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Telegraph
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
‘I've had death threats': Why Edinburgh Fringe isn't safe for Jews
Edinburgh's Niddry Street comes alive during the city's annual Fringe festival. Like so many roads in the heart of the Scottish capital, punters pack into bars and clubs on the narrow thoroughfare just off the Royal Mile to see everything from stand-up comedy and musical theatre to university student productions and improvisation. Comedian Philip Simon has performed there for the past few years; so much so that, on his posters for this year's festival, he described his shows as 'staples of Niddry Street'. Events of the past week, however, mean that Simon's promotional material is now out of date – and he has no desire to go anywhere near the venues at which he has previously had such a good time. First, Simon and his fellow Jewish comic, Rachel Creeger, had their shows cancelled by the Whistle Binkies bar less than two weeks before the festival started. It was claimed that venue staff raised 'safety concerns' as a result of the extra security put on amid the escalation of the war in the Middle East and the knock-on effect for British Jews. His run of gigs, Jew-O-Rama, is a showcase of different comics, while hers, Ultimate Jewish Mother, is an interactive stand-up show that has also played at the venue for years. Neither show is political, or about the Israel-Hamas war. But they are the only shows with 'Jew' in the title, and the only ones cancelled by Whistle Binkies this year. Then Simon had a second run of gigs, Shall I Compere Thee in a Funny Way?, axed by the neighbouring Banshee Labyrinth after its bosses trawled his social media profiles. It was decided that his attendance at a vigil for victims of the Hamas attacks of October 2023, and public calls for a return of the hostages taken into Gaza, were beyond the pale. He was told that 'it is inappropriate for us to provide a platform for performers whose views and actions align with the rhetoric and symbology of groups associated with humanitarian violations'.
Telegraph
7 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
Calls for James O'Brien to be ‘taken off air' after anti-Semitic comments
But the Board of Deputies of British Jews have labelled the comments 'unacceptable and highly offensive', and have called on LC to apologise and 'take Mr O'Brien off air'. The Telegraph understands the broadcast has also been reported to the Metropolitan Police, with one complaint alleging that the programme spread 'lies about Jews'. Police have reportedly been told the show ' puts Jews in very real danger '. The comments, which some have labelled 'anti-Semitic', were shared online by LBC in a clip from a longer live broadcast. It has been reported to the media regulator Ofcom, and has since been removed from X, formerly Twitter, by LBC. 'Fascinated by objectivity' In the clip, Mr O'Brien stated: 'I'm fascinated by objectivity, which is why I'm going to read out this from Chris'. He then read out a message that claimed: '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. 'Whilst young children are taught such hatred and dehumanisation – undoubtedly on both sides… then they will always be able to justify death and cruelty.' Mr O'Brien added that in relation to the Israel-Gaza conflict, there was a danger of the public only hearing about 'one side' of the 'propaganda processes'. In response to the comments, Andrew Gilbert, vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, called on LBC to apologise and take Mr O'Brien off air. In a statement shared on X, Mr Gilbert said: 'We are urgently seeking a meeting with senior executives following the completely unacceptable and highly offensive comments made by James O'Brien on his LBC show today. 'Broadcasting such a transparent falsehood and demonising the British Jewish community, at a time when antisemitism in this country is at terrifyingly high levels, must have clear consequences. 'LBC should apologise, and take Mr O'Brien off the air.' On-air apology issued Karne Pollock, the head of Holocaust Educational Trust, also pointed out that there is no such thing as a 'Shabbat school'. Other critics have taken issue with the on-air message suggesting that – beyond Israel itself – Jews in general may harbour resentment towards Arabs, and are instructed to feel this way. The day after the contentious broadcast on July 22, Mr O'Brien issued an on-air apology when he returned to the LBC studio. He said: 'This is very important. At this time yesterday on the show, I read out a message from a listener called Chris, who said that his wife had been brought up in the Jewish faith and had attended what he described as a Shabbat school. 'He went on to make further claims about what he said she had been taught in that school. 'As with all the texts and messages that I read out on the programme, I did so in good faith, but the message has understandably upset a lot of people, and I regret taking those unsubstantiated claims at face value and am genuinely sorry for that and it is very important that I get that out there. Thank you for your attention.'
