Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Lebanese Parliament Speaker Tells Anti-Semitic Money-Grubbing Joke

(JTA) — The speaker of the Lebanese parliament told an anti-Semitic joke during an interview and said Israelis love their land less than the Lebanese because they stay away from the border.

Nabih Berri, a leader of the pro-Hezbollah Amal movement, made the racist reference to Jews during an interview with the Al Joumhouria newspaper published Wednesday.

Asked why Israel agreed this week to a demarcation process of its naval border with Lebanon – a process with implications for Israel’s offshore reserves of natural gas – Berri replied: “Once someone asked, how do you recognize the Jew? This is the answer he got: If you see a pregnant woman, simply approach her and place a piece of gold on the ground. If the fetus jumps out of the mother’s womb and picks it up, you know immediately that it’s a Jew.”

In the interview, Berri also said that he told a delegation of American officials during a tour of the border area to note how close to the border with Israel villagers live and farm. That’s because, he told the newspaper, the Israelis “barely approach these borders and if they approach them, they come to infiltrate, because the land is not theirs.”

But, “On the Lebanese side, you will see with your own eyes how much our land is dear to us. You will see where we are, we build our homes, build them directly on the border, and we are not afraid because it is our land.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.