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Sunday, August 01, 2021

Ben and Jerry's Anuradha Mittal spreads antisemitic slander - while saying she's the victim (UPDATE)

Anuradha Mittal tweeted that she has been receiving hate mail for her role in promoting BDS as the head of Ben and Jerry's board of directors.

She published this vile email she received:


As far as I can tell, there is no such rabbi in Williamsburg, which is there that zip-code is. The language doesn't sound at all like anything any rabbi, from Williamsburg or anywhere else, would write. 

Yet from among the hate emails she says to have received, Mittal chose to publicize this one - leaving the "rabbi's" name in.

She could have made her point with blacking out the name and email address - anyone who cares about the possibility that an email is meant to discredit a real person would do that. Yet she chose to highlight and publicize this email and include the allegation that a rabbi was sending this anti-Hindu hate to her.

Which, of course, stokes antisemitism - as can be seen in the responses.

As a public person, it seems farfetched she could not have figured out that no one would send this sort of email under their own name. 

I am not doubting that she received abusive emails, and I am not justifying them at all. But her choice to publicize this one and include the fake name indicates that she wanted the world to know that she is being attacked by a "rabbi", someone who represents Jews, and by extension that Jews are horrible people. 

Mittal claims she is not antisemitic. But if she cared at all about antisemitism, she would never have posted something that she knew quite well would increase antisemitic attitudes. And if she was as inundated with hate mail as she claims, one must wonder why she chose to highlight one from a supposed rabbi.

UPDATE: Twitter removed her offensive tweet, saying that it violated Twitter rules. Knowing Twitter, though, it probably did it because of the anti-Hindu slander, not the antisemitic part.