We,
the undersigned, protest the visit of the preacher Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi to the
UK.
Rabbi
Mizrachi is on record as expressing a variety of highly offensive, bigoted and
hateful views
A. That Downs Syndrome children and those with autism are
being punished for their sins in a previous life for gossiping, "measure
for measure" and are here to suffer.
B. That due to not being correctly religious, secular
Jewish women acted without concern for their modesty at the gas chambers during
the Holocaust.
C. Engaging in a [racist] form of Holocaust denial by
challenging the Jewish status of five million souls who perished.
D. That Sephardic Jews were spared much of the Holocaust
because Reform started in Germany, a demonstrably false claim in view of the
decimation of the Sephardic population of the Balkans.
E. That children who are born with blindness are being
punished for watching pornography in previous lives.
F. That women contract breast and cervix cancers as a
result of sexual licentiousness.
G. That men contract prostate and brain cancers as a
result of sexual licentiousness and what he calls "dirty thoughts".
H. The racist accusation that crime has increased in
America as the result of the emancipation of African-Americans.
I. That homosexuals are being punished for having chosen
to be gay in a previous life.
J. That people cease to be religious because they are
influenced by gay university professors.
K. That totalitarian laws should be imposed as a result
of terrorism.
L. That the problem with the European far right is not
their views, but that they detest Jews as well as Muslims.
M. The racist view that all Chinese people look the same.
We
consider these views to be cultish, divisive and contemptible.
When
criticised, Rabbi Mizrachi attacks his critics personally in the most
intemperate ad hominem language, likening them to wicked Biblical figures such
as "Amalek", "Korach" and "Haman" or,
sickeningly, as "worse than Hitler". Videos of his more controversial
statements are routinely removed in order to enable claims that they were
"taken out of context".
His
remarks on the Holocaust and other matters provoked strong condemnation from
the Novominsker Rebbe, the president of the ultra-orthodox Agudath Israel of
America, resulting in a rare apology.
He
was also forced to publicly disavow remarks he made about the Chabad movement,
suggesting that they were hypocritical and greedy enough to praise a serious
criminal, as long as they received a donation of $1,000.
Rabbi
Mizrachi intends to visit the UK again on the 16th-19th of September. His last
visit to the UK in 2014 was covered by the Jewish Chronicle and led to
criticism of his views by two leading London rabbis, concerned at invitations
to allow him to speak in a local synagogue and to school children.
The
signatories of this petition condemn his views and, whether Jewish or
non-Jewish, stand in solidarity with the Jewish community in its efforts to
distance itself from extremism and condemn racism, ignorant bigotry and
intolerance in whatever form it presents itself.
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Rabbi
Mizrachi's views referenced above can be checked from the list of sources
below:
LINKS TO SOURCE MATERIAL:
Condemnation
by the Novominsker Rebbe:
Down's
syndrome and autism are punishment for the sins of a previous life:
"Down
syndrome, autistic and any other problem is a punishment as a result of a
previous life"
People
born of a forbidden relationship (e.g. incest) and blind people are punished
for their past life behaviours and deserve no sympathy:
Mixed
dancing and women's clothes cause cancer:
Disrespect
for the secular victims of the Holocaust:
"the
secular (Jewish) women, (before being thrown into the gas chambers) they stand
like this (opens arms) for photographers to take pictures of them, because they
don't care"
Less
than a million "real" Jews were killed in the Holocaust:
Going
to college will turn you into a non-Jew (46:52) and this is why the Holocaust
happened to the Ashkenazim, not to the Sephardim:
Misogyny:
A non-virgin girl is "like an open bottle of Coke", a "used
product":
The
deaths of children (in respect of the Sassoon family tragedy in which a number
of children died in a fire) are punishment for their past lives and that one's
past lives can be examined through "regression therapy"
The
spiritual taints of children whose parents were not observant of taharat
ha-mishpachah, for instance an "uncontrollable desire for
fornication":
"A
soldier even in the IDF, if he's mekhallel Shabbat, he has no share in the
world to come:
Racism:
"Look what happened when US gave blacks rights"
Chabad
are 'hypocritical money-grubbers':
His
critics will receive punishment in hell:
"..she
will get the biggest Auschwitz you can think of, Auschwitz is a picnic, she is
gonna be there for eternity, she will never come out of there and all the
people who are on her page, just as much, no different"
Crude
lampooning of a homosexual university professor:
"the
more they make fun of rabbis. Who got them to make fun of rabbis? The gay
professor in the university (makes "mincing" gesture) ooo! You a
rabbi! We are in the 21st century!"
Totalitarian
views:
"If
it was up to me, if I was the prime minister of Israel, I would change the laws
totally"
"How
long the French government would last? They going to lose now, do you know who
is going to be the next government in France? The Nazis. They have Nazis there,
do you know? The only problem is that they are against Jews also. They against
Arabs, because Arabs made their country a nightmare."
"The
only way to do something drastic is to cancel the democracy the way it is right
now. You cannot have minorities torturing the majority of the people in the
country, you must modify the laws."
Anti-Chinese
racism (at 1:12):
"Chinese
(people), it's one copy machine from 7/11 make 2 billion copies, all of them
straight black hair, yellow skin, eyes like this... If I showed you I had in my
computer, a picture of 20 Chinese, all of them twins!"