Telegraph
7 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
Why is James O'Brien recycling an anti-Semitic lie?
What kind of person would unquestioningly believe that British Jewish children are taught that 'one Jewish life is worth thousands of Arab lives and that Arabs are cockroaches to be crushed'? Step forward James O'Brien, LBC's prince of the bien pensant. Today, the radio presenter received a message from a listener calling himself 'Chris' who made these overtly anti-Semitic claims. O'Brien apparently duly repeated them on air without so much as a how's your father, prefaced by the baffling statement: 'I'm fascinated by objectivity, which is why I'm going to read out this from Chris'. The listener's message began by pointing out that 'warped views are not just an Israeli problem'. What? So it's OK now to smear an entire nation as holding 'warped views'? The fact that this alone did not set off alarm bells in O'Brien's mind was worrying enough. Make such a claim about any other people and the author of How To Be Right would surely be the very first to cry racist. But that was only the prelude. 'Chris' went on to extend this 'Israeli problem' to include Jews in this country as well as their cousins in Tel Aviv. 'My wife was brought up Jewish and at shabbat school in a leafy Hertfordshire town…' his message continued. Let's press pause again there. For one thing, it just sounded phony. 'My wife was brought up Jewish'? Yeah, right. But the mention of a 'shabbat school' was hilarious. There is, of course, no such thing. Jews do not go to school on the sabbath. These red flags also fluttered too high above O'Brien's head for him to notice. He continued to read out the message to his 1.5 million listeners. Thus, middle Britain was treated, in O'Brien's honeyed tones, to Chris's claim that at 'shabbat school', his 'wife' had been introduced to the aforementioned bigotry towards Arabs. The fact that O'Brien at no point realised the nature of what he was reading is downright disturbing. Let's make this absolutely clear. Of the 15 million Jews in the world, you'll be hard pressed to find any who holds such repugnant views of anybody, including Arabs. Attend any pro-Israel rally and you'll never hear anything like it. Especially not in Britain. It is true that a handful of extremists, especially in Israel, sometimes chant disgraceful things about their enemies. Jews have their thugs and nutters just like any other people. But these are in the vanishingly small minority, like the BNP in Britain. To suggest that this amounts to an institutional indoctrination, akin to the brainwashing in Gaza, is quite obviously an anti-Semitic lie. Obvious, at least, to anybody with common sense. In concluding his shameful monologue, O'Brien intoned: 'Whilst young children are being taught such hatred and dehumanisation, undoubtedly on both sides, as Chris points out, then they will always be able to justify death and cruelty.' He added: 'There is a danger, perhaps, that we only ever hear one side of the dehumanisation and propaganda.' No, there isn't. Not everything has two sides, James. There is such a thing as right and wrong. Obviously Israel, being a real-life country in the real world, isn't perfect; obviously it has its own extremists and criminals, like every other state on Earth. But to compare the Middle East's only democracy to Gaza, where every strata of society is poisoned with the toxic ideology of the death cult, is frankly abhorrent – let alone suggesting that British Jews are engaged in the same thing. Think of the scenes on October 7, when the half-naked corpses of Jewish women were paraded through Gaza while mobs spat at them, jeered and beat them with sticks. Could you imagine such a thing happening in Tel Aviv? Could you imagine Israelis cheering as children and the elderly were taken hostage? Of course not. But I wonder whether O'Brien can. Maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. In 2014 and 2015, the author of How They Broke Britain gave vast amounts of airtime to the bogus claims of the VIP sex ring based on testimony by Carl Beech, who was later imprisoned both for sex offences and for perverting the course of justice. He later expressed regret. But in August last year, he caused outrage by praising a video on social media that blamed 'Zionist backers' for the Southport riots. He later claimed not to have watched the clip in full and condemned it. A certain pattern is emerging here. As inexplicable as it might be, O'Brien has a huge listenership and more than a million followers on social media. LBC has removed the 'warped views' clip from the internet. For untold numbers of people, however, the damage has already been done.
