Nureddin Sabir, Editor, Redress Information & Analysis, writes:

Like the contents of a poorly flushed toilet, Danny Cohen, the former director of BBC Television, has resurfaced once again.

In his first interview since leaving the BBC under a dark cloud in November last year, Cohen told The Times that being Jewish and voting for the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership would be like being a Muslim and voting for Donald Trump.

If you are Jewish how can you vote for them? How could you? For me it would be like being a Muslim and voting for Donald Trump, how could you do it? You have to feel absolutely confident that it is totally unacceptable and it won’t be tolerated and I personally haven’t felt comfortable that it is happening yet in the Labour Party.

Cohen, a prominent figure in London’s Jewish community, joins a chorus of Zionist lobbyists within Labour who claim that the party is tolerating “anti-Semitic” behaviour.

On 21 March Michael Levy threatened to resign from Labour unless Corbyn makes a speech denouncing “anti-Semitism” immediately.

Levy is a staunch Zionist and was principal fundraiser for war crimes suspect Tony Blair’s New Labour Party.

In the Zionist lexicon, any criticism of Israel or of any public figure who happens to be Jewish is defined as “anti-Semitic”, irrespective of the merits of the criticism.

Jeremy Corbyn is a longstanding campaigner for justice for the Palestinian people. His landslide victory in the Labour Party’s leadership election in September 2015 was a humiliating defeat for the Zionist lobby, in the form of the Labour Friends of Israel group, which up to that moment had been in complete control of Labour’s leadership. It is this, rather than any “anti-Semitism” in Labour, that is rattling the likes of Cohen and Levy.

Responding to Levy’s scurrilous allegations, Corbyn told Sky News on 21 March:

Lord Levy clearly hasn’t been listening to the seven times since I became leader I’ve absolutely condemned anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, any form of racism. It is absolutely something I totally passionately believe in and I’m disappointed that Lord Levy has made these remarks…

He knows full well what my views are. He knows full well what the views of the Labour Party are. He knows full well the kind of decent inclusive society that we all want to live in… I look forward to having that discussion with him.

This is not the first time that BBC has-been Cohen had made ill-judged and thinly-veiled pro-Zionist comments.

In December 2014, in a thinly-veiled coming out as an advocate of Zionism and while still director of BBC TV, he claimed at a conference in occupied Jerusalem that “anti-Semitism” has become so bad that he had to question the long-term future for Jews in Britain.

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”.

In October last year, Cohen added his name to a letter opposing a cultural boycott of Israel, when he still worked at the BBC. This prompted BBC chief complaints adviser Dominic Groves to emphasise in January 2016, two months after Cohen had left the corporation, that the BBC “agrees that it was inadvisable for him to add his signature given his then seniority within the BBC as director of television”.

Thankfully, Cohen is no longer at the BBC. But how he – and others like him – ever got to work for Britain’s supposedly impartial public service broadcaster is a question which the BBC owes the public that finances it a full and honest answer.