Pete Gregson writes:
I have just watched David Baddiel’s Channel 4 TV programme, “Jews don’t count”. I have news for him: They do, they do.
They demanded the International Holocaust Remembrance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, and they got it. As a result, thousands of people have been punished as “anti-Semites” for criticising Israel.
Baddiel ignores this very powerful mechanism that has artificially created a huge increase in alleged “anti-Semitism” cases in the UK, which of course he does cite, ignoring that so many of these examples are bogus. Because all it takes now to be an “anti-Semite” is to call Israel a racist endeavour. (I know, because I am the only shop steward in the world to be expelled from my union as a “Jew hater”, for criticising Israel.) Why did Baddiel choose to ignore this toxic definition which has done so much harm to Palestine campaigners? He droned on and on, relentlessly seeking evidence that everyone hates Jews, when in fact, it is ISRAEL that is the problem.
Baddiel lives in a very delicate universe. Many of the miseries his TV pundits complained about have been levelled at other minorities – Catholics, Scots, Irish – all of whom have been victims of pogroms, persecution and cruel stereotypes. Admittedly, none has suffered the genocide that took place in World War II, but Baddiel’s programme was intent on portraying modern Jewry as victims – as if Hitler was around the corner, just itching to do it all again. Miriam Margolyes was the only one in his programme that spoke sense, in that she correctly identified the cause of so much concern from the left around UK Jewry, because of its overwhelming support of Israel. However, every time she brought up Israel, Baddiel dismissed her concerns.
Tony Greenstein was correct when he wrote “Jews are not an oppressed minority – they are overwhelmingly middle class”. And I would go further, and note they are white, too. Baddiel ignored such truisms and went out of his way to define Jews as a separate oppressed race, but he struggled to match their present situation with the very real ongoing racism that black and Asian people face on a daily basis. He beat his chest while apologising to black footballer Jason Lee, saying how much he regretted the racist bullying to which he had subjected the footballer 25 years ago in his Fantasy Football League TV show. But one got the impression that Baddiel was only “mock grovelling” for the sake of his documentary TV film. Lee’s face told the story; he was not convinced. Because no white man, even a Jew, can claim his suffering matches the indignities born of a history of slavery.
Baddiel’s insensitivity in ridiculing Lee for being black reflected the fact that Baddiel himself has never suffered racism at that time. Baddiel said that because he now sees anti-Semitism everywhere, he appreciates how much hurt he had caused Lee. But one gets the impression that Baddiel is searching for anti-Semitism in order to get himself into the public eye. I suspect he needs a new career, because he’s given up on comedy, and presumably he sees lots of mileage in painting Jews as victims in Rishi Sunak’s Britain, when they are not.
Israel will be loving this. Baddiel presented an example of children in a London Jewish school participating in a safety drill, in case they are visited by a gunman. Come off it! Zionists know they need to raise their children in fear, else their myth of perpetual and endemic Jew-hate from the goyim [gentiles] will wither and die.
So, who are the winners in all this? Who was it that prevented a worldwide boycott that might have stopped Hitler in his tracks? Who profited from the rise of the Nazis? Who was it that refused to save the European Jews in World War II (when they were given the chance to buy the Jews out of the gas chambers) by declaring in 1943 “only through the bloodshed of Jews will we get the land, because when the victors will divide the land after the war, then they will give us the land in return for Jewish bloodshed, and that is what we want.” It was the Zionists. And the majority of UK Jews support Zionism.
By choosing to ignore what is being done by Zionists in the UK and in Israel, David Baddiel presents a very weak case. Jews comprise 0.4 per cent of the British population – a tiny, tiny proportion – yet this tiny proportion has won the propaganda war for Israel. It has convinced all our big political parties (bar the Greens), the Scottish and Westminster governments, all the major trade unions (bar the PCS), the police and 40 per cent of local authorities to declare that to call Israel racist is an example of “anti-Semitism”.
So, it seems Jews do count, after all.
Related
Anti-Semitism: what it is and is not
30th January 2013
Wider still and wider: The holocaust alliance’s solicited “anti-Semitism” as a reaction to insufficient supply of anti-Semitism
On the misuse of anti-Semitism
In “Home”