Mail, Anti-Semitism, And Hypocrisy

Opportunist to the last, the Mail titles have maximised the claims of Gideon Falter, head man at the so-called Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, that when marches in solidarity with the Palestinian people took place in central London, this made the area unsafe for Jews. This opportunism has required some highly creative writing, plus the old standby of talking well, but lying badly.

Falter had gone after the Metropolitan Police, demanding the resignation of Commissioner Mark Rowley, but after the full video of the CAA man’s encounter was revealed, Rowley not only stayed in place, but gave his backing to the cops featured in the incident, and told Mr F he wasn’t going to give him an interview. Which is more or less telling Falter to fuck off.

But those who might have thought that was that reckoned without the creativity, and indeed rank hypocrisy, that come easily to the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker. So it was that today’s Mail on Sunday brought us a package of righteousness, cop-bashing, and flat-out lying.

“After officer warns campaigner for being ‘Openly Jewish’ … POLICE ARE SO COWED BY THE ANTI-SEMITIC MOB, THEY EVEN COVER UP THE HOLOCAUST … Shameful insult to the Six Million” thunders the headline, the photo helpfully captioned “NO RESPECT: An etched boulder [you don’t capitalise after a colon, Mail mutts] at Hyde Park’s Holocaust Memorial Garden was hidden by a blue tarpaulin yesterday, to protect it from pro-Palestine protesters”. Sadly, the cops had nothing to do with that.

As the Met’s feed on Twitter, X, or whatever Muskrat’s calling it this week told, “This is an inaccurate headline that will only fuel community concerns. The decision to cover the memorial was taken by park authorities, not the police. As the paper’s own article makes clear, it is a precaution Royal Parks have taken for a number of different events”. Police in no cover up shock horror.

Meanwhile, some Mail watchers may be wondering what a paper that has dabbled so extensively in anti-Semitism, and not just in the years leading up to the outbreak of war in 1939, is doing playing the other side of the field. But then, that’s all part of the opportunism and hypocrisy. It was the Mail, after all, that launched an anti-Semitic attack on the memory of Ralph Miliband.

Which f***er's calling me out for anti-Semitism, c***?!?!?

The father of David and Ed was called “The Man Who Hated Britain”, thus recycling one of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes, that of the “Disloyal Jew”. To head off the inevitable criticism, the name on the by-line was that of Geoffrey Levy - “it can’t be anti-Semitic, a Jewish journalist wrote it, see?”

Miliband Père is dismissed as a mere “Jewish immigrant”. At the Jewish Chronicle, Martin Bright mused “I have always been wary of calling this dark undercurrent ‘antisemitism’, but the Daily Mail’s leader about the Milibands and Marxism (headline: ‘An evil legacy and why we won’t apologise’) dripped with the nastiest kind of prejudice”. So blatant, even John Mann noticed.

Could it get more blatant? Don’t ask. The Mail, this time wanting to kick anyone not invested with the idea of the UK leaving the EU, told its readers “Angry scenes as police separate Leave and Remain protesters at anti-Brexit rallies across Britain (and Eddie Izzard has his pink beret knocked off) … Typically British scenes included gentleman in tweed waving a Union Flag”.

Except anyone reading the article today won’t see the “gentleman in tweed”. The photos have been removed. But Zelo Street screen grabbed them. They featured one Jeremy Bedford-Turner. He is a rabid anti-Semite. So rabid, in fact, that the Guardian later told “A far-right army veteran has been found guilty of stirring up racial hatred after the Crown Prosecution Service was pressured to reconsider its decision to not bring charges against him”. Go on.

“Jeremy Bedford-Turner, 48, called for his ‘soldiers’ to liberate England from ‘Jewish control’ in an address outside Downing Street and blamed Jews for issues ranging from both world wars to Jack the Ripper … Under cross-examination, he admitted that he wanted all Jews to leave the UK”.

The Mail. Hot on anti-Semitism. Except when it doesn’t want to be.

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