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Andrea Zanardo
The Zionist Rabbi your friends warned you about

‘Jewish racism’: A legend and its consequences

One month ago, in central London, a group of Jewish teenagers were attacked, harassed, and traumatised by an antisemitic gang on a busy street.

My immediate reaction was like: “that was in Oxford Street, there are plenty of cameras there, it’s certainly not difficult to arrest those thugs”.

How wrong I was. No arrests have been made. Message for the Jewish readers: your children can be attacked with impunity. The BBC has blundered on its report their faces. Message to antisemites: your privacy is safe, even if we catch you committing a crime. And our beloved national broadcaster has turned the Jewish teenager victims into racists and antisemitic aggression into a confrontation between extremists. How so? By adding a lie. The public has been fed a lie. That Jewish kids, trapped in a bus, were shouting racist slogans against the aggressors.

Someone took time to examine the events’ recording and post the result online (may the Almighty bless the grass-root Jewish activist!). And then, the Beeb gave the best of herself. No, there were no slogans; it was an anti-Arab song. No, the teenagers were not shouting nor singing. It was an adult. He was singing a racist Israeli song. No, it’s not in the video, but we have to report both sides, and if one side says that Jews are racist, then it may mean the song was there. We have asked a Hebrew speaker to confirm that a racist song was sung in English. It sounds like a comedy, but it’s how the BBC deals with antisemitism. Turning the victims into aggressors.

One month has passed. And nothing has happened. No one has been arrested, no one has been identified, and the only persons investigated have been the Jews. Searching the Jews first after an antisemitic attack used to be how Soviet police operated. It is not uncommon in Arab dictatorship: that’s “opposition to Israeli policies” for you. It was also a regular occurrence in Fascist regimes. And now we see it is a habit at the BBC.

Why is the national broadcaster so fond of this fictional “Jewish racism”? It ought to be said that there is no serious sociological research on the matter. No data shows that UK Jews are more racist than the average non-Jewish British citizen.

The opposite is suggested by anecdotal evidence -such as the often evoked immigrant background of a large part of our community.

Then why? Why is the BBC so fond of the “Jewish racism” myth? The belief in Jewish racism is to be found on the Far Left and on the Far Right corners of social media, both camps united by the belief that Zionism is a dangerous ideology and violence is a necessary mean in the struggle against “Jewish supremacists”. Even at Limmud, sessions have been hosted about “anti-Palestinian racism”. If the problem is so widespread (this must have been the reasoning at the BBC), then there were undoubtedly racists among the teachers or the parents of these Jewish teenagers who ventured into Oxford Street to celebrate Chanukah. When thinking about it, were they not singing Israeli (that is Zionist, that is Jewish supremacist) songs? And you expect “the people” not to react?

That was, let me repeat it again, one month ago. “The people”, that is, the aggressors, are nowhere to be found. Meaning they can attack you and your children with impunity.
What an outstanding achievement in the eternal battle against “Jewish racism”.

About the Author
Italian by birth, Israeli by choice, Rabbi of the largest synagogue in Sussex (UK). Uncompromising Zionist.
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