Geoffrey Alderman on Margaret Hodge

Here's Geoffrey Alderman in The Jewish Telegraph taking a bit of a swipe at Margaret Hodge.  Because of The Jewish Telegraph's habit of pasting the latest article over the previous one I save Alderman's pieces to the Wayback Machine and copy and paste them here:

GEOFFREY ALDERMAN DAME MARGARET HAS SOME EXPLAINING TO DO

THE abysmal showing of the Labour Party in the recent European Parliament elections is the cumulative outcome of many factors. Prominent among them are said to be the prevalence of anti-Jewish prejudice in the party and the party’s seeming inability to confront the difficulty head-on. Of course Labour has a problem with antisemitism. But so do the Tories. So does virtually every mainstream political party in this country. In Labour’s case, however, antisemitism (too often not even disguised as anti-Zionism) has led to the exodus from the party of some of its members, and dire public warnings from others, among the most prominent of whom is Dame Margaret Hodge, Labour MP for Barking and former leader of Islington council. On April 17, in a short but forceful speech in the House of Commons, Dame Margaret gave public expression to her concerns. Born in 1944 as Margaret Oppenheimer to Jewish parents then living as refugees in Egypt, she spoke movingly of members of her family who had been murdered by the Nazis, and she recalled how, on a visit to Auschwitz, she gazed upon a mound of suitcases, one of which she recognised as it bore the initials of her uncle. Powerful stuff! And, politically, more compelling still for what Hodge had to say specifically — and not for the first time — about the Labour Party of which she has been for more than 50 years a member and remains so to this day. Ever since Jeremy Corbyn’s election as party leader, Hodge has, in fact, spent a great deal of time attacking her own party for not doing enough to stamp out antisemitism in its ranks, and she has made no secret of her personal disdain for Corbyn, whom (in a celebrated incident in the Commons on July 17 last year) she reportedly accused of being “an antisemitic racist”. Dame Margaret is unquestionably Jewish. Yet, according to her own testimony (offered in the April, 2019, debate): “My upbringing has been entirely secular. “I have never practised Jewish religious traditions. Neither of my two husbands were Jews. I am a consistent critic of the governments of Israel.” Nonetheless, she added, “my Jewish heritage is central to my being”. In an article in the online Spectator on May 8, I drew attention to the fact that as Labour leader of Islington council from 1982 to 1992, Hodge appears to have played a part — though exactly what part remains unclear — in the council’s decision to approve a planning application that would have led to the destruction of the original 1843 cemetery of the West London Synagogue and the sale of the land to developers. I was part of the ultimately successful campaign to have the decision reversed. So was Jeremy Corbyn. Was Mrs Hodge personally in favour of the proposal? We simply do not know. Hodge has claimed — in The Observer on July 21, 2103 — that she feels “passionately Jewish”. In October, 1986, members of Islington council — not all of whom were Jewish, by the way— were moved to protest against the scheduling of a race relations committee meeting on Yom Kippur. Council leader Hodge apparently saw nothing untoward in attending the meeting. Three years later, the media reported that members of Hackney’s Jewish communities were holding “top-level meetings with Islington council” in an attempt to buy an Islington-owned property in Stamford Hill, which the communities wanted to turn into a nursery and old people’s home. According to press reports, “Islington leader, Margaret Hodge . . . informed groups that Islington intended to use the building for people in bed-and-breakfast accommodation”. Hodge denied that the move was in any way discriminatory. But her apparent lack of empathy with the educational and social needs of practising Orthodox Jews surely needs some explaining. If Hodge wishes to pursue a totally secular lifestyle, that is no business of mine or yours, but she certainly has some explaining to do! E-MAIL: comment@jewishtelegraph.com If you have a story or an issue you want us to cover, let us know - in complete confidence - by contacting newsdesk@jewishtelegraph.com, 0161-741 2631 or via Facebook / Twitter

Geoffrey Alderman on JEWS WHO TURNED AWAY KINDERTRANSPORT KIDS

Here's another article by Geoffrey Alderman in the Jewish Telegraph which, like the previous one will probably be overwritten by the next.  So off to the Wayback Machine go I and I'm posting the article here too.

