Dear Family and Friends, Dati or Secular, amv"sh
I usually do not send emails out that are so disturbing and alarming. If the rise of antisemitism is happening in Britain, then Canada and America have reason to worry....
How to effectively combat antisemitism?
It is my opinion that there is a strong correlation between Am Yisroel's longing and desire for Eretz Yisroel and to keep the commandments of the Torah in Eretz Yisroel, with the rise and fall of Antisemitism.
Yawn, "Yeah right" you say and then off you go on to your next email. This one is getting too long and too wordy.. What has this to do with the Hell in Britain?
But I beg you to continue reading.
All religous Jews agree that Torah observance can only reach is full capacity within the Land of Israel and with our Beit Hamikdash.
Yawn again. This is nothing new.
The religious and the secular don't like to talk about this practically and as relevant.
On to the next email...this ones not saying anything...too much musar (rebuke..)
The religious say that they believe that Eretz Yisroel belongs to us but act as if its an ellusive dream for the future. They go around their daily lives as if the events taking place in Israel and the world are of no reflection or consequence as to the way they are observing the commandments of the Torah Not talking Lashon Hara and davening harder are emphasized among other select commandments and typically satisfy the religious requirements of observance of the Torah commandments.
Keeping the Land itself is of no major consequence. The typical religious Jew will sit on the side watching, perhaps in dismay, as events unfold and as the political parties that represent them make deals with those that wish to give away Eretz Yisroel,
The secular Zionists too have abandoned the Land. When we talk about the observance of Torah commandments, the secular are terrified of religious coercion. When we talk of observing commandments they perhaps are afraid that they will be forced to dress in a certain way and their lifestyle will be cramped because of not being able to turn on lights on Shabbos or travel.
These are some of the misconceptions of the religious Jew and the secular Jew!
The Land is necessary for Torah observance and Torah does not cramp ones lifestyle.
Therefore, To effectively fight antisemitism we must agree on these basic points:
1. The Torah is the blueprint for each and every Jew and a model for the entire world.
2. Eretz Yisroel is the birthright of the Jewish Nation and the laws and precepts of the Torah must be observed in the Land.
Once these two fundamental premises are engraved in our mindset we will act differently
No stone will be unturned to make sure that the land remains in Jewish hands protected and secure and to see the relationship between the Jewish People and the Land as holy and sanctified as with a holy marriage.
This means no talk of reciprocity or of other responsible partners..
I believe that when the Jews clearly claim our entitlement of the Land of Israel, reject in principle and in action the formation of a Palestinian State because Eretz Yisroel is our birthright and because only Am Yisroel have the mandate to keep the commandments in the Land, than the forces of antisemitism will dissipate.
Therefore, rather than turn our energies into fighting a monster that is too great for us, we must put all our energies into creating the facts on the ground, such as political reform in Israel and in uniting in proclaiming our Divine Inheritance and acting to do whatever we can to secure and protect this Divine gift of ours.
If after taking these steps the forces of evil continue to grow and the forces of antisemitism seems to be on an all time high, we must remember what happened in Egypt. We must stand firm in our belief in the Torah and in Hakadosh Baruch Hu and be like the generation coming out of Egypt who cried out to Hashem and were worthy of seeing miraculous miracles. G-d says I will fight for you and you will be Silent. (Anochi Alacheim Lachem Veatem Tacharishu!)
From: hanna jaffa erez <hannajaffa@rogers.com>
Date: Sun, Feb 8, 2009 at 1:40 PM
Subject: Fw: Hell Arrives in Britain
To: Robin Ticker <faigerayzel@gmail.com>
Dear Friends,
This article by Melanie Phillips reinforces our need to take a close look at what is happening with Canadian universities – already many of our students state that they have to deal with intimidation when going to class. What is happening in British universities could happen here in Ontario if the administrations at many of our universities continue to turn a blind eye to the behavior of some students which contravenes the university's Code of Behavior. It's time that we started to look at this issue YERY seriously.
Shirley Anne Haber
The Media Action Group
The jihad against Britain's Jews
Friday, 6th February 2009 Melanie Phillips
I am hearing ever more alarming accounts of the deepening attrition against British Jews in the wake of the incitement against Israel provoked by the war in Gaza. In addition to the record number of attacks upon Jewish individuals and institutions and murderous incitement displayed on the anti-Israel demonstrations and riots as reported by the Community Security Trust, Jewish parents report that their children – some as young as eight – are now running a gauntlet of attack from their Muslim classmates at school who accuse them of 'killing Palestinian children'. Comments by adults about 'Jews controlling all the money/the media/the BBC' (yes, really! All because it allowed Israel's spokesman to put the case for Israel from time to time) are now commonplace in both private and public discourse. Today's Jewish Chronicle reports that a 12 year-old Birmingham schoolgirl was terrorised by a mob of 20 youths chanting 'Kill all Jews' and 'Death to Jews' on her way home from school last week:
She said: 'One of my friends said an Asian girl from the year above asked her why she was talking to me because I am Jewish. I asked the girl in a friendly manner if she had a problem with me being Jewish. She said "yeah, I do". I managed to punch her before she hit me but then she grabbed me by the hair and swung me around shouting "f****** Jews, I hate Jews". But then another Asian girl rounded up a whole gang. They were all in school uniform and they came running towards me shouting "death to Jews" and "kill all Jews."'
