Trudy Gold
The Left and its Blind Spot about Israel
Trudy Gold and Tanya Gold - The Left and its Blind Spot about Israel
- All right. Well, good evening everyone. And of course, we are in a very, very dark time and I particularly want to give all our greetings to our friends in Israel. In fact, our friends everywhere because we are feeling as a people, I think, very, very, very threatened. I’m delighted that my daughter Tanya’s joined us today. As you know, Tanya’s a journalist and she came up to London this weekend to actually go to the rally. So I think one of the things we want to establish tonight is what on Earth has gone wrong with the left? Up until the 70s, the majority of Jews in Britain voted labour, regardless of income, something has gone horrifically wrong with the relationship of the Jews, with the left. And that’s what we’re going to try and tease out to today because a lot of people of the left always the home of decency and inverted commas, morality. What has gone wrong? So Tanya, will you talk a little bit, first of all, about the rally you attended yesterday in London? How many people were there?
Yes, of course. Good evening everybody. Good evening. Particularly to our friends and family in Israel. I’ve thought of you all this week constantly. Well, yesterday I saw the rally gather from a perch on Waterloo Bridge, from which I could see the whole rally. Now today, the supporters of the rally were saying there were half a million people there. The police said 50,000. They could fill Whitehall twice. I don’t know how many people it is, but it isn’t half a million people. The first thing I would say is it was not a rally of the left. I will argue, and I suspect you’re going to agree with me, Mom, that this rally not only was it not a rally of the left, it wasn’t even a rally in support of liberal democracy. This was a rally, in my view, and lots of people disagree with me and say the rallies are lovely and they’re fluffy and they just want to ceasefire and they want to get the hostages back. I think that this was a rally in support, consciously or not, for some consciously, for some not consciously of Hamas and their Iranian paymasters. And we’re seeing this in the middle of the British state, one of the oldest liberal democracies in the world. And a good question is, how much longer is this going to endure? So it was organised by the usual gaggle of pro-Palestinian groups in this country. Stop the war.
Can you stop there a minute? Stop the war. Of course, the Stop the War coalition. That’s Jeremy Corbyn and et al. Could you expand on that, because we have a lot of people not from Britain listening.
The Stop the War Coalition is a pro Putin, pro Assad lobby group that is anti the war in Ukraine. Is of course, anti-Israel as well. It’s not really a Stop The War Coalition at all. It’s stop the wars that I don’t like. And they gathered. And there are two different kinds of people on this rally, I would say. I would say at least half of them were British Muslims. A family atmosphere, many of them very young. Many, many women there. And the other half were people attached to the British left. And I would say a few of them are principled. I think a few of them are intelligent. Sorry, this isn’t coming out. From my experience at the rally yesterday, let me just tell you what happened and then I’ll try and define the kind of people who were there. This was not a rally in support of peace. It was not a rally in support of ceasefire. It was not ceasefire that would be of any benefit to the Jews. This was a rally in support of Hamas. The impression I had as a Jew was that Israel, and by extension, all Jews can do nothing right. It was an annihilationist. It was annihilationist rally. The chant was from the river to the sea. We’ve had a lot of arguments about what it means from the river to the sea. I believe that it means the whole of the land between the river and the sea will belong to the Palestinians. That’s been rather confused in recent weeks by the fact that I do believe that some Israelis also like to use this phrase. They’re in much smaller numbers. So you’ve got extremism meeting extremism. There were signs comparing Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler with a Hitler moustache. The sign that made me Angus actually was of a perfectly ordinary looking woman carrying a sign that said all resistance is justifiable. So that meant, of course, that this perfectly ordinary looking woman, probably my own age, probably with children, thinks that what happened on October 7th was necessary to free the Palestinians from the evil Jews. Evil, scare quotes. What surprised me most and surprised the non-Jewish friend I was with was the atmosphere of celebration. It felt like a carnival. I was also at the pro-Israel rally in Square last week, and there was an atmosphere of great sorrow and of grieving.
I was with a non-Jewish friend yesterday, so he can confirm this for me. That he also was very surprised by the absence of sorrow. People were lighting fireworks. They were cheering. As the day went on, there was a very strong smell of marijuana from some of the younger people. And you got the impression this was a party. They were climbing on bus stops. They were climbing up all over the British ministries. The police have a policy of not kicking heads in, which I suspect is is probably wise because lots of them are looking for a fight. But certainly the impression I came away with was Jews out. That’s what they want. And very interesting. There was a rally in another part of England yesterday where a moderate Muslim stood up and said, we must have peace. We must release the hostages. There must be a ceasefire, but we must come to the table for talks. And that was not good enough for the crowd. And they cackled and they booed him off because they don’t want to hear a solution that involves Jews living in peace. And I’m sorry if this alarms or frightens anyone. I’m aware that people living in America are seeing very, very similar things there. And God knows people in Israel have it so much worse. But what we’ve seen in Britain in the last two weeks is an outpouring of what I think is a mediaeval style antisemitism. The atmosphere of a pogrom, and it’s an alliance between two groups of people. As I said young, I would suggest, rather alienated Muslim people. Lots of people, well, British people will know. American listeners will not know so well that in this country at the moment we’re struggling over very high inflation, there’s a housing crisis. Our public services are not doing very well. There are reasons why young people are feel alienated, though I wouldn’t suggest that’s a reason for them to go to the lengths that they are. But these people, I think they are very alienated from the British state. And on the other side are, I’m just going to be rude and call ‘em the sort of mouldy left.
And I suppose we’re among friends here. So I can say that as soon as I saw the white British bourgeoisie with their anti-Jewish placards, I just rang up my mother and said, well, I don’t think anyone here was in the top set at school. It’s always said that Nazism was a religion for failures and for mediocrities. And I know it sounds incredibly unkind, but they looked to me like people who were disappointed with their lives, whose lives were not enough for them. Now they had found a cause to attach themselves to. And it was very difficult for me, obviously as a Jew, to listen to the things they have to say, hear my people called evil, to hear our fallen derided. And what kept going through my head, I’m a huge fan of musical theatre, that great invention of American Jews, plus Cole Porter. And the song that kept going through my head was “Give Me Something To Believe In.” So that is what I saw.
And, Tanya, before we look at the history of the left, you, because of your job, you spend far too much time on Twitter. How dark is it?
