An antisemitism expert has called on The Observer to correct this week’s leader column after it falsely claimed that, prior to last week’s terrorist attack on Manchester’s Heaton Park Synagogue, there had been no antisemitic murders in the UK in almost 300 years.
In an October 5 piece titled “We cannot allow Britain to become an Unsafe Haven”, the paper’s editorial team wrote: “From the 1650s, for 300 years, there was no record of a Jew being killed in Britain for being a Jew.”
But this claim prompted a letter from Professor Tony Kushner from the Parkes Institute for the study of Jewish/non-Jewish relations at the University of Southampton, who pointed to at least three more recent examples.
In a letter to the paper, seen by the JC, he wrote: Sadly, this is not the case. In the eighteenth century, as I have outlined in my book, The Jewish Pedlar, several Jews were brutally murdered because of their Jewishness, including by having scorching bacon stuffed down their throats.
"Whilst these were relatively unusual moments, and the courts were free of prejudice in finding the perpetrators guilty, it is a warning to those who would see Britain as fundamentally different with regards to Jew hatred.”
Kushner also pointed to the case of Mark Feld, who was murdered by his fellow soldiers while serving overseas in the British Army in 1946.
According to the historical account of the crime, the assailants had said that Feld’s “only place was Belsen” and vowed to “do him up” before striking a fatal blow to his head.
The claim remains uncorrected on the Observer website and the paper is yet to issue any statement on the matter on its social media.
The JC has contacted The Observer for comment.
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