Exposé: Who are the Board of Deputies of British Jews?
JVL Introduction
Koser Saeed, Journalist, Researcher and Editor of Spotlight Newspaper turns her attention to the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
Drawing on an interview with the president of the BoD, Marie van der Zyl on the right wing Israeli news channel i24News, she raises a number of important questions about the politics of the BoD.
It is worth highlighting that Saeed cites van der Zyl as claiming in November 2018 that the Board can “keep this issue of antisemitism on the front pages day after day, week after week, exacting a severe political and reputational cost for continued failure” until Labour are prepared to repent and change.
This article was originally published by Spotlight on Tue 21 Jan 2020. Read the original here.
Exposé: Who are the Board of Deputies of British Jews?
The video you’re watching in this post is from August 2018 and it’s of Marie Sarah van der Zyl, the current and 48th President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. She’s being interviewed by i24News – a right wing Israeli news channel. In the interview, Van der Zyl claims, repeatedly, that Jeremy Corbyn had been “spending more and more time with terrorist and extremists” and “with people who threaten the security of Britain”. She seconded one of the presenter’s outbursts that supporters of Jeremy Corbyn are “a cult” and said that “Jeremy Corbyn had declared war on the Jews at home”. According to Van der Zyl, Jeremy Corbyn’s “hatred of Israel and Zionism runs so deep” and “he cannot separate that from anti-Semitism”. In other words, in her opinion, anyone who has an issue with Israel or Zionism ‘is’ an anti-Semite. When asked if Theresa May had spoken out, Van der Zyl immediately sang the praises of the Tory party, claiming that “The Tories have always shown themselves to be friends to the Jewish community”, despite the fact that the Tories have a far worse record with anti-Semitism and Islamophobia than Labour.
This interview threw up a lot of questions for me… Who are the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who do they really represent and what are their objectives? I decided I’d try and find some answers to these questions and found myself going on a bit of a surprising journey through history and stumbling across some shocking revelations that I’d now like to share.
The Board of Deputies (BoD) are self-appointed representatives of all British Jews. Established in London in 1760, the first deputies appointed to the board were from the Sephardi congregation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews. The Ashkenazi Jewish congregation appointed their own “Secret Committee for Public Affairs” shortly after. The two groups met frequently and by the 1810s they amalgamated into ‘the London Committee of Deputies of British Jews.’
The BoD are affiliated to the World Jewish Congress (WJC). Part of the WJC’s mission statement is “countering anti-Semitism and the de-legitimization of Israel; and continually supporting the State and People of Israel in their struggle to live in peace with their neighbours”. They are also affiliated to the European Jewish Congress (EJC). Amongst the objectives of the EJC’s primary is the mission “to promote a balanced European policy towards Israel and the Middle East, and to assist in the construction of a healthy dialogue between Europeans and Israelis”. Another objective of the EJC is to prevent “nuclear terrorism”.
One of the first Presidents of the BoD was Joseph Salvador (1766 & 1778), who has been referred to as the only Jew to serve as a director of the British East India Company. Although it’s not proven Salvador was a director, he did invest a lot of money in East India Company stocks and was active in Company politics in the 1760s.
A notable early President of the BoD was Sir Moses Montefiore (1835–1838) who was a financier, banker, activist, philanthropist and the Sheriff of London. In 1860, Montefiore founded Mishkenot Sha’ananim, the first Jewish settlement to be built in Palestine, outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem and prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. In fact, the Montefiore family were diplomats and bankers across Europe and appear to have held the presidency of the BoD for most of the 19th Century.
Another prominent President of the BoD was Sir Stuart Montagu Samuel (1917–1922), 1st Baronet (24 October 1856 – 13 May 1926), who was a British banker and the Liberal MP for Whitechapel between 1900 and 1916.
Lord Rothschild (Lionel Walter), 2nd Baron Rothschild, a British banker, politician, zoologist and member of the Rothschild family was president of the BoD between 1925 and 1926. Rothschild was a prominent Zionist leader and it was Rothschild who received a letter, issued by the British government in 1917, announcing its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. This statement is better known as the Balfour Declaration and was passed to Rothschild for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.
So, a cursory glance at past presidents of the BoD reveals a long line of Zionists, quite a few financiers and a healthy crop of Liberal, Conservative and Labour MPs.
