Talks and Lecture Schedule March – June 2010

•  Sunday, 21 March - 19.30 Hagai van der Horst: Looking into anti-Jewish and anti-Arab racisms in The Guardian and The Independent. According to Hagai van der Horst anti-Jewish and anti-Arab racisms exists in some of Britain's finest liberal newspapers. Furthermore, these two racisms, evident in The Guardian and in The Independent, can be viewed as in polar opposition to one another: 1. Hatred towards 'the Jew' is often portrayed as the religious and all powerful internal enemy. 2. Hatred towards 'the Arab' is often portrayed as the political and weak external enemy. Recent press coverage will be shown to demonstrate this, including amongst other things, footage about the Peace Talks, the 2006 Israel – Lebanon war, the Palestinian Authority elections, and reports on the Holocaust and the Naqba. A must see informative talk, for anyone interested in the Middle East and the British Liberal tradition. Don't miss it! Hagai van der Horst is currently completing his PhD research at SOAS (University of London).
• Sunday 11 April 2010 - 14.00 ( Yom Ha-Shoa) World premier film: Sam Freiman - “Memories of a Lost World" by Helga Merits. Shlomo "Sam" Freiman was born in 1926. He and his family were transferred to the Warsaw Ghetto following the German invasion of  Poland, where he smuggled food through a hole in the ghetto wall. One day his father told him not to come back. Sam survived initially by literally singing for his livelihood! Eventually he ended up at the German (slave-)work camp Skarzisko, then Buchenwald and Schlieben until reaching Theresinstadt, where he was liberated by the Red Army.  The Central British Fund for German Jewery was evacuating child survivors to Britain, so he lied about his age and ended up in Ascot. In 1948 he volunteered to fight for Israel's independence. After the war he returned to Britain, where he lives until today. Sam Freiman will be at the event for Q.and A. 
• Sunday, 25th of April - 20.00 Saul Issroff: “Who were my ancestors?”  Saul Isroff expert on genealogical and family tree research introduces its general themes, with attention to past Jewish populations.   Q.& A.  Saul Issroff is a retired dermatologist, with an interest in Jewish genealogy and history. Amongst others he is founding member and one of the vice-presidents of the Jewish Genealogy Society (UK). He is also project director at the Centre for Study of Migration and Jewish Genealogy, University of Cape Town and on the board of governors of Jewishgen. He has published works on Jewish history, especially migratory history in a number of publications. If you want to know more about your ancestors, or where to start looking, don't miss this session! 
• Monday 24th May - 19.30 The Radical Jewish East End in History and Song. The history and the songs of the Jewish radical past in East London. A joint talk by social historian Ben Gidley and  teacher and musician Vivi Lachs. Dr. Ben Gidley is a Senior Researcher at the Centre on Migration Policy and Society (COMPAS) at Oxford University. He has studied and written about the history of London's Jewish community, focusing on the many Jewish radicals in the 20th century London East End. Vivi Lachs has been teaching and running education projects in Hackney schools for the past 24 years. She is also the singer with the band Klezmer Klub where she has been researching, recording, and writing about Yiddish songs of London and the social histories they contain. A very well reviewed CD of these songs, Whitechapel, mayn Vaytshepl has just come out and is available from www.klezmerklub.co.uk 
• Sunday, 13th June - 19.30 Mira Vogel: Jews, Israel and The Green Party. Perceptions and Stereotypes. This is an in depth analysis into the mechanics of a potential political ally of Jewish people and Israelis on the Left, with ever surprising revelations. Mira Vogel works at Goldsmiths College as an academic developer with a focus on technology-enhanced learning. In early 2000 she became very worried about the academic boycott campaign against Israel and later became involved with Engage, which ran an information campaign against the boycott attempts. When this campaign found a home in the Green Party, she and other Green Party members founded Greens Engage which hopes to influence Green Party policy regarding Israel, as well as to oppose anti-semitism. Mira Vogel's presentation will give an overview of the efforts by Green Party members to respond to the intersection of anti-semitism and anti-Zionism, a discussion of the effects and limits of activist blogging, and a call for solidarity with and from Israeli progressives.
• Sunday 27th June - 19.30 The emerging Civil War over Israel within the Jewish community – and how to deal with it’. Dr. Keith Kahn-Harris is Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College, the convenor of the intra-Jewish dialogue project New Jewish Thought and co-author of the book ‘Turbulent Times: The British Jewish Community Today’. He is a frequent columnist in the The Guardian and has published widely on contemporary Jewish themes, as well as conducted independent and academic sociological research.
  
