Why Cucking Doesn’t Work: The Case of UKIP's Rabbi Shneur Odze

In the wake of the successful referendum that triggered Brexit in the United Kingdom and the resignation of Nigel Farage as the head of the UK Independence Party (hereafter UKIP); the party has struggled to maintain its relevance in British politics. (1)

Thus in 2016 new party leader Paul Nuttall has sought to re-brand the party as the UK’s version of Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ pro-Israel and anti-Islam PVV (literally ‘Party for Freedom’). (2) The problem with this of course is that he needed viable candidates who could withstand the intensive media scrutiny that they would inevitably be subjected to and appeal to voters.

This blindly counter-Jihadi mindset without any reference to any kind of deeper critical analysis is typical of why followers of people like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller have rather bad habit of failing to turn propaganda disasters for the mainstream political parties into political capital. The fact is that outside of their little amen corners; these activists have been remarkably unsuccessful because they simply don’t factor in that there are a great deal of other factors to consider.

This inevitably gives them a blind-spot where Israel and the jews are concerned.

The assumptions upon which they base their political calculations are that because Israel’s supporters claim that one of political Islam’s primary goals is to drive out and exterminate the jews from Israel and most jews –as well as a chunk of the ordinary public – are avid supporters of it.

It therefore follows that if UKIP and their ilk uncritically support Israel that the jewish community and Israel’s substantial UK fan base will politically migrate en bloc to either actively or tacitly supporting UKIP or at least not attacking and condemning them as ‘Fascists’ and ‘Nazis’ from every available soapbox quite so much.

This is a false position, because it assumes that the established political parties don’t already have their own influential Israel Lobbies, which deftly hamstring any opponent of their agenda as in the case of Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone although not George Galloway. While conversely rewarding uncritical slaves to the lobby’s party line on Israel like the then leader of the Conservative party Theresa May with ample support and funding.

Indeed even the Liberal Democrats – not exactly known for being all that supportive of Israel – have their own in-house Israel Lobby in the form of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel (LDFI), which managed to get two of its own candidates for political office expelled from the party for daring to publish criticism of Israel on social media. (3)

This blind counter-Jihadi logic also assumes – without any critical investigation – that because many if not all of the contemporary world’s perceived political evils result from the direct and/or tacit influence of political Islam and/or ‘Islamofascism’. That their perceived principle opponents – the Israelis and the jewish communities around the world – are innocent of all the charges that the agents and apologists for Islam make against them.

Thus the jews are really a model religious minority who are fully integrated and in-tune with British values and Western civilisation in general, but yet one that has been irrationally persecuted over the years. This sense of endangerment and eternal irrational persecution is what UKIP – like Wilders – seek to exploit, but fail to understand that just because the agents and apologists for Islam charge the jews with something doesn’t mean that the charge is itself factually incorrect.

A good example of this is UKIP candidate for the position of Mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017: Rabbi Shneur Odze.

UKIP’s political logic was obvious enough. Manchester has the second largest jewish community in Great Britain (4) as well as a large ultra-Orthodox jewish population. (5) Odze is an ultra-Orthodox rabbi affiliated with the powerful Lubavitch Chabad and is married with four children. (6)

As a representative of the jewish community and a rabbi no less; Odze is in receipt of an automatic pass from the mainstream media and political opponents from the charge of being a ‘Nazi’ and ‘Fascist’ because to claim that about a jew implies that you yourself are anti-Semitic in the irrational parallel intellectual universe occupied by philo-Semitism.

Also as an active and highly religious jew and thus a primary target for the agents and apologists of Islam; Odze would in reality be whiter-than-white and therefore possibly win against established and entrenched Labour competitor Andy Burnham. Since the agents and apologists for Islam are always wrong; UKIP had nothing to lose and everything to win in making such a choice.

Or so they thought...

It is true Odze’s jewishness brought sympathetic coverage when he was verbally abused by left-wing pro-Palestinian political opponents, (7) but it turns out that Odze’s strong ultra-Orthodox partisan connections worked against him with local jews being encouraged by their rabbis not to vote for him. (8)

Then there is the fact that Odze is an Israeli citizen, holds an Israeli passport and that his paternal grandparents come from Poland and his mother comes from Morocco. (9)

Not exactly an example of Britishness that when put on the electoral podium is going to inspire the tub-thumping British patriots who are in many ways the stalwarts of UKIP to get out to vote.

