This is a cross-post from Jonathan Hoffman who writes here in his personal capacity and not as a representative of the Zionist Federation
At the age of about 10 I was addicted to the ‘Just William’ stories written by Richmal Crompton. William Brown is an eleven-year-old boy, eternally scruffy and frowning. William and his friends (Ginger, Henry and Douglas) call themselves “The Outlaws”, and meet at the old barn in Farmer Jenks’ field, with William being the leader of the gang.
In those stories there’s a girl called Violet Elizabeth Bott. She’s the lisping, spoiled daughter of the local nouveau riche millionaire. She’s dying to be a member of the gang and William reluctantly endures her company in order to prevent her carrying out her constant threat of:
“I’ll thcream and thcream ’till I’m thick”
Yachad’s response to the ZF’s decision not to grant it membership represented the “Violet Elizabeth Bott” manoeuvre, except instead of “I’ll thcream and thcream ’till I’m thick” we’ve had “I’ll thcream and I’ll tweet and I’ll blog and I’ll publicise ‘till I’m thick”. What seems increasingly obvious is that the application to join the ZF was a carefully calculated ‘win-win’ ploy, even though Yachad had little expectation that it would be accepted.
Ms Weisfeld admits here that the application was a long shot: “it’s hardly a surprise” (she writes) that Yachad was rejected. If she thought that then why did she waste ZF volunteers’ time by applying, if it was not a PR stunt?
If it was rejected, she fully intended to use it as a hook to hang a publicity campaign on. Hence the full page adverts in Friday’s JC and Jewish News (which by the way don’t come cheap, my guess is north of £3500 in total). Hence the public meeting this week. Hence the ludicrous accusations that the ZF is acting as the “Zionist police” (!). The reality is that this publicity ploy was utterly cynical and self-serving. In order that Yachad should have publicity – and knowing the response would in all likelihood be “no” – Ms Weisfeld thought nothing of imposing significant extra work on ZF volunteers in assessing Yachad’s application.
You can read the rest of Jonathan Hoffman’s piece here and you can read a different perspective on the ZF’s actions by Stephen Pollard (to which Jonathan responds at the end of his own article) here.
