Question everything but Torah & don’t judge others

STAFF WRITER

Online editor Ant Katz today published a blog he entitled “I’ve failed myself to protect the community” explaining how after having 300,000 followers over the past five years, he had finally met his match in a regular user who he has had to ban from placing comments on this website.

“As I get older I find myself becoming increasingly intolerant of intolerance. And yet, at the same time, I seem to find myself increasingly surrounded by others who become ever-more dogmatic as they age,” posts Ant.

READ ANT’S FULL BLOG

“I found myself more than a little annoyed last week with an old rival who for five years has been trying to use me as a platform for his dogmatic beliefs (which he very strongly believes are the only beliefs there are)!” Ant says it is the first time in his 35-year-plus career in community media that he has had to ban someone from writing letters or commenting.

Although clearly disappointed to have had to take this step, Ant is just as clearly angry.

Unadulterated
arrogance

“To me, this is unadulterated arrogance,” he writes of dogmatism. “I was brought up to believe that nobody should question the Torah but that everybody should question everything else – and never judge others for their beliefs.”

“And here I am, five years later, arguing for the same rights of fellow Jews with the same dogmatic and arrogant person who has tried to get me to publish some of the most horrible slander, hate-speech, racism and even calls to murder others. I guess I have, very conservatively, spent a thousand hours over the past five years trying to convince him that what he “thinks” is only his “opinion” and other people are allowed theirs.

“I have protected users from this abuser…” Ant writes. “I get what (he) believe(s). But (he) can’t, or won’t, get what anyone else believes.”