https://www.facebook.com/groups/reunitingbeth/permalink/457685599151288/
#Manchester, #Leeds, #Liverpool and #Scotland edition’ front page 04.02.2022
๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ ๐๐ฅ ๐ฉ๐๐๐ก๐ก๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ฅ๐๐๐๐: ๐โ๐๐ ๐ฅ๐๐จ๐ก๐๐ง๐ ๐๐๐ง๐ ๐ช๐๐ง๐ ๐๐๐ฅ ๐ง๐ช๐๐ก๐ฆ
The former chief rabbi of Vienna has pledged to reunite Manchester-born Beth Alexander with the twins from whom she has been alienated for five years.
In a dramatic intervention, Rabbi Moshe Friedman, who claims to have won many cases by representing victimised plaintiffs in the Austrian courts, travelled to Vienna this week after hearing of her plight.
And, in a further development yesterday, the communityโs lay and religious leaders contacted British chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis after becoming aware of Rabbi Friedmanโs involvement and the international outrage following the official launch on Sunday of a Facebook support group.Alleging cover-ups, corruption, coercion and interference in Ms Alexanderโs case, Rabbi Friedman says that his involvement will send shockwaves through the legal establishment, the social services, the education department and the Vienna Jewish community.
He added that the latter feared his involvement in cases and described it as โa game changerโ.โThe community fear me. This is their worst case scenario,โ he insisted.Rabbi Friedman, 50, had been moved by Ms Alexanderโs plight after reading the Jewish Telegraphโs account of a court decision to bar her from any contact with her 12-year-old twins Sammy and Benji.
Their father, Dr Michael Schlesinger, has sole custody of them in Vienna. The couple married in 2006, separating three years later.Rabbi Friedman immediately set the wheels in motion by issuing a petition to the court for full custody to be switched to Ms Alexander, 37.
Rabbi Friedman, who himself won a landmark case against the Vienna Jewish community and the school which his children attended, is well known for his feisty determination to right wrongs he believes to have been committed against innocent parties. And in a damning indictment of Vienna Jewry, Rabbi Friedman, who says he is of independent means and will ensure that Ms Alexander will not face any legal costs, insisted that the entire infrastructure of the community has been working against her.He claimed: โThey did it because she was British.
If anything at all happens, divorce for instance, they do everything to get rid of that foreign element. The other party just waives their rights.โThey did everything to break her. Bethโs resistance fighting for her children has never happened before.
She had the guts.โBrooklyn-born Rabbi Friedman, who has Austrian and Belgian citizenship, previously fought another case successfully, involving a get that he was able to have reversed.And he gained visitation rights for the father who had not sought custody.
During this weekโs visit to Vienna, he had โintensive meetingsโ with senior officials from the Ministry of Education and the social services departments in both the district where Ms Alexander had lived and that where Dr Schlesinger now has his home.
He said that the former had wished Beth and the children โgreat successโ and congratulated him on his involvement, adding that she knew the facts of the case intimately.โShe says she thinks Beth will be successful,โ he said. โWhen I step in to cases, itโs a game-changer. Thatโs why she was laughing.
โEveryone knows me, because when there is anything related to the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde (IKG, the representative organisation of Vienna Jewry), or corruption, my name will always come into it.
โItโs also known that I win each and every case myself against them.โBefore I was there, it was taboo. It was not possible to win a court case against the Kultusgemeinde. It was a taboo I have broken. Judges were extremely scared even to touch them.
โAt the end of the day, not all are bad, but itโs a very corrupt system. So theyโre saying between them, โletโs be on the side of the strong Kultusgemeindeโ. All are afraid of them.
โโWhy should we help an innocent British lady? Letโs go with the strong one and get rid of herโ.
โRabbi Friedman said he knew psychiatrists well who had been involved in the the most high profile cases in Austria of kidnappings, children held hostage and abuse and even they had been shocked by the corruption in Ms Alexanderโs case.
He alleged: โIn addition to robbing the children of Beth, there is a cover up going on here because they are robbed of the contact from the outside world.
โThe courts invited the children in and made a kind of theatre, talking with them a little bit and said something they didnโt say.
โI saw what the children said and the social services refused to get involved in the case. I will highly recommend that a court-commissioned psychologist should be appointed to go deeply into the issue, which the court didnโt do, and was the minimum they had to do.
โI am going to file an application at federal level and the highest level of the government of Austria and the paediatric department of the minister himself, as well as at the health department, given the age of the children and the danger of the situation, because there might be irrevocable damage to the children.
โRabbi Friedman insists that there was Jewish communal pressure to have the case closed.
He declared: โThe community is extremely powerful and corrupt. Everyone is afraid because they use historical elements as a blackmail tool. This is whatโs going on.
โThereโs a cover up. Thatโs what I say for sure. There is a cover up here. Theyโre not only robbing the children of their mother, theyโre robbing the children of their basic minimum rights. Thatโs a disaster.
โThe initial hearing will be for directions, but Rabbi Friedman said it was conceivable that the presiding judge could allow Ms Alexander visitation rights before the main hearing at which she will be seeking full custody of the twins.
