Barry Lerer called on Lammy to Apologise for Suspending 8% of Britain’s Arms Supplies to Israel & Blamed Palestinian Parents for Israel’s Murder of Their Children
Above is an interview by Ben Jamal of PSC with Middle East Eye where he quotes extracts from sermons made at the Central Synagogue.
The synagogue’s rabidly far-right Rabbi Barry Lerer and his synagogue have hosted a never ending series of right-wing figures including Michael Howard, Boris’s sister Rachel Johnson and Theresa Villiers MP – as well as the mad genocidal ‘journalist’ Melanie Phillips and Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s Gideon Falter.
Fascist Lerer has as much right to his political views as Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson but this helps us understand why he has complained to the Met. He totally ignores, not just secular left-wing Jews, but religious Jews who attend the Palestine demos and who are very warmly received.
Since a Novara article this week, the synagogue has taken down the webpages of its sermons, so I have added some extracts from these sermons as footnotes to. Google has a record of all these webpages so any extracts can be confirmed.
Lerer condemns the UN, the International Court of Justice and ends up quoting the equally far right Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, who was trained in a settler yeshivah, to the effect that Israel is going to extraordinary lengths to protect human life.
If after at least 200,000 deaths, including indirect deaths, the deliberate starvation of the Palestinians of Gaza, the deliberate bombing of tent encampments burning their inhabitants alive, Lerer thinks that Israel is taking care to uphold humanitarian law one can only assume that he is a fantasist, a liar or both. Or just a raving loony fascist of the type that used to stick out their right arm.
Either way this is the kind of person the Institutionally Racist Metropolitan Police is relying on to enforce their ban.
Perhaps accusing Palestinians of being ‘human animals’ as Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, did, in an echo of Himmler’s description of Jews is upholding humanitarian law? On 9th October Gallant declared:
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed, We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,”
yoav gallant – israel’s defence minister 9 october 2023
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Or Netanyahu’s comparison of Palestinians with Amalek whom god commanded the Israelites to wipe out to every man, woman or children. Or Bezalel Smotrich’s saying that it is morally right to starve 2 million people.
If Netanyahu and Gallant are really upholders of humanitarian law, despite the warrants out for their arrest by the International Criminal Court then we must reassess Hitler and Goebbels. Perhaps they too have been misjudged.
The Sermons of Rabbi Barry Lerer (before they were removed this week from Central Synagogue’s website)
The Rabbi of the synagogue that is closest to the BBC – and who the police have made clear has been one of the people saying I and my congregants feel unsafe – says that he’s twice had to put back services, to delay them, to prevent the service taking place when we’re there. He’s not provided any evidence that anyone’s tried to go to the Central Synagogue, harass people etc.. But he said we can hear them chanting genocidal chants inside the synagogue.
What does he mean by genocidal chants. He’s talking about people chanting from “The River To The Sea Palestine Will Be Free”. So the argument is: we’re inside a synagogue, we can hear this in the background; we know there are people with Palestinian flags etc. – that’s harassing.
It’s worth saying something about this rabbi’s political positions which came to light yesterday and was covered by Novara media. He has published sermons on the synagogue’s website in which he attacked Starmer, calling him ‘two-tier Kier’. He said that the government effectively, and the policing it enforces, is unfairly hard on the far-right but has another rule for those on the left.[1]
Barry Lerer accused the BBC of being horrendously anti-Israel.[2] He’s criticized the UN and says the International Court of Justice and the decisions made by the ICJ are lies.[3]
Most notoriously and shamefully, in a sermon he quoted Golda Meir, who notoriously said ‘We’ll have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us’.[4] And he’s also talked about the need to go on the attack against our enemies wherever they exist.
“It is time to go to combat our enemies, not only on the battlefield, but the hostile press, those on social media, the UN and Governments who have no desire for the truth or peace and seek the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.”[5]
What that demonstrates is the police are taking evidence from this person with egregious views [as if he’s a] good faith actor who’s informing them that they have to prevent people protesting for the rights of the Palestinian people from going within any sort distance of his synagogue regardless of whether he’s got a service on or not.
It is clear that Rabbi Barry Lerer is an out and out racist so it’s no surprise at all that the institutionally racist Metropolitan Police should use him as an excuse to ban protests at the BBC. But that is all they are – pretexts and excuses.
For someone to blame Palestinian parents for the deaths of their children, 20,000+ of whom have been deliberately murdered by Israel in Gaza is beyond vile. Perhaps he would like to blame Jewish parents for the death of their parents in Nazi Germany? Israel has deliberately targeted Palestinian children. Hind Rajab wasn’t killed by her parents but by deliberate Israeli tank fire.
