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Tag: jews

conservatism Culture wars USA 

Jews and conservatism: an idea whose time has come

Melanie, , ,

Last Sunday, I took part in the Jewish Leadership Conference in New York on Jews and conservatism. There were some excellent presentations from a line-up including Ruth Wisse, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, Jonathan Haidt, Yoram Hazony and others. The point of the conference was, in the JLC’s own words, to harness the power of conservative ideas to strengthen the Jewish people and revitalise American civic life. It is not over-dramatic to say this is a project that is urgently needed to save the west. For the past several decades, the bedrock…

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antisemitism Britain 

UK Jewish community leaders lose the plot on antisemitism, hate and lies

Melanie, , ,

The Jewish community leadership has been pleading with the Labour Party to deal properly with antisemitism and become again the party of moral decency. Surely no-one in the Jewish leadership believes this will happen? Even if the party adopts the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, does anyone really think its antisemitism will then go away? The core problem goes way beyond Labour. It is that the new antisemitism, expressed through virulent anti-Israelism, is now the defining motif for “progressive” circles. This attitude intrinsically repudiates the unique right of the…

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conservatism Culture wars USA 

Judaism under attack: the Orwellian hijack of tikkun olam

Melanie, , ,

Throughout the west, the left has a big problem with Israel. This much is well established. In America, the Jewish community has a big problem with galloping assimilation, intermarriage and the steady abandonment of Judaism by its children. This much is also now all too obvious. What’s less appreciated is the extent to which the two are symbiotically linked, and the disturbing implications of how that link works. It’s not just that so many Jews are leaving the faith. It’s not just that the loss of connection to Judaism produces…

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Britain Israel USA 

Israel gets the nation-state right while the west fumbles with identity

Melanie, , ,

Two utterly fundamental and seismic issues are threatening to tear apart Britain, Europe and America. They are mass immigration and national identity. The majority of Jews in Britain and America are warmly disposed towards the former and terrified of the latter. They have got it precisely the wrong way round. Diaspora Jews have a Pavlovian response to immigration. This is entirely understandable: the vast majority, myself included, are the descendants of immigrants and refugees. Jews are also commanded in the Torah not to wrong or oppress a stranger “for you…

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Culture wars Israel 

Time to leave? The question the Jews of Britain and Europe must ponder

Melanie, , ,

These are alarming times for Jews in Britain and Europe. The British Labour Party is convulsed over the realization that it is riddled with antisemitism. Jeremy Corbyn, its leader and a friend to Hamas, has been exposed as belonging to Facebook groups hosting claims that the Jews were behind ISIS and 9/11, that the Rothschilds controlled the world’s finances and other such paranoid theories. The backwash from the exposure of these groups revealed a tsunami of anti-Jewish insults, smears and libels by Labour supporters. Corbyn’s responses, often truculent and insulting…

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Global conflict 

Time to go? Simon Wiesenthal memorial lecture

Melanie, ,

Last week, I was privileged to deliver the Simon Wiesenthal memorial lecture at St John’s Wood synagogue in London. My title was “Time to go? Jews in Britain and Europe”. Did I answer my own question? Find out by watching a recording of the event below. An edited version of the text of the lecture is due to be published in the June issue of Commentary magazine, which will be on line next month.

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Labour party antisemitism Britain 

Giddy at their boldness – but Corbyn didn’t cause Labour antisemitism. He’s its product

Melanie, , ,

Giddy from having put its collective head above the parapet for the first time ever, Britain’s Jewish community leadership is telling itself that it has managed to change the political weather. Earlier this week, the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council published a blistering attack on Labour’s leader Jeremy Corbyn for facilitating antisemitism in his party. A demonstration they called outside Parliament, which brought around 2,000 mainly Jewish people onto the streets, produced the extraordinary sight of dozens of Labour MPs turning up to express solidarity against their…

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Labour party antisemitism Britain 

Open and shut case

Melanie, , ,

An open letter backed by more than 2,000 supporters of Jeremy Corbyn has claimed that the Jewish community’s protest against antisemitism in the Labour Party was the work of a “very powerful special interest group”, the Independent reports. Some 2000 people turned up at Monday’s demonstration. There are around 65 million people in the UK. The Jewish community numbers about 270,000. There are an estimated 2.8 million British Muslims. The letter says the organisers of the demonstration had mobilised its “immense strength” to “employ the full might of the BBC” in order…

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