Deputy suspended for George Floy remark is ‘cancel culture’ victim
Deputy for Portsmouth and Southsea shul, Richard Cooper, defended his former colleague on the Board, Raymond Solomon, after the latter questioned if Floyd's killer was racist
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
A Deputy who questioned whether the murder of George Floyd by an American cop was “racist” is a victim of cancel culture, a colleague at the communal organisation has claimed.
Raymond Solomon was dismissed by the Manchester Jewish Rep Council last week as their Deputy after Jewish News revealed he had asked Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl to justify a decision to call Floyd’s murder racist in blog published last month.
But in an email to fellow Deputies following Sunday’s Board Plenary meeting, Ric Cooper wrote :”To cancel culture we should give no sanction, no assistance. We are poorer without Raymond Solomon.”
Cooper, the Deputy for Portsmouth and Southsea Orthodox synagogue, added he wished to convey his “dismay” at the decision taken by the Manchester lay body’s chief executive Marc Levy to announce that Solomon was no longer the group’s representative.
He said:”I realise that it was the Manchester Rep Council that dismissed him but that was clearly in response to his disapproval of his comments by the BoD executive.
“Raymond, Roslyn Pine, Jonathan Hoffman, Tony Cohen, in the past few years we’ve been deprived of some very powerful voices speaking up for Israel from a Likud-Herut perspective.
“Obviously many of us will disagree passionately with their point of view but surely if the BoD is to be genuinely representative of British Jewry such voices should be opposed in debate but never silenced.”
Another Deputy told Jewish News:”Who could possibly argue there is a place to debate whether the murder of George Floyd was racist or not was the right thing for the leading Jewish body to be discussing!”
During Sunday’s Plenary Dame Louise Ellman spoke of her decision to rejoin Labour. She was praised by the Board President, who then suggested there was still a “toxic” atmosphere at some local party meetings.
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