Richard Ferrer

Editor, @JewishNewsUK

Novel, Error 404, published in July – ‘An atheist disproves God. God takes it personally’.

[Richard Ferrer @richferrer]

I’ve written a satire about blind faith called Error 404, published 28 July.

Pre-order here: https://t.co/73RCGnYJzH

God bless you if you buy a copy. Hell surely beckons if you don’t.

[Daniel Sugarman @Daniel_Sugarman]

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

[Richard Ferrer @richferrer]

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: https://t.co/Un7hIQImEh

[Daniel Sugarman @Daniel_Sugarman]

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".

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

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.

[Richard Ferrer @richferrer]

There's no “nailed” emoji. I did, however, find “snailed”. 🐌

[Daniel Sugarman @Daniel_Sugarman]

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.

https://t.co/gCHge7UX0Q

[Richard Ferrer @richferrer]

Jewish event postponed by spineless @BritishMusum because antisemites object.

[Jewish News @JewishNewsUK]

.@britishmuseum postpones celebration of Jewish culture over antisemitic protest fears
https://t.co/GO8nVAW6vd

[Richard Ferrer @richferrer]

@George_Osborne The solution to intimidation is to reward it?

[Richard Ferrer @richferrer]

@mishtal @BBCNews The BBC. Pioneers of 4Ws journalism.

[Richard Ferrer @richferrer]

@QueensPark_TR Play 46, win 15.33, draw 15.33, lose 15.33. Finish 15th.

[Daniel Sugarman @Daniel_Sugarman]

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.

[Daniel Sugarman @Daniel_Sugarman]

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:

https://t.co/agfr4Su7kE

[Richard Ferrer @richferrer]

20,000, say police. About the number who turn up to watch #QPR at home, singing less terroristy songs.

[Piers Morgan @piersmorgan]

Did you go to the same accounting school as Tommy Robinson? Police say 20,000 attended this march. Why lie?

[Dan Sacker @dan_sacker]

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. https://t.co/jCBkaZmaBL @RoyalFamily @JewishNewsUK

[Josh Glancy @joshglancy]

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

https://t.co/OcaVRKR0sp

[Richard Ferrer @richferrer]

Long to mensch over us. This means a lot.

[Shomrim (North West London) @shomrimlondon]

“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.

[Daniel Sugarman @Daniel_Sugarman]

.@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'.

[Jewish News @JewishNewsUK]

Arsenal names Israeli-founded Deel as its new shirt sleeve sponsor

https://t.co/1ZAbfzKUjx

[Nicki Minaj @NICKIMINAJ]

😩 The UK is truly one of a kind.

They will portray her in film & TV one day…just like they did with
Margaret Thatcher.