An anti-semite on Facebook

It's not usual for me to come across anti-semitism in practice. Fortunately for British Jews it's not something we come across alot, though there have been an increasing number of anti-semitic attacks on Jews and our institutions over the past few years.

But over the last few days I've had a conversation on Facebook in which, to my surprise, I have found myself effectively corresponding with someone who appears to exhibit many of the signs of being on the extreme end of anti-semitism - though she attempts to shelter it under the mask of anti-zionism.

The person concerned uses the pseudonum 'GSD Jayne' and her Facebook profile shows a picture of a dog. I believe that she is involved in rescuing German Shepherd dogs - hence GSD.

The conversation began when I commented on an excellent article by David Baddiel called 'How anti-semitism entered the zeitgeist' http://tinyurl.com/5wn2rk7 which appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 5th March and which my friend and former colleague, Joe Rich, posted on his Facebook page.  (Joe has, by the way, supported my comments throughout what follows).

Here are the relevant parts of the conversation which then ensued:

Me:  Seriously though, David Baddiel's article (which was attached to your post) was excellent; it rightly captured the concerns we have about... the recent increase in this pernicious form of racism.

DSG Jayne: The anti-semitic accusation is thrown in a little to quickly. Maybe more people are awakening to the zionist agenda.Well worth a watch - Zeitgeist: Addendum http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912#

Me:  Sadly, it appears that yet again someone (Gsd Jayne) attempts to use Israel/Zionism as an excuse for anti-semitism. It isn't. Many Jews (including Israelis) don't agree with all the policies of the Israeli government. Yet that doesn't stop anti-semites and their apologists from using Israel/Zionism as an excuse or explanation for their racism. The result is that, increasingly, Jews and synagogues are being attacked - mostly by people who care not one jot what their views are on Israel.

GSD Jayne:  You are very misinformed and I am not anti-semitic. Perhaps you need to do some research. A good start would be to find out who funded the nazis! All religions have been used to hide our true history and to divide and conquer. 

Me:  I'm not clear what you are implying. Who do you say funded the Nazis?

GSD Jayne: The Warburg family is a financial dynasty of German Jewish origin.' The Warburg brothers financed both sides in WW2 - allegedly! The elite banksters always finance both sides in a war - it's a win win situation for them. Wars are very profitable for the elite z******* banksters. 

GSD Jayne: Both the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England are privately owned cartels - JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Rockefeller, Rothschild. They control governments and policy. Hollywood, the music industry and mainstream media are owned and controll...ed by.........? People are given 2 choices - tow the line or face ridicule, being discredited and elimination if necessary. Famous people who were a threat to their agenda and were eliminated include - Lennon, Hendrix, Jackson, Tupac, JFK and most famously Princess Diana. 

All wars and economic recessions are deliberately engineered. Millions of innocent men women and children are starving to death - by design. we live in a world of excess!!

Our troops are just cannon fodder to make the wealthy even more wealthy. They always fund both sides. Our young men and women are dying for nothing.

The British government is an illusion - they have no power. They are controlled by the global elite.

Al qaeda Bin Laden are CIA. Bin Laden is dead - Benazir Bhutto let that slip in a TV interview, after which she was also eliminated. Bin Laden was a close family friend of the Bush family.

It was always planned that there would be 3 world wars - we have only had 2. What is going on in the middle east has all been engineered.

The reality for the majority of people, is too horrible to comprehend so they dismiss it as conspiracy theory.

The economic destruction of the UK and USA is well underway.

Henry Kissinger declared in the 1970’s, ‘If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food, you control the population. What is happening to fuel and food prices today? 

If you want to see real news, check out Russia Today. The Keiser report is spot on.See More 

Me:  It seems to me that Gsd Jayne has shown in her rather loony comments above that what David Baddiel wrote in the article which started this, and what I first wrote in response to it, were spot on.

GSD Jayne:  Go back to sleep Paul, you are showing your ignorance.

Now it is, of course, entirely possible that, despite having read a great deal about Nazi Germany, the Holocaust and World War II generally, I don't know everything about that era. But the notion which GSD Jayne implicitly promotes, that Jews financed the Nazis and thus the Holocaust, is so monstrously, wickedly wrong that only the most loony fringes of the Far Right believe it.  Her later post, in which she alleges that various organisations, including ones with obviously Jewish names (Goldman Sachs, Rothschilds) "control governments and policy" and that "Hollywood, the music industry and mainstream media" are owned and controlled by .....?" is, for all its dots and question marks, a repetition of the age-old anti-semitic canard that the world is controlled by a Jewish conspiracy.  That is a lie for which, of course, there is no proof : there are, for instance, far more organisations and governments run by members of other religions than by Jews but no-one ever suggests that there is a world Christian conspiracy. But that simple fact hasn't prevented it being used as the excuse to persecute and kill many Jews over the past millenia.

I had thought that the world had grown beyond such lies. Apparently not. Here we have someone in England in 2011 who believes this and is prepared to spout it on Facebook apparently without any shame and without the least notion that her comments are anti-semitic both in content and effect.  For all its conspiracy-theory laden lunacy and its sneering claims of my ignorance, that is rather frightening.

Anti-Semitism: The hatred that refuses to go away

I heartily recommend reading Jonathan Freedland's excellent article about anti-semitism in today's Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/6l9fq9u.

