James O'Brien has disgraced himself

Spectator

4 days ago

For a man who wrote a book called How To Be Right, James O'Brien sure gets a lot wrong. Consider the message from one of his listeners that he read out on his LBC radio show yesterday. It said Jewish kids in the UK are taught to loathe Arabs and see them as 'cockroaches to be crushed'. This is not only untrue, it is grossly libellous and possibly dangerous. Will Mr Right fess up and apologise?
What possessed O'Brien to so solemnly read on air a blatant falsehood about Britain's Jews? The message came from someone called 'Chris' from Oxford. From the get-go his comment was creepy and should have got alarm bells clanging at LBC. 'Warped views' about Arabs 'are not just an Israeli problem', it said. No, this 'warped' supremacism infects the hearts and minds of people outside Israel too. Guess who? Yes, Jews here in Britain.
Chris continued: 'My wife was brought up Jewish and at Shabbat school in a leafy Hertfordshire town she was taught that one Jewish life is worth thousands of Arab lives, and that Arabs are cockroaches to be crushed.'
That 'young children' – say it, 'Chris': young Jews – are being indoctrinated with 'such hatred and dehumanisation' is profoundly concerning, the message said. And O'Brien read it out, every word, not once stopping to wonder: is this true?
It isn't true, of course. None of it. As Jews across the internet have pointed out, there's no such thing as 'Shabbat school'. Some Christians might take religious lessons on their holy day, but Jews do not. A 'Shabbat school' is the invention of – to be generous – a confused mind.
As to the claim that Jewish kids are taught that one Jewish life is the equal of thousands of those 'cockroach' Arab lives – that is a disgusting lie. Jewish friends of mine are furious. They feel genuinely unsettled that on a popular radio show loved by middle-class liberals, such a vile calumny could be made against their community.
'We were taught the opposite – that every life is precious', a Jewish friend texted me last night. And he's from Hertfordshire, that apparent den of sneaky Jewish brainwashing on the awfulness of Arabs.
The problem here is less 'Chris' – sadly there are many people out there who spout drivel – than it is James O'Brien and LBC itself. That O'Brien took as good coin this calamitous untruth about our Jewish compatriots should induce some serious soul-searching on his part.
He has this morning apologised and the clip appears to have been taken down by LBC. O'Brien said on his show today that he is 'genuinely sorry' for taking the 'unsubstantiated claims' in the message 'at face value'. Would he so breezily have read out a message branding our black citizens as 'criminals' or calling all British Muslims nutters who are taught to hate the world?
Worse, LBC posted a clip of O'Brien reading Chris's message on X, where it was no doubt lapped up by the anti-Jewish bigots who are sadly legion on social media. So not one person at LBC queried Chris's claims? O'Brien himself, his producers, the audio guys, the person who made the clip, the person who posted it – not one of them appeared to stop to ask: 'Wait, is it true that Jewish kids are being brainwashed to be racist scum?' That is a catastrophic institutional failure. LBC needs to investigate how it happened.
To me, the sick myth that Britain's Jewish children are being pumped with Arabphobia has a whiff of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Where that gross old forgery claimed to reveal a Jewish plot for world domination, now fact-free messages read out on radio shows tell of a Jewish plot to 'warp' children with racial hatred. It's 2025 and people are still spreading libels about the Jews being an unusually malicious people, only now we're told they want to crush Arabs like 'cockroaches' rather than kill Christians for their blood.
It would be deeply immoral to broadcast a message like that at any time. To do it during one of the worst outbursts of anti-Semitism of modern times is unforgivable. Is LBC not worried about whipping up racial hatred against Jewish schools and their teachers and pupils? Things were so bad post-7 October that Jewish schoolkids in London were told they could remove their blazers on their way to school to avoid becoming a target for anti-Semites. That LBC has now stoked the lie that Jewish schools are indeed suspect places is shameful beyond words. Leave Jewish kids alone, please.
For years O'Brien posed as a warrior against 'post-truth', and yet here he is helping to spread outright untruths. He was lauded as the conscience of liberal Britain, yet here he promotes wholly regressive claims about one of our most beleaguered communities. He raged against the 'hatred' in Brexit Britain, yet now he is possibly emboldening the hatred of certain toerags on the internet who've long suspected that the Jews are up to no good. O'Brien is living proof that 'liberal Britain' has lost its moral bearings, and possibly its marbles too.