Unholy Kaddish

So, the Board of Deputies has a new president.
Will anything change? This remains to be seen.
We believe the most important change that's required is for the Board to return to its prime directive – which is to speak for British Jews.

We were reviled by the admission of Yachad to the Board four years ago, and by a 2/3rds majority to boot.

Yachad’s representative on the Board is Amos Schonfeld – he’s the guy inviting people to say Kaddish for Arabs sent by Hamas to ‘tear out the hearts of the Jews from their bodies’.

This for us is a last straw. To paraphrase Groucho Marx (though this is far from funny): we should not be part of a club which has Yachad and the likes of Amos Schonfeld as a member.

Yachad is an organisation that seems to champion the rights of the Palestinian resistance over and above the rights and security of Israelis (both Jewish and Arab) whose army and security forces are singled out for slander, double-standards and outright lies.

In some ways it is worse than the Neturei Karta who demonstrate alongside the PLO, usually on shabbat. The NK openly opposes the State of Israel, whilst Yachad claims to support it. Except perhaps for Israel being a democracy. Yachad seems to think they know better about Israel’s security needs than the voters who elected the government, and they are prepared to shout their opposition into the willing ears of Jew haters in this country. People like Schonfeld are most useful idiots of all.

Yachad openly partners with NGOs which are funded by foreign governments and special interest groups who seem bent on destabilising the democratically elected government of Israel, demonizing its army and exposing its leadership, past and present, to foreign arrest warrants using lawfare.

It partners with ‘Yesh Din’, which it calls a human rights organisation. This was formed by the founders of ‘Machsom Watch’ which was set up to harass and videotape IDF border guards manning security checkpoints. Yesh Din has been richly endowed by foreign governments like Norway, Germany and Ireland as well as by other ‘friends’ like Oxfam.

Another of Yachad’s bedfellows is ‘Breaking the Silence’ which it calls ‘an IDF veterans association’. Except that its sole purpose appears to be the defamation of the brave fighting men and women of the IDF. Like Yesh Din, it has an annual budget of around 6 million shekels, more than half of which is funded by foreign governments. Some of these donations are performance-based, depending on how much incriminating evidence can be uncovered against the IDF. Last year ‘Breaking the Silence’ was exposed in open court for fabricating an Arab’s abuse claim against an IDF soldier.

The activities and funders of such hateful organisations, and so many others, are easily researchable on Professor Gerald Steinberg’s excellent website: NGO-monitor.Org

So, we ask members of the United Synagogue – whose membership fees include a voluntary contribution to the upkeep of the Board of Deputies: Do you really want your money used as a platform to legitimise the likes of Yachad?

Do Deputies like Amos Schonfeld speak for you?

If the answer is NO, perhaps you should withhold your voluntary contribution to the Board of Deputies until Yachad are expelled for bringing it into disrepute?

You decide.
Email the US and tell them how you feel about it:
https://www.theus.org.uk/contact

And perhaps sign this petition too: 
https://tinyurl.com/yachadxx