Newspaper Article

Letters

(Rev) Michael Plaskow MBE, Richard Rinberg, Glenn Woiceshyn, Colin L. Leci, Henry Kaye, Joe Frankl, Yoel Tamari, Shifra Tarem, Raymond Cannon, Shakil Khan, Ellie Morris, Leon Harris, Naomi Cohen

2005

Overview

Sir, - In \"'Great' Britain\" (Letters, September 16) Jack Barreti omitted a crucial fact re the UK's attempted arrest of Maj-Gen. Doron Almog. Apparently, the arrest warrant was issued under a 1957 Act that enshrined the Fourth Geneva Convention in English law. Article 146 obliges the UK to bring persons alleged to have committed war crimes before the courts. Sir, - I'm afraid Jack Barreti's recollection of a tolerant \"British Lion\" was an illusion of selective memory. The Britain I was born into had men's clubs into which women, dogs and Jews were not admitted. It was hard to get a job if you had a Jewish name even if, and sometimes because, the owner of the factory was a Jew. The Scout movement was based on Christianity. An unfair act or statement was termed \"unchristian.\" The cathedral town of York's decree from the Middle Ages that no Jew could live there was officially lifted only a few years ago. All schools had a Christian service every morning before school. There were no Jews in private schools. Sir, - I am not sure whose funeral your reporters attended as, from my own observation, their account was glaringly inaccurate in one significant respect (\"Hundreds attend funeral of 'Mandela's rabbi,'\" September 16). A large segment - possibly even the majority - of those at the funeral of Rabbi Cyril Harris, former chief rabbi of South Africa, included his erstwhile UK rabbinical colleagues, congregants and personal friends from the London communities of Kenton, for whom there was a special bus from [Netanya], as well as from Edgware and St. John's Wood synagogues. This was apart from the many British and Israeli friends of Rabbi Harris's sons.

• Publisher: The Jerusalem Post Ltd