When Yom Kippur ended, we learned about the terrible attack on Jews at a synagogue in the city where I grew up, Manchester. Two people were killed and three wounded. Rabbi Daniel Walker, an old schoolmate of mine pictured below, acted courageously in preventing even more deaths.
In the aftermath, many people are saying that responsibility lies with Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose government has been tolerant of violent Israelopathic protests, along with the rise of Islamist rhetoric in the UK. Certainly, they bear some of the responsibility. But I think that there is also much blame to be placed with the BBC.
As a Jew who grew up in England, I can attest that British antisemitism is not limited to Islamists or to anti-Israel sentiments. Wearing a kippah on the streets of Manchester, I was variously punched in the face, spat on, and cursed out more times than I can remember. And none of it was from Muslims.
This sort of street antisemitism was a feature of the north of England. In the south, there was a much posher form of antisemitism. And it was exemplified by a fictional television series produced by the BBC.
The BBC series Spooks, released in the US under the title MI-5, fictionalized the work of MI-5, the UK's domestic intelligence agency. Spooks ran for ten seasons and received numerous prestigious awards. In contrast to American-style TV shows, Spooks was intended to be less fantasy and more gritty, with a lead character being brutally killed in the second episode.
But there was something very odd about the storylines in this immensely popular show. Who were the villains in Spooks? Who was plotting evil acts of murder and terror?
The rogue’s gallery in Spooks included anti-abortion radicals, white supremacist groups, rival British intelligence agents, the CIA, and the Mossad, along with a pro-Israel terror group called “The November Committee.” There were virtually never any Islamist terrorist groups - although there were a number of episodes in which such groups were falsely suspected and proved to be innocent.
Yet at the time, I checked up the real facts, and discovered that they were the exact opposite. MI5 monitored some three thousand Islamist extremists living in the UK. Meanwhile, there were only 100 suspected dangerous neo-Nazis and far-right extremists. And the threat from rogue British intelligence groups, the CIA and Mossad was mere fantasy, while “The November Committee” was a fictitious invention. Why invent pro-Israel terror groups for a storyline, when there were pro-Palestinian terror groups that actually do exist?
An entire generation of BBC viewers were brainwashed by a “gritty, realistic TV show” into falsely believing that the threat to Great Britain is from British nationalists, Americans and Jews, rather than from Islamists. It is simply appalling. And it’s no wonder that such a generation believes all the worst stories about Israel today. They’ve been primed for it.
The distortions performed by the BBC were reflecting a wider problem. The United Kingdom suffers from pathological anti-American and anti-Israel sentiment. Immediately after 9/11, there was a grotesque outpouring of anti-American hatred. And Israel is widely perceived as an oppressive colonial regime, rather than as the historic homeland of the Jewish People trying to defend itself against those who wish to wipe it out.
There is a clear and rampant problem in British society of an inability to recognize the difference between free societies and fear societies, between democracies and tyrannies, between acts of defense and acts of aggression. And this is accompanied by good-old-fashioned antisemitism virtuously cloaked in anti-Zionist garb. And while the UK itself will eventually pay the price, the first to pay it are Jews.