Various alerts and spoilers pinged into my devices last evening (probably generated by ‘cookies’ and algorithms I’ve inadvertently racked up), so by the time I saw
Rabbi Mirvis’s actual letter in the actual Times I already knew what was in it.
Let’s liken the fallout from the
Enough is Enough demo to the mini-eruption of a volcano that has been rumbling away for years.
The letter from one mild-mannered grandpa to a different kind of grandpa at such a sensitive time has caused another eruption, the fallout from which is yet to unfold.
The fact that such a mild-mannered grandpa (Chief Rabbis traditionally steer clear of political interventions) felt compelled to speak out in this way has certainly caused a stir.
Craig has spotted a difference between the BBC’s and Sky’s reporting, but I couldn’t face picking either one apart this morning. There might be more on this topic later.
I glimpsed a snippet of Victoria Derbyshire sitting beside a female representative of the Muslim Council of Britain. On the studio monitor, a large talking-head shot of the editor of the Jewish Telegraph, Paul Harris, was ‘explaining’ the Chief rabbi’s concerns. When he’d finished, Ms Derbyshire questioned the headscarf sympathetically about Islamophobia in the Conservative Party.
That more or less sums it up.
The BBC is a kind of
enabler.
It’s all very well getting Nick Robinson to grill poor old Alf Dubs, but all that will do is hand (unsound) ammunition to the Labour Party’s many apologists and the ignoramuses in Momentum. This merely skirts around the problem and pays lip service to a bit of gossipy news that they see as ‘nowt to do with us’.
As well as the disingenuous conflation of antisemitism (racism) with a rational (non-phobic) anxiety about a disturbingly hostile religious ideology, we have the willful misrepresentation of all things to do with Israel. The giant woolly mammoth in the room.
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| Antisemitism is a poison. (So is Islamophobia) |
Unfortunately, Blogger wouldn't let me embed the clip above from the
BBC's report. (They offer the code, but it doesn't work!)
If the BBC could somehow magic away all the errors and omission of the past 70 years that would clear up much of the mess. Failing that impossible and completely unachievable ask, a more realistic demand would be - at least to try, somehow - to mitigate the damage. I have no idea how. Maybe start modestly by showing some gripping Israeli-made drama on the scandi noir channel.
Yes, there are still pockets of traditional right-wing antisemitism around - the foreign office is riddled with it so I’m told, but it’s high time everyone acknowledged the hatred of Jews within the Islamic world, including Britain’s Muslim communities. Instead of airbrushing it out in its painful, politically correct, subservient, Islamophillic fashion, the BBC could promote “Muslims against antisemitism” groups.
Has the Muslim woman who
stood up to the man on the tube been on the VD show yet? Isn’t that’s the kind of story VD usually wallows in? I can picture her with her head tilted, sympathetically ‘listening’. I'm not knocking it by the way. The opposite. Asma Shuweikh was brave and she acted honourably.