As explained, the current and 48th President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews is Marie Sarah van der Zyl, a lawyer specialising in employment law. As a claim to fame, back in 2012, Van der Zyl defended Stringfellows nightclub by arguing that the claimant, a lap dancer, was self-employed. Van der Zyl once boasted “the only difference between me and a Rottweiler is that a Rottweiler eventually lets go”. Marie Sarah van der Zyl announced her bid for presidency of the Board of Deputies in March 2018. He campaign was focused around tackling anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, taking on Jeremy Corbyn and protecting Jewish rights – specifically the right to circumcise male children and slaughtering animals in accordance with Kosher traditions. In an article in the Jewish News at the time, van der Zyl exclaimed that British Jewry was “at a critical point” and pledged to “defend Israel’s legitimacy and its centrality to Jewish identity”
Simon Rocker did an piece on Marie van der Zyl in the Jewish Chronicle back in May 2018. In the article, van der Zyl explains how her grandfather, who came to the UK on the Kindertransport, made Aliyah (‘moved to the land of Israel’) in 1969 and how this gave her a “great passion for Israel”. Later in the article, in response to Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, she remarked how she believes it is “Israel’s right” to choose its own capital. It’s worth noting that the Board of Deputies offices share the same address as the United Jewish Israel Appeal (1 Torriano Mews, London NW5 2RZ).
Later that year, in an article in the Jerusalem post in December 2018, Van der Zyl said that she believes that the Board of Deputies exists “to promote a sympathetic understanding of Israel”. The journalist interviewing her, Josh Dell, wanted to ask Van der Zyl about a recent demonstration by Charedi Jews who decided to protest outside the Board’s annual dinner and affirm that the “BoD do not represent 50,000 Charedi Jews” in this country. Dell remarked, after his interview with Van der Zyl, that he was “left acutely aware of just how difficult it is to attempt to represent all sections of a Jewish community, even one as relatively small as the 290,000 in Britain”. He goes on to cite a poll undertaken in 2015 by City University London (commissioned by Yachad), that found that 68% of British Jews felt a “sense of despair” every time settlement expansion in Israel was announced. The BoD have come under severe criticism from Yachad more than once. In 2018, Yachad presented a letter signed by over 500 British Jews criticising the BoD for “deeply misrepresented” their views when the BoD criticised Hamas for “repeated violent attempts at mass invasion” while completely failing to call for Israeli restraint or acknowledging that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) acted disproportionately in killing scores of Palestinians. The ‘Liberal Judaism’ movement (formerly known as the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues and who, as of 2010, became the fourth largest Jewish religious group in Britain), also said “the Board’s credibility as the voice of British Jewry depends wholly on its willingness to listen to, hear from and reflect the values of all sections of the community”.
In a response to the BoD’s recent demands that the Labour leadership candidates must agree to sign up to their 10 ‘pledges’, Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) have responded by advising the candidates that the BoD have no right to claim to speak for the British “Jewish Community”, especially given that Charedi Jews (approx 20% of the British Jewish population) do not recognise their authority. They also point out that they can’t claim to represent the 50% of all British Jews who happen to be secular either.
JVL have publicly rejected the BoD’s 10 demands, explaining that they severely undermine justice and the disciplinary and legal process for anyone accused of anti-Semitism. They point out the demand calling for “prominent” offenders to never to be readmitted into the party was “political vengefulness” and a ploy to claim important scalps, after all “how can it be just or appropriate to specify different penalties for people depending on how well known they are or have become?”. JVL also explain the BoD’s demand that they be given access to details of ongoing disciplinary cases undermines confidentiality and is particularly unacceptable, especially as allegations do not establish guilt and they point out that this would also contravene data protection laws.
JVL also rejected the BoDs demand that Labour outsource their disciplinary process to an independent provider, explaining that this would effectively mean handing over control of who is/isn’t entitled to be a member of the Labour party to an external body, which would completely strip the Labour of its autonomy and effectively neutralise Labour as a political party.
In Nov 2018, Van der Zyl wrote an article in the Jewish Chronicle in which she praised Louise Elllman, Ruth Smeeth, Luciana Berger, John Mann, Ian Austin and Margaret Hodge as “Labour heroes”. She also criticised the paper for allowing “a comment piece on Cable Street from Jeremy Corbyn” and boasted that the BoD have shown, with the ‘Enough is Enough’ demonstration and the ‘vigil for Pittsburgh’, that they have the power to “turn out.. hundreds or thousands with just 24 hours’ notice” and that they can “keep this issue of antisemitism on the front pages day after day, week after week, exacting a severe political and reputational cost for continued failure” until Labour are prepared to repent and change.
