Skip to main content

Left Anti-Semitism?

This is a cross-post from one of my other blogs. As it's got a religious element I thought it fair game to post here!


It's not a website I normally frequent but there appears a peculiar story in the Brussels Journal. It's about the increasing harassment of Jews in Amsterdam.

As with any harassment of identifiable people groups the Dutch Police use undercover decoy tactics to hold accountable those guilty of such attacks. It's commonly used to identify people who are considered to actively harass groups such as prostitutes, gay persons, or the elderly. And to me it sounds a pretty good tactic. Who could find anything wrong with that?

Well it seems one particular party does, but only when the undercover police are dressed as Jews. The website reports Evelien van Roemburg, an Amsterdam counselor of the Green Left Party, saying that using a decoy by the police amounts to provoking a crime.

But only when it's the Jews. Apparently.

I would hate to think that a party that is identified by many on the left as 'of the left' in fact turns out to have such tendencies. Perish the thought.

But it could all be Daily Mail style reporting by what is obviously a right-wing website.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Upper Rooms

We often think of the 'upper room' as being the place where Jesus and the Disciples held the Last Supper but the Bible has many more 'upper rooms'.

Sound familiar?

Watching the BBC interview of Adele by Graham Norton tonight and Adele sang one of the new tracks off her forthcoming album. The track was called A Million Years Ago. Listening to it reminded me of a different song by someone else. You know where you almost recognise a tune but get lost with the words, yet it's the words which are the key! Eventually it came to me, El Shaddai by Michael Card, famously sung by Amy Grant. It's a song that I occasionally play during worship. Have a listen. What do you think?

The Archbishop and Wonga

Image via CrunchBase Have to say I was initially chuffed to see the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby laying down a challenge to Wonga and others of their ilk. The AoC communicated that he wanted to see the payday loan industry driven out of business by promoting the use of credit unions. The payday loan industry is involved in outright usury which is condemned by many faiths such as Islam and Christianity and others. Usury we can look upon as the lending of money at exorbitant rates of interest. But then I thought what was the AoC actually saying? He wanted to replace excessive usury with not so excessive usury. Is that what we should be aiming for? Plus the architects of our current austerity are backing the AoC! I would love to see all of the credit industry driven out of business but it will only be done by paying workers a decent wage, sharing in the profit of their labour and making capitalism history. At the end of the day this sort of initiative is just a...