OPINION: For the first time in my life, I ask you to listen to Melanie Phillips

Six years ago, soon after I began working for the Board of Deputies, the journalist Melanie Phillips wrote what I considered a repulsive article on how Islamophobia was a bogus term and that the entire concept was “profoundly anti-Jew”.

I had recently left the Jewish Chronicle, where Phillips wrote – and I believe still writes – a column. I went onto Twitter and I did not hold back.

“I worked for the Jewish Chronicle for a number of years, and wrote many hundreds of articles for the paper,” I wrote. “My favourite four words to ever appear in print, however, were ‘Melanie Phillips is away’.”

I described how “her presence as a monthly columnist diminishes a wonderful paper”, referring to her as “a disgrace”.

She would soon after return the favour, writing a column for Jewish News Syndicate (not to be confused with Jewish News), in which she referred to myself, the head of policy at CST and the chair of Shomrim in Stamford Hill as examples of political AIDs (“Auto Immune disease”) within the Jewish community.

I write this to demonstrate that there is absolutely no love lost between myself and Phillips. So when I tell you that she is absolutely right about something, you should listen.

She has written on her substack exactly why Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs, and Amir Ohana, the Speaker of the Knesset, were so unbelievably stupid in their public embrace of Tommy Robinson, AKA “Stephen Yaxley-Lennon”. She has detailed Robinson’s long and odious history of thuggery and his string of criminal convictions.

As you would expect, I vehemently disagree with some of Phillip’s statements in that very Substack article. Comments about the “Islamisation” of Britain are a key part of Phillip’s oeuvre, and I do not find them any more appealing than the “Britain is controlled by Jewish supremacy” rants from certain NHS doctors.

She, in turn, does not hold back from expressing her disdain for the Board of Deputies and “the liberal Jews both on it and beyond who in my view subscribe to attitudes that are lethal to Jews, Britain and the West” – I no doubt would fall into that category for her.

But her viewpoint of Robinson himself is the correct one, and here I quote:

“For Israeli ministers — Israeli ministers! — to link the defence of Jews, Britain and the west to a man who has a record of neo-Nazi extremism, thuggery, violence, incitement, intimidation and contempt for the rule of law is utterly shocking. It’s hard to exaggerate these Israeli ministers’ fathomless stupidity and ignorance.

“Israel’s ‘Minister for Combating Antisemitism’ and the Knesset Speaker have now made life even more dangerous for British Jews by giving wholly unnecessary ammunition to their mortal enemies — the Islamists and their fellow travellers — who can now gloatingly paint British Jews, Israel’s defenders and Zionism itself as being embraced by a man who people should more properly shun as a menace to decency and the rule of law.”

If you’re the sort of person who likes to comment underneath my articles on how I’m a woke, far-left self-hating Jew (a description that would somewhat surprise anyone who actually knows me), then I know you’re not likely to listen to me here, either. So don’t.

In this case, listen to the woman whom it would appear that many of you have treated as a guiding light for so long, when she tells you that Tommy Robinson is a thug, a menace and someone who anyone who cares about Israel, Zionism and antisemitism should run a mile from.

If you’ve hung on her every word up until now, you’ve picked a bad moment to suddenly start ignoring her.