He concluded: โI am quite confident that this will happen. At the very least I will get her equal visitation rights, because thereโs been such a miscarriage of justice. Usually I give less promises.
โOn Sunday, a campaign was launched by Telegraph editor Paul Harris on Facebook Live, with the support group being renamed โReuniting Beth with her Boysโ.
A video featured a poignant personal plea from Ms Alexander, with contributions, too, from Chief Rabbi Mirvis, Dr Matthew Offord MP and Naomi Dickson, CEO of Jewish Womenโs Aid.
Mr Harris told viewers: โWhen I offered to introduce tonightโs video and launch the campaign, Beth asked me whether I would be compromising my editorial impartiality by so doing.
โI am not impartial in his case. I am four square behind Beth and will continue to campaign editorially and personally until Beth has her children home with her and so that she can lavish on them the love and care of which they have been deprived for a decade.
โHe recalled how he had first met Ms Alexander and her twins more than eight years ago in a Vienna hotel lobby.
โI had decided to investigate for myself what was being termed a tug-of-love story, but which, quite frankly, I didnโt really believe, feeling that both parties must be at least equally to blame,โ he said.โI was soon disabused of that notion. I was immediately struck by how careworn and exhausted she appeared.
โI was equally aware of the lethargy of the two boys who just sat there without saying a word, or attempting to tear around as most lively four-year-olds would.
โHe added: โThe interview I did with Beth that afternoon in November, 2013 was the start of a friendship between us, not as a journalist and a subject, but as a human being who wanted to right a dreadful wrong perpetrated against a young mother by an uncaring, xenophobic Jewish community and an apparently corrupt legal system supported by equally flawed social services, both of which were content to deprive a loving, caring mother of her inalienable right to raise her two sons and grant custody to a husband who had been abusive towards her.
โParental alienation is something shocking, but that is what Beth suffered, nearly 1,000 miles from her family and friends in Manchester, and with visitation rights of just a few hours a week.
โAnd that alienation continues until now on an even more insidious scale.โI do not accept the testimony allegedly given to the court by the twins, that they did not want any contact with their mother whatsoever.
โI know that cannot possibly be true and the only way they could have made such statements would have been as a result of malign coercion.
โThe Facebook group already has 5,000 followers and messages of support for Ms Alexander flooded in from throughout the world.
Followers were asked to email their protests to Oskar Deutsch, president of the Vienna Jewish community, which they did in their hundreds.
An overwhelmed Ms Alexander told the Jewish Telegraph last night: โThe campaign launch went even better than hoped. The letters to Oskar Deutsch have been flooding in faster than we can read them.
โThe eloquence and empathy of peopleโs words have moved us to tears. Each letter is more impassioned than the next.
โRabbi Friedman taking on my case is nothing short of a miracle. To finally have someone who understands the intrigues and machinations of that murky place is exactly what was needed.
โRabbi Friedmanโs backing, together with the eyes of the world watching and demanding justice, makes my heart skip for Sammy and Benji.
โI close my eyes and communicate with them in the only way Iโm able โ telepathically.
โโStay brave and strong, my darlingsโ, I say. โSo many people care about you and want the best for youโ.
โAnd then I allow myself the luxury of hope and dare to believe that this nightmare is ending.
โThe Jewish Telegraph has approached Mr Deutsch for comment.
You can support Beth by joining the Facebook group Reuniting Beth with Her Sons and liking the page Reuniting Beth with Her Sons
๐ง๐ผ ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ฑ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ณ๐๐น๐น ๐๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ ๐ฎ๐ป๐ฑ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ต๐ผ๐น๐ฒ ๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ฟ, ๐๐๐ฏ๐๐ฐ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฏ๐ฒ ๐๐ผ ๐ผ๐๐ฟ ๐ฒ-๐ฒ๐ฑ๐ถ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป https://e-edition.jewishtelegraph.com#helpbeth#reunitingbethwithhersons
Jewish Telegraph : ๐ฃ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐ฅ๐ฎ๐ฏ๐ฏ๐ถ ๐ ๐ผ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ฑ๐บ๐ฎ๐ป ๐๐ฎ๐ ๐ฐ๐ต๐ถ๐ฒ๐ณ ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ฏ๐ฏ๐ถ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐ฉ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ป๐ป๐ฎ (๐ฌ๐ฐ.๐ฌ๐ฎ.๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฎ) : https://www.wienerzeitung.at/nachrichten/chronik/oesterreich/330594_Friedmann-darf-sich-Oberrabbiner-nennen.html
Jewish Telegraph : ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐บ๐ฒ๐ฟ ๐๐ต๐ถ๐ฒ๐ณ ๐ฅ๐ฎ๐ฏ๐ฏ๐ถ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐ฉ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ป๐ป๐ฎ ๐ ๐ผ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ฑ๐บ๐ฎ๐ป ๐ฎ๐ป๐๐๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ ๐ฐ๐ฟ๐ถ๐๐ถ๐ฐ๐ถ๐๐บ๐ (๐ฌ๐ฐ.๐ฌ๐ฎ.๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฎ)