KOSMINSKY, Peter (film maker): " But if you’re Jewish, as I am, and you criticise the domestic and/or foreign policy of the sovereign state of Israel you are immediately called ‘an anti-Semite’"

Peter Kosminsky (an anti-racist Jewish British writer, director and producer; directed Hollywood movies e.g. “White Oleander” and TV movies e.g. like” Warriors”, “The Government Inspector”, “The Promise”, “Wolf Hall” and “The State”) (2013): “Nothing prepared me for the level of vitriol that was going to drop on me from the Zionist lobby… personal, vicious stuff came my way… I was left with one really striking puzzlement... If I choose to criticise my country, and I often do, nobody or very few people say I'm not patriotic, certainly no people call me ‘a racist’. They accept that it’s a legitimate thing in a free society to criticise the political and diplomatic behaviour, the domestic and foreign policies of a sovereign state. It doesn't mean that you're not a loyal member of that state, it just means that you disagree with its political behaviour. But if you’re Jewish, as I am, and you criticise the domestic and/or foreign policy of the sovereign state of Israel you are immediately called ‘an anti-Semite’. Very clever isn’t it. You can't criticize the behaviour of a sovereign state, a member of the United Nations, without being called ‘a racist’ and of course because of the Holocaust... you know, it's an immensely sensitive accusation to level at someone, that ‘you're anti-Semite’. And to me that's the most troubling thing, as they say a cuckoo in this academic nest... about a whole discourse that the Western world is ultimately hampered in its ability to criticize, irrespective of more geopolitical considerations, we are still after all these years, restricted in our ability to criticize the straightforward behaviour of an elected government in the state of Israel, for fear that we will be accused of being anti-Semites and that's what I've been spending two years and plus, wrestling with...” ( Peter Kosminsky “Peter Kosminsky explains the hate he received”, YouTube, 26 April 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ3f9d1l0hg ).