Keep calm and call someone, it’s urgent

— The Jewish Chronicle (@JewishChron) December 1, 2021

It was GnasherJew – stalwarts in the fight against antisemitism – who first published the cleaned-up audio and identified the Hebrew cry for help. I spoke with the person who did the audio work and confirmed that they were a professional sound and video producer with studio-grade equipment and software. He doesn’t speak Hebrew so when he cleaned up the audio he was only working to make whatever was said as audible and clear as possible. Other members of GnasherJew speak Hebrew fluently and quickly and correctly identified what the BBC alleges is an ‘anti-Muslim slur’ as the phrase ti-krá le-míshu ze dakhúf – call someone, it’s urgent. We amplified their analysis and demanded a response from the BBC. But the BBC was adamant. Other than amending an article to now allege only “one anti-Muslim slur could be heard” rather than plural, it was sticking to its guns.

As the Board’s Digital Communications Officer and as a native Hebrew speaker, it was decided that I should first verify the findings before we took things further. I extracted the audio of the now viral video footage and spent a weekend with massive studio-grade headphones cauliflowering my ears, applying various techniques to try to get to divine the truth. After hours of high-passing, low-passing, hiss reducing, noise reducing, modulating, filtering, slowing down and speeding up I was certain it was Hebrew. Either that or there was a .01% chance that a Mancunian male with a head cold was warning people that someone has a mistletoe and was about to kiss David Hasselhoff (try listening to it with the phrase: ‘He’s got a mistletoe with The Hoff’ in mind and you’ll see what I mean).

The @bbc needs to correct its report and apologise to the victims. @bbclondonnews @bbcnews pic.twitter.com/7Z0GIZZ84w

— Board of Deputies of British Jews (@BoardofDeputies) December 4, 2021

Let’s also understand the context. This was a Chabad-sponsored bus full of Israeli tourists and expats doing some London sightseeing while celebrating Chanukah, dressing as dreidels, dancing, lighting menorahs and handing-out doughnuts. The hired bus was festooned with Hebrew banners. The footage is mostly a smattering of various Hebrew phrases like: “Come, come, come”, “close the door”, “drive”, “let’s go,” clearly discernible – as well as reminding me of just about every madrich and madricha shouting at us on every school-run tiyul I’ve ever been on in Israel (minus the sieg-heiling and spitting threats of course).

When the BBC – one of the world’s most revered and esteemed news institutions – insists that something is so and stands by it so rigidly despite massive outcry, it can make anyone doubt themselves. There’s gaslighting and then there’s industrial-scale gaslighting of the kind that has a half a billion audience numbers, multi-billion-pound revenue and 22,000+ staff and the cultural cache of, well, being the BBC.

 Despite this, members of our humble complement of staff and Honorary Officers who didn’t speak Hebrew, nevertheless put their trust in me. We published a video where I re-enact the utterance of the Hebrew phrase to make it clear to people what they are hearing and how well it fits precisely in line with the more distorted phrase from the viral footage. Many of those who had doubts said to us they were now more convinced that it was indeed Hebrew. Those who do speak Hebrew got it immediately. There was still nothing but the sound of crickets from the BBC. 

We then published our open letter to the BBC top brass even copying in Department of Culture, Media and Sport Minister Nadine Dorries – not something we do lightly. The crickets were now chirping so loudly they should have a slot at The Proms. We eventually received a formal acknowledgement but then weeks went by before we received the same canned response that hundreds of other complainants will eventually have received as well. The Beeb was not backing down and the crickets were being booked for Jools Holland’s Hootenanny. While other communal organisations and leaders were raising their own complaints, we knew that we needed to escalate.

For the next step to be taken, we knew we would need something more authoritative than “trust us, we asked some Hebrews”. We also knew that it was imperative to get the absolute best quality source footage we could. Our friends at the Jewish Chronicle helped us get in contact with the person who took the footage on the bus. They were distraught by the way the BBC was reporting the story and were happy to help. After various technical and Covid hurdles we were able to secure direct access to the original file. 

To verify the authenticity, we did so with the help of OSINT specialists at DigFind. We commissioned them to authenticate the file extraction, preserve the metadata, and verify that there was no tampering with the footage. The team at DigFind also brought in specialist support from D3 Forensics – experts in digital forensics who could clean up the audio, isolate the disputed segment, apply the necessary filters to make it as clear and audible as possible and together with DigFind analyse what they can hear in the audio. DigFind/D3 Forensics were commissioned with no prejudice as to any desired outcome other than to ascertain the truth. And they found it. The truth was that the BBC accused a Jewish man calling out for help in Hebrew of instead uttering a racist remark. 

 But because we are facing industrial-scale gaslighting, even this would not be sufficient. To make the case even more watertight, we thought it best to recruit the help of a forensic linguist to provide more analysis. Every native Hebrew speaker we spoke with about this concurred with our findings, but we needed someone who could break it down syllable by syllable, explain the phrasing, the accent, the cadence of the speech and to do so authoritatively. We tried to anticipate every possible ‘yeah but whatabout…’ reaction. We found arguably the most qualified person on the planet.

 Reading Professor Zuckermann’s CV is an experience in itself. If you wanted to invent the most supremely qualified person to opine on this issue, it would be Professor Zuckermann-shaped. A native Modern Hebrew-speaking forensic linguist who speaks thirteen languages, with doctorates from both Oxford and Cambridge, Chair of the Linguistics Department of his University, author of numerous books and peer-reviewed papers, numerous professional accolades, fellowships, grants, affiliations, and honours and is even a consultant for the Oxford-English Dictionary. His conclusion was unequivocal. A native Hebrew speaker is calling out for help.

And so here we are. The BBC reported an incident of sieg-heiling, spitting, threatening abusive men attacking a busload of Jewish children dressed as dreidels and Israeli tourists as an “alleged antisemitic attack” while reporting as fact a Hebrew cry for help as first “several racial slurs” and then “an anti-Muslim slur”. The BBC’s television broadcast even insinuated that the victims may have been at fault. Despite universal outcry from the Jewish community the Beeb preferred to blame the victims and smear them as racists. And by doubling and tripling-down on this stance, open up those of us who knew otherwise to accusations of lying and deceit. And because our own knowledge and awareness of the oldest hatred that is antisemitism is almost always seen as suspect, our small Jewish charities and campaigners have to spend thousands of pounds and an extraordinary amount of time and energy arguing every head-desking, face-palming gaslighting quantum of whataboutery with reams of independent confirmation in triplicate because we Jews are seen as diabolical liars and probably somehow to blame.