Well, the thing about Twitter is they always say, first of all, not everyone is on Twitter. If Twitter was the world, I think we’d already, all of us be dead. Not everyone is on Twitter, and of those people on Twitter, 2%, sorry, 90% of tweets are done by 2% of people who tweet. So what you are seeing are extremes and the algorithms directly towards things that will make you angry. So you continue to be engaged. Rage engages you, apparently. But the antisemitism on Twitter is absolutely appalling. And I’ve been telling you this for years because Twitter is a harbinger. It’s where the Overton window, which is a British way of describing things that are acceptable to say. It’s where the discourse is. Acceptable discourse is the Overton window. And I believe that Twitter shows you how it widens and moves and stretches. And one of the things that is obsessing me and has obsessed me since Brexit is how liberal- Our liberal democracy in Britain seems to be sort of fraying and shattering and being pulled in so many directions. And of course, you’re seeing the same thing in America, but you see that very, very clearly on Twitter. Or I could just say people are so stupid, because you can’t explain the complex ideas that underpin us all living together in safety in 280 characters, right? But the anti-Semitism there is absolutely off the scale.
Okay. I want to go a little bit back into history because the extreme left in Britain are, of course, in the vanguard of the fight for Palestine, fight against Israel. And what I find out-
Let me just say, Mommy, they aren’t really fighting for Palestine though, are they?
No, that’s the point. But when you go back into history, I find in 1948, the daily worker actually praised brave little Israel fighting the feudal monarchies. And don’t forget that Stalin gave both de facto and de jury recognition to Israel. So the question is, when did it all go wrong, and how did it go wrong? And I think this is a story that I’m going to tell very, very briefly, and I want you to chime in on it. Basically, when Golda went to visit Stalin in 1948, after she became the the ambassador, he realised he had a Jewish problem because 50,000 young Jews came out to greet at a time when revolution was dead in Russia. I remember John McDonald, he actually said, “How can we be considered antisemitic when Trotsky is a Jew?” I mean, they got absolutely no understanding of what it means to be a Jew. Because as you all know, so many of the leadership of the left-wing parties were Jewish. And, but it goes wrong from there. And what you see, particularly after there’s a change in the Arab world, after NASA came to power, and NASA of course was bringing in Nazis for his anti-Semitic propaganda, what happens is that Russia does a tie up ideologically. They open up a sinology department at the University of Moscow, and as the third world develops, gradually, Israelis seen more and more in the camp of the West, in the camp of Israel, of America. And consequently, particularly in '67, the great student revolution, Israel made a terrible mistake. They won a war. And what had happened before that? When there could have been a Palestine in 1947, the United Nations voted for it. But if you look at what happened to the land, Gaza was taken by Egypt. The West Bank was taken by Jordan.
And as you know, we say Abdullah’s country have been carved out of the original mandate. And instead of integrating them, what happens is they’re putting refugee camps. Meanwhile, over a million Jews are kicked out of the Arab world and they are not putting refugee camps in Israel. In fact, the majority of the citizens of Israel today are those people who are expelled from the camps. So on one level, how on earth did this embattled little state that was once regarded as pristine by the left, where did it all go wrong? And I should mention also that Mahmoud Abbas, he studied at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, and his thesis was on the link between Zionism and the Holocaust. And you talked about at the rally, this picture of Hitler and Netanyahu, one of the problems, and it all starts in Russia, their sinology departments, they began to spew out, particularly after Israel did a peace deal with West Germany, the reparations agreement, they began to spew out this spurious accusation that the Zionists somehow allowed their weak to die so that Israel could come into being. And they begin to equate Zionism with the Holocaust. And today it’s almost seen as red in certain portions of the left. Now how did the left take it on? And it’s all tied up with the student revolutions of the 60s, the the Japanese Red Army, the PLO. All of a sudden, Israel is on the side of the white colonialists. Embattled, little Israel is white, it’s colonialist. All you have to do is visit to see how many Israelis are not white. But the other point is Israel became a successful western democracy, and gradually the aligned block of the third world, the Arab world, whose spewing, all this hate spews into the Arab world. And you have the demonization of Israel. I mean, I have books and books and books looking at cartoons of how the Jews were depicted in the Arab War.
Did we take it seriously? That’s another question. Because I think to anyone who believed in common sense, it seems so ridiculous, but it’s manifested itself in other very strange ways on the liberal. Not only on the left, but on the liberal. Amongst liberals. Relativization of the Holocaust. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, the Holocaust is unique in human history. It is the only time that birth was sentenced of death for no gain whatsoever, and yet it’s relativization, even at the Holocaust Museum, the new one they want to open in London, they were talking about Uganda, they were talking about Rwanda. Look, any catastrophe is a catastrophe, and I’m going to bleed for those babies in Gaza because I’m a mother and I’m a human being. But the kind of equation that the Holocaust isn’t really half as bad as you think it is, that’s that’s very much part of the liberal world as well now. So the question is where do we go from here? And I have got a certain comfort because I’m finding, and I’m sure this is true of many of you, that there is in Britain, a lot of people who are incredibly decent and I think they are fed up. The other problem we have is that the Muslim population is now, what is it? It’s 3 million, at least. So percentage wise, that makes 'em 5% of the population. And politically, they tend to vote labour. So there are political reasons as well, why the Labour Party has a real problem. But do you want to talk a little bit about Jeremy Corbyn and his crowd, because of course they came out of this kind of liberal- They came out of the left of the 60s. He marched for Aldermaston, anything to do with white colonialism is evil. Anything to do with the oppressed, inverted commas, and Jews are not seen as oppressed is good.
I just wanted to say something about the Muslim population of Britain. There are moderate Muslims. But I’m told that they, when they speak up for peace in Israel, Palestine for two states for a deal, they are ostracised, or in the case of one brilliant pressure group who I’m not going to name, because they’re receiving death threats, and some of them, I understanding have even left the country. So I just wanted to mention that. I first came across Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in 2015. When he became leader, that’s when I began to cover it. I don’t believe that Jeremy Corbyn released antisemitism in this country. I think he was part of a trend. Corbyn is not a cause. Corbyn is a symptom. And I think I’ve said to you many times, the anomaly was after the Holocaust. The fact that there was almost no antisemitism in Western Europe. Well, there were almost no Jews. But the reason why my family and families like us in Britain grew up with almost no antisemitism was an anomaly of history. And I’m feeling that very strongly at the moment, that things are back to normal. And is it too much to say, I think the show have bought us 80 years. And one of the things, I really wanted to say this, even though it’s not terribly relevant, one of the things I’ve really wanted to say this week, because I’m not sure anyone else has said it, is there are so many educators and particularly Holocaust survivors who have been working in schools all over the world and have been telling their stories to children and students to try and morally educate them. And I think it was Howard Jacobson who said at Holocaust memorial day a couple of years ago, “You gave of your very soul so the deaf would listen and the disbelieving believe.” And of all the things I feel terrible about in the last couple of weeks, I feel most bad for them.
Well, as you know, I spent yesterday with Anita, who’s a very close family friend of ours. And she is absolutely hopeless, because she was brought up, remember, in a tradition of the enlightenment, and she survived. She built up the English Chamber Orchestra. But much of her life has been spent telling people what happened. And she now feels that nobody listened, and I’m getting this from many of my survivor friends, the hopelessness. But Tanya, you are almost talking in an existential way as though anti-Semitism is a factor of life. Now why do you see it as different from any other kind of hatred? Because any kind of race hatred, should of course be, in my view, completely condemned. What is it about anti-Semitism? Why did your friend Robert Wistrich call it the longest hatred? What is it?
Well, I think you said it in your last bit when you said there was no gain to the Holocaust. People have been racist in history. Or I mean, some people have a theory that anti-black racism developed after the slave trade in order to give it a sort of theocratic meaning. In order to give it a philosophical meaning. Racism is usually about theft. As you say, there’s some gain to it. But I believe that it began, of course, with the gospels. With St. Paul and St. Matthew. The Jewish rejection of Christ. There was a terribly antisemitic video the other day of a man shouting from his car at a woman in America with a little child behind us saying, you’re a Jew. You’re a Jew. You people are the devil. I’m hearing that a lot this week. The the Devil Jew. And then he said to his wife, “Take a picture. Take a picture.” And what I wanted to say is, you want to see a picture of a Jew, go and look on the wall of your church. And I think that that is absolutely key at the bottom of this and at the very beginning of all of this and you’ve said this very, very, very many times is the Christian oedipal rejection of the Jew.
I’ve got to go with that, because also Islam. I think it was actually Robert, very naughty, he said the problem was Christianity and Islam are the two aberrant children of Judaism. Now maybe that’s going a little too far. But I mean, Robert lost nearly all his family in the Shoah. So maybe he’s allowed, may he rest in peace, was allowed to say things like that. But what it shows us is all the anti-racist education has completely failed, because now I come on to my next point, I want you to go… Actually, before we go to that, I want you to talk-
Do you want me to talk about Corbynites?
I want you to talk more about the Corbynites, people like Diane Abbott and how successfully a lot of Muslims are now in positions of local government and in parliament, and how dangerous is that in terms of their ideology?
I’m not an expert. I’m just going to say, it’s a much better . I’m not an expert on the Muslim community in Britain, Mama. I’m talking to you like this on a video. I want to talk a little bit about the Corbynites. And the reason I pause to talk about the Corbynites is because this is Lockdown University and you are expecting a sort of sophisticated analysis when the genuine truth having stared at these people for eight years now, I just genuinely believe that they aren’t very bright. I think you can tell Jeremy Corbyn a million times that Hamas are a murderous, tyrannical organisation. They do not believe in Palestinian nationalism. They want to see a caliphate. They’re anti-gay, they’re anti-women, and he will never change his mind. I mean, the blood libel that the Jewish people, that Israel blew up a hospital in Gaza last week and 800 people were killed, around the world, before the truth had its boots on is still up. When I last checked this morning, it was still up because he will not change his mind. And that’s where you come into the other. So the first main characteristic of the Carbonite Jew hater is stupidity, is the lack of understanding, a lack of intellectual elasticity, a refusal to listen to ideas. What people always say about Jeremy Corbyn is he has never in 60 years of politics been known to change his mind. And that feeds into the next main characteristic of the Corbyn minister who I like to call the tanky, which is vanity. When I went to the Corbyn Minister Conference in 2016, I thought, if you agree with these people, they are the kindest people in the world. And if you tell them you don’t agree with them, they hate you. I perceived the diehard Corbyn minister and you saw a lot of them on the march yesterday as people who perceived that they were broken, and they want to see a solution, and they want a moral and emotional solution. And it’s great to feel transcendence through politics. Yeah, sure. But that’s not really what liberal democracy is for. And one of the things that came very strongly to me for this march yesterday, because the other thing we’re seeing here is groupthink. And the people are, for whatever reasons, quite deep reasons in relating to our educational system, to the way we absorb information on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok. Apparently, TikTok has been an absolute disaster. Arab Israeli conflict in two seconds, pick your side. Culture war stuff. Not only were they enjoying it, they took it incredibly personally. For example, as for a sign.
I lost you.
Can you hear me?
Yes, now. We lost you for a second. Yeah, yeah.
There was a sign that said, stop genocide. Hilariously, they don’t actually know what a genocide is. I believe that a genocide, I don’t care what the UN says. A genocide is an attempt to murder an entire people. It’s not when you kill too many people.
And of course, that word was created by a Polish Jew who lost all his family in the Shoah.
Yeah, I mean, that’s another thing, the sort of mirroring. They accuse us of ethnic cleansing. We’ve ethnically cleansed Gaza, even though I think it’s quite reasonable of the Israeli army quite generous to say get out of the North 'cause we’re going to go in and get Hamas. And they go, oh, we can’t move because of ethnic cleansing. So there’s all this terrible sort of dishonesty and self piteousness. I’m not talking about Palestinian self-piteousness. I have no doubt that Gaza at the moment is the worst place on Earth stuck between the IDF and murderous Hamas. But when you look at the young, white, bourgeois, British educated, born and raised in liberal democracy, those kind of people spouting this nonsense, I find it absolutely contemptible. And one such person, I believe got this poster, it said, free genocide, no genocide. And I thought, I’m going to turn it over because it was lying on a step. And I turned it over and it said… I found the first draught. It says Israel is like my ex-boyfriend. And I think what a lot of these people have done. First of all, they don’t understand the conflict, and worse, they don’t want to. So there’s that. But I think they’ve projected their own emotional needs onto it. Their frustrations. You talk about this a lot. The end of empire decline, you know, boredom. We’ve had it too easy for too long and we’re searching, we’re searching and what are we going to believe in? And she’s obviously decided to believe in the demonic Jew. And I’m just going to end with saying that the thing that came to me most clearly yesterday when dealing with this kind of person, not the Muslims at the rally, who have got their own imperatives, is when she says free Palestine. She doesn’t mean free Palestine, she means free me. That’s what I believe. And it has become the latest craze of the kids, and whether it’s going to get, oh, okay.
Okay, but in terms of the Jewish community in London, the fact that your nephew, my grandson can’t wear his school uniform, the fact that most Jews I know are actually frightened, do you think that the England that I fell in love with will come to its senses? Do you think there’s any hope for that? Because I’m getting a lot of support from what I call the silent majority. Actually people like William Tyler who lectures on Lockdown, I had a long talk with him this morning. And he said, “You’re the canaries in the mine.” They’re worried about liberal Britain. So I think there’s an awful lot of ordinary folk out there who actually they don’t want to see 100 thousand mad people marching through the streets of London screaming Have you any hope for that?
Well, yes I do. I really, really do. And I think you are absolutely right and we fight about this a lot because one of the responses of people when they see, when things like this happen, you feel frightened is to go to further extremes. Okay, we can no longer trust the Muslims. There’s no way we could make peace with the Muslims. We are now the enemies of the Muslims. And then the Muslims look at us and they go, well, we’re the enemy of the Jews and we’re automatically, even though we are nowhere near Israel Palestine, we’re in a terrifying state of war. And I don’t think this is going to be a very popular point, but I think if there is a solution. Do you know the most moderate people in the Middle East are, Mom? Israeli Arabs. I’d like to talk to some Israeli Arabs. I’d like to listen to some Israeli Arabs. In answer to your question, Britain’s an interesting state because it’s a liberal democracy, but it’s also a monarchy. And for a long time, the monarchy has kept us, we had a superb head of state who Elizabeth seconded. She filled the space that would be taken up by a tyrant or all sorts of nonsense. She filled it impeccably and perfectly, and we all felt safe. And, but the truth is liberal democracies require work. They require work and effort from the people within them. And one thing that makes me saddest about this country is we seem to have so much pride in the royal family. Every school child giving a book for Elizabeth II, but children are barely educated about their rights and more importantly their responsibilities. And we fought a lot in the last 10 years about the Cameroo. We had a leader called David Cameron. He was the longest serving prime minister since Tony Blair. He was an Etonian, the Potter School in Britain. And there was a lot of talk and a lot of chat about how these incredibly privileged, not that bright men were running Britain. And when I interviewed Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson was also an old attorney. And so we had this idea that Britain was being run by this sort of cabal of wealthy men who didn’t really understand politics because they didn’t need it, being wealthy. And when I interviewed Dominic Cummings, he was very convincing to me that we haven’t been solving the problems of the British state. Things change, hospitals crumble, roads crumble, we need new infrastructure, we’ve got a million immigrants. How are we going to integrate them?
Well, are you actually saying that the Jew, again, has become the scapegoat for many of the problems? Is that what you’re saying? And one of the other things I want to get, I want to talk to you about is education. Because whether we like it or not, the image of Israel in our textbooks, in schools is become absolutely abhorrent. And it’s filtered through, so I’m going to call it wokeism. I know you don’t like that expression, but it’s like wokeism, all these groups that think they’re fighting for rights are fighting against the Jews. Now, how did that happen?
Well, what I wanted to say when you said that was coming back to my woman yesterday, who thinks Israel is her boyfriend. If 60 million people have rights, right, no one does. No one is defending the space in the middle. That’s what we got to do. I don’t know if things are going to get better or worse, but I do know that unless we fix the problems in Britain, they’re only going to get worse.
Well, Richard always said liberalism has to get militant, and he said that 20 years ago. But I am fascinated by the way the schools and particularly the universities, both in Britain and America, how the sides have been taken. You’re looking at privileged elites at Harvard and Oxford, aren’t you? So how did they also get hijacked into all this?
Well, it’s my job to monitor social media for you. And I am going to say, and this is a joke, so please take it as a joke, that the funniest thing that has been written in the last two weeks was written on far white, right satirical website. It was a fake headline, it said, “Harvard student leaves lecture on microaggression to attend a rally to shout kill the Jews.” So I did think that was quite funny. I can talk about the Guardian. I said when I was talking to Howard Jacobson the other night, that if I could put one man in the dock in this country, because I think we’ve had an absolute abrogation of responsibility by the leading lights of the so-called Liberal bourgeoisie is a man called Alan Berger, who was the editor of “The Guardian” from 1995 to 2015. And Melanie Phillips says that she was there in the 80s and it was just as bad. But one thing I’ve always noticed about “The Guardian” is its prejudice towards Israel was not subtle. Every single article, no matter how small or large was at the very least slanted and at the very worst, a blood libel in the vein of the blood libel about the Israelis blowing up the hospital last week, when in fact Hamas blew up their own hospital. For example, one of the incursions to the West Bank. Massacre at Jenin, they said that was a headline on the front page of one of the most influential newspapers in the world, Massacre at Jenin.
It was not a massacre. And that was never retracted and never apologised for. I’ll give you another example. There are tens of thousands. One of the ones that I found most awful, I think it was 2014, and rockets were coming out of Gaza. The Israelis were firing back. A small group of Jews, of Israeli Jews apparently got some chairs. I don’t disbelieve it, got some chairs and went to a hill overlooking Gaza or near the fence, and they sat down and they watched the bombing of Gaza. And there was a huge piece on this. And I read it closely. Not one time did the woman writing the piece say how many people were there? And I was looking at the newspaper and screaming at the newspaper, how many people were there? Tell us how many people were there. And she didn’t. And I’m a journalist and my guess is she wasn’t going to tell you how many people there were. That’s because there were almost no people. So you read this article and you think that the Jews of Israel are people who like to have a party with snacks watching Palestinian children get murdered. And “The Guardian” is so, I cannot describe to you how influential. “The Guardian” is free, by the way. It has no paywall. That’s why it has so many readers in the world. And every time you read a letter from an artist or a film director or a maker of culture about how demonic the Jews are, they’ve been educated, scare quotes, in this by “The Guardian.” And they are saying it because “The Guardian” has given them permission to do so.
And also, of course you have the luvvies letter, all these lead inverted commas, the luvvies signing a letter condemning Israel. It’s absolutely extraordinary, actually, Tanya. Now before, I can see we’ve got a lot of questions. But before that, I do quickly want to talk about some of those, what I would call, I call them self-hating Jews, people like Miriam Margolyes, Tony Greenstein, Judas itself. Have you anything to say about that?
Yes, one thing I wanted to say, because it helps to explain how this has all got so heated, is now that we have Twitter and social media, I mean, Howard says we should just turn it off, and he’s completely right, is in the olden days someone could stand up and say, I like Israel. I’ve got no problem with Israel. I stand with Israel and it would be nothing. But now, if you do that, because you’re on Twitter and everyone has a public profile, you get 10,000 death threats called. There’s a Jewish comedian called Josh Howie who has been tweeting in defence of Israel a week. People have been emailing the venues where he is playing to try and get him cancelled. So that’s part of the reason why the artistic and intellectual community, scare quotes, is so vulnerable to this groupthink, and is so scared to step outside of it. Yes, you wanted to ask me about the Jewish Corbyn supporters. I have been obsessed with these people. And Dave Rich who’s very senior at the community security trust in Britain
You interviewed him on Lockdown.