However, there are clearly a number of Jewish communities and Jewish organisations in Britain who do ‘not’ wish to be represented by the BoD and statistically speaking, the figures seem to suggest that this would be a significant majority of British Jews. Jewish Voice for Labour explain that a potential 70% of British Jews do not feel represented by the BoD which makes the BoD’s demand that any engagement with the “Jewish community” must be through “main representative groups” impossible! In fact, neither the BoD nor the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), both highly vocal groups who do not support Labour and who have repeatedly maligned the Labour Party, could claim themselves to be “main representative groups”.
I should also mention that the chief executive of the Board of Deputies is Gillian Merron, the former Labour MP for Lincoln (1997 to 2010) who held a number of prominent positions in the Blair/Brown governments, such as Lord Commissioner of the Treasury, Under-Secretary of State for Transport, Secretary to the Cabinet Office, Minister for the East Midlands, Under-Secretary of State for International Development, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Minister of State for Public Health). Merron was one of 98 MPs named in the June 2009 MPs expense claims exposé, having claimed £929,339 in expenses over a 7yr period. Merron was appointed Chief Executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews in July 2014 and was the external affairs officer on the board of Liberal Judaism, between July 2012 and May 2014.
Merron was also made Vice-President of the Jewish Leadership Council in Feb 2013 – an umbrella group for various Jewish community organizations, charities, Zionist and pro-Israel advocacy groups, who’s membership includes Lord (Michael) Levy, Sir Ronald Cohen, Lord Harry Woolf, Lord Stanley Fink, Sir Trevor Chinn CVO, Leo Noe and Lord Janner, as well as Conservative Party Treasurers Howard Leigh and Stanley Fink and the President of the Women’s International Zionist Organisation, Michele Vogel. Constituent members include the Zionist Federation of the Great Britain and Ireland and the Zionist Youth Council. The leadership have received a lot of criticism by other Jewish groups over the years as members appear to be self-appointed and unaccountable.
In December 2006, the Leadership Council and the Board of Deputies of British Jews joined forces and formed the ‘Fair Play Campaign Group’, in reality a pro-Israel advocacy organization that coordinates activity against anti-Israel boycotts and other anti-Zionist campaigns. In December 2009, the Council declared their support for a change in UK law that would prevent the issuing of arrest warrants against Israeli leaders without prior consent of the Attorney General (advocated by Lord Pannick QC) and in June 2011, the council and the Board of Deputies met with Foreign Secretary William Hague to “discuss developments in the Middle East” where they expressed their “concerns about a potential Palestinian Authority move at the UN for recognition of a Palestinian state”.
The BoD has had its fair share of controversy. In 2003, they reproduced an extract from a US State Department report claiming the Palestinian Relief and Development Fund (Interpal) was funding terrorist organisations but when Interpal threatened to sue for libel the BoD retracted and apologised.
In 2005, Ken Livingstone, compared a Jewish Evening Standard reporter, Oliver Finegold, to a concentration camp guard, the BoD filed a complaint to the Standards Board for England calling on Livingstone to apologise. Livingstone, who had a “25-year running battle” with the paper’s owners responded… “there is no law against ‘unnecessary insensitivity’ or even ‘offensiveness’ to journalists harassing you as you try to go home”. Needless to say, the complaint against Livingstone was unsuccessful.
In 2014, the BoD were criticised by some conservative Jewish communities for putting out a joint statement with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) calling for peace, following a particularly aggressive Israeli military operation in Gaza. Although the statement had 75% approval from the board in 2014, they had a significant back lash from 25% of their membership and by December 2015 the BoD had distanced itself from the MCB.