  
  All talks £8, conc. £6.50, Members: £5, conc.£4 (*) on door. Our events are open to people of all backgrounds. Ha Shomer House is located 5 minutes from Finchley Road London Underground station (Jubilee & Metropolitan Line) and bus stops (C11, 82,13, 187) and less than 10 minutes from Swiss Cottage (Jubilee Line, and buses 13,31, 46, 82, 113, 187, 268, 603, C11) and West-Hampstead tube and  B.R. Parking is free on Sundays. Ha Shomer House is a ground-floor venue without stairs. For more details about the events or Meretz UK, (*) Meretz UK annual membership is available for £20 / £10 concessions. 

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“Untermenschen” and “Asylum Seekers”: a report on a recent symposium

by Leslie Baruch Brent

This article appeared first in the March 2010 edition newsletter of the Association of Jewish Refugees.

 

This ambitious meeting, starting at 9.40 a.m. and finishing early evening on a Sunday, January 24, was organised by Meretz U.K., a leftwing Jewish education and pressure-group (“Equality, Human Rights, Peace and the Environment”). It was an interesting day but poorly attended, possibly because of the title but probably also because few people are sufficiently devoted to this cause to want to sacrifice a whole Sunday. I had been asked to talk about my life and my autobiography, representing as it were the Kindertransports.

The programme included a touching film, “The Forgotten Refugees”, describing the plight of Jewish Iraqi, Iranian and Egyptian refugees who have had a hard life in Israel. This was followed by a talk by Edwin Shuker, a refugee from Iraq who left that country in the 1970s. David Rosenberg talked about the 1905 Aliens Act in this country and the dire effect this had on Jewish immigration (down from about 500 to 3 within 4 years). Subsequent Acts placed further restrictions on those who managed to gain entry. All this was in marked contrast to British attitudes in the 1930s and especially of course towards the Kindertransports.

Another film (“Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Children of Asylum”) illustrated the appalling treatment meted out to children who arrived more recently in the U.K. without their parents, e.g. from Uganda-- a happy ending for some but not for others, who were repatriated with an uncertain future. Nitzan Horowitz, an Israeli former foreign affairs correspondent with Haaretz before becoming a Meretz member of the Knesset and who has lobbied on behalf of children of migrants born in Israel, was unable to attend. His address was therefore delivered on his behalf, by telephone, by Ms. Rotem Ilam, a young psychology student who founded the pressure group “Israeli Children” and who works with him on behalf of the children of migrant workers. She spoke about the children born in Israel and who regarded themselves as patriotic Israelis, but who have been under threat of deportation, despite widespread sympathy among the population. This was followed by Ben du Preez,  formerly of Amnesty International  (Refugee Rights), who described the chaotic and constantly changing asylum policy of Israel though he stressed that Egypt’s was far worse.

  A very informative talk was given by Maurice Wren, Director of AsylumAid, who analysed the problem of asylum seekers in the U.K. It is a sorry tale: policies have been generated largely by expediency and the pace has been forced by the BNP and the UK Independence Party, as well as the tabloid press. The system in place now being aggressive and with the bar set impossibly high, to act as a deterrent, has unleashed waves of people smuggling, with all the horrors that entails. The policy was essentially target-driven and the claims of torture victims were often met with unwarranted scepticism. Some progress is being made in developing faster and more credible assessment for those seeking asylum.

The day closed with a personal account by Pauline Levis of her 5-year (as yet unfinished) battle to secure the future of an Iranian student, and with a gifted young professional singer from the Congo (who had grown up in a refugee family in the UK) singing African songs – a delightful conclusion to an arduous but interesting day that, despite the small audience, had provoked lively discussions..

