A senior BBC executive has publicly come out as an advocate of Zionism.

Danny Cohen, who is the director of BBC Television, claimed that anti-Semitism has become so bad that he has to question the long-term future for Jews in Britain.

Danny Cohen, Director of BBC TV

He stopped short of calling on British Jews to emigrate to Israel or of endorsing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s intention to change the Israeli constitution to define Israel as “the nation state of one people only – the Jewish people – and of no other people”.

A basic tenet of Zionism – and a key principle underlying the foundation of Israel – is that Jews and gentiles are incompatible, that whenever Jews and gentiles mix there will be anti-Semitism and that, therefore, the state of Israel exists as a safe haven for Jews escaping anti-Semitism.

According to the Times of Israel, Cohen’s thinly-veiled coming out as an advocate of Zionism took place at a conference in occupied Jerusalem on 21 December where he claimed that the past year had been the most difficult for him as a Jew living in the United Kingdom.

I’ve never felt so uncomfortable being a Jew in the UK as I’ve felt in the last 12 months. And it’s made me think about, you know, is it our long-term home, actually. Because you feel it. I’ve felt it in a way I’ve never felt before actually…

And you’ve seen the number of attacks rise. You’ve seen murders in France. You’ve seen murders in Belgium. It’s been pretty grim actually. And having lived all my life in the UK, I’ve never felt as I do now about anti-Semitism in Europe.

Not surprisingly, Cohen failed to mention a single instance of anti-Semitism-related murder in the UK. That’s because there was none.

To save Cohen’s blushes, the Times of Israel scraped a few non-fatal examples of minor attacks to illustrate rising anti-Semitism in Britain: a physical assault on a rabbi in Gateshead, attacks on synagogues and an attack by an Arab woman wearing a niqab on a Jewish boy riding his bicycle in northern London.

It did not, however, mention how many racist attacks against Arabs and Muslims took place in Britain at the same time.

Appropriately enough, Cohen was speaking at a comedy conference, so it is somewhat disappointing that he didn’t mention, as evidence of anti-Semitism, the fact that he was appointed controller of BBC1 TV at the age of 40, the youngest appointee to that post, before taking over as director of BBC Television in 2013.

Cohen has had a Jewish tribal upbringing in the UK, where he attended a Jewish elementary school. So, the odds are that he sees the world from a narrow, Judaeo-centric, narcissistic perspective where the only things that matters are what Jews think, what Jews feel and how well Jews do.

Consequently, he could not bring himself to mention the broader context of any possible rise in anti-Semitism in the UK this year, as any self-respecting journalist should do.

He conveniently omitted to mention the Israeli Wehrmacht’s 50-day onslaught on Gaza this summer, which resulted in the murder of 2,104 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians, 495 children and 253 women.

And he conveniently failed to mention the unfortunate fact that, despite Israel’s recurring war crimes and crimes against humanity, and despite its continuing flagrant violations of international law, British Jews continue to support Israel right or wrong, thereby implicating themselves in Israel’s crimes in the eyes of the public.