Joined February 2009
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I’ve written a satire about blind faith called Error 404, published 28 July. Pre-order here: waterstones.com/book/error-4… God bless you if you buy a copy. Hell surely beckons if you don’t.
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Richard Ferrer retweeted
Great piece by @richferrer
.@TravelodgeUK should offer pillows, not politics, writes @richferrer jewishnews.co.uk/a-good-nigh…
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Richard Ferrer retweeted
Ooooh man. I think it's worth showing you all the sort of stuff that this document says, because it is "grim". Really, really grim. A 🧵
Muslim police association identifies Zionism as ‘manifestation of anti-Muslim hatred’ jewishnews.co.uk/muslim-poli…
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Great news! Great shoes!
Chuffed to be named a 30 Under 30 winner last night, the first ever journalist from the JC to receive the award ✨ I’m grateful every day that I have the privilege of telling stories and digging into the issues that matter.
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Richard Ferrer retweeted
I've written about how there are those within the Greens who are determined to fight the wave of antisemitism which seeks to swamp the party. It was a privilege to be able to discuss it with @EliseDB
Special report: Fighting Green Party antisemitism and bigotry from the inside jewishnews.co.uk/fighting-an…
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Jewish News and the Jewish Leadership Council are launching J-HUB - a new digital platform connecting the UK Jewish community in one place. We’re looking for a project manager. Apply here: thejlc.org/vacancies
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Richard Ferrer retweeted
There are many depressing elements to this piece, but I was particularly depressed at the suggestion at one point, as mentioned in the piece, that we should not report on this because it risked "having a detrimental impact on community cohesion".
Strictly-Orthodox schoolgirls subjected to antisemitic abuse at A-level exam site jewishnews.co.uk/strictly-or…
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Richard Ferrer retweeted
This matters. An obscure London event on the history of the ancient Jewish kingdoms in Judea and Israel is cancelled because of ‘security concerns’ and it turns out this was a reaction to a campaign to fill and then undermine the event by activist disrupters. How strange! Why would a posse of aggressive activists be interested in the arcane details of bullae and steles and ostraca and inscriptions and numismatics in some small South Levantine kingdoms in the Iron Age? Well, it is a little more than that which is why it is both disturbing and important. And it matters because at its least it is a threat to history in Britain’s - but also the world’s - greatest temple of History @britishmuseum - and its scholarly integrity. The BM and its leadership are decent and well-meaning and have explained that they wished to save an event from disruption by bullying vandals but I am sure the BM realizes it is essential to announce a new event fast lest it give the impression that the permission of tiny cadres of aggressive bullies are required before it hold events. But the significance is wider than an event about the Moab and Tel Dan steles in a great museum. British cultural life is the right and exercise of civic and cultural freedom – a privilege of our liberal democracy - that does not require the permission of gangs of ideological activists nor can it cancelled or postponed nor endured at their beck and sufferance nor permitted with a bend of the knee to their permissions or veto. But that is what this appears to be. Across the cultural world in the West, though the bewildered middleaged managers of our institutions that are confronting and often submitting to a wave of self-righteous blackmail and mob threat, there is an increasingly thin – indeed ever more fragile and sometimes nigh invisible – line between ‘security concerns’ – and institutional pusillanimity. Then there is the history itself. This event concerns the study of the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel that existed between roughly 1100BC and 586BCin the Levant. It is not a coincidence that this was chosen for disruption. The history of the Judean kingdoms and the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem that stood for most of the time between 1000BC and 70ADetc is important and fascinating history in its own right, supported by complex and growing archaeological finds. These small kingdoms and the subsequent Temple priestly mini-state (restored by the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius 539BC) and then the larger Judean kingdoms of the Hasmoneans and Herodians – between 167BC and 135AD chronicle the long indigenous history of Jews in the region – which the protesters are keen to erase. This is a political project of ideological erasure and malicious incitement of course concerned with the complex, brutal Israel-Palestine conflict that has now gone on for a hundred years and is unlikely to be solved in a small lecture theatre in the British Museum. But it also attempts to deny or erase Jewish history itself – and by implication the heritage of British Jews who live here in Britain, a small community that is now under cultural and sometimes physical threat. Incidentally - but