Yes.
No, I didn’t interview Dave. I interviewed him for “The Jewish Chronicle.”
Oh sorry. We must get him in.
About how to combat antisemitism that everyone should read, by Dave Rich. And he says I worry too much about these people and I think too much about these people because I just think, how can you? And I interviewed Miriam Margolyes a couple of years ago. You may or may not know who she is. She is a very famous actress in Britain who who is incredibly gifted. She was in the Martin Scorsese film “The Age of Innocence,” and I believe she walked away with the film. But, and this is probably connected to her view on Israel. She seems to spend most of her time these days on talk shows farting and flashing her breasts. So Miriam is a complicated person, and I interviewed her and I interviewed her tenderly, because I felt that I could see the self-loathing and the unease that this gifted Jewish only child growing up in not exactly anti-Semitic, not compared to what we’ve got now, but in Oxford, a very cold town in the 1940s. And I have to be honest and say I simply didn’t believe it. I knew that she was an anti-Zionist. I knew she’d said anti-Zionist things, but I simply didn’t believe that when it came to pass, you’d see a massacre like October the 7th, and Miriam would not, her Judaism at the very least, if not humanity would mean enough to her to say, to stand up and say God help us. But there was nothing, there was absolutely nothing. As for Tony Greenstein, a very notorious anti-Jewish, anti-Semite in Britain, I just think they’re all mad.
Anyway, the reason I brought up Dave Rich, he said, “Well, first of all, it’s not worth analysing these people.” And second, it will always be in their own family. Because they have made Jews unsafe in this country. They’re very, very important in the Corbynite movement. As soon as Corbyn came to power, mainstream Jewish community started saying, “Oh, we’ve got problems with him.” He said that he was friends with people in Hamas, he invited blood libelist to Parliament, immediately Corbyn is to Jews. And I don’t really care how active they are. There’s been, it was very common to call them, and this is a word that hurts people, so forgive me. To call them . I don’t think that’s a word I like to use. People said, oh, you’re not really Jewish or, and would deny their Jewish identity. That’s not true either. But what is true is that they founded an organisation called Jewish Voice for Labour in which they laundered the antisemitism in the Labour Party from the fringes right into the mainstream. And my friends, when I told them I was going to the Palestine launch yesterday, and they said, “Are you’re going to be all right?” And I said, “I’ll be absolutely fine, as long as I stay away from the Jewish block.” It’s a tiny Jewish block, Jewish Voice For Labour, an absurd sort teenage account called Judas with a picture of Rosa Luxembourg, fanatically anti-Israel, the Jewish socialist block. And I said, as long as I don’t go anywhere near the Jewish block, I’ll be fine.
They are so tragic. They’re so misunderstood people like Rosa Luxembourg, and people like particularly Trotsky. In 1938, Trotsky actually said, the world is divided up into those countries that won’t let the Jews in, and those countries that won’t let the Jews live. If he’d survived Stalin’s acts, who knows what he would’ve thought. So honestly, we’ve got a lot of questions I think we should take.
About the Corbynist Jews, I tried for a very long time to understand them and then I realised they don’t even understand themselves.
Okay, but Tanya, before we get to questions, do you think that the Labour Party can hold, honestly?
We have to have disagreements about this. The first thing, Keir Starmer, who is the leader of the Opposition Labour Party, he took over from Jeremy Corbyn. The first thing he said, his very first statement as labour leader was an apology to the Jews. And I mean, it was the very least that we needed, but I was always had faith in him, faith in him because of that. He is a very clever, cautious, and very, very devious man. And I think since the Tories have run us into the ground, and we’ve got to have a change, and there’s been a lot of talk this week about how 25 labour Muslim councillors or friends of Muslim councillors are leaving the Labour Party. I think that he’s on top of it and he’s under a lot of pressure to call for a ceasefire, though other people are saying that senior people, but not him are calling for a ceasefire in order to keep hold of the Muslim block. And look, I’ve been proven wrong so many times before. But I’m going to put my faith in him because what else is there?
But what I would say, 'cause I don’t want to talk party politics with you. This is not the right place. But what I would say is as long as he holds, what is different is you do have a government and you do have an opposition that is actually against what is going on in this country. And I think the next thing that has to happen is the police have to start making arrests and more arrests. And I do believe, Tanya, that a lot of people, ordinary folk are very, very angry because they think their Britain is being taken away from them. So I don’t want to finish on a dark note. We are living through incredibly dark times. Look, this is tragically one chapter in that strange history of the eternal people, and we will go on. Sometimes the price, and I know to our Israeli friends, I’m sure, I know Adrian’s online. I just hope you don’t have to go to the bomb shelter tonight, Adrian. And I’m sure many of you are. Look, we are all with you because something has happened to the Jews. We are United again. And just maybe out of this horror story can come something positive. So, Tanya, let’s look at the questions. I’ll read them out and you can have a look at them.
Q&A and Comments:
Q: So. Ziggy Riseman. Hi, Ziggy. Did you see the video of Jeremy Corbyn’s brother shouting in the street?
A - No, but I have met Piers, and he’s completely insane. God knows what happened in that house. Sorry if that’s not a particularly good answer.
Q - Tanya, would the names of any organisations who are funding the protests?
A - I can find that information for you.
Yes.
I don’t have it on-hand. Iran is funding some of them for obvious reasons.
Yeah. You know, it’s quite tragic actually, because the axis of evil. We have Iran, you have Russia, and you have China. And this is all in their interests. This is from Veryl. I’m in Ottawa. We have rallies here as well. Pro-Palestinian. It’s difficult to imagine the hate gaining. As a Jew what I’m am I to do? Pray and donate and educate the people with their ideas. Don’t change their opinions. That’s from Veryl. Anything positive to say to her? Except that what we are finding in this country, Veryl, is there is a change. And it was actually a journalist from “The Telegraph” who got a petition up in support of Israel. And a lot of people have signed that petition, including some very, very famous people and some ex-Prime ministers. So.
I mean, I was asked this question the other night and I was silent because I had no answer. I mean, I think there are a few things we could say. The first is there’s a lot to panic about, but I’m talking about in the diaspora. And CST, Community of Trust, Security Trust did say last week it, will get better. When this war is over, it will get better. The other thing I wanted to say, and I didn’t want to say it because it just felt so rude, is my God, teach your children to throw a punch. Because if they are out there on the street and they are going to have a little scuffle, no one’s suggesting that that Jews are going to get murdered on the streets of England, but they should be able to throw a punch. I’m sorry.
