In the silliest segment on Channel 4 since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s alternative Christmas message, Stephen Sizer has a go at talking about antisemitism.
I have to say, Sizer seems quite awkward talking about this issue.
He does not look comfortable in the conversation.
He spent much of the little time he had complaining about people accusing him of antisemitism, which as Amie surmised, I found quite galling. The video will be broadcast on Friday, I think at 7.55pm during Shabbat.
He says:
“I’ve come to know, and respect, and care for Jews.”
I’m not sure what Sizer means by “care for” Jews. Certainly he claimed to look after a Jew called “Mordechai Cohen,” as a member of his “church family” – coincidentally when I was using the name Mordechai as a blogging pseudonym. Sizer claimed that Mordechai had been teaching him Hebrew.
Here they are together:
When I started blogging about contemporary Christian antisemitism with reference to Reverend Sizer, I received correspondence from Mr. Cohen, such as:
“One year on, and yet you have not given your name out to you avid readers. Shmuck, you have real chutzpah to attack a man in words and via the web, when this man has offered many times to meet with you.
[…]
you are nothing other than a Ben Zaynim“ [son of penises]
And also:
“Anonymity, is not the right of those who are slandering someones name, This person, who has said that he is jewish should know the Laws of Lashon Hora. As for being a stalker, i was hired to find the root of where these emails were coming from, a failed student of The University of Leeds, The police have his details“.
According to the City of London Royal Marine Association (opens in PDF), Mordechai had been living rough in the graveyard of Christ Church Virginia Water, since the death of his wife – Sizer had discovered him. Cohen apparently refused help from the RMA, but accepted payment from Sizer to send me abusive messages.
I found it surreal and oddly poetic, that Sizer should discover Cohen in his own church graveyard.
You might recall Sizer then sent the police round my house, in order to intimidate me.
When I met Sizer at his film’s UK premiere in Manchester, Sizer tried to hug me as a way to show we were now somehow reconciled, and I refused. I asked Sizer about this Mordechai guy. I will never forget his reply, which I refrained from sharing with you when I wrote the initial report, so as not to detract too much from the events of that night.
But Sizer’s reply struck me as creepy.
When I asked,
“How is that guy you paid, Mordechai?”
Sizer chirped nonchalantly, almost glibly,
“Oh, he’s dead.”
I then really did not feel comfortable with the conversation.