In 2018, the BoD were forced to suspend the deputy for Finchley United Synagogue, Roslyn Pine, for six years for referring to Muslims as “the vilest of animals” and Arabs as “so evil” and saying how she “detests the creed of Islam” and believes that killing Jews and “destroying Israel” is a fundamental pillar of Islam. Even more shocking was that Pine claimed that every deputy at BoD held similar views “otherwise what is their purpose there?”. Oddly enough, while the BoD took the view that Pine had brought the Board into disrepute there doesn’t appear to have been a statement from the BoD distancing themselves from her remarks. This suggests they were only concerned about the public’s perception of the BoD and it exposes a weakness in their ability, or even desire, to challenge Islamophobia from certain right wing Jewish groups that they represent.
When you have a BoD that fails acknowledge, let alone deal with the rampant Islamophobia and racism from its own members, fails to apologise unreservedly for disgusting Islamophobic comments from one of their own deputies, aggressively supports Zionism, fights BDS, tries to block the arrest of Israeli criminals and then arranges meetings with a British Foreign Secretary in order to demand he apply pressure on the UN to stop them recognising a Palestinian state, then you know you’re dealing with an unaccountable organisation, with its own racist agenda.
Incidentally, it was around the same time as the BoD ‘suspended’ Roslyn Pine, that the President of the BoD, Van der Zyl, went on the i24 Israeli news channel to slander Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour membership and claimed that that Corbyn was “a threat to world security”.
It also turns out that any dissent, even within the ranks of the BoD, is simply not tolerated. In September 2018, the BoD took a no confidence vote against the board’s Senior Vice-President, Dr Sheila Gewolb, simply for criticising Israel’s Nation State Law. The BoD claimed Gewolb had “breached the IHRA definition of antisemitism ‘in applying double standards’ to the country”. The Nation State law basically rules that only Jews have a right to national self-determination in Israel. Gewolb was censured because she said that Israel was wrong and that “all people should be valued and Israel’s Arab and other minority populations should be a treasured part of society.” I think most people might struggle to find another country with a “Nation State Law” that privileged one particular religious group over another so claiming a breach of the IHRA definition on the grounds that Gewolb didn’t criticise any other country for doing the same was odd, to say the least. Members of the BoD even called for her removal, saying her statement “inappropriately meddles in the democratic process of another sovereign nation”.
Any Labour candidate for leadership now needs to consider, very carefully, what they are saying to the 3.5 million British Muslims in this country, the 2/3rd of all British Jews who happen to be secular or follow the Charedi faith and who do not subscribe to the agenda of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Labour membership and British voters as a whole, if they agree to concede to the BoD’s demands and they need to consider the potential consequences that might result if they do.
SOURCES:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Deputies_of_British_Jews
https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Jewish_Congress
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Salvador
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Montefiore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Samuel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/marie-van-der-zyl-announces-board-of-deputies-presidency-bid/
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-jewish-chronicle/20180518/282677572942989
https://www.jpost.com/Jerusalem-Report/MP-for-the-Jews-573697
https://skwawkbox.org/2018/09/20/orthodox-jews-to-protest-at-board-of-deputies-annual-dinner/
http://yachad.org.uk/about-us/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Judaism_(United_Kingdom)
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/statement/response-to-board-of-deputies-10-pledges-document/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_van_der_Zyl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Merron
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Leadership_Council
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/foreign-secretary-meets-leaders-of-the-jewish-community
https://mcb.org.uk/press-releases/the-governments-muslim-brotherhood-review-the-mcb-responds/
https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/board-of-deputies-suspends-roslyn-pine-1.466934
https://www.bod.org.uk/who-we-are/meet-the-officers/
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/an-internal-spat-at-the-board-of-deputies/
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In the issue of Jewish News where Rebecca Long-Bailey sadly rushed to say ‘I’ll sign up to the Board’s asks’, there is an interesting letter from a former Board associate :
‘The Board of Deputies has issued 10 pledges to Labour Party leadership candidates, which include ensuring transparency, and engaging only with the community’s representative bodies. Would the Board itself, in the interests of transparency and confirming its representative status, be prepared to publish a list of its constituencies, the deputies elected to represent each of them, and the numbers of people who voted for each of them in the most recent elections?
[signed] Daniel Bernstein Vulkan, Ex- senior researcher, Board of Deputies’
Clearly we in JVL are not the only people who find that the Board is even more unrepresentative than it has been in the past.
So then pray tell me who does represent British Jewry ?
If the BOD does not then neither do JVL nor any other group
It is of course really important to expose the BoD for who they are, who they think they are, what their role has been historically but this is superficial and misleading.
