Rabbi Jonathan Romain, A Senior Reform Rabbi, Urges Jews To Vote ABC – Anyone But Corbyn

This is how Zionism’s False Anti-Semitism Campaign Tries to Produce the Very Anti-Semitism it Purports to Oppose

Rabbi Romain is a senior rabbi and a former Chair of the Movement for Reform Judaism. In the eyes of my father, an Orthodox rabbi, Romain was worse than a Christian and that’s saying something!

Reform Rabbis when they are not treated with contempt by their Orthodox colleagues are considered useful fools. The half-Jewish equivalent of the Sabbath goy. Romain is just such an example though it may be an insult to the average village idiot to describe him as such.

A good example of the Orthodox attitude to Reform Jews was when a White Supremacist gunman, fired up with the racism of the Zionists’ best friend, Donald Trump, shot dead 11 Jewish worshippers at the Conservative Jewish Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. The Chief Rabbi of Israel, David Blau refused to call it a synagogue. He described it as ‘a place with profound Jewish flavor’ as if it were a cafe that Jewish youngsters happen to hang out in.

In Israel Reform Judaism isn’t recognised as an authentic strand of Judaism. Reform converts are not considered Jewish and cannot marry other Jews or be buried in consecrated ground. They make up a growing portion of Israeli Jews who are Jewish enough to enter the country and serve in the army but not Jewish enough to get married, except to bastards (mamzers) like themselves. Thus Israel has its own mixed race, half-Jewish racial category just as Nazi Germany did where half or quarter Jews were termed Mischlinge.

Last week’s Jewish Chronicle reported that Rabbi Romain had‘taken the unprecedented step of writing to his congregation urging them to vote for whatever political party stands the best chance of beating Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour candidates.’He wrote that “a Corbyn-led government would pose a danger to Jewish life as we know it.”

Over the summer in Brighton the Zionist Board of Deputies tried to stop Chris Williamson MP from speaking at a meeting. 3 venues cancelled after threats, abuse and harassment from Zionists and their supporters such as Peter Kyle MP. The President of the Board, Marie van Der Zyl even came down to Brighton in person to show her miserable face.

Despite this socialists and anti-racists ensured that Chris spoke to a meeting of over 150 people in Brighton’s Regency Square to the chagrin of local racists such as New Labour’s Cllr. Dan Yates. [See Chris Williamson MP Defies Zionist Intimidation and the Lies of Peter Kyle to Speak in Brighton]

I mention this because a few days later I happened to be in the local supermarket when I overheard a conversation between 2 people – one of whom said that ‘the Jews are trying to stop Corbyn.’ I confess to being somewhat shocked and intervened to assure them that this was untrue. That Zionist Jews opposed Corbyn but you couldn’t generalise about all Jews.

Yet there is no doubt that these two men, who weren’t racists or anti-Semitic, had good grounds for saying what they did. Rabbi Romain has just proven them true. That the organised Jewish community, for its own narrow, selfish, political and economic reasons is doing its best to stop a radical socialist government.

I can’t think of any better way to create anti-Semitism in this country than to spread the idea that Jews want to keep Boris Johnson and the Tories in power, that they do not care about racism, poverty or inequality. That austerity is not something that touches Jews and that the Windrush Scandal or what happened at Grenfell is of no concern to them because Jews are not victims of state racism and do not experience poverty.

The fact that Boris Johnson is known for his racist utterances, describing Black people as having ‘water melon smiles’ or as ‘picanninies’ is of no concern to the Romains of this world.

What Jonathan Romain is doing is trying to prove that every gutter anti-Semite is correct when they say that Jews are only concerned with themselves, that they have no idea or understanding of how most people live, that they mix with the rich, powerful and privileged and that they use the Holocaust as a battering ram against their opponents.

Millions of people in this country desperately want to see an end to the Tories. They see the NHS being privatised before their eyes. They include Jewish people, but not the sort that Romain and his congregants mix with. Jewish anti-racists and anti-Zionists know that the allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ against Corbyn and the Left aren’t worth a bucket of warm spit.

When Theodor Herzl wrote in his Diaries that

“The anti-semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-semitic countries our allies.” [pp.83-84]

he understood better than most the common interest between anti-Semitism and Zionism. The anti-Semites wanted the Jews out and the Zionists were only too willing to go. They accepted that Jews weren’t part of the nations they lived amongst.

