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Monday, 19 August 2024

Reginald D Hunter And A Bad Faith Smear

Ah, the innocence of it all! “They had come to Britain for a romantic holiday and some much needed respite from the horrors at home … But Shimon and Talia’s trip to the Edinburgh Fringe festival this week quickly turned into a hate-fuelled nightmare after the pair unexpectedly found themselves at the centre of an anti-Semitism row”. So it was told in Saturday’s Daily Mail.

Reginald D Hunter ((c) Metro) ...

Only further down the page do we discover that Shimon And Talia are not the couple’s real names. By the time we get to “It was only their second night in the city when this charming and friendly Jewish-Israeli husband and wife were literally hounded out of a stand-up gig by the comedian Reginald D Hunter and a baying mob”, author Sabrina Miller is just getting warmed up. However.

It had all started with a piece in the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph by Dominic Cavendish, claiming “This was the ugliest Fringe moment I’ve ever witnessed … The audience bayed at an Israeli couple during Reginald D Hunter’s stand-up show in Edinburgh”. Did Cavendish not know the identities of the couple concerned? Everyone else does.

Now, questions are being asked as to whether Cavendish knew beforehand who was in the audience. Not that he’s telling. Yet. But he has tried to hold the line by Tweeting out the Mail article with the commentEven if the police haven’t contacted them, I’m glad they’ve spoken to a reporter to share their experience”. But he couldn’t resist a little self-aggrandisement.

So he also Tweeted Nicole Lampert tellingPeople seem to think it’s some kind of ‘got-ya’ that the people hounded out of the comedy show are people who a few years ago said they were moving to Israel because the UK was becoming so antisemitic. They didn’t choose to tell this story. There was one person in the audience who was shocked enough to write about it for his newspaper and that’s why the story was told”. Of course it was.

But do go on, Ms L. “Mark and Mandy … were in Scotland for a wedding and went to the fringe to see some comedy. Among the shows they went to see was Hunter’s: they’d seen him on telly and thought he’d be good”. It was just a coincidence that Mark Lewis and Mandy Blumenthal were there!

... and two anonymous shrinking violets

So that’s “For Some Value Of ‘they didn’t choose to tell this story’”, then. And someone else was in the audience: step forward Sangita Myska, allegedly binned by LBC for questioning the Israeli narrative on Gaza. “The events are not being reported accurately by some press. Yes, it was upsetting but the couple were not ‘hounded out’ by a ‘baying’ antisemitic crowd” she told.

What of Hunter’s spiel that set it all off? “It was, imo in poor taste and - written up out of context (which I’m guessing is what’s happened?) - it could be read as anti-Semitic. That wasn’t the incident referred to in the headline here. I’m not going to spend hours answering Qs but the Telegraph is not accurate”.

And a coda which is only going to make matters worse for Lewis and Ms Blumenthal: “And the couple should have mentioned what they screamed at the audience, which was absolutely hideous”. Not mentioned by Sabrina Miller, who may have overdone it when she claimed she had to “track down” the couple she so resolutely defended. Neither was it mentioned by Dominic Cavendish. Nor was the effect of the adverse publicity mentioned too loudly.

That effect was that Hunter had a show cancelled on the supposition that the claims of anti-Semitism were true and duly proven. Elsewhere, as a penalty for speaking up, Ms Myska was subjected to a welter of online abuse. Hunter has also identified Lewis and Ms Blumenthal in a Twitter thread (HERE). And the connections are being made, along with yet more abuse.

Was this another set-up, in the style of Gideon Falter trying to walk (with bodyguards) into a Palestinian solidarity march? The screaming denunciation of anyone thus enquiring as a conspiracist will only reinforce the thought. Meanwhile, Sky News toldPolice investigating a report of a ‘hate incident’ have said ‘no crime’ was established”. Maybe they should go to the EHRC.

Another day, another stunt unravels. And more hacks stand devalued.


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12 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's the problem for spooks and other seedy "undercover" wannabees: sooner or later they out themselves.

In Israel's case they don't even care to conceal it. Then again, why should they if, by his own admission, they already own the British prime minister.

The Toffee said...

Just as well Jerry Sadowitz didn't have a show...

Anonymous said...

The problem is though, is it doesn't matter that (once again) pro Israel provocateurs have been 'found out', the damage has already been done. Not only that, but as ever, the distance between the lie and the truth in terms of travel is enormous.

I doubt you'll find many who'll accept what really happened now, as opposed to the masses tutting and sighing over 'yet more evidence' of 'left wing anti-semitism', with the added 'bonus' (as far as the far right is concerned) of Hunters background.

Anonymous said...

Hunter doesn't know how lucky he is. That smear doesn't begin to compare with what the Starmer/Reeves far right hoodlums perpetrated on Jeremy Corbyn.

astara said...

This is just a tried and very successful Zionist ploy: shout about perceived antisemitic slights, and everybody falls over themselves to rectify that injustice. Remember the plates that were decorated by Palestinian kids that HAD to be removed from a UK hospital wall 'because Jewish patients felt very uncomfortable and unsafe about it'? Completely predictably, their pathetic demands were met.

astara said...

For Zionists, this is pure savage entertainment: crying about abuse of feelings, and everybody falls over themselves to rectify the perceived unjustice.

Burlington Bertie from Bow said...

It's worth looking at the 2018 Victoria Derbyshire interview with these two, referenced and linked on the Reginald D Hunter X account. This was the 'UK-is-so-antisemitic-cos-Corbyn-that-we- have-to-leave-and-move-to-Israel' stunt.

I don't know the background to the setting-up of the interview but Derbyshire seems very unhappy that these Herut UK propagandist chancers are being given a platform and she's relentless in her questioning of what they claim is Corbyn's 'unleashing of the general antisemitism in the Labour party'. She does as good a job as could be hoped for short of just telling them to piss off.

The other clear impression given is that the couple are thick as shit, spouting and repeating dumb attack lines, he mumbling away quietly and she enunciating carefully like a latter-day Thatcher with cleavage and a lip filler job.

Did they ever actually leave the country and would anyone have noticed if they did?

Ed Balls said...

More than anything else in the world, I want to know what Bertie thinks about this.

From my own perspective, I remember Hunter making some less than wholesome comments about the trans community recently. So, he is hardly a leftie icon, now is his material particularly anti-zionist, let alone antisemitic. He seems a strange target.

Mark Hayhurst said...

Excellent post Bertie. First class response.

Lewis is a first rate brief but not exactly all that good at much else.

Anonymous said...

That's the sort of 'disgraceful' behaviour that left the BBC with 'no choice' but to end her show. I mean we can't have someone on the BBC questioning the lines being fed to the public by the establishment it so ruthlessly serves!

Anonymous said...

There is a long term emerging tragedy from this Zionist evil. It is the fading memory of historical wrongs done to innocent Jews, including the Holocaust. Present generations will have the Gaza horror burned into their memory. Eventually it will relegate flickering old black and white films to the same archive as the Boer War.

Responsibility for that will rest squarely with the psychopathic perpetrators, supporters and apologists of the Zionist massacre of innocent Palestinians. Which includes the present British government.

Meanwhile a new generation of Palestinian resistance will be born from this new Nakbah. Some people just never learn the lessons of history.

Anonymous said...

Wait'll Christians hear what Ricky Gervais did with their bible. His life won't be worth a plug penny.

https://youtu.be/S_hnHSdh2Hw?si=ah4RVbXwuPYh9-B6