Telegraph
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
‘It may be dangerous in Israel but it feels safer there than Britain'
Crowds of people swarmed around information stands. Old people, young couples, toddlers and babes in arms. One person joked: 'There must be a Yiddish phrase for 'Packed like sardines.'' But most were not in the mood for humour. Some even had tears in their eyes as speakers on the stage talked of 'coming home'. This was the scene at an aliyah fair held in north London last month, for British Jews who are contemplating moving to Israel (the Hebrew term 'aliyah' literally means 'ascending' or 'rising', but for generations it's been used to denote immigration to Israel). And while this is an annual event, organisers were surprised by just how busy the 2025 gathering was, with 1,100 participants attending, three times the numbers of the year before. 'Usually, we have a few hundred people, but this time we were surprised by how many signed in,' says Rabbi Vadim Blumin, the head of the Jewish Agency in the UK and Western Europe, which helped organise the fair. 'I was surprised by the diversity. Normally we get empty nesters, people who are retiring and want to go somewhere warm and sunny [...] But we had so many young families, students, really people of all ages.' What would make someone leave peaceful Britain to go and live in a war zone, in one of the most disputed and fought over places in world? It is, perhaps, a sign of just how bad things feel for some British Jews. The BBC's airing of what the Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis described on Monday as 'vile Jew-hatred' at Glastonbury festival, has done little to assuage their fears. Debby Lee, 59, a television executive, was one of those who attended the aliyah event in north London last month. She was there, she explained, to 'explore my options'. 'I've never had a longing to be in Israel but there is an irony in that, the more there is criticism of Israel, the more there is anti-Semitism, which means that we feel that maybe Israel is the only place for us,' she says. 'None of that fills me with joy, but I need to look at my options because things are very bad in this country, and have been since October 7 2023. 'I realised something had changed on October 8, when I went to see my dying mother who was in a Jewish hospice, to find police outside because there had been death threats. That was the first big shock, and things have got progressively worse.' Until October 7, Lee says she felt part of the progressive movement, standing with friends over their various causes, but has had little support in return. 'Even when my friends and colleagues do want to show support, they don't dare say anything publicly. They feel they can't, and that's where we are,' she says sadly. 'My family has been here for 200 years. I love this country and am hugely patriotic. But I am not sure this country loves me any more.' The numbers who have actually left the UK for Israel are small but growing according to statistics from The Jewish Agency and the Israeli Ministry of Aliyah and Integration. In 2023, 404 Jewish people from the UK made aliyah to Israel. Last year, 660 went and, in the first five months of 2025, 250 have gone – a 12 per cent increase compared to the same period last year. Another 980 households have gone through the aliyah process, which takes around four to six months, and involves proving Jewish heritage, providing documentation and an interview before being granted a visa. Sammy Garfinkel was on a gap year in Israel before starting at a British university when October 7 happened. His parents flew him out of the country, but he insisted on going back, and has now started at university in Israel and officially made aliyah. When the 20-year-old finishes his degree, he will be conscripted into the IDF, which has lost more than 800 soldiers in this war alone. 'When the war started and I was back in London, every time I took public transport or walked on the street, I was subconsciously thinking, 'Do they know I'm Jewish, and will they hate me?'. In Israel, I can be openly Jewish and happy about it. This is the place where my ancestors prayed three times a day to return to, and they didn't get the chance to be here. So, to not be here seems crazy to me,' he says. 'I believe that the Israel-Palestine conflict is driven by pain, suffering and hate on both sides. What many outsiders don't understand is that adding more hate into the mix only deepens the divide. The events at Glastonbury are a stark example of this: chanting: 'Death to the IDF' may feel like a political statement to some, but to many Jews around the world, it sounds alarmingly close to 'Death to us'. 