Zionist Federation funds anti-Islamic tour
Mordechai Kedar speaking at a conference in Jan, 2014 YouTube screen capture/ DemoCast
Shul bans fail to derail Israeli academic’s tour
By Simon Rocker, Jewish Chronicle
December 11, 2014
The Zionist Federation claims a tour by Israeli academic Mordechai Kedar was a success, despite a further cancellation by one synagogue this week.
Dr Kedar was due to speak at three schools but they were pulled by the ZF after the Board of Deputies voiced concerns over his links to Pamela Geller, the anti-Islamist American activist banned from the UK last year. His appearance on Tuesday at Finchley’s Kinloss Synagogue was also cancelled.
ZF chairman Paul Charney said: “Despite a concerted campaign against Dr Kedar, his speaking tour has been largely successful. Like all attempts to ban or boycott something, this campaign has had the opposite effect.”
More than 600 heard him in several venues, Mr Charney said, with many “surprise at how moderate he is”.
The move by Finchley, one of the largest United Synagogues, followed the decision by the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation in Maida Vale not to host Dr Kedar, taken before his UK arrival.
Finchley rabbi, Jeremy Lawrence, said: “Without derogating from his expertise as a commentator, Kinloss considered and followed counsel on the perception of hosting the speaker, who was publicly aligned with comments and views which did not reflect the relationships and work undertaken by our past and present leadership.”
Dr Kedar, who lectures at Bar Ilan University, addressed synagogues in Borehamwood, Brighton and Hendon’s Ner Israel, the ZF advocacy conference and Christian groups, as well as appearing on BBC Arabic TV and Sky News. He said the exposure had meant that “other people invited me to speak in alternative events organised by the ZF”.
He said the audience of 100 in Brighton in Monday had been more than twice expectations. “They sat nailed to the chairs and listened to a two-hour scholarly lecture about the chaos in the Middle East, its causes and prospects, a lecture which connected the dots for many in the audience,” he said.
Mr Charney revealed this week that schools due to host him had raised concerns about a potential complaint to Ofsted if Dr Kedar were to appear.
The Board of Deputies, “then voiced concerns particularly over the schools. We understood their concerns”.
The ZF, however, had not agreed to the synagogue cancellations. “They simply cancelled on us,” he said.
Zionist Federation speaker: immigration will be death of Europe
Ben White, MEMO
December 05, 2014
The UK Zionist Federation (ZF) this week hosts an Israeli professor who has stated that “the only thing that can deter terrorists… is the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped.”
Mordechai Kedar, of Bar-Ilan University, will speak at a number of synagogues and Jewish schools across the country. It has been reported that at least one synagogue and college have cancelled.
Back in July, Kedar used an interview on Israeli radio to claim that the rape of female relatives is the “only thing” that could deter “terrorists”. He added: “It sounds very bad, but that’s the Middle East.” After his remarks were publicised, Kedar said that his comments were “hyperbole.”
No such justification, however, for comments Kedar made to Israeli news site Ynet in May 2013, when he claimed that without “an end to immigration, we will soon be hearing the death throes of the [European] continent as we know it.”
Kedar decried what he called “a European softening” that “the Muslims see as a weakness”, adding:
Every year more Muslims than non-Muslims are born in France. Japan has no Muslims because they don’t allow them in. Racism? Maybe. Superiority? Maybe. They don’t care. They want to sustain Japan and are looking down on everyone.
Evangelical Christian and partner to Mordechai Kedar in denunciations of Islam, Patrick Sookhdeo, a convert to Christianity from Islam, is a special adviser to the UK’s Special Branch. He is the founder of the Barnabas Fund which ‘aims to support Christians where they are in a minority and suffer discrimination, oppression and persecution as a consequence of their faith’.
On Sunday, Kedar will speak alongside evangelical Christian and former adviser to the British army Patrick Sookhdeo, at a ZF-organised event called “Christians in Crisis: Violence & Persecution in the Middle East”.
Sookhdeo, who is awaiting trial in Swindon Crown Court in February after pleading not guilty to a charge of sexual assault and two of intimidating a witness or juror, has his own track record when it comes to views on “Islam”.
Sookhdeo believes that “the brutality of contemporary Islamic terrorists…obviously harks back to such paradigmatic examples from Muhammad’s life”, is a signatory to the US-based ‘Coalition to Stop Shariah’, and told an interviewer in 2009 that “everything about the West is inimical to Islam.”
The theme of Sunday’s event, co-sponsored by Christian Friends of Israel and the Barnabas Fund, is instructive. Like Netanyahu’s parroting of “ISIS” at the UN, the ZF hopes to exploit the catastrophes faced by minority groups across the region to mask Israeli apartheid.
In their choice of speakers, the ZF also shows the kind of people who, increasingly, are the only ones left fighting Israel’s corner, in a world where boycott campaigns are growing, and even political elites are getting frustrated with rejectionist Israeli leaders. Kedar and Sookhdeo are hardly likely candidates to check this increasing isolation.