For British Jews like me who grew up in the post-war era anti-semitism has been something that happened to other Jews in the past or is happening to other Jews elsewhere in the world; but, aside from the odd comment, it didn't really happen to us.  The rise in threats to our synagogues and institutions over the last few years, and the consequent increase in the level of security we have had to provide for them, shows that those halcyon days are over. The recent reported comments of Messrs Galliano and Assange show even more that this ancient and pernicious hatred is still very much with us.

The differences between freedom of speech in the UK and in the USA

Adam Wagner has written an excellent article (“Thank God for Dead Soldiers” vs. “British soldiers go to hell”) in the UK Human Rights Blog about the different view of offensive speech taken by the courts in the UK and the USA: http://tinyurl.com/4ly76mn. 

Of course, freedom of speech is easy when you agree with what the person is saying buy much more difficult when you disagree or, even more, when it is offensive. But that's precisely when you need a robust concept of freedom of speech.

European Court judgment on insurance

If you want to read today's judgment of the European Court regarding discrimination in car insurance it's at http://tinyurl.com/6e5j5pa. Though the judgment is remarkably short for the European Court (only 36 paragraphs), if you don't feel like reading it all there's a sort of crib in the Press Release at http://tinyurl.com/4rlr93p. There's also a rather good article on the UK Human Rights blog at http://tinyurl.com/4lsqnht. The effect of this ruling doesn't come into force until 21st December 2012 so, as Corporal Jones would have said, don't panic (yet).

Judges being rude about barristers

My former colleague, Paul Diamond, has been representing Mr and Mrs Johns in the claim they brought against Derby City Council in the Administrative Court over Derby's refusal to certify them as foster carers because of their views about homosexuality: see http://tinyurl.com/4ljcekq.  The report of the case is worth reading not just because it sets out the view which English law takes of religion but also because it contains a rare example of a court being stunningly rude about a barrister (see paras 32-35).

Judiciary responds to Government’s legal aid proposals

The Judges’ Council, the Council of Circuit Judges and the Association of District Judges have published their responses to the Government's Legal Aid proposals. They make interesting, if not entirely unpredictable, reading. They can be found at http://www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed80420

What does 'full-time education' mean?

Here is a problem which occasionally arises under old orders which simply say that periodical payments for either the wife or (in non-CSA case) the child continue until the child "reaches the age of 18 or finishes full-time education, whichever is the later". The question is does that include tertiary education?

The answer is yes. In B v B (Adult Student: Liability to Support) [1998] 1 FLR 373 CA,  the husband, who wanted to terminate the periodical payments he was paying for his daughter, who was at university, argued that the order had terminated on her completing secondary education. Thorpe LJ said:

"The financial arrangements following the divorce of her parents were the subject of an order made in the Plymouth County Court on 4 November 1991. By para 4 of that order, the appellant was required to pay to his former wife for the children of the family periodical payments at the rate of £175 per month per child until they respectively attained the age of 17 years or ceased full-time education, whichever should be the later, or further order. Manifestly, the liability in respect of his daughter continues under the provisions of that paragraph."

In practice, of course, it is ordinarily futile to argue about this anyway because the child has his/her own right to claim periodical payments under Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989.

Legal Aid cuts: Problems for Ancillary Relief lawyers

Unless you have been living the life of a hermit over the last few weeks you will know that Legal Aid is to be radically cut and that family law is to suffer particularly. In practice, public funding will only be available for cases in which domestic violence is a factor.  That is likely to have two effects:

• There will be more litigants in person
• There will be more people alleging that the other party was violent during the marriage.

As all lawyers know, litigants in person know even less about the law than we do but they often don't know it. The internet has made this problem worse: every Tom, Dick and Harriet who has watched a couple of episodes of Kavanagh QC and rummaged around on the internet seems to think that he/she is the reincarnation of George Carman.

For those of us practicing in ancillary relief this leads to two particular problems when we are faced with a litigant in person on the other side.  First, in practice it places much responsibility on us to guide the court. It also means that, whether or not we have instigated the application, it is often up to us to prepare bundles etc (with all the attendant expense for our client) or face having inadequate bundles prepared by the LIP. Secondly, it makes FDRs - the valuable tool for settlement introduced in the 1999 rule changes - pointless, because litigants in person don't know what sort of orders the court is likely to make and thus are unable to recognise what reasonable offers to make and/or accept.

That means, of course, (as others, including the President, have noted) that there will be fewer cases settling and more proceeding to final hearings. That may be good for lawyers but I'm not sure that it is good for the law.

The second problem is even more pernicious. If legal aid is only available if one makes an allegation of violence it is clearly likely that more people will make allegations of domestic violence in order to get public funding. That is likely to inflame rather than ameliorate ancillary relief disputes. The flip-side of that, of course, is that those (predominantly husbands) who are faced with allegations of violence are likely to allege that the allegation is only being made so that the wife will be able to get legal aid.

Both of these are likely to increase the length of hearings, and thereby the delays in and the cost of running the family court system. In the long run I suspect that they are more likely to cost than to save money.

The main objection to these cuts, however, is not financial. The family court system is  a service which the State, and only the State, runs. Unlike health and education, for instance, it is not something which can be dealt with privately: if you want to get divorced  you have to go through the family courts.  Putting in place changes, such as those proposed, which lead to potential injustice and increased delay in such an intrinsic part of a modern state are, therefore,  wrong.