That was why until the second world war Zionism was a minority amongst Jews worldwide, commanding less than 3% support among German Jews.

It is no accident that fools like Romain have nothing to say about Tory MEPs having sat alongside anti-Semitic parties in the European Parliament’s ECR Group for the past decade. The fact that Robert Ziles, MEP for Latvia’s LNNK marches with the veterans of Latvia’s Waffen SS doesn’t bother him at all.

What concerns Romain and his ilk is the fact that the Left in and outside the Labour Party are no longer prepared to tolerate a situation where Israel, a so-called Jewish state, is the world’s only Apartheid state. 80% of Palestinians living within what is Greater Israel don’t have any political or civil rights.

If indeed opposition to Apartheid constitutes an ‘existentialist threat’ to Jewish life, as three Zionist papers claimed in July last year, then clearly being Jewish is so empty and meaningless that it has lost any purpose or reason to continue.

Tony Greenstein

Open letter to Rabbi Jonathan Romain of Maidenhead Synagogue

Dear Rabbi Jonathan Romain,

It may not be essential for Rabbis to be fools and idiots but it is clearly, as you demonstrate, a very desirable characteristic.

My own dad was also a Rabbi, albeit an Orthodox one. He would have considered you to be even worse than a Christian. Given that he used to spit on the ground at the mention of Christ then that should tell you something!

The reason why I am writing to you is not about your religious but your political credentials. I read in last week’s Jewish Chronicle that you had ‘taken the unprecedented step’ of writing to your congregants urging them to vote for anyone but Corbyn Labour. I assume that includes Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.

Incidentally your letter is not that unprecedented. In the 1900 elections Rabbis also supported the anti-Alienist Tories in the East End of London.

The three examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ that you gave in the Labour Party are, as you are well aware, bogus.

1. Tom Watson statement that he was “ashamed” of Labour being guilty of racism comes from a man who ‘lost sleep’ over the High Court’s ejection from parliament in 2010 of the racist Labour MP Phil Woolas. This is the same Tom Watson who, as campaign manager in the 2004 Birmingham Hodshrove byelection issued a leaflet “Labour is on your side, the Lib Dems are on the side of failed asylum seekers.” Watson supported the Tories ‘hostile environment’ policy. Not a good role model.

2. You say the Equalities and Human Rights Commission are currently investigating accusations of racism against Labour. This is a body that has had nothing to say about the hundreds of deportations of Black people to the Caribbean and Africa. It is not an anti-racist body and has no record of anti-racism.

3. You mention Louise Ellman resigning as an MP. The reason members of Riverside Labour Party detested her was not because she was Jewish but because she was, like you, a reactionary supporter of the Israeli state. In particular she supported the Israeli military’s abuse of Palestinian children as young as 12 in a parliamentary debate on Child Prisoners under Israel’s military occupation. Many of her local opponents were themselves Jewish but perhaps they were the ‘wrong sort of Jews’ i.e. anti-racists.

The accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ against Labour are remarkable for the lack of evidence to support them, as the new book ‘Bad News for Labour’ demonstrates. That is why your Zionist friends threatened and abused Waterstones and forced them to cancel the book launch a month ago.

I should have thought it obvious, even to an intellectual lightweight, that if the idea gets around that Jews oppose electing a radical socialist government that is determined to make the multinationals pay their taxes, to renationalise the utilities, bring back rent controls and build housing for the homeless then there could be no greater gift to anti-Semitism.

The suggestion that Jews will leave Britain if a Corbyn government came to power is similar to what the papers such as Commentary were saying when the Sandanistas came to power. It’s not new. The argument then and now is that wealth redistribution will adversely affect Jews. Do I need to explain why this is anti-Semitic? Of course, hopefully, Alan Sugar will depart but that will not be a loss.

Jews in this country far from being in fear of their lives or living under some ‘existentialist’ threat are living in a golden age. I’m not aware of anyone Jewish who died or was injured in Grenfell Tower. The days when Jews lived in the East End of London are gone. Jews are twice as likely to be in social classes A or B as non-Jews. (see Geoffrey Alderman, The Jewish Community in British Politics). There is no Jewish Windrush, Jews are not deported or suffer from police violence. There aren’t disproportionate numbers of Jews in the prison estate or experiencing low wages. In short it is not a disadvantage in Britain to be Jewish.