This is especially the case when Odze is on record as stating that UKIP was an ‘anti-Semitic party’ when it was founded, (10) which will no doubt cause many an eyebrow to be raised in surprise among those familiar with British politics. This apparently hasn’t stopped the media accusing UKIP’s voters of harbouring anti-Semitic views. (11)

That comment as well as Odze’s Israeli citizenship should have immediately worried the leadership of UKIP, but yet safe in their counter-Jihadi hug box; they didn’t heed the warning signs that Odze was only patriotic towards Britain in so far as it suited his jewishness and that his real allegiance was to the world’s only jewish state: Israel.

Thus UKIP were sent desperately scrambling for a political recovery; when Odze was caught boasting about having burnt a copy of the New Testament that he discovered in his synagogue this Pesach (i.e., April 2017) on social media and then lied about not doing only to them apologise when the screenshots of his celebratory post and photos on his official X (then Twitter) account were published. (12)

Then in a death knell to Odze’s political future as well as his personal life and standing within the frum community: it turned out that – even though he had publicly refused to shake a woman’s hand ‘for religious reasons’ before – (13) he was an active member of a bondage website and was pretending to be a Roman Catholic priest.

I quote the Daily Mail’s summation of his conduct in regards to a non-jewish woman that he met up with for decidedly kinky non-kosher sex through the site:

‘Bizarrely posed as a Roman Catholic priest in his online profile, styling himself ‘His Worshipful’ and ‘The Right Reverend’; Indulged in disturbing sexual role play games; Bombarded her with sexually explicit text messages and begged her to join him in a threesome with another woman he hadmet online; Sent sexually explicit texts on the Sabbath; Told her his name was Simon, and never revealed who he really was, or that he was married.’ (14)

In effect these rather unseemly revelations – which should and would have been exposed by a competent background check on Odze before his candidacy was ever announced – has sent Odze’s electoral campaign as well as that of UKIP’s flying for six.

Yet the farrago of what the Times of Israel’s aptly referred to as ‘making headlines for the wrong reasons’ (15) could have been avoided by not cucking and buying into the blindly pro-Israel counter-Jihadi positions in a quest for cheap votes to mask the underlying issues within - and challenges outside of - the party.

Devastating failure is the price of cucking and UKIP will now have to pay that horrific price.

References

(1) https://www.ft.com/content/6f19c3f4-290c-11e7-bc4b-5528796fe35c; https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/ukip-struggle-get-message-across-sleaford-north-hykeham-election/; http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-politics-37187303/ukip-will-struggle-in-post-farage-era; http://uk.blastingnews.com/politics/2017/04/united-kingdom-independence-party-still-relevant-and-in-with-a-chance-001644257.html

(2) https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/23/ukip-to-campaign-to-ban-burka-and-sharia-courts-says-paul-nuttall; http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/1214973-2/

(3) http://www.lutontoday.co.uk/news/luton-lib-dem-candidate-suspended-for-anti-semitic-tweets-1-7933515; https://www.rt.com/uk/386239-liberal-democrats-antisemitism-ward/; http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2017/04/27/anti-semitism-claims-force-uk-liberal-democrats-to-drop-two-election-candidates/

(4) http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/film-and-tv/strictly-kosher-manchesters-jewish-community-865277

(5) http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/189587/manchesters-new-jewish-ghetto

(6) http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/who-are-manchester-mayor-candidates-12935286

(7) http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/763977/Ukip-Stoke-left-wing-protesters-go-home-Jewish-man-Shneur-Odze

(8) https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/ukip-charedi-claims-he-lost-because-of-the-jews-1.55077

(9) http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/763977/Ukip-Stoke-left-wing-protesters-go-home-Jewish-man-Shneur-Odze

(10) http://www.citymetric.com/politics/shneur-odze-orthodox-jewish-candidate-who-wants-be-ukips-first-manchester-mayor-2810

(11) http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/01/meet-orthodox-jewish-candidate-who-wants-be-ukips-first-manchester-mayor

(12) http://forward.com/fast-forward/369156/orthodox-british-mayoral-candidate-sorry-for-burning-new-testament/

(13) https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/orthodox-candidate-refuses-to-shake-hands-with-women-hk2nvdjt2ts

(14) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4459182/Sex-role-play-shame-Ukip-s-rampant-rabbi.html; also see http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/charedi-shneur-website/

(15) http://www.timesofisrael.com/rabbinical-ukip-candidate-making-headlines-for-wrong-reasons/