UK: For Telling the Truth About Islam, Jewish Board of Deputies Vice President Compelled to Resign

Gary Mond is an important figure in British Jewry: he is — or was until January 12 — a vice president of the Jewish Board of Deputies and the treasurer of the Jewish National Fund (JNF-UK). Some of his past comments on social media that have recently come to light caused such a furor that he felt compelled to resign. Robert Spencer wrote about this here, and an additional report on the events surrounding Mond’s reluctant resignation is here: “British Jewish leader resigns following comments about ‘war with Islam,’” by Cnaan Lipshiz, Times of Israel, January 14, 2022

A senior member of British Jewry’s main communal organization has resigned following his suspension over social media posts seen as hostile to Muslims.

Gary Mond, a vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the treasurer of the UK branch of the Jewish National Fund, a pro-Israel charity committed to strengthening the Jewish state, had written on Facebook that “all civilization” is “at war with Islam,” among other social media activity unearthed by a news investigation.

Was Gary Mond wrong? Isn’t “all [non-Islamic] civilisation” at “war with Islam”? Or, to put it more clearly, isn’t Islam “at war with all” of the non-Islamic world? Don’t the texts and teachings of Islam tell Muslims that they are the “best of peoples”(3:110), while non-Muslims are the “most vile of created beings” (98:6)? Aren’t Muslims instructed “to fight” and “to kill” and “to smite at the necks of” and “to strike terror in the hearts of” all non-Muslims? What do those who pressured Gary Mond to resign know of the Qur’an, and in particular, of such blood-curdling verses as 2:191-193, 4:89, 8:12, 8:60, 9:5, 9:29, and 47:4? Perhaps they have never bothered to read the Qur’an. Or, still worse, perhaps they have done so, but remain unwilling to recognize the uncompromising war on Infidels that it prescribes.

Haven’t Muslims been making war for the last 1,400 years, conquering many lands and many peoples – Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists and all other non-Muslims? And after those conquests, they offered those non-Muslims they conquered only three choices: conversion to Islam, death, or – for Christians and Jews, privileged as “People of the Book” – the permanent status of dhimmi, enduring a host of economic, social, and political disabilities, of which the best known is the tax known as the Jizyah, payment of which allowed the dhimmis to be protected from attack by Muslims themselves; in other words, the payment of the burdensome Jizyah constituted extortion.

“Key people at the Board have made it clear that they no longer wish to work with me, which effectively forces my decision,” Mond announced in his resignation statement Thursday, the Jewish Chronicle of London reported. In his statement, he characterized his posts as “contradictory thought.”

He accused the Board, an umbrella group whose elected deputies represent different British-Jewish organizations, of silencing views diverging from what he said were the group’s left-leaning policies.

Gary Mond was forced to resign because others made clear they would no longer work with him. His primal sin was in telling the unpalatable truth about Islam, a truth that the grand panjandrums of British Jewry did not wish to hear. Islam is indeed at war with “all non-Islamic civilisations.” But despite resigning, he remained unrepentant; Mond had been determined, as he put it, to offer his “contradictory thought” to the party line of Jewish leaders who required everyone to speak no evil of Islam.

Mond’s suspension followed a report Wednesday [January 12] in The Jewish News of London about his interactions on social media in recent years. The Jewish News found that Mond had “liked” on Facebook two posts by Pamela Geller, a Jewish-American anti-Islam activist. One post from 2017 lamented the loss of right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen in the French presidential elections, and another criticized an unnamed “Muslim hate group.”

So among Mond’s unforgivable sins was his having “liked” on Facebook four years ago two posts by Pamela Geller, who is beyond the pale (and like Robert Spencer, has been banned from entering the U.K.), in which she – horribile dictum! – expressed her dismay that Marine Le Pen had lost to Macron in the French presidential election, and criticized an unnamed “Muslim hate group.” And as we all know, no Muslim group has ever preached hate; that’s something done only by Islamophobes, people such as Geller and Spencer.

In 2014, Mond reacted to a post about the prospect of more Muslims opposing military intervention in Muslim-majority countries. “When this happens — and the odds are that it will — The Britain that we knew would have gone forever,” he wrote.

Wasn’t it terrible of Mond to suggest that Muslims in the U.K. would oppose military intervention in Muslim countries – even though that’s exactly what happened in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, where many British Muslims did oppose the U.K’s. military intervention?

In 2016, he wrote in a comment on Facebook: “We just have to hope that our leaders wake up to the fact that all civilization — West and East, American, Russian, Chinese, Israeli, whatever — is at war with these evil bastards, and I have to say it, at war with Islam. And, just as Islam has lost before in history, it will lose again.”

The “evil bastards” Mond was referring to in this 2016 Facebook comment were the fanatical cutthroats of the Islamic State, not all Muslims. And he referred to “all civilization” being at war not with every Muslim but with the ideology of Islam. These are different things.

“We greatly regret the circumstances which have led to Gary’s resignation, which are a matter of public record. As an organization we are committed to fostering strong and positive relations with other faith and minority communities,” the Board wrote in a statement.

Instead of forcing Gary Mond to resign, the Board of Deputies might have usefully engaged in a public debate over his social media postings. They may offend some, but that’s not the point. Are they true? There ought to have been a forum provided for Mond to expand upon his thoughts concerning Islam, to answer his critics, and then for British Jewry to decide if they think he has sufficiently defended his views and ought not, therefore, be pressured to resign.

In his statement, Mond wrote: “I apologise for any hurt that has been caused as a result of the excavation into my Facebook activity from many years ago. However, this cannot be a justification for any attempt to silence contradictory thought.”

In other words, Gary Mond is unrepentant; he “apologises for any hurt” he may have caused, but refuses to withdraw or disavow the remarks he made years ago on social media. He takes a final poke at those who wanted to silence him for the cardinal sin of offering views – “contradictory thought” – that go against the accepted see-no-evil party line of British Jewry’s leaders.

Mond also wrote: “I take a very positive view of the Muslim communities in this country and am delighted to work with them, opposing and condemning only those who wish to do those in the Jewish community and other communities harm.”

Mond distinguishes those Muslims with whom he can work from those Muslims who wish to do harm to Jews and other Infidels. He has nothing against the “bad Muslims,” those who do not follow the Qur’anic commands on the treatment of non-Muslims; it is the “good” Muslims – those who take those commands to heart and act upon them — who worry him.

He accused the Board of pursuing a left-leaning policy that does not correspond with the views of most British Jews. “The Board faces a crisis of legitimacy, and their behaviour towards me demonstrates this,” he wrote.

With that parting shot, bloody but unbowed, Gary Mond leaves the Board of Deputies to continue, one suspects, to sound his Cassandra-like warnings about Islam in other, less fearful, venues.