14 OPINION
26 MAY 2022
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OPINION
The opinions on this page do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper
Promoting Ignorance OPINION PIECE BY ROBERT FESTENSTEIN
Fustat is a little known town in Egypt which for 500 years was its capital until the middle of the 12th Century. In 1204, its most famous inhabitant, Moses Ben Maimon, commonly known as Maimonides died. Maimonides has been hailed as one of the greatest Jewish scholars ever. What was so remarkable about him was not only his Talmudic scholarship but that he was also a respected physician and philosopher. His ability to master both the religious and the secular has served as an example which many have sought to emulate. In the 818 years following the death of Maimonides one would expect to see Jewish educators seeking to meet his standard both in respect of Jewish and secular studies. For reasons passing understanding, certain parts of the community today are turning their back on Maimonides’s example. The latest Queen’s speech included a promise to give additional powers to Ofsted in respect of schools not registered with the department of education. In the
Jewish Telegraph of the 12th May 2022, it was reported that a spokesman for the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations said “Really, but the age of 13 and a half, when they start yeshiva ketana, they [teenage boys] should know enough secular knowledge to make their way in the world. If they want to take employment and need more [secular knowledge], they will be able to get that later on”. It is impossible to see how this approach has any legitimacy at all. The suggestion that a boy at 13 and a half has enough secular education to make his way in the world is as stupid as it is unrealistic. Without formal qualifications the prospects of an individual to obtain employment, let alone well-paid employment are seriously
reduced. The requirement to earn a living is as important as the requirement to study and significantly comes first. Work then study. Denying people a secular education past 13 and a half is a recipe for low income. Add to this the likelihood of the boys in question marrying and having large numbers of children, the prospects of poverty for that family are pretty much guaranteed. What makes matters worse is that this lack of education and increasing poverty appears to being ignored by the communal leadership. No-one it seems is prepared to state what is plain to see, that a lack of education for those with large families is massively undesirable
Sadly, this weakness has allowed the position to get worse. For as long as no-one takes a stand on the secular ‘ignorance is bliss’ position, those promoting religious over mainstream education will continue unchallenged.
both in terms of their poverty but also that of the community as a whole. There is a sense that these leaders are keen to ‘reach out’ to the ultra-orthodox with a view to engaging with them. It is not clear what that engagement might be though what is likely is that because of these attempts to engage, no-one has the spine to say what is blindingly obvious about the lack of education and consequent poverty. Sadly, this weakness has allowed the position to get worse. For as long as no-one takes a stand on the secular ‘ignorance is bliss’ position, those promoting religious over mainstream education will continue unchallenged. There are some issues where there is no grey area and this is one. It remains to be seen whether any leader has the strength of character to point out, like the young boy with the emperor’s new clothes what is right in front of us and not allow Maimonides’s example to become something to be ignored. Robert Festenstein is a practising solicitor and has been the principal of his Salford based firm for over 20 years. He has fought BDS motions to the Court of Appeal and is President of the Zionist Central Council in Manchester which serves to protect and defend the democratic State of Israel.
Boris goes all in! OPINION PIECE BY YEHUDA HEIMANN
Brexit! Yes, it’s back on the agenda, have you missed it? I know I certainly have. Numerous times during lockdown while we were all being told we were going to die, I found myself yearning for a simpler time, a time when the worst that could happen was “No deal”. Well, as it turns out “No deal” could still happen! Last week in Parliament, Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, stood at the dispatch box and threatened to put forward a bill in UK domestic law that gives the government the right to unilaterally make changes to the Northern Ireland protocol. A move that resulted in the EU threatening legal action and commentators predicting a potential trade war! The Northern Ireland protocol is the Brexit agreement’s answer to this question; How can the UK have an independent trade policy from the EU, without a border in the Irish sea or on the island of Ireland? Fundamentally, the question that cost Theresa May her premiership. And it’s really beginning to become a major event in the premiership of her successor, two years after officially leaving the EU. After months of endless, agonising and
frustrating deadlock in Parliament over May’s answer to the Irish border dilemma she called “The Backstop”. She was removed as the leader of the Conservative party by the ERG. The eurosceptic group within the Conservative party that included Boris Johnson I might add. Later to be replaced by Mr Johnson himself after a leadership election. Boris Johnson comes into power and realises he’s inherited a coalition government with the DUP, and will be held to ransom by them at every step of his negotiation. He calls a general election saying he’s got an “Oven Ready” Brexit deal, (which technically was true, as his predecessor had split the Brexit negotiations into two parts, the divorce bill and future relationship, the divorce bill part was ready to go, so technically Brexit was “oven-ready”) To cut a long story short, Boris wins an eighty seat majority, negotiates and signs a future relationship agreement, before anyone has a chance to look at it. In a very Boris Johnson fashion, then Covid happens… Now here we sit two years on, the dust has settled, and guess what?! It’s not working. To start with, I think it’s safe to say that it’s certainly not in the EU’s interest for the current agreement to work. Just look at the way they’ve been implementing it until now. Border checks and regulatory delays on products that have absolutely no chance of continuing their journey into the Republic of Ireland, things like fresh sandwiches! And
they have absolutely no incentive whatsoever to negotiate in good faith to fix it. Because let’s face it, there have been two major crises in Europe since Brexit. And guess which one of us came out looking better for them? Who came up with a Covid vaccine in record time? Which leader took the initiative in unifying the world against the Russian tyrant? I’ll give you a hint, it wasn’t the EU. And it certainly wasn’t Macron, or whoever the new chancellor of Germany is. You guessed it! It was Boris Johnson and his independent UK government. In a nutshell, this is their one and only opportunity to try and make it look like Brexit failed. Are they petty enough to milk it? You bet they are! The only conclusion I draw from all this, is that this is a game of poker. The same game the EU has been playing all along, it’s all one big gigantic bluff, and it’s about time we called it! Finally, the government is playing the game the way they should have played it all along. All the scaremongering on the news during the Brexit talks. Every day when you turned on the radio all you heard was what a disaster “No Deal” would be. The Remainers in Parliament even managed to get the government to take “no deal” off the table. What do you think that did for the UK’s negotiating position? It’s very possibly the reason that we’re still
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in this position. In a negotiation, you need leverage, without leverage what’s going to make the other side compromise? To be clear, I’m not trying to alienate readers on my second week and I’m certainly not trying to take a side in the Leave or Remain debate. As far as I’m concerned that ship has sailed, Brexit has happened. Now the only thing left to do, is give it our absolute all to make it work. Any true patriotic Brit should agree with that, no matter how you voted in the referendum. So I’m going to make a prediction, because I know the unashamed anti-British bias that is rampant throughout the mainstream media. I predict that we’re going to hear an awful lot of the words “BREAKING INTERNATIONAL LAW”, those words will be coming out of your nostrils before long. But when you hear those words, remember, this is a negotiation! A negotiation with people that aren’t going to do us any favours, they’re not our friends. What they are, is our competitors! It’s in their best interest to keep us in this mess for as long as they possibly can, and they will! Threatening to break international law is not a crime, breaking international law is. This is called negotiating. The writer is an up and coming political/ commentator journalist, he writes a political blog as well as contributing to various publications.