[1] “Elon Musk has accused Kier Starmer of being two teir Keir- with the Government and policing policies having one rule for those on the right and another for those on the left. This was apparent in the heavy handed policing of the recent demonstrations here in UK …” Rabbi Lerer, Sermon, 7 August 2024. (This sermon was made just after the far right, anti-immigrant riots of last summer)
[2] “A major study published this week by Assersons, a British law firm based in Tel Aviv where my brother works is a sobering read. A dedicated team used AI to follow four months of war coverage. It identified over 1500 breaches of the BBC’s own guidelines on impartiality and accuracy. Time and again after 7th October the BBC’s output soft-soaped Hamas’s atrocities while depicting Israel as ‘militaristic and aggressive’.
Israel was 4 times more likely to be associated with war crimes in BBC reporting than Hamas, whose entire campaign from October 7 onwards has consisted of war crimes against both Israeli and Gaza civilians. Israel was 14 times more likely to be associated with genocide and six times more likely to be associated with breaking international law.
We’re also reminded of the BBC’s stubborn refusal to call Hamas terrorists. Instead insisting on referring to 7 October as a ‘militant attack’– and how they claimed why they weren’t using the T-word by saying that they ‘don’t take sides’, and won’t use loaded words like “evil” or “cowardly” and how they don’t talk about “terrorists”.’
But we all know that this isn’t true. The BBC has referred often to ‘far-right terrorism’ and even wondered if incels are adherents to a ‘far-right terrorist ideology’. And as for impartiality, we all know the BBC takes sides all the time – on Brexit, climate change, woke etc. As Brendan Oneill wrote– Faced with a thousand dead Jews, the Beeb finally rediscovered the importance of impartiality.” Sermon, 14 September, 2024.
[3] “This past year has been an Annis Horibilis for the Jewish Community and for the State of Israel. It feels like we have been in a boxing ring with a World Heavyweight Champion. We seem to be knocked down again and again whether it be the constant Israel bashing in the media, the threats and missiles of Hamas and Hezbollah. The sham trials in the ICJ. The demonstrations on University campuses. The constant lies being spread at the UN. Iran’s missile attack just before Pesach. The cold blooded murder of 6 of the hostages just a month or so ago. We have been broken and even shattered time and again- but we are not out.” Sermon, 2 or 3 October 2024.
Earlier in that same sermon, Rabbi Lerer said: “For anyone who has visited Israel over these 12 months they would have seen Posters and Banners all over the Holy land read Yachad Ninatzeach- together we will be victorious! And this was shown by the tens of thousands of Israelis who returned from all around the world to Israel after October 7th to fight – because we don’t have another land….”
[4] “And of course we think of the how children have been killed on both sides of the conflict. How children have been orphaned on both sides of the conflict. We are reminded of Golda Meir’s famous quote “We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”” Sermon 3 or 4 October 2024.
[5] Sermon 28 September.
Earlier in that same sermon, Rabbi Lerer said:
“We must succeed in our mission—standing firm, striving for a better world, and embracing the truth. As one voice we stand up to antisemitism and we call on the hostages to be released. The state of Israel is also standing. Standing up against the Hezbollah bullies who have rained daily rockets since October 8th, caused many deaths (including civilians and children) and displaced over 60,000 people in the North from their homes for the past year who have been living as refugees in their own country. Israel is standing up against the world and governments and media who chose not to see or not to comment on any of those events over the past year- their eyes were too focussed on Rafah….now that Israel is finally responding they have all of a sudden woken up- condemning Israel of course and calling for a ceasefire.
The United Nations General Assembly last week voted 124 to 14 against Israel’s right to defend itself, with 43 countries abstaining, including nations like Germany, England, Australia, and Canada….” (This sermon was made just after the Israeli attack on Lebanon from 23 September.)
Earlier in another sermon, on 7 September, Rabbi Lerer said:
“In a press conference later that day Prime Minister Netanyahu also apologised “To the families of the six hostages, I ask for your forgiveness that we did not succeed in bringing them home alive. We were close, but we did not make it.”
But where were the other apologies? Where were the apologies of the USA – Hersh’s country of birth?
Where is the apology from the David Lammy the Foreign Secretary who, on the day of these funerals and while five British citizens are still being held hostage in Gaza, decided to announce the suspension of thirty arms licenses to Israel? Accusing Israel of breaching Humanitarian Law when as the Chief Rabbi says “it is in fact going to extraordinary lengths to uphold it!” As Brendan O’Neill wrote… in normal times, such a flagrant moral abandonment of our old ally of Israel would be geopolitically foolish; in the wake of the 7 October pogrom and its unleashing of a global wave of Jew hate, it feels nothing short of sickening.”
See the Press Statement of Jewish Network for Palestine
