UK
Hertfordshire Police boss writes to LBC over James O’Brien’s ‘Shabbat school’ comments
LBC presenter has apologised for reading out a comment about a “Shabbat school in a leafy Hertfordshire town”
July 23, 2025 16:36
LBC presenter has apologised for reading out a comment about a “Shabbat school in a leafy Hertfordshire town”
July 23, 2025 16:36The police and crime commissioner for Hertfordshire has written to the managing editor of LBC about the “unsubstantiated and antisemitic claims broadcast about the Jewish community in Hertfordshire.”
On James O’Brien’s LBC radio show on Tuesday morning, the presenter read out a message from a listener called Chris who claimed that his wife had attended “Shabbat school” in Hertfordshire where she had been taught to dehuminize Arabs.
In the message – read live on air by O’Brien – the listener wrote: “My wife was brought up Jewish and at Shabbat school in a leafy Hertfordshire town, she was taught that one Jewish life is worth thousands of Arab lives and that Arabs are cockroaches to be crushed.”
After criticism from Jewish organisations, including the CST, Board of Deputies and Jewish Leadership Council, O’Brien apologised for airing the remarks, saying on his Wednesday show, “The message has understandably upset a lot of people and I regret taking those unsubstantiated claims at face value. I am genuinely sorry for that.”
Now Hertfordshire’s police and crime commissioner, Jonathan Ash-Edwards, has written to the channel, citing concerns that the remarks on O’Brien’s show risk “provoking further antisemitic incidents in our country.”
The Conservative official said, “Hertfordshire is a diverse, but largely harmonious, county where people of all backgrounds overwhelmingly get on together. Our county is home to one of the largest, and fastest growing, Jewish communities in the country.
“Appallingly, Hertfordshire suffers from one of the highest number of antisemitic incidents reported to the Community Security Trust. In 2024, Hertfordshire had the fourth highest number of antisemitic incidents nationally, with more than two a week being reported.”
In his letter to LBC’s senior managing editor, he claimed that O’Brien’s decision to read out the message “was a conscious and deliberate choice”, which had been “aggravated by LBC's decision to publish the clip on social media.” The channel later deleted the clip.
Ash-Edwards suggested that O'Brien and LBC have “breached multiple sections of the Ofcom broadcasting code”.
He called on LBC to suspend O’Brien for “deliberately and unquestioningly broadcasting an antisemitic trope” and asked the channel to commission an independent investigation into the matter, including establishing how the message was chosen and why it was deemed appropriate to post on social media.
He asked how LBC will "prevent its producers from broadcasting antisemitic tropes in future”?
LBC has been approached for comment.
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