Rachel Riley has received a barrage of abuse after she shared a video by anti-racist campaigners that condemned antisemitism in football.
The countdown presenter, who is Jewish, shared the three-minute long video, which was developed by the football equality organisation Kick It Out and Chelsea football club.
However after sharing the educational video designed to show how antisemitic abuse is still prevalent in English football, she said she was “inevitably confronted with weird and aggressive posts about Israel and Zionists.”
Ms Riley shared a number of examples of the tweets she had been sent comparing Jews to Nazis, or blaming them for the actions of the Israeli government.
Permission to talk about something really difficult...Thread:
— Rachel Riley (@RachelRileyRR) 8 December 2018
I don’t particularly want to, but yesterday, after posting an @kickitout video condemning antisemitism, inevitably, I’m confronted with weird and aggressive posts about Israel and Zionists, and I want to address this. pic.twitter.com/7xBQuq8wev
She wrote: “One tweet in reply to the posts following the video complained about all the rich Jews pretending to be persecuted, then followed into a series uninformed tweets about Palestine and ‘Jews.’”
But among the attacks she shared, she said she was pleased to see someone who had sent her antisemitic abuse, changed his mind once his behaviour was pointed out to him.
She wrote: “For the first time ever, I saw someone make an antisemitic post, carry on that path, and then listen to someone with a different view and change their opinion.
“They’d heard some things, didn’t understand them, nor the context, and turned it aggressively on Jews,” she wrote.
She told her Twitter followers: “There are always 2 sides to a story, and sometimes that story doesn’t come into play.”
She asked people to “think carefully before accidentally adding fuel to the flames of antisemitism, whatever your motivation.”