Ed. Postscript:  Pauline Levis Iranian student and his family have been given indefinite right of stay in the United Kingdom since the publishing of the article. 

Meretz UK Chair Yehuda Erdman on this review :

Dear all

A very balanced and well written account of our event. I am glad that at least one person appreciated the enormous effort that Meretz UK and particularly Daniel Zylberstajn took to address this vitally important issue of our day.

You can all rest assured that refugees and asylum will be very high up the agenda in this forthcoming election in the UK, but as alluded to by Leslie Baruch Brent, this topic unfortunately has the pace set by the BNP and the UKIP, as well as the tabloid press.
It used to be 30 or so years ago that the British Jews stood four square behind refugees not only because of the memory of the experience of Jews themselves in the UK circa. 1905, but also in more recent times, i.e. 1930's the fate of our people in Europe at the hands of the Nazis. They wre like rats caught in a trap, and I speak personally here although my immediate family made a successful exit from Germany.

Later on in the 70's there was an extra-ordinarily vital and eventually successful campaign to obtain the release of Soviet Jews. To this day it is still largely unknown what fate befell our people who were Soviet citizens before 1939 and later in the 2nd World War, the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees who fled the advance of the Nazis to the USSR. Many believe that  more than a million  perished either through the war, or the massive population transfers ordered by Stalin, or the murders of suspected enemies of Stalin, or of the harsh conditions in the gulags. It is very odd that the huge effort invested in examining the fate of Jews under the Nazis, e.g. by Yad vashem, seems to have run out of steam. Very few have the tenacity or will to look at Soviet crimes against Jewry, as well as all the other persecuted peoples. I could mention the Ukrainians, but there is also the Chechens, Armenians etc.

Is there some collective amnesia?

Yehuda Erdman

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Meretz UK - What are you supporting?

Some of our 2010 campaign material.

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Meretz UK Position Statement on New Israel Fund

Meretz UK believes that the attacks by the Israeli right wing organization Im Tirzu on the New Israel Fund (NIF) for alleged disloyalty to the State of Israel are a disgrace. Meretz UK wishes to put on public record its support for the NIF and its branches around the world including in the UK. The inaccurate and intemperate allegations that the NIF has supported organisations that have provided evidence against the Israeli Armed Forces regarding their actions in Gaza 2009 for the Goldstone report, speak more of Im Tirzu's politics than it does for the actions of the NIF in supporting human rights organisations and political pluralism in Israel.

Israel is a state that is committed to equality in its Declaration of Independence to its Palestinian Israeli residents, whilst such equality is overall still lacking in daily life, and remains an issue Meretz Israel continuously lobbies on. 

We at Meretz UK support an Israel that is bound by Law, including International Law, respect for civil rights and the best attempts of achieving open peaceful discourse with its neighbours, be they Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian or Iranian, or any other.  We and our sister organisations around the world have always maintained that the West Bank and Gaza are the basis of a Palestinian stateas proposed in the Road Map to Peace and the Two State solution, and that Jewish settlements within are an obstacle to peace.

We feel that Israel is obligated to consider the Goldstone report with due respect through an independent enquiry into the events of the war in Gaza 2009. 

We feel that over the last decade the New Israel Fund, now led by a former Meretz member of Knesset and deputy speaker, Naomi Chazan, represents our interests and of all those who believe in a civil Israeli society .  In contrast to Im Tirzu the group who wishes to defame the NIF,  we wish to stress that the NIF and Naomi Chazan in particular, have acted within their right to express their beliefs openly in a democratic society like Israel.

Who are Im Tirzu to attempt to gag these respectable people and organisations? Im Tirzu are entitled to their own views but NOT to censor other legally expressed opinions.

There area many organisations and individuals within Israel and abroad who have supported expansionist settlements and policies of dispossessing Palestinians, causes that Meretz UK object to, but they are unimpeded, especially under the current ultra right wing coalition government of Israel.

It is on these grounds that we strongly encourage our members and friends in Britain to continue to support the New Israel Fund and join them, Meretz UK and other progressive organisations in our combined mission to strengthen all corresponding groups that daily defend human rights, civil rights, equality and meaningful engagement for peace.

Meretz UK



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