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Jonathan Sacerdoti
British journalist and broadcaster From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Jonathan Sacerdoti is a British broadcaster, journalist, and TV producer. He covers stories relating to the United Kingdom and Europe, as well as terrorism and extremism stories, race relations,[1] Middle East analysis[2] and the British royal family.[3] He is also a campaigner against antisemitism and a pro-Israel activist.[4][5][6][7]
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Early life and education
Sacerdoti's father Cesare was a Holocaust survivor, and Cesare's father was an Italian rabbi.[8]
Sacerdoti is a graduate of the University of Oxford,[9] having studied English Language and Literature at Balliol College.
Career
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Broadcast
As a reporter or expert analyst, Sacerdoti has appeared on various TV channels. In 2013, he became UK correspondent for the Israeli 24-hour news channel i24news,[10] while, in 2020, he was appearing as a regular UK correspondent on the financial news network Cheddar News.[11][12][13] In 2022, he started to cover the British royal family on Fox News[14] and participated in the Fox documentary Who is King Charles III?[15] In the US, Sacerdoti is a guest commentator on UK affairs on E! Channel's Daily Pop.[16] He has also appeared as a co-host and guest on the American publication Us Weekly's podcasts.[17]
His work as a voice artist includes "accidentally" narrating an English language audiobook of the Quran in 2019.[18]
Journalism and writing
Sacerdoti's a contributor in many publications, including the Daily Express and The Spectator.
He had his first byline in a national newspaper when he was 17 years old, writing for The Daily Telegraph.[19][20] He is a Special Correspondent for The Jewish Chronicle newspaper, covering investigations,[21] features,[22] and major news stories.[23]
Jewish Chronicle acquisition
In 2020, Sacerdoti was part of a consortium of business and media figures[24][25] which acquired The Jewish Chronicle, the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the world, founded in 1841.[26] It had announced its intention to seek a creditor's voluntary liquidation, with 54 journalists and support staff told they would be made redundant, an outcome which was avoided through the consortium's acquisition of the newspaper.[27]
TV production
Sacerdoti worked as a television producer on the Channel 4 breakfast news programme RI:SE[28] and on the Channel 5 news discussion programme The Wright Stuff.[29] He has also worked as a development producer on entertainment and factual programmes for various production companies, including Endemol, where his original format, My Childhood, was commissioned by the BBC and won BAFTA Scotland's Best Factual Programme 2006.[citation needed] Whilst at Endemol, he worked on the development of the UK version of Deal or No Deal.[30] Between 2005 and 2006, he worked at ITV, and then at Shine TV until 2007.[31] In 2016, he set up a communications and design practice, Sacerdoti Creative Consultancy.[32]
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Voluntary work and campaigning
Sacerdoti is among the founding trustees of the charity Campaign Against Antisemitism and served as its Director of Communications until August 2016.[33][34]
He is also a trustee of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's United Kingdom branch.[35]
Sacerdoti is on the council of The Montefiore Endowment, a charity that administers the endowment of the 19th-century British philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore.[36] Sacerdoti represented the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation on the Board of Deputies of British Jews and has been a member of its international division.[37]
Antisemitism
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As a journalist and a campaigner, Sacerdoti has made many high-profile public statements about antisemitism and other forms of racism, as well as about the Holocaust.[38][39][40] He has spoken about the racial persecution his father experienced as a child under the Italian racial laws,[41] and written about the members of the Florentine Catholic Church who hid and saved his father as a child during the Shoah.[42][43][44] He argues that true anti-racism requires individuals to act fairly to protect each other, using the example of the Catholic priests and nuns who saved his father's life: "When faced with the question of what our duty is as citizens of the world, each of us can choose to make a difference, just as they did."[42]
He is critical of the use of the acronyms BAME and BIPOC because they exclude Jewish, Gypsy, Roma and Travellers of Irish Heritage groups, and because they create "linguistic opacity."[45]
He was critical of Whoopi Goldberg when she said on The View that the Holocaust was "not about race," calling her comments "absolute nonsense" and "outrageous".[46] He questioned Goldberg's claims of being Jewish and argued against her use of a Jewish stage name, as well as her writing racist anti-black jokes for a white comedian to deliver in blackface.[47] Sacerdoti has been critical of short-story and children's stories author Roald Dahl's anti-Jewish racism, suggesting that his "antisemitic attitudes were, and probably remain, widespread among some parts of British society."[48]
He has written extensively about antisemitism in Arabic language TV broadcasts,[49][50][51] as well as about positive interactions between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East.[52][53]
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Pro-Israel activism
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Sacerdoti is a former Director of Public Affairs at the Zionist Federation.[54] He is a staunch defender of Zionism in the United Kingdom, and has defended Israel against claims of genocide, war crimes and apartheid. In 2010, for his support of Zionism, he was awarded the World Zionist Organization's Herzl Award.[37]
In November 2024, he took part in a public debate at Oxford University organised by the students' union that asked whether or not "Israel is an apartheid state responsible for the genocide" of Palestinians. Arguing against the proposal, along with Sacerdoti, were British lawyer Natasha Hausdorff, Arab-Israeli activist Yoseph Haddad, and ex-Hamas member turned Israeli spy Mosab Hassan Yousef, while arguing in favor were author and activist Norman Finkelstein, Israeli-American activist and author Miko Peled, Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa, and Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd. The debate, marked by significant heckling, ended with the union voting 278:59 in favor of the proposition.[55] Subsequently, Sacerdoti claimed that the event was a "sham trial conducted mafia-style by disreputable kids in black tie" during which he was "abused, disrespected and attacked".[6]
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Lectures
Sacerdoti has spoken both as a keynote speaker and as a panelist at international conferences organised by Harvard University, National Chengchi University in Taiwan, the American University in Dubai and Keio University in Tokyo.[56][57] He has given lectures on the nature of terrorism in Europe.[58] Sacerdoti has also debated at the Oxford Union and Cambridge Union.[59]
BBC News
Sacerdoti has appeared regularly on BBC News programmes, including on BBC Radio 4's Today programme[60] and The Moral Maze.[61][62] He was a regular panelist on BBC World's Dateline London.[63][64][65][66][67]
In 2013 the BBC issued an apology for interviewing Sacerdoti four times over two days during Israel's Operation Pillar of Defense without disclosing his role as Director of Public Affairs at the lobbying group the Zionist Federation. During these interviews Sacerdoti denied the killing of civilians by the IDF. The BBC's statement read: “It was not made clear that [Sacerdoti] is an active proponent of the Israeli viewpoint."[68]
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Awards
In 2001, Sacerdoti was awarded the Oxford University OxTALENT prize for IT and literature.[31] In 2010, he was awarded the World Zionist Organization's Herzl Award.[37]
References
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