights as everyone else. It takes different forms in different ages. In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century they were hated because of their race. Today they are hated because of their nation state, the state of Israel. It takes different forms but it remains the same thing: the view that Jews have no right to exist as free and equal human beings.

If there is one thing I and my contemporaries did not expect, it was that antisemitism would reappear in Europe within living memory of the Holocaust. The reason we did not expect it was that Europe had undertaken the greatest collective effort in all of history to ensure that the virus of antisemitism would never again infect the body politic. It was a magnificent effort of anti-racist legislation, Holocaust education and interfaith dialogue. Yet antisemitism has returned despite everything.

On January 27, 2000, representatives of 46 governments from around the world gathered in Stockholm to issue a collective declaration of Holocaust remembrance and the continuing fight against antisemitism, racism and prejudice. Then came 9/11, and within days conspiracy theories were flooding the internet claiming it was the work of Israel and its secret service, the Mossad. In April, 2002, on Passover, I was in Florence with a Jewish couple from Paris when they received a phone call from their son, saying, “Mum, Dad, it’s time to leave France. It’s not safe for us here anymore.”

In May, 2007, in a private meeting here in Brussels, I told the three leaders of Europe at the time, Angela Merkel, President of the European Council, Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, and Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the European Parliament, that the Jews of Europe were beginning to ask whether there was a future for Jews in Europe.

That was more than nine years ago. Since then, things have become worse. Already in 2013, before some of the worst incidents, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights found that almost a third of Europe’s Jews were considering emigrating because of anti-Semitism. In France the figure was 46%; in Hungary 48%.

Let me ask you this. Whether you are Jewish or Christian, Muslim: would you stay in a country where you need armed police to guard you while you prayed? Where your children need armed guards to protect them at school? Where, if you wear a sign of your faith in public, you risk being abused or attacked? Where, when your children go to university, they are insulted and intimidated because of what is happening in some other part of the world? Where, when they present their own view of the situation they are howled down and silenced?

This is happening to Jews throughout Europe. In every single country of Europe, without exception, Jews are fearful for their or their children’s future. If this continues, Jews will continue to leave Europe, until, barring the frail and the elderly, Europe will finally have become Judenrein.

On the evening July 14, citizens and tourists gathered on the promenade in Nice, France, to celebrate Bastille Day, but the night would end in horror as the celebrations turned into the largest terrorist attack during 2016’s ‘Summer of Terror.’

The Nice attack, which took place just 90 days ago, would mark the midpoint of a near-constant stream of terror attacks in the West that began with the June 12 mass shooting at The Pulse night club in Orlando by Omar Mateen.

Since the Nice attack at least 20 terror attacks in Western countries have been committed—one nearly every 100 hours.

That pace is just slightly off from how this year’s “Summer of Terror” began. Two weeks after the Nice attack I noted that the pace was nearly one every 84 hours:

ISIS inspired or directed attacks outside Syria/Iraq occurring once every 84 hours since June 8 https://t.co/0Lh5LgphhF

— Patrick Poole (@pspoole) July 26, 2016

That statistic ended up widely circulated in the media, and the attacks would continue up through this past weekend, with this year’s recently concluded summer earning its moniker.

The fall of German Christianity leaves an emptiness that seems likely to be filled by a more multicultural and Islamic society. Germany today houses Europe’s largest Muslim community.

Christians in Germany, Die Welt reports, will become a minority in 20 years.

The falling birth rate will remove a piece of Germany larger than the former communist East Germany. It will result in a demographic loss equivalent to the population of Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne and Frankfurt combined.

The German army just spent 428 million euros on various operations relating to migrants during the past year. It has been the costliest mission within German borders that the army of the Federal Republic of Germany has ever undertaken.

In the decades after WWII, Germans have turned into hard-core pacifists, enjoying their role on the sidelines of global conflicts. The army was then turned into a humanitarian organization.

“Contemporary historians … right now, have failed to find a single historical example of a society that became secularised and maintained its birth rate over subsequent centuries,” the former UK chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, recently argued.

“Falling fertility has coincided so closely with massive secularization that we must at least ask whether the two phenomena are related, even if not in a neat one-to-one relationship”, the scholar Philip Jenkins also said.