The most significant way the Board has failed to represent the community has been in terms of class. While the early BoD leaders were from the well to do Sephardi community joined in the early 1800s by an Ashkenazi elite. By the 1850s/1860s there were many poorer Dutch and German Jews in London totally unrepresented by the BoD.
That was even more the case for overwhelmingly poor Jews who settled especially in London’s East End from the 1880s. The failure of the BoD to lead the fight against Mosley’s fascists in the 1930s (they told Jews to stay indoors and not make trouble) was because they were completely out of touch with working class lives in the East End. Some 90% of London-based Deps at that time lived outside the East End. Even those members who represented East London synagogues mostly lived out of the East End.
And yet – and this significantly disrupts the narrative offered by the author of this article – from 1897, when Political Zionism was created, until the late 1930s, the BoD was led by * ANTI-Zionists *
They saw themselves as British patriots, who did not want to be accused of having dual loyalties, but they also expressed fears that the position of Jews as a minority in Britain seeking equal treatment would be undermined by the existence of a Jewish state. It wasn’t just them. Britain’s Chief Rabbi in 1911 was asked what he thought of Zionism. He described it as an “egregious error”. Shame he is not Chief rabbi today!
The key point here is that the BoD has taken various perspectives on Zionism historically – its constants have been representing the more conservative elements of the community, and taking anti-Left stances.
Its record on fighting antisemitism and other racism is abysmal: not simply giving bad advice re Cable Street, but undermining the 43Group who fought fascists just after WW2, instructing Jews to steer clear of the Anti Nazi League in the 1970s, and failing today to support Muslim bodies who are demanding an investigation into Islamophobia in the Tory Party. None of these positions are essentially driven by Pro-Zionism though that tends to get woven in to the rationalisations.
Lastly, it’s own democratic deficits: most of its members are elected through synagogues largely in uncontested elections. I believe it is still the case that in some of these elections women do not have voting rights. And besides, whatever views are expressed by Board members its key political statements are produced by paid officers like Van der Zyl.
It’s interesting that in the above photograph Van der Zyl is holding a placard that says ‘No To Socialism?’ as opposed to ‘No To Anti-semitism’. And the fact that she has gone to Brighton to specifically ‘protest’ against Chris Williamson’s right to speak in public tells us all we need to know about the BoD!
Anyway, I just did a search to see if I could find any articles that included the above photo, and the second result/article that I clicked on said the following:
‘Meanwhile, the parliamentary group Labour Friends of Israel announced it would be pulling its stand from the event [the LP Conference] over security concerns, citing incidents in previous years.’
Well *I* have never heard of any ‘incidents’ in previous years, and the fact that no examples of these ‘incidents’ are/were included in the article – which one would have thought WOULD have been had something or other happened in previous years – leads me to believe it’s complete fabrication. I’m going to do another search now to see if I can find anything pertaining to such, because if anything DID happen – and bear in mind it’s in the PLURAL – then it would undoubtedly have been all over the MSM. And I’m also going to do another search to see how widely the above was reported in the MSM – ie that LFI would be pulling its stand over security reasons etc.
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/board-raises-deep-concern-about-labour-over-antisemitism-ahead-of-conference/
NB I just checked to see exactly when the LP conference WAS, and it started on the 21st September, and the Jewish News article was published and posted the day before, and one can’t help but be reminded of what Ella Rose said/claimed (albeit anonymously) right at the very start of the Panorama hatchet job just over a couple of months earlier – ie that someone came up to her at a LP conference when she was handing out leaflets and screamed abuse in her face. Yeah, sure they did! I mean if there had been ‘incidents’ in previous years, why would you book a stand in the FIRST place if you had ‘security concerns’, and instead book a stand and then leave it until a day or two before the conference begins to announce that you’re pulling out over security concerns. Hmm………
I have already sent these comments to Koser. This is a descriptive history but it leaves out the political development of the Board from anti-Zionist to Zionist. These were my comments:
‘This is a very patchy history of the Board of Deputies. I asked you if you had seen the constitution of the Board and you didn’t respond. I assume you hadn’t because there is no mention of Clause D of Aims Purposes and Powers which is:
‘(d) Take such appropriate action as lies within its power to advance Israel’s security, welfare and standing.’
