During period of the Crusades the Jews of England were massacred before the crusaders left town, leading to an incident at York Castle that was reminiscent of Masada. Jews were chased into the castle and the tower was besieged by the mob of crusaders, demanding that the Jews convert to Christianity and be baptized. Trapped in the castle, the Jews were advised by their religious leader, Rabbi Yomtob of Joigney, to kill themselves rather than convert; The father of each family killed his wife and children, and then Yomtob stabbed the men before killing himself. The handful of Jews who did not kill themselves surrendered to the crusaders at daybreak on March 17, leaving the castle on a promise that they would not be harmed; they were also killed. In the aftermath the wooden tower they were hiding out in was burnt down.
In 1216 it was deemed that Jews in Britian had to wear badges. In 1290 Jews were expelled from the country for almost 400 years, but that didn't stop the hatred. The Pope at the time told everyone that the Jews killed Jesus:
"The story exerted its influence even in the absence of Jews... the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw the proliferation of the Host-desecration story in England: in collections of miracle stories, many of them dedicated to the miracles of the Virgin Mary; in the art of illuminated manuscripts used for Christian prayer and meditation; and on stage, as in popular Croxton Play of the Sacrament, which itself evoked memories of an alleged ritual murder committed by Jews in East Anglia in 1191."(Jeremy Cohen 2007: Christ Killers)I would need twelve pages to take you from the 17th century till today. But lets just say that nothing really changed. True there was Balfour in 1917, but that was a ruse since at the same time the British were promising the same land to the Arabs.
During WWII ignoring the dire warnings coming from Germany, Britain refused to allow further Jewish refugees into their country. Even worse Jews were denied the ability to escape the Nazis and immigrate to the British-controlled Palestine. As more and more Jews were facing the final solution Britain strictly limited immigration. This limitation became nearly absolute after the White Paper of 1939 all but stopped legal immigration. During the War, Jews organized an illegal immigration effort, conducted by "Hamossad Le'aliyah Bet" that rescued tens of thousands of European Jews from the Nazis by shipping them to Palestine in rickety boats. Many of these boats were intercepted and some were sunk with great loss of life. The efforts began in 1939, and the last immigrant boat to try to enter Palestine before the end of the war was the Struma, torpedoed in the Black Sea by a Soviet submarine in February 1942. The boat sank with the loss of nearly 800 lives. How many Jewish lives could have been saved from the Nazis were it not for Britain's hatred of Jews.
After the war when Jewish refugees were caught trying to enter the holy land they were brought to concentration camps in Cyprus. Even in 1948 as Israel approached independence the British Army did all that they can to ensure that the Arabs had the more favorable military position against the Jews.
”Decades of British Government Anti-Israel positions have taken their toll. Years of the BBC and the British press promoting a moral equivalence between terrorist acts and Israel trying to protect its citizens . Years of British columnists talking about the Jewish lobby controlling foreign policy the financial institutions etc. have worked. Great Britain is no longer a safe haven for Jews (if it ever was)or as one recent victim said “There’s no future for Jews in England"
This has been confirmed by Historian Robert S. Wistrich who now says that the UK is the epicenter of Anti-Semitism in Europe:
Historian: UK is now European center of anti-Semitism
Etgar LefkovitsBritain has become the epicenter for anti-Semitic trends in Europe as traditional, age-old anti-Semitism in a country whose literature and cultural tradition were "drenched" in anti-Semitism has developed into a contemporary mix of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, an Israeli historian said Monday.
The problem of anti-Semitism in Britain is exacerbated by a growing and increasingly radical Muslim population, the weak approach taken by a timid British Jewish leadership, and the detachment of the British from their Christian roots, said Hebrew University historian Prof. Robert S. Wistrich in a lecture on British anti-Semitism at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
"Britain has become the center point for the meeting of anti-Semitic trends in Europe," Wistrich said.
In a wide-ranging two-hour address, the Cambridge University-educated historian, who has just completed a book on global anti-Semitism, traced the roots of British anti-Semitism to its history, culture and literature going back to medieval times.
"Anti-Semitism in Great Britain is at least a millennial phenomenon and has been around for 1000 years of recorded history," Wistrich said.
He noted that the expulsion of all Jews from Britain in 1290 by King Edward I following years of anti-Semitic violence was the first major expulsion of any Jewish community in Europe.
Jews were banned from Britain until 1656, when Oliver Cromwell, who had overthrown the monarchy, authorized their return.
Wistrich noted that a Jewish presence was not required in Britain to produce potent and resonating anti-Semitic stereotypes in classic English literature, including in works by Chaucer, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Dickens, Trollope, T. S. Elliot, and D. H. Lawrence, which he said continues to impact British society hundreds of years later today.
"The authors are conveying and transmitting to a future generation an embedded anti-Semitism whose influence is impossible to underestimate," Wistrich said.
"English literature and culture is in fact drenched in anti-Semitism," he said, adding that British intellectuals fail to understand the long-term impact of this phenomenon.
During World War II, the British refusal to rescue the Jews of Europe and their decision to close the gates of Palestine stemmed not only from a policy of realpolitik but by anti-Semitic sentiments, he said.
"Nothing was to be construed as fighting a Jewish war," he said.
He noted that the famed British wartime leader, Winston Churchill's, record on Zionism was "far from brilliant, rhetoric aside" noting that he promoted the infamous White Paper, which severely limited Jews from immigrating to Palestine during World War II.
The recent controversial contemporary theory of a Jewish lobby controlling American government policies in the wake of the 2003 Iraq War actually had its antecedents a century earlier, and dated back to the infamous anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, while anti-Israel activities on British campuses was going "strong blast" in the 1970s, he said.
In his address, Wistrich said that today's British media had taken an almost universally anti-Israel bias, especially but not exclusively on the BBC, with context removed from description of Israeli military actions, and Islamic jihadist activity such as suicide bombing never connected to ideology.
"Under no circumstance will a Palestinian act of terrorism be referred to as terrorist, They are militants similar to the floor-shop dispute in Liverpool whose workers have decided to go on strike," he said.
"Palestinian terrorism is portrayed as a minor pin-prick compared to 'massive' retaliation of this 'rogue' state [Israel]," he said.
"You cannot read a British newspaper without encountering a variant of the libel that Zionism is racism or Zionism is Nazism," he said, describing a culture of "barely disguised hatred" when the subject of Zionism of British Jewry or Anglo-Israel relations is broached, unless they are "the good anti-Zionists."
With the media and the elites skewed against Israel - aided by former Israeli academics who routinely condemn the Jewish state and who have attained "historic dissident status and are listened to as the authentic voice of Israel" - the whole discussion of anti-Semitism had become distorted in Britain, with the accuser becoming the accused, he said.
"The self-proclaimed anti-racists of the [London Mayor Ken] Livingstone brand lead the pack when it comes to the prevailing discourse about Israel and by implication Jews."
"If you bring up the subject of anti-Semitism you are playing the anti-Semitism card and you are [seen as] a dishonest deceitful manipulative Jew or lover of Jews who is using the language of anti-Semitism to disguise hide or silence criticism of Israel," he said.
The tenure of former prime minister Tony Blair - considered to be the most favorable British premier to the State of Israel - was a paradox of the British situation today, Wistrich said.
He said that Blair's support for Israel during the Second Lebanon War was "the straw that broke the camel's back" for a British premier who had already supported the Iraq War and was closely allied with US President George W. Bush, and helped bring about his downfall.
Today, the rapidly growing Muslim community in Britain numbers at least 1.6 million, compared to about 350,000 Jews.
Wistrich faulted British-Jewish leadership for taking a "softly softly approach," which he said was "very strange" and did not bear fruit in contemporary times.
"There is a long tradition of doing things behind closed doors and it is different to break with tradition but it should be broken," he said.
The historian noted that the straying of the British from their Christian roots has also created a changed reality in the Anglo-Israeli relationship with no Bible-based reasons or raison d'etre for a Jewish presence in the Holy Land.
He cited the recent support of the archbishop of Canterbury for the adoption of parts of Sharia, or Islamic law, in Britain - the same country, which, he noted, was once the birthplace of the US evangelical movement.
"The loss of Christian identity in what was the most Bible-believing culture in its day is one of the deeper layers of what has happened here," he said.
He noted some of the biblical remarks of prominent British leaders such as Lord Balfour and Lloyd George would be viewed as anathema today.
"You cannot speak or act that way today, or you would be considered the 'biggest threat to civilization' as American evangelicals are.
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