'The irony is, when Jews begin to feel they are no longer safe or welcome in their home countries, they will turn to Israel – the one place where they feel truly welcome. In trying to fight Zionism, these movements end up reinforcing it.' Olly, 27, (who does not want to give his full name), is moving to Tel Aviv in August. He has rented out his London house and packed up his things. A software developer originally from Essex, he says he used to come back from holidays to Israel thinking, 'I could never live there, it was such a different way of life.' But October 7 changed things and, 'Glastonbury this weekend felt like the final nail in the coffin.' 'Yes, there is danger [in Israel] but there is danger in the UK, too. I look at what has happened in America – two people killed outside a Jewish event, someone throwing Molotov cocktails at Jews, and I see people saying it was their fault because they were pro-Israel, and that sickens me. 'I've had workplace anti-Semitism – the old-fashioned kind with people saying things like, 'Why do you work here? I thought all Jews were rich', and then the new kind where every other person has a Palestine flag on their laptop. I feel like I have a target on my back and its unnerving. Whilst the majority of Glastonbury was peaceful, the BBC displayed a hate fest to millions [...] Chants that are banned in Saudi Arabia and the UAE were projected into our living rooms, and very little has been done about it.' Olly says he feels 'a huge sense of relief' that he's a few weeks away from leaving the UK, 'but also deeply sad it has come to this. How is it that I can be safer and more protected in some countries in the Middle East than in the UK? 'I know its not everyone. A former manager of mine messaged me to say he'd been at a Massive Attack concert and they showed footage of the Hamas terrorist Yahya Sinwar [the principal architect of the October 7 attacks, who was killed by an Israeli patrol in the Gaza Strip a year later, in October 2024] and the whole crowd was screaming, 'Free Palestine'. He's not Jewish, but was so disgusted that he and his wife walked out [of the concert]. But people like him are a rarity.' Immigration by diaspora Jews has always been welcomed by Israel. The 1950 Law of Return means that anyone who can prove they, a parent or grandparent was Jewish, is almost always granted citizenship (although criminals and anti-Israel activists are sometimes turned away). The law was a response to Hitler's race laws, which saw anyone with a Jewish grandparent sent to concentration camps. Immigrants to Israel, known as Olim, are given benefits such as 500 hours of lessons to learn how to speak Hebrew, as well as free healthcare for up to 12 months until they get a job, and help finding housing and work. But even aside from the ongoing war, life is not easy. Tel Aviv is one of the most expensive cities in the world, and it can be a struggle to get a job. Israel is also a country at war with itself, with huge demonstrations against Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and his coalition government. It's no surprise that as many Israelis are moving to the UK as Britons relocating to Israel – with around 80,000 Israelis estimated to be living here. For Rabbi Vadim Blumin, moving to Israel from a relatively safe place like the UK – where, unlike in America, France or Belgium, no one has been murdered for being Jewish – requires both a feeling of 'push and pull'. 'It is true that Jews feel less safe in many spaces, and I'm sure it's a push factor, a significant one,' he says. 'But British Jews can consider other places, so I would also say most of the people are not running away. They understand that their first years in Israel will be much less comfortable than their lives in the UK. But for many, there is a sense of calling, of identity, of belonging. 'I think also many British Jews are deeply concerned over the future of Israel – both with the war and the internal challenges as a society – and they want to be part of reimagining our future and rebuilding the country. Tied into that are questions of identity, of belonging, of looking for a meaningful life in a world that is going crazy.' Lee Kern, 46, an Oscar-nominated comedy writer, from north London, felt both the push and the pull extremely strongly. He became a significant voice speaking out about the anti-Semitism of the Jeremy Corbyn Labour party by using his huge social media following. Just three weeks after October 7, he travelled to Israel to document what had happened. And then something unexpected happened: he didn't want to go home. 'October 7 and the celebrations that followed it, felt like a coordinated global war against Jews,' he says. 