Well, you’ve got a son who can. I don’t know about my autistic other grandchildren. I’m not going there. This is from Yehuda. The blind spot has of course reached parts of the Jewish communities. A typical example, a few days ago, the war came up in a discussion I had with a passionate supporter of the protest movement. The first thing the supporter said is that Netanyahu will not survive politically and then declared that the protesters were taking a leading role in volunteering, even if the latter were true, sustaining the schism even after the significance of the horrors figure to penetrate any scale is idiotic. Well, I think there will be a time, Yehuda, when there will have to be an analysis, but I think at the moment, I agree with you, we should really pull together.
No, no, no.
This is Nikki Shiner.
Can I say an addendum to that? Just one very quick addendum to that. I do not think that the kids going out to the IDF to defend their homeland are going out to defend Netanyahu. His dream of Israel, the right wing settlers’ dream of Israel, that is not everyone’s dream of Israel. And that’s just all I’m going to say.
Q - Okay, now this is from Nikki Schiner, and she gave a very interesting lecture the other night on- She’s a psychologist and she said this. “A lot of the Germans were in the top sets. Intellectuals, politicians, clergy, philosophers.” That is why what happened then and what is happening now is so frightening. I’m afraid I’m going to go with Nikki on that because tragically, you know, Einstein said something very interesting, Tanya or Nikki. He said that he put- After the First World War, he said, I’m going to put the blame at the feet of those educators who for 50 years have taught the Germans about war and nationalism. No, the problem is what we all dream of is the enlightenment, and I think that’s what’s missing. An education based on the values of the European enlightenment. This is from David Blackburn. Can it be reasonably argued that Israel, including its traditional left, has something of a blind spot about the importance of respecting international law, and generally international conventions for dealing with major humanitarian crisis? Tanya.
A - Not my area. I’m sorry.
- Okay. Okay. Actually, David, the whole issue of international law. Hold it, and I think it’s something that we will be bringing international lawyers in on. This is from Jerry. I’ve just read a few articles on TikTok and they agreed that it was so anti-Semitic. This is so scary ‘cause millions of our youth are on it. What are your views? This is our kids who, look, what I’m going to scream at is Jewish kids don’t know Jewish history. Isn’t it about time that we started making sure that Jewish kids, look, let’s forget the outside world. I used to teach with my team 30 years ago, Jewish history as a Sikh form option in most of the best schools in London. And when we also taught at Eton and Harrow, by the way, and it made a huge difference. Unfortunately, it wasn’t funded and the community at the time didn’t think it was sensible. We would never get back into those suit schools again. I do believe that most people can be reasoned with as long as they have the knowledge, and we at least let’s start in the Jewish schools.
Joan, Tanya reminds me, this is from Joan who I see as a close friend. Tanya reminds me of Boycott day, April 1st, '33. My father went with a friend already wearing a brown shirt and took photographs. They had no idea what was to come. And I don’t know what happened to those photos.
This is from Lucy Huberman. Hi, Lucy. There are two outstanding articles this week on the capture of the left, one by Nick Cohen, the other by David Monovich. I call it capture, even though it has been a long campaign, it’s just that the rest of the left don’t believe it was happening and when they saw it was happening, didn’t really know what to do. It was very hard to dislodge momentum and the political work it took has not really been discussed. But that’s only part of it. In fact, Nick Cohen’s agreed to come on. So we’ll be inviting him on in the next couple of weeks. This is from Asser. Now for many years, a person, Dennis Prager has been making people in the US and Canada, in fact all over the world, aware of the facts that more people on the left in politics, the more antisemitic. They are, unless if there is God and religion in their lives, he’s right on many of the subjects, and he lectures on in the speeches he gives. So there’s, Asser is suggesting you’ll get in touch with- Look at his work, Dennis Prager.
Eli Strauss is backing him.
Q: Are you saying a sinology or Zionology?
A: Roger, I meant a Zionology department in Moscow. Robert Wistrich wrote a book called “Ambivalence to Betrayal,” the left and its betrayal and he’s got chapters on it. It’s absolutely fascinating.
Sharon, socialist worker, front page headline, “Smash Israel Terror States,” issue 2876. The socialist workers, yes, they see themselves as the heirs of Trotsky, and I don’t believe they have the brain to understand anything about Trotsky. And Monty’s saying, Tanya could be heard on YouTube in a JW3 discussion being Jewish in Britain. Thank you. Thank you. And that of course was with Howard Jacobson.
Oh, this is from Anna Lee. Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. Voltaire. Yeah. Marsh Slinger. I’m a leftist. This war confirms my belief that people on the left and the extreme left have deep-rooted antisemitism. It just comes down to this. It’s that simple. So how do we come out of this? Because I’m afraid we won’t. Can we give Marla any hope? Yes, we will come out of it. We are as old as history. And I still believe, despite all the horror, I believe in England, that England’s going to come to its senses because it’s been brewing beneath the surface for a long, long time. I mean, Tanya, you took a taxi here from the station. What did the taxi drivers… I mean, look, I can give you him so many anecdotes.
He was a white working class man because like so many of us, I’m just all over the place. I mean, and that’s another thing. We are shocked. We are all in shock. We should not trust our first emotional response to be a guide to how we are going to feel. I mean, at the moment, I feel I’ll never be happy again. But I’ve thought that before and I always have. And let’s be honest, this isn’t our first time at this radio. But anyway, I was talking to a white working class man because you do clutch at straws as a taxi driver. He grew up in Essex, and I told him he was Jewish. He just said he grew up among Jewish people and he said he’d never had any problem with them and he sent his love to my family.
I’m getting this a lot. I’m getting this a lot. And this is from Maya Jacobs, a close friend of mine and Anita’s daughter. I must add, it would be wonderful if you had an Israeli and Arab representatives in the discourse. My heart is shattered, as is my mother’s. Maya, we’re all praying for you. Now, it’s an interesting one. I do have a Palestinian friend who happens also to be part Jewish. After October 7th, he sent me such a lovely message. He’s actually spoken on Lockdown. I will discuss this with Wendy. It’s a very complicated issue. I wouldn’t want to put his life at risk, Frankie. And I think we are. Tanya’s already talked about what’s going on online and I really think we have to be very careful.
Q: This is from David Sefton. What right do these pro-Palestinian protests have been asking for my extermination? Governments are failing to protect Jews. Governments do not want to prosecute organisation defined by them as terrorists. Why on earth aren’t the courts? Well, we’ve got no room in prison, have we, in England?