It is no surprise that you are so narrow minded and blinkered that you are unable to see beyond the fog of the Jewish Chronicle’s rhetoric. Your own MP is Theresa May, the very epitome of bigotry. I read with interest your article Our Maidenhead synagogue is sad to see Theresa May go. You ‘lamented’ her passing, writing that

‘she feels an affinity with religious life in general. As a practising Christian, going to church every Sunday, she appreciates the faith of others…. Whatever history’s verdict on her as PM, she remains a good friend to the Jewish community.’

Perhaps Theresa May is a good friend to the Jewish community, at least the one that you are a member of. Anti-racist Jews however would consider her a virulent racist who introduced the ‘hostile environment’ policy that led to the Windrush Scandal, the deportation to their death of Black British citizens. Every landlord and bank official became an immigration officer. Of course Jews being White and privileged were unconcerned but these policies led to a climate of fear amongst Black people. Being a Rabbi you were completely unconcerned about this or the austerity that accompanied Universal Credit.

We all know that what lies behind this concern over Corbyn’s ‘anti-Semitism’ is not hatred of Jews but opposition to Zionism and Israel. As Netanyahu has explained Israel is a state of its Jewish not its Arab citizens. It is a state where 93% of the land is controlled by the JNF for the benefit of its Jewish citizens only. It is a land where your compatriot, the Chief Rabbi of Safed, backed up by dozens of other rabbis, issued an edict that Jews must not rent homes to Arabs. It is a country where hundreds of Jews in Afula demonstrated against the sale of a single house to an Arab. It is a state where Jews demonstrate to the chant of ‘Death to the Arabs’.

If any of this were to happen to Jews in Britain, then you would be the first to cry ‘anti-Semitism’. That is why your letter to your congregants is so outrageous. As Attlee once said to Laski, an extended period of silence on your part would not go amiss. In other words Rabbi, shut up.

Regards

Tony Greenstein

Rabbi Romain’s Letter to his Jewish Congregants

I am writing to all members of the community regarding the forthcoming election.

In past elections, never have I dreamt of suggesting which way one should vote.

This election is different.

You may recall the ground-breaking decision of all three Jewish newspapers – The Jewish Chronicle, The Jewish News and The Jewish Telegraph – to publish exactly the same front cover on 25^th July 2018: taking a united stance to suggest that a Labour government under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn would prove “an existential threat” to British Jewry.

You may recall the Deputy Leader of Labour, Tom Watson saying he was “ashamed” of Labour being guilty of racism, or the fact that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) are currently investigating accusations of racism against Labour, the first time they have done so against a political party since their enquiry into the British National Party.

You may recall the Labour MP of 49 years, Louise Ellman, resigning in October 2019, because, as she put it: “Labour is no longer a safe place for Jews and Corbyn is a danger to the country”.

These are just a handful of examples from the last three years that make me feel that normal political allegiances are superseded by the unprecedented situation we face.

I should stress that the problem is not the Labour Party itself, which has a long record of fighting discrimination and prejudice, but the problem is Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn-led Labour, has, at best, let anti-semitism arise within its ranks, or at worst, has encouraged it.

This has never happened under any previous Labour leader, whether under Tony Blair on the right, Neil Kinnock in the centre or Michael Foot on the left, so the finger of responsibility really does seem to point to Jeremy Corbyn

I am therefore suggesting we should each put aside all other considerations and vote for whichever party is most likely to defeat Labour in whatever constituency we are in – even if we would never normally vote for that party.

If you, too, think that a Corbyn-led government would pose a danger to Jewish life as we know it…whether it be utterances that cause Jews to feel victimised, less secure and no longer at ease…or maybe even legislation that restricts Jewish life or relations with Israel in some way, then you may wish to vote to ensure Labour does not gain your local seat.

Do not discount the power of your vote – many seats are won or lost on small majorities – while the issue of Brexit means that very different voting patterns will probably take place compared to previous elections…so do not assume that a safe Labour seat will remain Labour, or that Labour might not win a seat that previously looked safe for another party.

Please feel free to share this with any family, friend or colleagues you think might feel the same.

Let me repeat that this is suggestion I would not normally make but for the Corbyn-factor – and you are at liberty to disagree totally with my point of view. I appreciate, too, that you may feel that other criteria take priority when voting. You should vote as your conscience dictates…

while if you wish to discuss this with me, feel free to do so.

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain MBE
Maidenhead Synagogue