GEOFFREY ALDERMAN JEWS WHO TURNED AWAY KINDERTRANSPORT KIDS LAST month an important conference took place to mark the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport. Two leading researchers — Dr Louise London and Professor Paul Weindling — presented what was reportedly regarded as shocking evidence relating to the choice of unaccompanied German and Austrian children who were — or were not — permitted to enter the UK under the Kindertransport scheme. Children were refused places if it was thought that they had ‘disabilities’ or had ‘too Jewish’ an appearance. What was wanted were children who were not religious and so could be all the more easily integrated into British society. Prof Weindling cited the case of a Viennese Jewish boy whom the authorities described as “very well behaved but very slightly mentally backward”. The application made on his behalf was rejected. We do not know what fate befell him. As Dr London remarked, the “problem of what to do with the Jews took precedence over efforts to save them”. I describe the evidence presented by Prof Weindling and Dr London as “shocking”. Unfortunately, those of us who have researched the Anglo-Jewish response to the Holocaust cannot have regarded it was shocking at all. Key to the choice of Kindertransport children was the Jewish banker Otto Schiff, head of the London-based Jews’ Temporary Shelter and ‘Overseer of the Poor’ of the United Synagogue. Schiff worked hand-in-hand with the Aliens Department of the Home Office, so that, in practical terms, Jewish refugees from Nazism were allowed into Britain — or were refused entry — on his authority. The Home Office trusted Schiff because it knew that, in his approach to this task, he would bring to bear prejudices and preferences of which the government approved. The Viennese boy was not rejected by the British government, but by Kindertransport officials in London. That is to say, by fellow Jews! Is there a case to be made in defence of Schiff and his colleagues? Anti-Jewish prejudice appeared to be on the rise in the UK at that time. With a handful of notable exceptions, the Anglo-Jewish leadership — at the head of which was the then-Board of Deputies president, Mancunian barrister Neville Laski — believed that allowing more foreign-born Germanic-speaking Jews into this country would add fuel to the fire. Laski had no qualms in publicly articulating the view that Jews, by their conduct, fostered antisemitism. In his book Manchester and the Rescue of the Victims of European Fascism (published 2011), the late Manchester Jewry historian Bill Williams reminds us that in December, 1935, the Manchester-based Women’s Lodge of Bnai Brith resolved that “the spread of antisemitism in England is largely brought about by ourselves”. But I need to stress that what was true of Manchester was equally true of London. Indeed within British Jewry this view was widely shared. And because it was widely shared, during the 1930s the official organs of Britain’s Jewish communities did their best to ensure that the least possible number of Jewish refugees were admitted to the UK, and that, as far as possible, only those were admitted who might be judged to be the most easily inclined to assimilate into the host society. Beyond that, the fewer foreign-born Jews who were permitted to enter the UK, the better. And what of those heavily traumatised children lucky enough to be chosen for the Kindertransport? Had they all been found billets in Jewish homes, their sufferings might have been lessened. But in 1943, Dayan Dr Isidor Grunfeld, of the United Synagogue’s Beth Din, recalled how in 1938, when the Kindertransport began arriving, Jews who had been only too willing to donate money to refugee causes “showed themselves very reluctant to take Jewish refugee children into their homes”. While a case can be made in defence of Otto Schiff and his colleagues, it strikes me as weak. As for Schiff himself, I never cease to be amazed at the praise still lavished upon him. I noted with dismay that as part of the 2018 Holocaust Memorial Day events, a number of posthumous awards were made to ‘Heroes of the Holocaust’. Among the recipients was Otto Schiff, upon whose activities the then-Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, waxed lyrical. Indeed, so preciously revered is Schiff’s memory in certain circles that a Jewish Care home in Golders Green actually bears his name. I am outraged. E-MAIL: comment@jewishtelegraph.com If you have a story or an issue you want us to cover, let us know - in complete confidence - by contacting newsdesk@jewishtelegraph.com, 0161-741 2631 or via Facebook / Twitter

© 2019 Jewish Telegraph
www.JewishTelegraph.com

The original of this article can be seen at the Wayback Machine.

Geoffrey Alderman on Jeremy Corbyn in Jewish Telegraph

I'm sad to say that The Jewish Telegraph website is a cheap and not very cheerful affair. I don't know if they maintain an archive but I couldn't find it if they do. Geoffrey Alderman came to the defence of Jeremy Corbyn just recently in the article you see below. He wrote another similar one in The Spectator. I just wanted a quick reread of the Jewish Telegraph article but, alas, it has now gone. This is the url for the original article https://www.jewishtelegraph.com/alderman.html. Click it now and it takes you to his latest article with no pointer to his previous stuff.

