Baddielphobia and the ugly truth about anti-Semitism

David Baddiel could not have asked for better evidence for his thesis that ‘Jews don’t count’ than the online reaction to it.

Channel 4 broadcast his intelligent and touching documentary this week with that very title – Jews Don’t Count – and instantly there was an explosion of Baddielphobia. It was almost as if people were determined to prove his point. There’s a blind spot among progressives when it comes to anti-Jewish hatred, said Baddiel. And – boom – there it was, right away, in hateful comment after hateful comment: the blind spot, clear as anything.

Baddiel first made his case in his sharp polemical book Jews Don’t Count, published last year. He argued, convincingly, that there is a new leftish coalition that fancies itself as being ‘on the right side of history’ but which rarely takes up the cause of Jews.

It’s not the left as we would have traditionally understood it, he says.