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7 October 2021 Jewish News
www.jewishnews.co.uk
Conservative Party Conference
Jacob Rees-Mogg has defended religious slaughter including kosher slaughter after LBC radio presenter Iain Dale used a fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference to call for halal meat to be “completely banned, like it is in some other countries”. Jacob Rees-Mogg with fans The leader of the House of Commons was taking part in the had expressed concern about bans TaxPayers’ Alliance Question Time on halal or kosher food, Rees-Mogg event in Manchester when he and said: “I, too, would be reluctant to the other panel members were asked ban halal or kosher slaughter. “I think religious freedom is very if they would support new laws meaning food needed to be labelled important and in a world where reladetailing whether an animal had tions between various religions can sometimes be quite sensitive – the been stunned prior to being killed. Responding to the question from Labour Party has had a particular an audience member, Dale, who issue with antisemtism – one does was chairing Sunday’s session, said: not want to do anything that would “I’ve done a few phone-ins on this. seem to be directed against a parIt seems to me – I’m going to ticular religion. “And yes there’s a balance in alienate some people in the audience now – that halal meat should be animal rights – and it’s a question of completely banned like it is in some really how cruel is it.” An audience member, who did other countries.” After the panellist Kate Andrews not give his name, had mentioned
Gove: Labour unchanged
Michael Gove has claimed that the Labour Party that elected Jeremy Corbyn is the “same party” that elected its current leader, writes Lee Harpin. The communities secretary said it was “undoubtably the case Sir Keir Starmer has sought to efface some of the memory of Corbyn”, and that the “core Corbynite team are marginalised and unhappy”. But he said Starmer had not emerged from last week’s Labour Conference having had the “confrontation with identity politics it needs to before it moves back into the mainstream”. Asked whether Labour has changed, Gove said he would “leave that for others to decide”. Gove, whose new role
New role: Michael Gove
includes the task of pursuing the government’s “levelling up” strategy, said he “did not get the sense” that Labour was in sympathy with the real concerns of working people. Speaking at a Policy Exchange fringe event, he said he believed the public’s full realisation of what Corbyn actually stood for did not happen until after the 2017 general election.
“Some of the things that were said about Corbyn just seemed incredible,” he said. “If you were inside, you knew he had been a supporter of Irish republicanism, his views on security and defence, and on how his views on the Middle East translated into his view on fighting antisemitism at home.” But he said that by 2019 “the evidence was there”, including the way Corbyn “grotesquely manhandled the need to protect Jewish members of his own party”. He said he thought it was “possible for Labour to recover and reconnect” but only after the party had properly confronted the obsession with identity politics.
BOARD LAUNCHES AWARENESS DRIVE The Board of Deputies has launched its first awareness and fundraising campaign. The #WeStandForEveryBODy campaign aims to improve the Jewish community’s understanding of its work and increase the proportion of synagogue members who pay the annual communal contribution, its main source of income. The campaign will run from October to December 2021 on social media and via email. President Marie van der Zyl said: “For too long, the BoD has been one of the Jewish community’s best-kept secrets, working behind the scenes on a wide range of impor-
tant issues that affect us all at some stage of our lives. “We need the community’s support to continue our work so it’s time to come out of the shadows and show everyone what we’ve been doing for the last 260 years – and how they can ensure that work continues.” The Board, which recently celebrated its 260th anniversary, also commissioned two short videos to demonstrate its work. The first explains the BoD’s role and highlights some of its achievements, while the second features some of the people who say they have benefited from the Board’s support.
in his question to the panel that on LBC radio there had recently “been coverage of meat being sold in restaurants, which is halal and kosher – ie animals being slaughtered without stunning... a religious issue. “Yet this meat is not being labelled as non-stunned meat.” On the back of a recent announcement by the government to open a consultation on the labelling processes around meat, the audience member then asked the panel: “Would you support a law that means food is labelled saying whether the animal has been stunned or not?” The New Statesman’s political editor Stephen Bush then said: “I’m not aware, as someone who is Jewish, [that] there is a vast difference between how Muslims kill their food and we kill ours to suggest halal should be banned and kosher food should not.” Bush then argued that it would be a “particularly bad idea to mandate every restaurant that prepared it that way, to do so” because he said it would leave these establishments open to a “violent terrorist threat”.
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27 May 2020
BRITAIN’S BLIND SP O T •
16 Sivan 5781
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Issue No.1212
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We’ve never been so focuse d on fighting racism, so wh y the deafen ing silence as antisemitism spirals out of control? • Hospital probes ‘cutt
• Driver with Israeli hroat gesture’ to Jewish patient attacked in Golders Gree • Crucifixion banner flaghuge n pro-Palestini • BBC journalist’s #Hitatlerw an demo • Nearly 300 antisemitic asright tweet revealed
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Journey’s end
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David Frost
past,” said Frost, the government’s chief negotiator. “We are very aware of that problem, we are very concerned about it, and we will get it sorted.” In July, Board of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl and Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis met with Belfast Jewish community chairman Michael Black and local Jewish religious leader the Reverend David Kale “to urge the government to take action to avoid the Northern Ireland Protocol potentially ending Jewish life in Belfast”. The protocol row affects the part of the Brexit deal that creates a border in the Irish Sea. Earlier this week Lord Frost threatened to invoke Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Brexit agreement, which would suspend key parts of the Brexit treaty and could see a hard border emerge.
by Lee Harpin at the Conservative Conference in Manchester lee@jewishnews.co.uk @lmharpin
Freddie’s century! Charity number
Lord Frost has told Jewish News the government is “very concerned” about the continued problem in getting kosher food to Northern Ireland’s Jewish community as a result of a row with the European Union over the Brexit protocol, writes Lee Harpin. Speaking after Boris Johnson had namechecked him in his leader’s speech at the Tory Party Conference, the Brexit minister confirmed that the government was “doing everything we can” to resolve the problem that has mainly affected the community living in Belfast. “Obviously we are concerned about that – and we will do everything we can to make sure that kosher food and everything else can be supplied into Northern Ireland in the future as it has been in the
REES-MOGG DEFENDS RELIGIOUS SLAUGHTER
Covid cancels Israel tours for second summer Page 10
VOICE 22 April 2021
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OF TH E COM M
10 Iyar 5781
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Issue No.1207
UK registered
Concern over kosher threat
Beloved survivor ’s 100th birthda y P31
UNITY
Time to en the divide d •
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Landmark revi ew of racism in the Jewish community calls for: • End to racial profi at communal
ling events
• Synagogues to
create ‘welcoming committees ’ ’ to be understood as a racial slur • Sephardi, Mizra songs in Ashk hi and Yemenite enazi • Schools to incre synagogues ase focus colonialism and black histoon ry • ...and Facebook Britain is name group Jewish Jewish Newsd and sham ed
• Word ‘Shvartzer
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ON PAGES
Commission chair Stephen authored the Bush Board of Deputies September report
6, 7 & 26
2021
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ISSUE NO.6
Magazine
DRESSING
Inside Julia’s
WITH HAAR
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YIZKOR – Living with
loss
New Beginnin
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