Geoffrey Bindman ז׳׳ל. A legend, and one of the Jews who did a great deal for the anti-racist cause in Britain. www.bindmans.com/news-insight...

How long before ‘but Disraeli was Black’ discourse starts

It’s heartening that all the worst pro-Israel and right wing elements of the US Jewish community threw everything they had at Mamdani and it made absolutely no difference. Hopefully they will be ignored in future.

Interesting that the UK Jewish press, which is not exactly slow to cover antisemitism, has not yet mentioned this story.

He writes the Torat Albion newsletter and is currently writing a book on Jews and race relations in postwar Britain for Manchester University Press. He will be writing about antisemitism and its instrumentalisation for Vashti. 2/2

Contributing writers - @josephfinlay.bsky.social is an historian, writer, and musician, who specialises in British Jewish history and culture, issues of Jews and race, and Jewish engagements in empire. 1/2

We're excited to announce the addition of four contributing writers, whose reporting and analysis will deepen our Jewish left, anti-Zionst commitments and will be essential reading for the left at large in this time of genocide and ascendent fascism. t.co/F8nQNtQY3m

Seems a reasonable decision. Were no other cantors available? www.thejc.com/news/world/a...

He’s amazingly good at this

Didn’t take long for Reform to start attacking Polanski in antisemitic ways. The article misses it but the reference is more to Svengali, the Jewish stereotypes character from George Du Maurier’s 1894 novel.

I predict that Reform's move towards neoliberalism and austerity economics will be the end of its popular surge.

Constitutionally, what would happen if it was not a prince but the king/queen who had committed crimes? Who would be responsible for sanctioning them/removing their title?

I don’t think the Palestine movement should campaign against academics who served in the IDF 40 years ago. But I don’t think Michael Ben-Gad is making the best case for himself when he goes on GB News and says that he is proud of that service and sees it as having defended his people.

I went to this exhibition recently, highly recommended. The first exhibition on empire and decolonisation at a major a British museum that I can recall www.iwm.org.uk/events/emerg...

I suggest we take this as a win, in line with my general philosophy that you should welcome people when they move towards your side, rather than condemn that for being late to the cause / not going far enough.

Just listened to the Theroux-Vylan podcast. Vylan comes across well, and certainly not antisemitic. He rightly questions what are counted in antisemitism statistics. Interestingly at one point he declares himself a Pan-Africanist, but Theroux completely fails to follow up on it.

Much to say about why Mamdani has dealt with accusations of antisemitism better than Corbyn, but the biggest difference is that we’ve just had 2 years of Israel perpetrating genocide and most anti-antisemitism orgs and individuals active in 2018-19 have either condoned it or remained silent.

Wild anecdote in the Jewish Chronicle

Plaid Cymru should stand in places that were formerly Wales

Just signed this, good initiative jewsdemandaction.org

When Jeffrey Epstein or Bernie Madoff did terrible crimes nobody says that since they are Jews to criticise them is antisemitic. But when Israel does terrible crimes that’s exactly what everyone says.

In which I argue that Jewish/Israeli main character syndrome has led us to misinterpret October 7, the subsequent protests, the current ceasefire deal and its violations. josephfinlay.com/our-main-cha...

New piece on why seeing Jews and Israel as being central is behind a range of a bad political analyses and distortions of current events. josephfinlay.com/our-main-cha...

Antisemitism: how to measure it, how to confront it. Read BISA’s David Feldman @dmf101.bsky.social, @bengidley.bsky.social and @brendanmcgeever.bsky.social in www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/religi...

The left should be proposing state owned not for profit cloud computing companies, we can’t keep relying on US tech firms, especially ones as exploitative as Amazon

Baruch dayan haemet. A true tzaddik, he will be remembered.

Now we’ve had sex I will return to virginity

Israel has clearly torn up the ceasefire. Was its position seriously that it would continue to occupy half of Gaza indefinitely and that anyone crossing the invisible 'yellow line' towards its forces would trigger a full resumption of hostilities? Not remotely credible.

This headline reads like pure satire. Who is violating the ceasefire here?

I know he’s still in Labour but the person I’d most like to see lead Your Party is John McDonnell

Apropos of nothing, the Community Security Trust (CST) HQ, where Starmer and Mahmood spoke yesterday is a very odd place for politicians to go on an official visit. It's an office building in a back street in Hendon.

To say that the banning of fans of an Israeli football team, who have a record of hooliganism and violence, is antisemitic is in itself antisemitic, and deeply insulting to British Jews

If anyone wanted to find it, there’s potentially a lesson in that fact that it’s very difficult to tell bodies apart, especially when so many lie under rubble, that we are all fundamentally alike in death.

The fact that Hamas can't accurately identify or readily locate the remaining dead hostages certainly implies that they were incinerated and crushed in Israel's bombing, which rendered – by most estimates – many thousand bodies unidentifiable under the rubble.

Unless they use explicitly pro-Hamas messaging I don’t accept that protests marking 2 years since Oct 7th can be considered as celebrations of that attack. Since Israeli reprisals began within hours, on Oct 7th, such protests likely mark 2 years of Palestine mass death / genocide.

I fear that diaspora Jewish communal statements welcoming the deal that frame it purely in terms of bringing home the hostages make it more likely that the Israeli government will resume the war (or at least never fully withdraw from Gaza) once the hostages are freed.

How about the Jewish Chronicle?

The deal is a huge relief. But it could have been made 2 years ago on the same terms. Netanyahu promised that he would defeat and destroy Hamas. Instead he signed a deal with them. So many killed for the impossible promise of total victory and ‘permanent security’.

One more share for this - on why the British state bears some responsibility for the Manchester attack and how racialised minorities should provide security for one another josephfinlay.com/weareeachoth...

Rejecting the British state’s philosemitic embrace in the wake of the Manchester attack josephfinlay.com/weareeachoth...

I wrote a piece about the Manchester attack, on why the British state bears a degree of responsibility and how Jews and Muslim communities would be safer if they provided security for each other. josephfinlay.com/weareeachoth...

There should be no doubt that Robert Jenrick is a racist. His disgraceful Birmingham comments would have seen him sacked by previous Tory leaders. It wasn't much noticed but this video from May is full of Judeo-Bolshevik tropes about Attorney General Ricard Hermer. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE0P...

But they were attempting to reach Palestine’s waters. A state which you have just recognised.

As Zionism is to Judaism one might say

Absolute unhinged nonsense from @boardofdeputies.bsky.social

The more I think about it the clearer it is: if you say that anti-genocide protests should be called off because of British Jewish sensibilities you are saying that British Jews support genocide. It’s disgraceful and it’s the kind of conflationist discourse that laid the ground for this attack.

Since it's emerged that one of the victims in Manchester died from a police bullet it's clear that the existence of armed police in Britain is part of this story.

British Jews are tired. Quite literally tired after 25 hours of fasting and intensive prayers. So please don’t expect quick and thoughtful takes on the Manchester synagogue attack from us. Give us a few days.

If an international protectorate is such a great idea for Gaza why not apply it to the whole land between the river and the sea? Call it the Mandate 2.0.