Britain Growing Increasingly Anti- Semitic: Really? You Think?

כ״ב לחודש השישי תשע״ד

Britain Growing Increasingly Anti- Semitic
Lloyd Levy, August 18, 2014

I actually never thought I would have to write an article like this, from the green and pleasant land of England. However it is becoming truly frightening to be a Jew in UK. What is so remarkable is how quickly it all appears to have happened. One can now start to experience what it must have been like in parts of Europe under Nazi threat, when friends and neighbours suddenly and without warning, turn on you because you are Jewish.

In the last week or so alone, we have seen the Tricycle Theatre banning the annual JEWISH film festival, which is one of the most important Jewish events of the calendar. The famous Edinburgh Fringe arts festival has also banned Israeli connected theatre groups.

We have the Parliamentary Member from Bradford, a large town in Yorkshire, announcing his town to be “Israeli” free, as well as reading that a leading Scottish Nationalist has apparently declared that an independent Scotland will be “Israeli free”. None of us are surely naïve enough to not understand that in practice it means Judenfrei, unless individual Jews renounce their loyalty to Israel.

Leading Supermarkets have been invaded and ransacked by anti-Israel terrorists, threatening staff and customers. The supermarkets have succumbed to this terrorism, with rumours swirling around that they are soon to stop selling all Israeli products. Only a day or two ago, a major supermarket in Central London, actually took all kosher products off the shelf. Think about that… all Jewish products banned, many not even from Israel at all. Over 100,000 people marched through London recently in an anti-Israel and anti-Jewish orgy of sheer hatred. I know people whose life-long friends are putting the most hideous anti-Semitic ranting on their “Facebook” pages.

Our Jewish so called leaders have let us down. I personally haven’t seen nor read any leading member of our Jewish representative bodies, or Rabbis, standing up in public for our community.

This is not a good time to be a Jew in Britain . Apparently in France it is far worse. We are being cowed and terrorised by home grown anti-Semites, and by imported oriental ones.

Only in the last few days have some of the leading Newspaper columnists begun to wake up to the hatred they have themselves stirred up by their coverage of Gaza, replete with its ancient Jewish blood libel of deliberate child sacrifice.

Natan Sharansky said recently that Europe is death to Jews, and he is so correct. History shows that anything can generate the hatred. If it wasn’t Gaza it would be something else.

Esser Agaroth (2¢):
What can I say? Natan Sharansky is right about at least one thing. Europe IS death to Jews.

The author of this piece, Lloyd Levy, is also right, and provides us with a comprehensive report of recent, Jew-hating events in England.

I am not in the least bit surprised by any of these events, and neither should any of the large number of religious British Jews. These attitudes and events are written all over the Tana"kh (Bible), and elaborated upon by Our Sages, may their memories be for blessings (HaZa"L).

What concerns me about Levy's piece is that he seems to write as if England being Judenfrei is a bad thing. Why is it a bad thing? Jews are not supposed to be living in England; we are supposed to be living in the Land of Israel.

Galuth (exile) is a punishment, a punishment which we have so easily forgotten is a punishment. It does not matter how well British Jews have survived oppression, and have battled against discrimination. It does not matter that British Jews have successfully contributed to British society, and have even produced a Jewish prime minister.

All that matters is that British Jews see the writing on the wall, read it, internalize it, and recognize that it is simply NOT going to go away.

"This is not your home!"

"Get out!"

When Levy says that our leaders have let us down, he is right for the wrong reasons. What would he expect them to do? Fight against Esau (The West) and Yishma'el (Arabs/Muslims) simultaneously?

"Our Jewish so called leaders have let us down. I personally haven’t seen nor read any leading member of our Jewish representative bodies, or Rabbis, standing up in public for our community."

Although correct in this regard, Levy fails to mention any solution to the problems faced by Jews in England and elsewhere, to which, of course, there is only one.

Attitudes such as "sticking around for the fight" and "not giving up" [on our countries of exile] are completely misguided.

Only recently, European Jewish Congress President Dr. Moshe Kantor expressed the same sort of sentiment. Kantor himself compared the current atmosphere in Europe with that of pre-World War II Europe, in other words, pre-Holocaust Europe. Kantor definitely appears to be one of those so called leaders which are letting British, and other European, Jews down.

Why are our so called leaders blind to this? Are they afraid of losing their power? Their positions? Their money? Haven't they thought about their lives? The families? Their future?

Is the answer to another Holocaust scenario really to stick around and fight? Fight for what? To continuing living in the Exile?

England is not the home of the Jewish People. Neither is France nor the U. S. of A. The Land of Israel is our home. However, even now that the gates to our Homeland have been opened, many of us are still stuck, unwilling to give up the lives that we know, in exchange for the unknown challenges of building a new life in Israel, which most of us still see as a foreign country, or at best, an historical tourist attraction.

And, before you get the chance to list the countless flaws of the Israeli Government, allow me to beat you to the punch. Whether we have the ideal people in charge, throwing orders around, or the ideal form of government controlling the Land of Israel, or not, is irrelevant. Either we will step up to the plate, and form a proper Jewish government, or wait around for Mashi'ah to do it for us. Either way, the Labor Zionist State of Israel is only temporary.

At the risk of being accused of being an alarmist and Apocalyptic nut job, I would like to suggest that it is only going to get worse. I would like to believe that The Almighty does not want to leave a single one of His People behind, and needs to get our attention somehow. As I said above, this should not come as a surprise. However, it does. This is the sort of thing which happens, after 2,000 years of being inundated by the influence of cultures, not our own.

Many of us, even rabbis, have gone so far as to internalize the confusion of Western, cultural values and sensibilities with our own. They are not one and the same.

Likewise, many of us, even rabbis, have internalized the confusion of Western lands of exile with our own true Homeland.

The thought of picking up and moving to Israel is the furthest thought from their minds!

And so, galuth is so deeply ingrained within us, that it have to take a particularly nasty kick in the pants to snap us out of it, and to get us ready, both mentally and spiritually, to come home.

May The Almighty have mercy on us!