Welcome back. We hope you had a relaxing holiday wherever you were. If like us, you had one and a half eyes on the kids and half a furtive glancing eye towards your media fix, you might need a thirty second recap on all things Jewish in the news.
Let’s start with some good news. Following an intervention from our founder Rabbi Margolin on behalf of the EJA to the Danish Government, we received a personal letter from the Danish Minister of Health Ms. Trane Norby, where she states that the government rejects the ban of circumcision for boys. As regular readers will know however, this issue regularly appears on the political radar In Scandinavia (Iceland, Denmark and Norway, all within the last couple of years), so we doubt that this will be an end to the matter in the region. We will of course stay across it.
Jeremy Corbyn spent the summer offending Jews and facing a deluge of photos in newspapers at wreath laying ceremonies for Palestinian terrorists, meetings with Hamas figures, and saying that Jews don’t get English irony. Rather like the many Republicans in whose eyes Trump can do no wrong, so a bulwark of Corbynistas (yes they have a denomination now) are convincing themselves anti-Semitism is being used to get Corbyn, but haven’t quite managed to figure out that it’s because Mr Corbyn is in fact an anti-Semite…this one has more legs than a super-model reunion so stay tuned for the inevitable latest drips of this sad saga.
But the big news of the summer? It’s one that rather like the Jerusalem embassy move, that just underpinned what was obvious to everyone, Israel officially became a “Jewish State”. You would think that the star of David on the flag, as well as airline fins would have been a bit of a give-away, but apparently not, with much hostility in the European media to the move.
Arguably, as a shrewd observer noted in Germany’s Die Welt, the legislation could be considered technically unnecessary because the "Jewish-character" of The State of Israel is already symbolized in the state's name, the dominance of the Hebrew language as well as on national and urban emblems. The seven-decades old “Law of the Return", which only grants Jews automatic right to settle in Israel, also testifies to Israel’s Jewish predominance.
But the richness of Israel’s multicultural democracy has continually been safeguarded by Supreme Court rulings allowing Israeli Arabs to hound and even delegitimize the state - emphasizing each citizen’s right to free-speech. Ironically, court decisions have also upheld the right of democratically elected Arab parliament members to call for Israel’s end.
The furore seems to expose the global community's vast acceptance of an 'entity' called the "State of Israel" but only as a temporary, democratic, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and secular 'project' - with an eventual, demographically imposed expiration date.
Many of Israel’s detractors, including Mahmoud Abbas, clearly only recognize Israel as a temporary phenomenon to be discarded once the ever-growing Arab population gains a majority - regardless of how many generations this could take.
So in short is the outrage emanating from this law demonstrative that the global community still has trouble fathoming permanent, Jewish-led national independence? It would appear so.
What this new law alerts us to is that far too many leaders and their followers, worldwide, are committed opponents of Jews running their own destiny.
Thank you as always for your support. Until next time.
Ps. If you haven’t done so yet, please register for our EJA conference in November, and if you are in Brussels on the 4th September, join us in the European Parliament in raising a glass to honor the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. You can find more details below.