A reader has sent me the following account of what happened to him when, travelling on the Tube in London, he started to read a copy of The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz:
After a time, I became aware that a man sitting diagonally in front of me near the doors at the end of the carriage was looking a bit agitated and had a disgruntled expression on his face. However, he didn't meet my eye, so I thought nothing more of it and continued reading as before...When the train reached St Paul's, the man I had noticed stood up to get off. But instead of leaving by the end doors, he made to pass me. In the process of doing so, he deliberately shoved into me and made to crush me against the side of the carriage and the passengers sitting behind me. Despite already knowing exactly what had actuated this behaviour, I asked the question anyway - and received the following response: 'You shouldn't be reading that, you f***ing [indecipherable].'...The whole confrontation had taken place in the time it took for the tube doors to wheeze open and shut.
Other than in the Jewish press, such incidents are barely being reported. Last week, for example, there was virtually no coverage of the violent demonstration organised by the Stop the War coalition which prevented the deputy commander of Israel's Gaza operation from speaking at London's Jewish student centre, Hillel House, when a crowd of about 60-80 students attempted to storm the building.
One of the most troubling developments is the way in which the universities have become an extension of the Middle East conflict, with a simulacrum of the aggression, intimidation and violence from which Israel is under attack by the Arabs being directed at Jewish students on British campuses, who now routinely run a gauntlet of intimidation and abuse from Arab and Muslim students. But even more worryingly, some universities are spinelessly choosing to give in to such bullying.
Throughout last week, after the cease-fire was declared in Gaza, there was a series of anti-Israel sit-ins and demonstrations organised by the STWC at some 17 universities: in London at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the London School of Economics, Queen Mary College and King's College, as well as at Bradford, Sheffield Hallam, Warwick, Leeds, Oxford, Cambridge, Sussex, Essex, Nottingham, Birmingham, Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan and Strathclyde. Some of these protests led to criminal damage and forced the universities to pay thousands of pounds to deal with the disruption, rearrange lectures, hire extra security guards and repair the damage.
The demonstrators took control of lecture halls and made a series of demands: that the universities should issue a statement condemning Israel's actions in Gaza; offer scholarships to Palestinian students; send surplus educational materials to help rebuild Gaza (presumably its Islamic University, said by Israel to be a fount of terror); dedicate some of their time to fund-raising for Gaza; and take no action against the demonstrators.
Some of these universities responded robustly to such disorder and intimidation. Manchester Metropolitan, Birmingham, Nottingham and, after some delay, Leeds and Cambridge reportedly refused to accept any of these demands. At Nottingham and Sheffield Hallam, the demonstrators were forcibly evicted.
But the LSE, King's College London, SOAS, Bradford, Strathclyde and Oxford reportedly gave in to some or all of these demands. According to the JC, the LSE agreed to waive application fees for Gaza and West Bank students 'directly affected by the conflict', while Bradford
agreed to investigate the 'ethical background' of food and drink served on campus, and promised to 'explore the feasibility of a twinning link with the Islamic University of Gaza'.
Strathclyde agreed among other things to cancel a contract with an Israeli water-cooler company. Oxford – which fined each demonstrator the princely sum of £20 – nevertheless started negotiations with them with indecent haste, and a mere few hours later had agreed to pretty well everything. In a craven letter to colleagues the Vice-Chancellor, John Hood, having stated that
unlawful action of this kind cannot be condoned
proceeded to reward it by giving the perpetrators what they had demanded.
The Oxford demonstrators also demanded that the title of the series of lectures on 'world peace' at Balliol, recently inaugurated by Israeli President Shimon Peres and named in his honour, be changed; the Senior Proctor, Professor Donald Fraser -- who oversees disciplinary matters and who recommended 'a relatively lenient course of action against the demonstrators '-- duly wrote to Balliol drawing its attention to the students' concerns.
Thus the trahison des clercs as they crumble in the face of criminality, violence and intimidation.
And so now at British universities --which should be the most protected of all environments for free discourse and inquiry -- British Jews no longer feel safe. At Nottingham, one such student said:
The sit-in has created an atmosphere where we do not feel comfortable going into shared buildings on campus.
At King's, another Jewish student said:
Someone from my course wrote 'kill the Jews' on my Facebook profile. Later he said he didn't know I was Jewish. In public someone said to me, 'I think all the Israelis are crazy and so are the f***ing Jews'.
And at Oxford, the JC reports:
One University Reader reportedly told a meeting that 'within five years, Oxford will be a Jew-free zone'
and a student wrote to Professor Fraser warning that
for Jewish students, the university and the city have developed a toxic atmosphere in which I and many others feel increasingly alienated and unwelcome.
Meanwhile, of course, as Sky's Tim Marshall pointed out the other day on his blog, the government of Sri Lanka is also attempting to eradicate terrorism by a military campaign in which, according to the UN, 'many civilians are being killed', thousands made homeless, hundreds of thousands trapped, and to which, as food shortages grow, the government refuses to allow access to journalists. Yet there are no sit-ins on campus against the Sri Lankans, no violent riots outside its High Commission, no calls to boycott Orange Pekoe tea. As Marshall observed:
And yet somehow the lives of the 1,300 Palestinians killed by the Israelis causes far more outrage, in certain quarters, than the 2 million dead in Congo, the tens of thousands of Iraqis killed by Sunni and Shia terrorists, or the growing number of Sri Lankan dead to add to the 70,000 killed over the past 25 years (far more than the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed in the same period).
Of course – because the protests in Britain have nothing to do with humanitarian concerns for the innocent. They are part of the jihad against the Jews – and those in the universities and other parts of the establishment who are capitulating to or even endorsing this are accomplices to a great evil that is now consuming British public life.
Accessed 7 February 2009, http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3329296/the-jihad-against-britains-jews.thtml
09-02-06, Melanie Phillips, "The jihad against Britain's Jews," spectator.co.uk, 6 February 2009, http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3329296/the-jihad-against-britains-jews.thtml (accessed 7 February 2009).