A - No room in prison and yet a third of pregnant women in prison on remand. Do you know what? It sounds so pathetic just to say, well, write to your MP. Demand changes into the law. But that’s how liberal democracies work. Pressure groups. Tanya, you’re right, and I know that there are a few MPs who are actually defending Israel very, very, very strongly.
Oh, I do have something to make you all smile. Regarding the antisemitism on campus universities, oh, the lawsuit that’s coming their way. It’s already in motion. They’re looking for plaintiffs. So if any of your children or grandchildren or even any listeners have suffered anti-Jewish racism at university, there are already lawyers acting on your behalf. I think they’re going to be very, very sorry.
Alright, this is from Elaine. I, as an Ashkenazi Jew will not identify myself as white, and I encourage Jews to reject that identity. I’m white passing. I’m Middle Eastern because that is where my roots begin. In addition, we ask an Ashkenazi Jews have never had the privilege of white Christian Europeans. I do not wish to blend into white society either. Thank you. This is from lovely .
Q: This is from Fred, a lovely . who of course comes from Poland. Don’t you know that Europe cannot forgive the Jewish people the Holocaust?
A: Yes, yes, yes.
Hazel, this is from Hazel Gato. There’s no Christian education any longer. So young non-Jews have no idea of the Old, New Testaments and Christian teachings are non-existent, whereas Islam promotes its ideology as being a peaceful religion. I would say though, the problem with the Christian world, even though I agree with you, a lot of them are no longer Christian, it’s so deep in the culture.
Maya said, I mean, historically, yes.
Sharon, Jews are an easy target. Small minorities, so many stereotypes.
From Gita, please maybe have some comfort. We’re all hurting. I’m afraid you’re not helping
Mel Brooks.
No, this is Gita. Not sure. Trudy and her daughter are here to provide comfort and encouragement. Why do you think they’re here? So there’s a debate going on.
They’re having a fight now. Okay.
This is from Elaine. Trudy, your daughter is brilliant. I agree with the historic analysis. Thank you very much. Look, what on earth can we say? As I’ve already said to you, this will pass too. I really do believe that. And I’m going to say it again. I really do believe that England will come to its senses. You can only go so far. I had a long talk with William this morning and he just said what we need is a church hill. We need someone who can stand above it and do whatever’s necessary to keep England safe. And I’m beginning to think, and not all the press is completely hostile to us. You’ve got to be very careful. “The Times” is very balanced. “The Telegraph” is very much on Israel’s side. So, Tanya, I mean, give them a little bit of hope. Some of the press, and I think Middle England, many people in Middle England are absolutely furious, aren’t they?
Yes, I think it more likely than not, that this is a wake up call that people need to be more active in their society. And I also think one of the most disgusting and frightening things about these rallies is that antisemitism has become a fashion. If it is a fashion, it will soon again become an unfashion, because that’s what fashion does, it moves in and out of fashion. So I would urge people not to take their initial response. And I genuinely believe that I’m more upset about what happened in Israel, of course, than what is happening in Europe. We’ve been lucky for a long time. And if it’s going to be a couple of months of trouble, we can take it. For God’s sake, we can take it. We’re still Jewish. And actually, I did say to my friend when we were walking down White Hall yesterday, my non-Jewish friend, I said, look. Look at all these people. They’re so upset with us.
And you know the other thing, Tanya. The fact that the people are very angry. It’s going to be the march pass next week and next month, isn’t it?
The Senate update?
Yeah, Senate update. Can you imagine how the ordinary British are going to feel about that? I think things are changing. And I’ve just had an email from a friend of mine that I’m going to read out. Legal Action Against anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students, Mark Ressler and his firm Kasowitz is representing Jewish students. The legal claim will add alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The firm is Kasowitz. All right.
That’s in America. The only British boy is watching, we need similar here.
Israel watching Israel. He is a British lawyer living in Israel and I’m sure his firm’s up to things. Arlene, the terrorists say when they got rid of those who prey on a Saturday, they would after those who prey on a Sunday. I just saw a video that says the atrocities of October 7th is an Israeli hoax. Some people already believe that. Shelly, do you have a lot of self-hating Jews in Britain? Here in the US, there are Jews whose religion and comfort is leftwing politics. Also on campus, Jews are being made to feel guilty for being alive and either feel ashamed of their religion or keep their head staying down and stay silent out of fear.
I think we have more self-loathing Jews than any other country? They’re a small. No, they’re small in number.
Q - I’m finding, the community is pulling together. I was feeling very dark this morning, so I called my friend Sandra Myers. I don’t know what you all do. We phone our friends first thing in the morning. And Sandra had been on a rally on Hamstead Heath, actually. And all these very civilised people marching together, it did make me feel a little bit better. This is from Louise. Do you think that the Labour Party will revert back to antisemitism because of this, or will Keir Starmer be able to control the tide?
A - I think that all the MPs, the very small number of MPs who are still supporting Hamas on their way out, he moves slowly, but not while he’s leader. No, and he’s going to win an enormous majority at the next election. His desire is to win back the so-called Red Wall, the white working class, voters largely gathered together in the north, who the Labour Party lost under Brexit because Jeremy Corbyn flip flopped on Brexit, like he flip flops on everything except seemingly this. So I think Jews are safe in the hands of the Labour Party for as long as Corbyn is leader. After that, I cannot say.
As long as Corbyn is there? You mean as long as-
I mean, I’m sorry. As long as Starmer is… And Starmer, you may or may not know this. It’s not that important, but it is comforting. Starmer’s wife and children are Jewish.
Okay, Harriet Dukov. Is there a way to harness immigration in Western countries for good? I think this is something else that’s going to come up. And Jonathan is talking about Israeli politics. I want to lead that aside because I know that Carly’s bringing in quite a few people on that. You should be very proud of your daughter. She speaks the truth and understands the useful idiots. I wonder how brave people like Josh Howie can stand up for Israel? Everybody go to a Josh Howie gig.
Are being cancelled. There’ve been horrible comments on his Facebook page.
Everyone go to a Josh Howie gig.
All right. And this is from Adrian Wolf who is in Israel. Free Palestine. Really? Gaza is . There are no Jews living in Gaza since 2005. And you know what is absolutely extraordinary, is when they gave it back. It could have become a Singapore. Anyway.
Can I just say one other thing? There’s been very little coverage in the British media. I’m just putting this out there and in global media about what’s happening in the West Bank. I understand there have been a lot of attacks on peaceful Palestinians by far right settlers, and we argue about this a lot, Mommy, 'cause my theory is I’m not a big fan of the settlers. And I think we’ve all got to choose. This isn’t a very good thought.
