Blair warning over politics at HET dinner
TONY BLAIR has told the Holocaust Educational Trust that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is still “in denial” over its antisemitism crisis.
Speaking at HET’s 30th anniversary dinner at the Dorchester Hotel in London on Monday night, the former Labour leader received a standing ovation as he said: “Months ago I was saying we must root it out. Well, some action has been taken — but the truth is many people are still in denial.
“It is not enough to challenge antisemitism in general. You have to challenge it in particular.”
Mr Blair then cited a catalogue of shameful incidents to have dogged Mr Corbyn’s party over recent months, including the leader’s own remarks about British ‘Zionists’ and his far-left ally Pete Willsman’s comments about Jewish “Trump fanatics”.
Speaking in front of former Labour frontbench colleagues Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper, Mr Blair added: “Antisemitism is today back in a way I never considered conceivable or possible.
“I want you to know that for those of us who know what the Labour Party should really be about there is nothing more abhorrent than the notion that antisemitism is alive in the party today.”
The former PM suggested singling out Israel for criticism was another form of antisemitism. He said that Israel was still the
At HET dinner: Tony Blair sole democracy in the Middle East and praised its free media and its rule of law.
He suggested that “Zionism as conceived by Hertzl is a homeland for the Jewish people”, but he added that “Zionists are not people who do not want see health and justice for the Palestinians.”
Mr Blair paid tribute to the Holocaust survivors at the event and said: “What we are fighting is not just something that happened in history; this is something profoundly relevant which will decide the future for us.”
Education Secretary Damian Hinds also spoke and pledged government funding for a further three years for HET’s “Lessons From Auschwitz” project, which last year took more than 3,000 students and teachers from schools across the UK on a four-part course, including a one-day visit to Auschwitz-Birkenenau.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid, the final political speaker, praised his bus driver father’s role in helping him understand and grow to love Israel and also spoke of the need to fully understand the tragedy of the Holocaust.
Earlier Karen Pollock, HET’s chief executive, warned the audience — including Labour MPs Luciana Berger, Louise Ellman, Ruth Smeeth and Wes Streeting, along with Conservative Friends of Israel chair Stephen Crabb — of the threat from the rise of the farright across Europe. She also hit out at Mr Corbyn’s party over its failure to “recognise antisemtism”.
Susan Pollack — the survivor who lost 50 members of her family in the Shoah — also delivered a moving address to the
audience.
ONE OF the country’s most prestigious cultural institutions, the British Museum in London, has arranged its first permanent display of Judaica.
A case in its newly reopened gallery 46, on post-medieval society, is now dedicated to artefacts that represent the Jewish presence in Britain.
The feature is indirectly the result of the museum’s new Islamic gallery, which was due to open on Thursday.
Its construction required physical alterations to the adjoining post-medieval gallery, which was closed to the public for over a year.
That enabled Beverley Nenk, curator of medieval collections and Judaica, to bring together some of the Jewish exhibits which had previously been spread around the museum.
“I managed to get a case for a permanent display of European Judaica, which is the first time this has happened,” Ms Nenk explained.
The British Museum began acquiring Jewish objects in the late Victorian times after the great Anglo-Jewish Exhibition in the Royal Albert Hall of 1887.
The objects on display show that Jews have lived in Britain for several centuries and settled across the country — in places such as Plymouth, Bristol and Birmingham.
Torah silverware — which the museum acquired only eight years ago — from Britain’s oldest functioning Ashkenazi synagogue in Plymouth can now be seen.
The collection also includes a clover leaf-shaped havdalah spice-box with four compartments, which according to the inscription was donated to a minyan room at Plymouth Dock, now Devonport, where Jewish traders supplied the Navy.
The spice box was then given to the “shul” (the word is spelt in Hebrew letters in the inscription) in 1844. “It’s unusual because spice-boxes
Eighteenth century plate made for a Sephardi family are usually in the shape of a tower,” Ms Nenk explained.
“We think it wasn’t originally designed for havdalah. “From the type of filigree, it is probably Indian in origin. “When we got it, there were traces of powder from the spices.” A simple gold band, while it may not look anything special, is “really a treasure,” she said, “because of the story it tells about the early Sephardi community.” The inscription inside the ring contains an abbreviation for “mazal tov” and records it was used for the wedding of Joshua and Judith Tsarfati in 1699.
They must have worshipped at Creechurch Lane, the first synagogue established after the resettlement of the Jews in England in 1656.
Other items which can be viewed include an antique circumcision shield used by a mohel, an amulet inscribed with the names of the four rivers of Eden and 18th-century kosher seals attached to food — “these are occasionally brought up by metal detector finds,” she said.
Antisemitism is back in a way I never considered possible