'I'd already had six years of fighting anti-Semitism which had, I guess, entrenched, a certain element of disenfranchisement. When I got here, there was so much trauma and tragedy and pain; a genuine anxiety that Israel could be destroyed. But it also felt like a strong country, with all these interesting, dynamic people making a difference, and I ended up falling in love with the place. 'Yes, we are surrounded by fundamentalists who want to cut my head off, but this is also the most positive, optimistic place I've ever been, and that is a big part of the reason why I left Britain.' He ended staying initially for three months, came home to the UK, and then quickly flew back to Israel having rented out his London home. Our interview draws to premature close as a siren sounds – the latest missile coming over from the Houthis, the Yemen-based troops who have vowed to continue until the war with Hamas is over. Kern is forced to duck into a nearby building and shelter with strangers in the stairwell. Israel isn't a place for the faint-hearted. 'I don't think there is a future for Jews in Britain,' he says sadly. 'I am worried about Britain itself. It feels like political leaders and the smug cultural elite are enforcing a regime of shame and self-hatred on the British people, where you are not allowed to feel pride, or feel happy. You are not allowed to have self-belief, and I think that's a terrible thing for a nation. Even when I'm unhappy here, I am happy. I feel proud.'
The Guardian
27-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Members of British Jewish body suspended after criticising Israel to launch appeal
Thirty-six elected representatives to the UK's largest Jewish organisation are to appeal against disciplinary action taken against them after they criticised the Israeli government's operations in Gaza, and have said they remain 'deeply concerned' about the war. The Board of Deputies of British Jews announced on Tuesday that five of the group would be suspended for two years and 31 would be reprimanded for breaching its code of conduct after a two-month investigation. In a statement released on Thursday, the group said they would appeal after taking legal advice. They 'remain deeply concerned about the remaining hostages, the appalling humanitarian crisis and ongoing war in Gaza and the further deteriorating situation in the West Bank', they said. The five deputies who gave media interviews about an open letter that was published by the FT in April had received 'the enhanced punishment of effective expulsion from the board' as they were suspended for the remainder of their terms of office, the statement said. It was 'the biggest mass disciplinary action in the board's history, with over one in 10 elected board members disciplined', it added. The open letter caused a furore among British Jews amid growing divisions over the war and distress at the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. It said that 'Israel's soul [was] being ripped out' by military action that renewed in March, and that the signatories could no longer 'turn a blind eye or remain silent' on the issue. Statements issued by the Board of Deputies since the war began in response to atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October 2023 have been broadly supportive of the Israeli government's actions. The board launched an investigation after receiving complaints from other members. It stressed that it welcomed a diversity of opinions, debate and free speech but that its code of conduct required deputies not to misrepresent the position of the board and not to bring the institution into disrepute. The reprimanded group's statement said they stood 'in solidarity with the 70% of Israelis that consistently say they want an immediate end to the war in Gaza, which is the perceived price for the return of all the hostages'. Since writing the open letter, a lack of food and aid had 'engineered conditions of scarcity, which has seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Palestinians being killed week after week in the desperate scramble for survival that has been created'. There was 'no justification for the continuing misery and destruction being wrought on Gazan civilians'. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Harriett Goldenberg, one of those suspended, said: 'So many Jews in the UK agreed with our sadly groundbreaking letter. We were inundated with thanks from those who said we represented them, and that we were their voice. It is tragic that voice is still needed.' Philip Goldenberg, another suspended deputy, said the board's executive was 'effectively expelling those who spoke inconvenient truth unto power. This is utterly contrary to the Jewish tradition that robust debate is an essential part of a civilised life, and feels more like Putin's Russia.'
