Why is James O'Brien recycling an anti-Semitic lie?
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.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
11 minutes ago
- Times
Goldman Sachs boss: City's status is at risk
London's position as a global financial centre is 'fragile', the head of Goldman Sachs has warned. David Solomon, 63, said a combination of Brexit and not retaining increasingly mobile talent and capital put the City's status at risk. 'The financial industry is still driven by talent and capital formation. And those things are much more mobile than they were 25 years ago,' Solomon told The Master Investor Podcast. • Rachel Reeves refuses to rule out wealth tax despite fresh warnings Solomon is one of the world's most powerful investment bankers and has been chief executive of Goldman Sachs, which has about 6,000 employees in the UK, since 2018. He said he was 'encouraged by some of what the current government is talking about in terms of supporting business and trying to support a more growth-oriented agenda. But if you don't set a policy that keeps talent here, that encourages capital formation here, I think over time you risk that.' On July 15, Rachel Reeves unveiled a number of measures aimed at cutting red tape in Britain's financial services sector as part of attempts to kickstart the economy. The chancellor said in her Mansion House speech that Labour placed financial services, one of eight key growth sectors under the industrial strategy, 'at the heart of this government's growth mission'. However, there has been speculation the Treasury could target profits in the banking sector, which have been boosted by higher interest rates, with tax rises to help bolster the government's fiscal position. Reeves with Solomon and his Goldman Sachs co-CEOs Kunal Shah, left, and Anthony Gutman, right, in Wednesday's meeting SIMON WALKER/HM TREASURY Reeves is facing pressure over reforms to the non-dom tax regime, with research by New World Wealth, an intelligence firm, recently suggesting Britain has lost 18 billionaires over the past two years, more than any other country in the world. In the podcast, Solomon said: 'Incentives matter. If you create tax policy or incentives that push people away, you harm your economy.' Reeves also pledged in her speech last week to make 'meaningful reforms' to ringfencing, rules brought in following the 2008 financial crisis which forced lenders to legally separate their high street businesses from riskier investment banking divisions. • Why is the FTSE 100 so high when the UK economy is stuttering? Solomon pressed the chancellor, with whom he met in 11 Downing Street on Wednesday along with his co-CEOs Kunal Shah and Anthony Gutman, to 'follow through', saying: 'It's a place where the UK is an outlier, and by being an outlier, it prevents capital formation and growth. 'What's the justification for being an outlier? Why is this so difficult to change? It's hard to make a substantive policy argument that this is like a great policy for the UK. So why is it so hard to change?' The ringfencing regime has also faced criticism from the bosses of some of Britain's biggest banks, who called on the chancellor in April to abolish the rules, arguing that they were inefficient and had been superseded by other reforms.
Telegraph
11 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Britain could be sued over causing climate change
The UN has opened the door to Britain being sued over its historic contribution to climate change. In a significant legal opinion, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said failure by countries to meet their climate obligations could, in specific cases, allow other states affected by climate change to sue them. It also cleared the way for lawsuits over historic emissions, which could leave the UK, the birthplace of the industrial revolution, at risk of legal action from other nations. The advisory opinion issued on Wednesday in The Hague is a way of clarifying specific questions of international law, and is not legally binding. However, it carries legal weight and moral authority and is expected to be influential on the future of environmental litigation. The UK implemented an ICJ advisory opinion when it agreed to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius last year in a deal in which Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, played an influential role. The new opinion will raise fears that Lord Hermer would back any attempt by a foreign country to use the opinion to sue Britain. 'Hermer has demonstrated he does not bat for Britain,' said Richard Tice, deputy leader of Reform UK. The Tories and Reform both rejected the ruling and said they would not pay any damages if they were in government. Dame Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, said: 'The ICJ has lost its core purpose and is now joining political campaigns and bandwagons based upon ideological obsessions on issues such as reparations and destroying the sovereign rights of national governments. 'The Labour Government is equally ideologically obsessed with this nonsense. Activist-led court rulings like this should never be treated as binding. 'This is the process of lawfare that led to the Chagos surrender and must not be replicated on this issue. We challenge Labour to put Britain's interest first and make clear they do not intend to act on this ridiculous advisory ruling.' Mr Tice said: 'Under no circumstances would a Reform government pay any ludicrous climate reparations. Nor will we not be beholden to any foreign court. 