Yes, it’s the same Jonathan Hoffman, co-chair of the Zionist Federation, who claimed he was the victim of sustained anti-Semitic chanting at a UCU meeting at SOAS in 2009. On that occasion he only realised that he had been the victim of anti-Semitism after two weeks. By that time everyone else had got wise to his claims and the BBC pulled a report of the meeting and the Jewish Chronicle, which refused to change its report, was found guilty of misleading reporting in a rare adverse decision by the Press Complaints Commission.
A Jewish protester outside the Ahava shop in Covent Garden, which sells stolen ‘beauty’ products from the Dead Sea was accused just before Christmas by a member of staff of being a Christ-Killer.
The conversation, not of all of it recorded, for the obvious reason that it’s not everyday that you expect to be the subject of one of the worst anti-Semitic canards in the book, i.e. it takes time to switch the recorder on, went thus:
‘Bruce Levy: “Why did you say I killed Jesus?”
Shop Assistant: “Because you’re Jewish”
There is no doubt, nor can there be, about the meaning of the above remarks and she actually confirms them on tape.
One would imagine, given the repetitious accusations of anti-Semitism when Muslims are held to have slipped up, to say nothing when support for the Palestinians is on the agenda, that our intrepid Zionists would have no problem in condemning this anti-Semitism forthrightly. I’m afraid you’d be wrong This is not the kind of anti-Semitism that gets them worked up. After all the shopkeeper is on their side!
Under the curious title ‘Ahava’s female staff suffer continued bullying’ Richard Millett in this blog defends the person in question:
‘Her apparent remark about Jews killing Jesus (although, no where in the footage do we actually hear her say that) is a remark to a male, Jewish activist who spends large proportions of his sad life hanging around outside the Ahava shop.
I don’t blame her for an off-the-cuff remark when confronted by a group of bullies.’
Well that’s clear then. In a response I wrote that
‘This is surrealistic. A staff member of an Israeli shop, comes out with one of the worst anti-Semitic libels in the book, and he is excused by posters on this blog, and Jonathan Hoffman, fresh from cavorting with the EDL pretends it hasn’t occurred. Imagine if an anti-Zionist had said half as much.’
To which Jonathan Hoffman responds, in his usual polite fashion:
‘@Greenstein
I didn’t ‘pretend it didn’t happen’ , Trot Moron.
As always you lie.’
No he didn’t pretend it didn’t happen. He merely ignored it! I thought, wrongly as it turned out, under instructions from those with a wiser head but obviously not. Eventually he rises to the occasion to proclaim, in that unerringly modest manner of his:
‘Listen Greenstein, you mendacious Trot scum She and the other shop workers have been harassed mercilessly for months by Chief Renegade Jew Bruce and his henchmen. Her first language is not English. She is a shopworker – not a sad manipulative Trot blogger like you. Her livelihood is being threatened. Seymour spends his life videoing us in order to get shots which he then takes out of context.’
So on the one hand Hoffman excuses the remark, falsely alleging that the woman had been ‘harassed mercilessly for months’ by ‘the Chief Renegade Jew Bruce’ (no this isn’t some parody of Julius Streicher in Der Sturmer or even Gilad Atzmon) and on the other hand he suggests the problem is that English is not her first language (she seemed strangely fluent to me!), that she is a shopworker (presumably this kind of thing is rife among these sort of people) and her livelihood is being threatened (which was what anti-Semites through the centuries have said).
So the next time Jonathan Hoffman, Co-Chairman of the Zionist Federation, decides to speak out against ‘anti-Semitism’ we will know exactly what he is talking about and it won’t be anti-Semitism.
