National Secular Society suggests Jews are responsible for antisemitism

Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society, has told LBC radio that the Jewish community has corrupted the political system and subverted due process in order to build unregistered schools in London. The presence of unregistered Jewish schools has been criticised heavily by many in the Jewish community.

Porteous Wood told LBC on 3rd April: “It’s far worse than what you’re reporting. There is a very very strong Jewish Lobby that actually undermines — of which the government appear to be frightened — and allows the rule of law to be undermined. Whether we are talking about education or indeed as is another open secret effectively in places like Stamford Hill planning rules just don’t apply. If the Jewish community wants to build — massively overbuild — and extend their houses, then they just get away with it. It’s another open secret. It’s less of a surprise that local authorities feel intimidated — as I think they do — and no doubt there are an awful lot of Jewish Councillors elected who are going to be very happy to look in the other direction, but when it gets to central government just thinking ‘Well actually we won’t do anything about it’, then it is a national disgrace.”

Not only does he think there is a “very very strong Jewish Lobby” which is successfully stopping the Department of Education from regulating Jewish schools, he also believes that Jews are successfully intimidating local authorities into failing to enforce planning regulations. Most appallingly, he thinks that Jewish Councillors ‘look the other way’ when it comes to enforcing planning regulations. Such language is straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Porteous Wood has yet to personally publicly apologise. A National Secular Society official said that “no malice was intended”, which is strange because the statement was extremely malicious.

The National Secular Society has also been criticised this week after the discovery on its website of an article about Jewish schools which claims that Jewish schools are responsible for rising antisemitism: “As more Jewish kids are taken into faith schools and fewer are taught alongside non Jews should we be surprised that the horror of antisemitism is prospering in Britain, with more attacks in 2014 than for decades?”

Opposing all religion is not discriminatory, nor should the National Secular Society be criticised for objecting to lawbreaking unregistered schools, but this week an antisemitic subtext has burst to the surface.

Please feel free to contact the National Secular Society’s Honorary Associates about this, however amongst the names of the great and the good you may also notice the names of the infamous, such as Baroness Jenny Tonge.

You may even wish to add your voice to the calls for Keith Porteous Wood to resign. One of Stamford Hill’s most senior rabbis, Rabbi Avrohom Pinter has commented: “The National Secular Society has now moved from promoting a secular lifestyle to blatant antisemitism. With Mr Porteous Wood at its CEO the NSS can no longer claim any form of legitimacy in the political sphere when we know their opinions are based on prejudice and hate. We have long wondered what fascinated the NSS about Jewish schools. We now know that their bias is against Jews and not schools. I trust that Government ministers and the media will take this on board when analysing NSS campaigns in future. There are some very decent people associated with the NSS and although we don’t see eye to eye on many matters, I am sure that a number of the NSS’s Honorary Associates will wish to cease their association with an organisation run by an individual who is actively promoting classic antisemitic myths and stereotypes.”