'This is another non-binding advisory judgment by the ICJ, who absurdly said we should give up the Chagos. They just hate us.' The case was put forward by a group of Pacific island law students. Ultimately, 132 nations supported it in the ICJ. The opinion ran to 133 pages and took two hours to read out. The opinion by the ICJ, also known as the World Court, was welcomed by environmental groups and by those living in islands at risk from rising sea levels and extreme temperature caused by climate change. Vanuatu is the island most at risk from climate change. Ralph Regenvanu, its minister of climate change adaptation, said Vanuatu would take the ICJ ruling to the UN General Assembly and 'pursue a resolution that will support implementation of this decision'. He said 'The Global South is bearing the brunt of a crisis it did not create. Families are losing their homes, entire cultures are at risk of disappearing, and lives are being shattered by man-made climate disasters. 'The nations most responsible for emissions should be held accountable for any violations of legal obligations and they must also step up and lead in providing resources and support to aid those most affected.' Legal experts said the judgment was a victory for small island and low-lying states that had asked the court to clarify states' responsibilities in 2019. Such countries are particularly vulnerable to climate change and have been frustrated by the lack of progress in tackling the problem. The Pacific islands, for example, are at the forefront of the risks of climate change, but are responsible for less than 1 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions. UN negotiations over how to curb global warming have often been stymied over how to balance the obligations of richer developed countries that polluted heavily with poorer nations being asked to cut their emissions. Developed countries, including Britain, argued that existing climate agreements like the 2015 Paris Agreement were enough and no further obligations should be imposed. On Wednesday, Judge Yuji Iwasawa, the president of the ICJ, rejected that argument. He said broader international law applied and countries not signed up to the Paris Agreement – or which, like the US, want to leave it – must still protect the environment He said developing nations have a right to seek compensation for the impacts of climate change, for example an extreme weather event destroying buildings and infrastructure. The amount of damages that a country could pay if a claim was successful is not clear. £2.8tn cost of climate change in 20 years The science journal Nature has previously published analysis estimating that climate change caused $2.8tn of losses between 2000 and 2019. But Judge Iwasawa warned it would be difficult to prove which countries were responsible for which part of climate change. The Foreign Office said the judgment was non-binding and there was no basis for the UK to pay reparations. A spokesman said: 'Tackling climate change is and will remain an urgent UK and global priority. Our position remains that this is best achieved through international commitment to the UN's existing climate treaties and mechanisms. 'It will take time to look at this detailed, non-binding, advisory opinion before commenting in detail. 'We will continue to collaborate closely to create the conditions for greater ambition and action, including with Brazil as it prepares to host COP30, and will tackle the climate crisis in a way that makes the British people better off.'
The Guardian
11 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Matt Wrack elected general secretary of NASUWT in contested leadership battle
Matt Wrack, a former leader of the firefighters' union, has been elected as permanent general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union following a ballot in which less than 5% of eligible members voted. He beat challenger, Neil Butler, winning 5249 votes to his rival's 3126, after the NASUWT's first contested leadership election for a generation. The union had previously announced that Wrack had been elected unopposed, but it was put to the ballot after Butler, the NASUWT's national officer for Wales, launched a legal challenge to the executive's decision. Wrack, who led the Fire Brigades Union for 20 years, thanked NASUWT members for placing their trust in him. 'NASUWT is a proud and powerful voice for teachers, and together we will make that voice even stronger. Now, our priority is unity and action. 'Teachers have endured years of underinvestment, overwork, and undervaluing of our profession. We urgently need government to invest in education – that means fair pay, manageable workloads, and safe, respectful working environments for staff and students. 'I will work tirelessly with our executive and activists across all nations to secure the conditions and respect teachers deserve. This is a critical moment for education, and NASUWT will lead the way in fighting for our members' rights.' Wayne Broom, the NASUWT national president, said: 'This election engaged our members up and down the country, and the result reflects their confidence in his leadership. 'Matt will play a vital role in the next chapter of the union's work on behalf of teachers across the UK. The national executive and I look forward to working closely with him as we continue our mission to put teachers first. 'We also want to thank Neil Butler for standing in this election and for his ongoing service to NASUWT – his dedication exemplifies the strength of this union's democracy.' Wrack was named as the executive's preferred candidate for general secretary in March. Under NASUWT rules he would have automatically filled the position if no other candidate received enough nominations from local branches. Butler's initial attempt to collect nominations was ruled out on the grounds that, as an employee, he was not a member of the union. He launched legal proceedings and the NASUWT backed down shortly before a hearing at the high court. Wrack was named acting general secretary and nominations were reopened. Only 4.7% of the NASUWT's 178,306 eligible members took part in the ballot. Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union, was elected in 2023 on a 9% turnout.
