A Shocking Look at What Anti-Semites Say When Jews Aren’t Around

March 1 2021

In his most recent book, The Taming of the Jew, Tuvia Tenenbom reports on his travels through the British Isles, where he has been practicing his signature form of undercover journalism: engaging both ordinary people and politicians in conversations about Jews and Israel, and documenting the results. David Herman writes in his review:

Tenenbom manages to catch people off guard with his disarming honesty and in no time they are coming out with these astonishing views about Israel, Jews, and anti-Semitism. Everyone he meets in Ireland, North or South, seems to hate Israel and love the Palestinians and yet Tenenbom likes them all and enjoys everything he sees about the Irish.

He puts some of these encounters online and “Irish people respond in writing.” What do they say? “Truly the Jews are a disgusting species.” “Reminds me I need to get some new lampshades, some soap too.” He’s not remotely bothered. It’s as if, unlike every mainstream journalist, he knows this is what people are like, that you don’t have to probe far under the surface to find the most appalling views about Jews and Israel.

Then on to England. He . . . manages to finally track down the elusive [former Labor-party leader and notorious Israel-hater] Jeremy Corbyn, whom he considers a symptom, more than a cause, of British anti-Semitism. In Newcastle, an Amnesty International bookstore has posters that say, “Millions of Palestinians will be DENIED human rights today. . . .” He meets students with “swastikas and anti-Semitic hate lines” on their T-shirts. In Sheffield, a sports fan, asked to provide his contact information after the game, writes, “I hate Jews.”

What surprises Tenenbom most about his time in England is that English Jews, even members of the House of Lords, are in denial and don’t want to make a fuss.

Read more at The Article

More about: Anti-Semitism, Ireland, Jeremy Corbyn, United Kingdom

 

When It Comes to Peace with Israel, Many Saudis Have Religious Concerns

Sept. 22 2023

While roughly a third of Saudis are willing to cooperate with the Jewish state in matters of technology and commerce, far fewer are willing to allow Israeli teams to compete within the kingdom—let alone support diplomatic normalization. These are just a few results of a recent, detailed, and professional opinion survey—a rarity in Saudi Arabia—that has much bearing on current negotiations involving Washington, Jerusalem, and Riyadh. David Pollock notes some others:

When asked about possible factors “in considering whether or not Saudi Arabia should establish official relations with Israel,” the Saudi public opts first for an Islamic—rather than a specifically Saudi—agenda: almost half (46 percent) say it would be “important” to obtain “new Israeli guarantees of Muslim rights at al-Aqsa Mosque and al-Haram al-Sharif [i.e., the Temple Mount] in Jerusalem.” Prioritizing this issue is significantly more popular than any other option offered. . . .

This popular focus on religion is in line with responses to other controversial questions in the survey. Exactly the same percentage, for example, feel “strongly” that “our country should cut off all relations with any other country where anybody hurts the Quran.”

By comparison, Palestinian aspirations come in second place in Saudi popular perceptions of a deal with Israel. Thirty-six percent of the Saudi public say it would be “important” to obtain “new steps toward political rights and better economic opportunities for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.” Far behind these drivers in popular attitudes, surprisingly, are hypothetical American contributions to a Saudi-Israel deal—even though these have reportedly been under heavy discussion at the official level in recent months.

Therefore, based on this analysis of these new survey findings, all three governments involved in a possible trilateral U.S.-Saudi-Israel deal would be well advised to pay at least as much attention to its religious dimension as to its political, security, and economic ones.

Read more at Washington Institute for Near East Policy

More about: Islam, Israel-Arab relations, Saudi Arabia, Temple Mount