Wall of Anti-Semitism

The other day there was a new image of anti-Semitism in London with the mural painted by Kalen Ockerman of a bunch of Jews seemingly running the world. The Times of Israel reported on it here.

I’m not quite sure how it’s logical for a man to draw a mural on a wall that can best be described as an image straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and then maintain that he is not an anti-Semite. Neither is the local council, nor the mayor of Tower Hamlets, the part of East London that Kalen Ockerman painted his mural in. The fact that he actually said that he had intended it as a depiction of Jews is even more stunning.

What is particularly upsetting is that the mural was painted in what was once the very heart of Jewish London. In their tens of thousands Jews arrived in London’s East End, mostly penniless. They came to escape the pogroms of Eastern Europe they came with with the hope of a better life and not much else. Through nothing more than hard work, sweat and vision they prospered.

To be written off as big nosed rulers of the world is an insult to the hard work and difficulties overcome by the immigrants and children of immigrants who, in many cases were armed with nothing more than a determination to succeed in a world filled with obstacles.

It will be to Kalen Ockerman’s everlasting shame that in the time it takes to paint a mural he attempted to wipe away the contribution of British Jewry to the United Kingdom and to paint, in the most vulgar way possible, an image of Jews that is utterly abhorrent. Perhaps the most laughable aspect of his claim that

“The banker group is made up of Jewish and white Anglos. For some reason they are saying I am anti-Semitic. This I am most definitely not… What I am against is class”

Is that many Jews residing in the very area where he painted his mural were ardently left wing. Jews were active in the entire spectrum of union and communist as well as socialist activities and often still are. The idea that Jews somehow secretly control the world is an idea that has been in circulation for a long time and it’s something that responsible people attempt to change rather than attempting to perpetuate. This is clearly the work of an anti-Semitic moron, someone who has exposed the darkness in his own soul by this disgusting and utterly untrue portrayal of the Jewish people.

What has been a silver lining to this whole murky episode is the swift work of the local authorities. The mural is being removed and the local mayor denounced it. This, I feel, is far more demonstrative of the London I know and left behind, a place where multiculturalism is a valued part of society and where immigrants can flourish. It is a country where the son of a Jewish immigrant has a shot at becoming Prime Minister and where the Great Great Grandson of a Jewish immigrant is currently the Prime Minister.