‘Surfing rabbi’ will join EDL demonstration

An American rabbi will join an extreme right-wing anti-Islamic-fundamentalist group in a protest outside the Israeli Embassy in London next week. Rabbi Nachum Shifren, from California, said he was supporting the English Defence League because he opposed multiculturalism, and promised to act with “full force” against shariah law. But his plans have been roundly criticised by Jewish community organisations.

Mark Gardner, Community Security Trust communications director, said: “The EDL’s Jewish branch is a tiny part of a far larger movement, dominated by white males who would previously have made up National Front marches and English football hooligan gangs. EDL actions are violent and intimidatory, attacking police and random Asians. Any Jews thinking that they can shape such dangerous forces and find shelter there are utterly deluded.”

Los Angeles-based Rabbi Shifren said: “I am coming to the UK to express my solidarity with the patriots in England who are on the front line in the war on jihad and stealth jihad. Multiculturalists have brought us to the brink, insisting on degrading our own cultures while pandering to forces of darkness that threaten to completely transform our societal foundations.”

Rabbi Shifren said the “enemies” of Western democracies had sought to destroy religious foundations, loosen patriotic bonds and were responsible for a “wave of Middle Age darkness in the Muslim religion”. “It is my goal to create a united front of American/British patriots that will act with full force against shariah law and any attempt to accommodate it either through legislation or by ‘compliant’ economic policies.”

Jewish Chronicle, 14 October 2010