Jewish Voice: the group trying to silence Tommy Robinson is yet another socialist anti-Israel front claiming it is 'pro-Israel', 'pro-peace'

In the face of an Islamist terror campaign and a wave of antisemitism (much of it from the extreme left) yet another group claiming to speak for British Jews has declared that the real threat to Britain and its Jews is ....Tommy Robinson. Here is their twitter statement of 27 June:

On their twitter page yesterday they announced they were 'launching a social media campaign to fight Tommy Robinson' which included the lie that 'Tommy Robinson is no friend of the Jews'. Tommy himself responded with this:

I'm not going to repeat here why Jewish Voice (and much of the main stream media) are so completely wrong about Tommy Robinson - you can see the links or just read what Brian John Thomas wrote about Tommy's trip to Israel last year.  My focus here is to expose who Jewish Voice are and why it is they who are a danger to British Jews.

Their mission statement ("About us") says

A group of people brought together by the Jeremy Corbyn movement for leadership of the Labour party has united to develop a Jewish community project to give a voice to socialist and progressive Jewish values.

They go on to say

..we feel that it is important to give voice to the alternative, socialist view from our community.

but as with most 'socialists' they do not feel that others have the same right to a voice or viewpoint that is different from theirs. Hence, their campaign to silence critics of Islam. Indeed, based on their twitter page their mission statement seems to have changed to 'fighting Islamophobia':

And, inevitably, they also support the BDS campaign to boycott Israel even though their two co-founders Yonatan Higgsmith and Moshe Ariel claim to be 'pro-Israel' as well as 'pro-Palestinian'. 

In fact, like those other 'pro-Israel, pro-Palestine' leftist organisations Yachad and JStreet, everything they do and say with respect to Israel actually involves its deligitimization while ignoring Palestinian terrorism. But Jewish Voice seem to have more in common with the openly anti-Zionist (and some would argue antisemitic) 'Jewish Voice for Peace'.

To get a feel for why they are a danger for British Jews take a look at this video of Moshe Ariel on the BBC. In a segment about the boycott Israel campaign he was on - literally - as the "Jewish voice". Except .... he actually says he supports the boycott (but only disagrees with some of the campus tactics used):

(incidentally this is a standard BBC tactic when discussing Israel; they typically have a panel of hostile speakers that is 'balanced' by a Jewish or Israeli speaker who also just happens to be either highly critical of Israel or an open anti-Zionist).  

And if that isn't bad enough check out this article on the J Voice website by Ariel after the heinous terrorist attack in Jerusalem in January in which a 'Palestinian' ISIS supporter continually ran over and killed 4 young cadets (including three young girls). Ariel argued that this was not an act of terrorism:

"Arguing that it is not terrorism may be controversial, but it shouldn’t be. ....Acts of violence in Israel/Palestine, are very different to similar acts of violence carried out in Europe and the United States. Palestinian violence and the subsequent Israeli response is a result of the occupation"

Moshe Ariel is a student at Sheffield University - so anybody who is a student there there needs to be aware of his agenda.

Like Ariel, Yonatan Higgsmith also claims to be a "Palestinianist" who is also a "Zionist"  citing the fact that his views are really not much different to the Meretz party in Israel. But, he also states his loyalty to Jeremy Corbyn and his commitment to Corbyn's statement on Palestine which, while making ludicrous demands on Israel, fails to call out Palestinian terrorism and incitement. It is important to note that Higgsmith is active with Limmud the mainstream Jewish organisation that claims it is 'dedicated to Jewish learning' but which increasingly pushes a hard-left, anti-Zionist message to naive, ill-informed participants at their events.

It is not clear whether 'Jewish Voice' is much more than just Ariel and Higgsmith, but they do have 10,500 twitter followers. And, as is evidenced from Ariel's BBC appearance, being critical of Israel in the UK always provides them a platform and respect denied to others.

See also:

• Tale of two books
• Tommy Robinson in Israel (response to the Jewish Chronicle)
• Police persecution of Tommy Robinson continues 
• Yachad indoctrination
• Rules and Guidelines for reporting on the Middle East