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,” Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF
Southern Command in Beersheba.
“We are fighting human
animals and we are acting accordingly,”
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
