A former Essex golf club sales manager was found to be the victim of anti-Semitic discrimination by the East London Tribunal.
Angela Dooley, 62, had been working at the Woolston Manor Golf and Country Club since 2007. When associate director Lee Williams arrived 10 years later, Dooley was the eldest member of the staff and probably the only Jewish one. According to the tribunal, inquiries from Jewish customers would “trigger Mr Williams to make pejorative comments about Jewish people.”
Williams told Dooley not to offer any special deals to Jewish customers as all Jews were rich, wanted something for nothing, and were very tight with money.
Williams was ordered to pay £50,902 in compensation to Dooley.
England Saw Record Number Of Anti-Semitic Incidents In 2019
A dramatic increase in social media abuse and anti-Semitism in the Labour Party are apparently behind the greatest number of anti-Semitic incidents ever recorded by the Community Security Trust.
The CST recorded 1,805 incidents in 2019 as opposed to 1,652 the previous year. Of the 2019 incidents, 224 were related to the Labour Party and 36 to far-right movements. There were 697 cases of online abuse – and increase of 82 percent on the previous year, accounting for 39 percent of the total number of incidents.
Last year also saw the highest number of anti-Semitic violent assaults – a total of 158. Incidents involving damage and desecration to Jewish property also rose, by 11 percent. A total of 122 incidents targeted Jewish schools, pupils, or staff. Of these, 54 took place on Jewish school premises and 43 affected pupils on their way to and from school.
Board of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl said, “It is profoundly depressing that the Community Security Trust has listed a record number of anti-Semitic incidents for the fourth year running.” But she added, “Overall it must be emphasized that Britain remains a happy place for its Jewish community.”
New Building for Scottish Jews Hits Religious Roadblock
Discussions for a £6 million Jewish cultural centre in Edinburgh have stalled over Shabbat observance and kashrut.
The religiously independent Edinburgh Jewish Cultural Centre (EJCC) wants both the Liberal and the Orthodox synagogues to share the same site as the cultural centre. One of their proposals is to restructure the Orthodox Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation for that purpose.
Chairman of the Orthodox shul John Danzig told the Jewish Press, “The Orthodox community is extremely keen to continue to develop and grow. The prospect of developing our cultural arm is very attractive. The issue is principally associated with whether you can actually have two types of Jewish communities, which are so different from each other, operating from the same building.”
“The Liberal Sukkat Shalom congregation bring in food, which is not supervised, into their premises,” he said. Sukkat Shalom also have a school at which children draw on Shabbat.
Danzig said, “These are quite challenging issues. We are not sure where this is all going. We are engaged in discussions with Sukkat Shalom to see how and whether the issues can be resolved.”
Besides the option of restructuring the Orthodox shul’s historic listed building for the centre, the EJCC is also considering procuring a City of Edinburgh Council property which would house both congregations as well as the cultural centre.
Danzig told the Jewish Press, “We have this wonderful site, to which a lot of people are particularly attached. … What we want to avoid above all is for some of our membership splitting off and going to another site and others wanting to remain in the current building.”
Although both synagogues have a membership each of only around 150, Danzig estimates that there are around 1,000 Jews living in Edinburgh, many of whom attend synagogue events.
The Scottish capital also attract hundreds of Jewish tourists, some of whom attend the Orthodox shul’s weekly Shabbat lunch, which is open to all.
JLM Wants MP Kawczynski Punished
The Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) is calling on the Tories to withdraw the whip from MP Daniel Kawczynski MP after he spoke at the National Conservatism Conference in Rome, which also heard from Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban and Polish Law and Justice MEP Ryszard Legutko.
The JLM wrote, “This is an opportunity for the Conservative Party to draw a clear line between what is and what isn’t acceptable behaviour for their elected representatives. Many Conservatives called out Jeremy Corbyn for sharing platforms with figures who hold dangerous and anti-Semitic views, they must do the same for their own.”
A Conservative spokesperson said, “Daniel Kawczynski has been formally warned that his attendance at this event was not acceptable, particularly in the light of the views of some of those in attendance, which we utterly condemn.”
The conference was organized, in part, by Yoram Hazony, an Orthodox Jew from Israel and the author of The Virtue of Nationalism and The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul. The Herzl Institute, which Hazony heads, was a co-sponsor of the conference.
In an op-ed for The Spectator, Hazony called liberal attacks against Kawczynski “disgusting” and the left’s characterization of the conference as “another attempt at PC cancel-culture intimidation.”
Jewish Councillor – Suspended Again
A Jewish Labour councillor who was suspended last year for making anti-Semitic remarks was informed that she can no longer stand for election for the National Executive Committee.
Wirral councillor Jo Bird was readmitted to the party after she apologized for joking about “Jew process.” She has now been re-suspended, pending an investigation.