I don’t think it’s for now.
I’m going to shut up. I’m going to shut up. But I’m very worried about the West Bank. There you are.
Leave it, leave it. Because Monty’s saying, when you have Annette Wolf, yes, she’s coming in on the 16th, we’ll ask her to explain the meaning of the Disneyland of Hate. And somebody’s been talking about Nick Cohen as I’ve said, he’s agreed to speak. I’ve been sent details of a Christian Arab who served in the IDF, maybe we could bring on. Yes. And JF’s piece in “The Guardian” was excellent, well-balanced and hopeful yesterday. JF, Jonathan Friedland, right. Okay, William, I don’t want to go about- I don’t want to go into the issues of the Arab-Israeli conflict at the moment.
Maybe some people just need to acknowledge the fact that Netanyahu has enabled some very unpleasant extremists and we just need to acknowledge perhaps, just to acknowledge the fact that we don’t want to feel people in Israel who support peace, who support a two-stage solution, however far away that might feel at the moment, we don’t want them to feel completely isolated.
I think at the moment-
There are no kings of the Jews and Netanyahu isn’t either. If we have a king of the Jews, in my view, it’s Lord Rothschild.
That was Tanya being funny by the way. And what about the previously trusted BBC?
Disgraceful.
Q - Gita wants to know, who do you write for apart from the JC?
A - Well, I write for lots of places. “The Spectator,” “The New Statesman.” I have a big piece about the misuse and idiocy of many Holocaust memorials, which will be coming out in Harpers in the new year, and I’ll come on here if I’m welcome to discuss it.
- You also write for “The New York Times” as well. I mean, Tanya is what they call eclectic. Okay. Somebody wants to know what luvvie was. And Sarah Dees for archetypes acts as a musician. Anyone in the theatre show biz world known as luvvies. Oh, and Susan Alexandra is pointing to an article by Jake Wallis Simons. Yes. Professor. This is William Chino. And then there’s Professor Judith Butler, a Jew has adopted the buzzword genocide, hopelessly aligned in effect to Hamas.
Q - Are you getting a lot of questions about Israeli politics?
A - Yeah, but I think we’ll bring in politicians.
They’re the last people you want to talk about it.
Panellists said Starmer went to a mosque in Cardiff. Audience with him when he said Gaza needed food and water. But when he said hostages should be returned, he was shouted down.
They didn’t care about the hostages.
No, Mark, it’s not a correction. Trotsky did make the distinction in 1938. I’ve got the letters. In fact, if you want, it’s something- Robert Wistrich did his PhD on it, and I’ve got all these copies of these letters. Of course was saying that. So was Jabotinsky. But it was actually, Trotsky did say that. Okay, I think we better stop there. Somebody’s asking for clarification. Oh, this is from Louise. We left wing Jews as well as others are devastated. We recognise heartbreak, including in Tanya. But we need information, e.g. funding of those protesting and common focus so that we can formulate strategy. Well, I think it’s pretty obvious where the funding’s coming from. It’s coming from… Unfortunately, it’s coming mainly from Iran.
I mean, we might be able to find out by just if they file accounts. If they’re charities or public, that information should be available.
Q - Serena said, what can we do to fight Jew hatred with truth?
A - Vita, that’s the problem.
I wish people didn’t read these stupid books about the Shoah, like “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.” I know it’s only a minor point, but the piece I’m writing for Harpers is all about how- because there’s a contradiction, isn’t there? We’ve never had so many Holocaust memorials, and yet people have never been so immured to it. So there’s a whole problem here about Jewish and Holocaust education and also about Holocaust memorials. And obviously, we don’t have time to talk about it now particularly. But I will say that you’ll go to a place like Auschwitz-Birkenau as a normal tourist, as I did on a normal tourist bus, and you would think that Jews were these people from outer space. And the piece I’m writing is about how it’s turned into a myth, basically. A myth has no victims. Nobody is complicit in a myth, and I think that’s part of the problem that we’re seeing now.
Oh, there are so many questions. I think we’re just going to take a couple more. Look, we will be coming back to this subject. I’ll be talking about it with… We’ll be talking about it. There was one question I did want.
I know Cole Porter wasn’t Jewish. That was my point. I said American. I said musicals were invented by American Jews, plus Cole Porter, sorry.
And this is Harriet Dukov. Diamond & Diamond have initiated a class action suit against York University in Toronto for enabling anti-Semite acts going back to the 1990s. Howard Levitt, a lawyer in Toronto was sued pro bono.
That’s something I always like to say to anti-Semites on Twitter when they always say to me, Jeremy Corbyn will sue you, 'cause I’m constantly calling him a Jew hater trying to get him to sue me. And I go, where will I ever get a lawyer?
This is a very depressing thought from Herschel. I, too, hope that England will come to its senses. However, there were many Jews in Germany in '38 who thought the German people would come to their sense. Yes. Now let’s be very careful here. I do not believe that the majority of Germans wanted the Shoah, by the way, any more than I believe that the majority of British want to see anything horrible happen to the Jews. It’s how you galvanise inverted commas, decent people.
I mean, I said that on the very first days when we saw this. I hate the bystanders more than anybody because they know better. The perpetrators do not know better, but the bystanders, they know better. So the people that we need to reach and we need to convince and incite our own fashion is to speak out. And the people I’ve been angriest with, have been my own friends in the media, who despite feeling sympathy towards the Jewish people, have not been able to find the courage to stand up. Those people will be the key to fighting this. I’m not going to change their minds.
What I predict is if anything happens on day, I think then you will see England get very, very angry. I do believe that. And I think the fact that more cases will be brought- I think, look, it’s not going to be solve. Look, the Jewish question. How many thousands of years old is it? We’re not going to solve it. Obviously, we’re not going to solve it. But all I’m saying is at a time when so many of us are feeling scared, particularly our friends in Israel and what they’re going through, I just thought that we’d start airing the issues. So I want to thank you, Tanya. And as I said, we have more people coming in to discuss these issues. What Wendy decided to do on Lockdown, and I think she’s completely right. We are sticking to the programme as much as possible. I mean, next week in Switzerland, though I’m going to be talking about the bloodline, the protocols going on trial. So I’m twisting some of it. But we are of course bringing in lots of experts. And as I said, Nick Cohen’s agreed to come in, and I like some of your ideas. So I’ll be discussing them with Wendy. So bless you, Tanya, for this. You can come out of my-
People of Israel are alive.
What is it? Let Israel live. Look. Look. All we can do is be together. And again, to our friends in Israel, God bless you all. Take care.