Well thank goodness for the Wayback machine.  The Wayback machine is a way of archiving web pages that you think might change or disappear. Simply take a web page's url and paste it into the box marked "Save Page Now" and Wayback saves the page as it was when you do it.  Well as luck would have it, someone did just that with this https://www.jewishtelegraph.com/alderman.html.  And so I can bring you this:   https://web.archive.org/web/20190419203707/https://www.jewishtelegraph.com/alderman.html

It is the only Jewish Telegraph page ever saved to the Wayback machine, so far anyway.

So now, if you see a web page that you think is going to disappear or change and you want the original, screengrab and archive in the Wayback Machine.

Now read on....

GEOFFREY ALDERMAN HORRORS! CORBYN’S A ‘PM IN WAITING’ – ACCEPT IT

WE live in interesting times. Earlier this month, our beleaguered prime minister, Theresa May, invited into 10 Downing Street Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Her purpose in extending this invitation — which he graciously accepted — was to enlist his support in the current crisis over the precise terms of the UK’s exit from the European Union. But don’t worry. I’m not going to bore you about Brexit. My purpose, rather, is to focus on the person of Jeremy Corbyn, whom we must now clearly regard as a potential prime minister. The opinion polls, which for months have been showing the Corbyn-led Labour Party trailing the May-led Tories, are now announcing a Labour lead. I would be the last person to insist that we must trust the polls. We mustn’t. But if a general election was held soon, it is entirely possible that Labour would win more seats than the Conservative Party, whose back has been well and truly broken on the Brexit wheel. In that scenario, the Queen would be bound to call on Corbyn to form a minority government. What, from the point of view of British Jewry, would such a government hold in store? In spite of numerous scare stories, I honestly can’t see such a government banning shechita or brit mila. If Diane Abbott, currently Shadow Home Secretary, found herself actually in charge of the Home Office, would she outrage her many charedi constituents by closing down synagogues and moving to deprive Jews of the rights of British citizenship? Of course not. We might indeed see a Corbyn-led government cosying-up to the BDS movement. Labour is already committed to recognising a Palestinian state “immediately” it forms a government, so such a recognition is a probability. Would Israel then sever diplomatic relations with the UK? I doubt it. The recognition of a Palestinian state would remain a symbolic but, in practical terms, meaningless gesture. Corbyn’s Foreign Secretary (the tactless Emily Thornberry) might enjoy striding on to the podium at the UN Security Council to support — perhaps even to propose — some blood-curdling resolution denouncing the Jewish state as a neo-colonialist plot. She would do so safe in the knowledge that American president Donald Trump would veto it. And let’s remember that on December 23, 2016, in the dying days of the Obama-led administration, a UN Security Council resolution condemning in the most explicit terms Jewish control of the West Bank and east Jerusalem — including the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and the Western Wall — was adopted with the full-hearted consent and approbation of Theresa May and her tactless Foreign Secretary, one Boris Johnson. The Tory-controlled UK government could have abstained. It could even have exercised its veto. It chose to do neither. Reacting to that act of betrayal, I outlined in this column on January 13, 2017, a number of concrete measures that those who order the affairs of British Jewry might have taken to signal the community’s anger. I suggested that May and Johnson could be disinvited from all communal events, and that Jewish groups should withdraw from co-operation with May’s government — for instance over security issues and the anti-terrorism “Prevent” agenda. A communal macher took me aside and pointed out that these bold suggestions would never be acted upon, because those who order the affairs of British Jewry would never forego the chance of a Downing Street photoshoot and the yichus that such an opportunity apparently confers. He’s right. By the same token, our narcissistic communal leadership would positively salivate on receiving, and being able to courteously accept, an invitation from Prime Minister Corbyn to take morning coffee or afternoon tea at No 10. As a matter of fact, Jeremy Corbyn has an impressive demonstrable record of supporting Jewish communal initiatives. In 2010, he put his name to an Early Day Motion — tabled by Diane Abbott in the Commons — calling on the UK government to facilitate the settlement of Yemeni Jews in Britain. He was supportive of Jewish efforts to facilitate the speedy issue of death certificates by the North London coroner. In June, 2015, he took part in a ceremony in his Islington constituency to commemorate the original site of the North London Synagogue. Of course, there’s another side to this story. In relation to Jewish sensitivities, Corbyn has on too many occasions acted foolishly, I suspect without thinking through the long-term consequences of his actions. The fact remains that he is a prime minister “in waiting”. We must learn to accept that reality. E-MAIL: comment@jewishtelegraph.com If you have a story or an issue you want us to cover, let us know - in complete confidence - by contacting newsdesk@jewishtelegraph.com, 0161-741 2631 or via Facebook / Twitter