Mishkenot Sha’ananim you describe as a Jewish settlement. This is not correct. It was a Jewish neighbourhood. It didn’t colonise any territory. Moses Montefiore also gave to non-Jewish communities. he wasn’t a Zionist. [which is not surprising since there was no Zionist movement among Jews at the time, it was a wholly non-Jewish movement around people like Ernest Laharanne, Lord Shaftesbury and George Elliot]
I’ve also looked up Wiki and it states that it was a Jewish neighbourhood. Either way it can confuse people who equate it with the settlements on the West Bank which are acts of land theft and exploitation.
You miss out entirely the controversies over the Balfour Declaration and the letter to the Times by David Alexander, the President of the BOD and Claude Montefiore President of the Anglo Jewish Association on May 24 1917, arguing against setting up a Jewish state. The Board eventually disowned the letter but it was not until the appointment as President in 1940 of Selig Brodetsky, a member of the Zionist Executive, that the Board definitely moved into the Zionist camp. There had been a long period when it was under the control of the non or anti-Zionist Jewish bourgeosie, people such as Neville Laski.
Other prominent figures in the Board who were anti-Zionist included Lucien Wolfe.
Montefiore was a pillar of the Establishment and the Jewish bourgeoisie who were opposed to Zionism not least because it threatened their campaign for Jewish Emancipation in Britain. I know nothing of the correspondence with the consul in Damascus other than the fact that Montefiore was taken up with the Damascus Affair of the previous year. [when several Jews died under torture as they were interrogated about blood libel accusations – which derived wholly from French monks]
I’m not doubting that there were Zionist officers of the Board prior to 1940 but the point I’m making is that with Selig Brodetsky they took over the Board. In reality the non-Zionist Jewish bourgeoisie were moving towards a Zionist position well before that, Laski attending the 1933 World Zionist Congress in Prague.
I don’t need to pray Harry Hopkins, just to say that there is not a single organisation that represents Britain’s Jews in the same way there is not a single organisation that represents Britain’s christians, or similar. It is not a hard concept to understand
I just came back to this page (which I still had open – along with a lot of other pages/tabs – when I restored my previous session), and this time I watched and listened to the video. I’m not going to watch it again, but on at least TWO occasions Van der Zyl says/claims that Jeremy Corbyn is “spending more and more time with terrorist and extremists” and “with people who threaten the security of Britain”, but she doesn’t say WHO these ‘terrorists’ and ‘extremists’ ARE, and it’s strange that the interviewer doesn’t think to ask her who they are either. Needless to say, the reason Van der Zyl DOESN’T elaborate OR the interviewer inquire as to who it is she’s referring to, is because it’s complete and utter fabrication, and she is lying through her teeth.
I’m not familiar with the i24 News Channel and have never heard of it before, but I just did a search and in the wikipedia entry it says: ‘i24NEWS is an Israeli international 24-hour news and current affairs television channel located in Jaffa Port, Tel Aviv, Israel. It broadcasts in French, English and Arabic.’ Anyway, I can only assume that the channel is watched by a lot of Jewish people around the world, and the vast majority of them wouldn’t know any different, and Van der Zyl knows it of course.
I don’t suppose Jeremy is/was even aware of the interview and what she said, or surely he would have threatened to sue her for defamation if she didn’t retract the accusation and apologise publicly. I mean if Jeremy really HAD been spending more time (which of course implies that he had previously been spending time with these ‘terrorists’ and ‘extremists’ only LESS time than he NOW is) with such people, then it would have been all over the British media AND Van der Zyl doing interviews on all the news channels in respect of it, but it is of course a Big Lie and a falsehood in true black propagandist style, and THAT is why it wasn’t AND why she didn’t.
I just forced myself to watch and listen to the video clip again, and the first thing that occurred to me as soon as I started it is that it’s just a part of the interview. Anyway, what she actually says (more-or-less at the beginning of the clip) is: “….we’re learning that he’s spending more and more time with terrorists, with extremists…..”. Take note of the “we”! And I wonder who “we’re learning” it from?! She then mentions it AGAIN – in a different context – about twenty/twenty-five seconds later, and then she mentions it AGAIN at 3mins 12secs, just shortly before the interview ends (being more-or-less the last thing she says), and I have NO doubt whatsoever that it was all planned EXACTLY that way prior to the interview!
Repetition, it’s what propagandists DO! And lie and smear and demonise of course!!