Raymond Shamash is a candidate in the May 7 general election for the United Kingdom Independence Party, slammed for its anti-EU, xenophobic stances.
It can be hard to stand up for what you believe in, as Raymond Shamash, the new United Kingdom Independence Party candidate in the country’s May 7th general election, representing the heavily Jewish London suburb of Hendon, is finding out.
UKIP, a right-wing, populist, anti-immigration party, is a tough sell in metropolitan London anyway, especially to a community overwhelmingly composed of immigrants and their descendants.
But worst of all, his own three children are so horrified by his candidacy for a party often accused of xenophobia that they have refused to let him reveal their names, occupations or even what country they live in. His wife, says Shamash mournfully, is in full agreement with them.
As for his potential Jewish constituents, at a recent hustings in a North London Orthodox synagogue, Shamash was told in no uncertain terms that none of his audience would have ever been born in Great Britain if UKIP were in power.
But the 68-year-old dental surgeon, who has spent much of the last four decades living in Haifa, where he voted Likud, believes there is too much at stake to let personal discomfort get in the way.
