British Jew Quits Race After Suggesting Israel ‘Do Eichmann’ on President Obama
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
A Jewish candidate for the British Parliament has withdrawn after suggesting that Israel should “do an Eichmann” on Barack Obama.
Jeremy Zeid of the United Kingdom Independence Party, or UKIP, quit his campaign on Thursday in response to the blowback to a Facebook post in which he suggested that Israel should “[k]idnap the bugger” and “lock him up for leaking state secrets,” according to the Jewish Chronicle. Zeid was outraged over the Obama administration’s negotiations with Iran.
Zeid, a decorator, was running in a northwest London district with the second-highest number of Jewish voters of any constituency in Britain, at approximately 17 percent, according to the Chronicle. He denied that the UKIP, a right-wing party defined by its anti-immigrant positions, had pressured him to resign.
Zeid was replaced on the ballot by Dr. Raymond Shamash, a dentist who served as a medical officer in the Israeli army during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Shamash, in turn, told the Jewish Chronicle that he is “fearful” of Muslims, though he denied being Islamophobic.
“There are 2.8 million people [in the United Kingdom] who are ideologically and religiously opposed to us,” he told the Chronicle, referring to the U.K.’s Muslim population. “I am fearful of a minority that sees us Jews as a potential target for attack.”
Why I became the Forward’s Editor-in-Chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