it is worth saying, this history does not deny anyone else’s history, nor the many other small realms in this region through ancient times nor the many names of the region and its entities and the historical origins of those names (Canaan, or Philistia or Peleset, Phoenicia, Aram Damascus or Moab or later Nabatea and the provinces of Palaestina Prime, Seconda and Tertia and the Ghassanid kingdoms and so on etc etc). The history of one can not be used to erase the history of the other and does not need to do so. The pursuit of knowledge which is one of the delights of human life and is the mission of the BM and indeed anyone who writes, reads or enjoys history, can celebrate and recognize all of these. Yet this protest and the many like it deployed across Britain nowadays is the opposite of that - an attack on history using the methods of intimidation and vandalism. Much of this involves distorting or dismantling actual history or often lying to replace it with a fabricated ideological structure that nourishes no one and helps no one but degrades our culture and civic life not to speak of history itself. By the way, the frequent claims that these histories or names are ‘denied’ or ‘noone knows them’ is nonsense: anyone and everyone who is interested knows this history. (Much of it appears for example in my book Jerusalem a history of the Holy Land.) And this is relevant not just to those of us who write study or enjoy the history of the region but also to those who believe that cultural life and civic society is a right that must not be submitted to the aggressions and plots of loud well-organized much-indulged ideologues who take advantage of the freedoms of our society to undermine its principles and the very freedoms they are designed to guard. Just as vital is a rule of history itself that concerrns the rise and fall of civilizations: the society that ceases to allow to free discussion of ideas and stops respecting and recognizing the value of scientific and historical sources and facts is a society that will fail.
Dark times when a talk about Ancient Judah and Israel @britishmuseum is cancelled ‘for security concerns’?
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There's no “nailed” emoji. I did, however, find “snailed”. 🐌
The British Museum felt the need to write that it "fully recognises the importance of lawful protest and freedom of expression in a democratic society". And here I was thinking this was about people planning to disrupt an event on Jewish history. jewishnews.co.uk/british-mus…
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Jewish event postponed by spineless @BritishMusum because antisemites object.
.@britishmuseum postpones celebration of Jewish culture over antisemitic protest fears jewishnews.co.uk/british-mus…
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Richard Ferrer retweeted
I've written about the issues within the Green party which have come into even sharper focus after their candidate for the Makerfield by-election stepped down just hours after being announced, it then being revealed he had shared Hatzola ambulance false flag conspiracy theories.
Eight questions for the Green Party after their Makerfield by-election candidate fiasco jewishnews.co.uk/eight-quest…
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Richard Ferrer retweeted
The police have now confirmed an arrest has been made "on suspicion of dangerous driving", and have stressed that "this was an isolated incident with no wider threat to the public." Read the story here: jewishnews.co.uk/police-conf…
Looking at this video from Salford yesterday, in which a Jewish family were almost run over by someone driving a late model white Mercedes, I find it very hard to believe that this was anything other than intentional.
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20,000, say police. About the number who turn up to watch #QPR at home, singing less terroristy songs.
Did you go to the same accounting school as Tommy Robinson? Police say 20,000 attended this march. Why lie?
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Richard Ferrer retweeted
I was honoured to help organise HM The King’s meeting and walkabout with the Jewish community in Golders Green. I’ve written about why it was such an important moment not just for Britain’s Jews but for British society. jewishnews.co.uk/two-gatheri… @RoyalFamily @JewishNewsUK
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Richard Ferrer retweeted
One picture of King Charles on Golders Green High Street tells us so much about this moment in British Jewish history. Wrote a piece about an extraordinary photo for @JewishNewsUK jewishnews.co.uk/the-king-in…
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Long to mensch over us. This means a lot.
“You’re all amazing, you’re all volunteers.” A special moment as His Majesty The King stopped to meet our Shomrim volunteers in the crowd, thanking them personally for the work they do for the community.
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Richard Ferrer retweeted
.@nicolelampert writes for us about one of the most disturbing and ill-sourced claims, I think, to have ever been published by a supposed 'paper of record'.
Opinion: The grotesque lie regarding Israel and canines Orwell asserted that ‘one of the marks of antisemitism is an ability to believe stories that could not possibly be true.’ jewishnews.co.uk/the-grotesq…
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