UK museum postpones Jewish life exhibit due to ‘potential risks at sensitive time’
Russell-Cotes museum accused of ‘choosing to extinguish Jewish culture in the face of threats’; report says BBC still using journalist who called for Jews to ‘burn like Hitler did’
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A UK museum recently postponed an exhibition on Jewish life in a seaside town due to “potential risks at a sensitive time,” according to British media.
The Telegraph reported Friday that the Russell-Cotes Museum in Bournemouth had been set to open an exhibition on Jewish life in the town between 1880 and 2020.
Reached for comment by the newspaper, the museum said that while the exhibition will not open in November after an assessment of the potential risks, the institution is working to reschedule it.
“Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum is an important heritage asset housing culturally significant art,” the museum said. “In planning all exhibitions, we carefully assess any potential risks. We recognize this is a sensitive time and due to requirements related to this event, the museum has decided to postpone the exhibition and is working with the organizers to reschedule it for a later date.”
Reacting to the move, the UK’s Campaign Against Anti-Semitism organization said the museum was “choosing to extinguish Jewish culture in the face of threats from an antisemitic mob.”
“When British institutions cower to threats from a mob over the rights of law-abiding communities to share their stories and celebrate their positive contribution to British life, what has happened to British values?” the organization asked.
Wave of antisemitic attacks in Bournemouth, UK ????????
Last Saturday, a Jewish teenager wearing a kippah was shot with an air rifle on his way to synagogue. The shooter drove by shouting obscenities. The boy suffered head injuries.
That same day, multiple swastikas were… pic.twitter.com/WNqG6D3IJI
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) August 28, 2025
Days earlier, UK police arrested a man over an attack in Bournemouth the week before during which a Jewish teen was shot in the head with an air rifle outside a synagogue. The same day, a swastika was found spraypainted on a Jewish home in the same neighborhood. Police said they were investigating both incidents as antisemitic hate crimes.
The Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit providing security protection to British Jews, said in August that antisemitic incidents recorded in the UK neared record levels in first half of 2025.
The figure represents a 25 percent drop from the all-time high of 2,019 incidents in the same period in 2024, but it is the second-highest total ever for a six-month period, with more than 200 incidents a month.
BBC still uses journalist who said Jews should be burned ‘like Hitler did’
According to a separate Telegraph report Saturday, the BBC has continued to feature a Gazan journalist on its Arabic channel months after it was found that he posted a slew of antisemitic social media posts, including one calling to “burn the Jews like Hitler did.”
Samer Elzaenen, 33, was uploading antisemitic and anti-Israel content to social media as far back as 2011, the newspaper reported in April, and continued to do so even after he began providing correspondence for BBC Arabic in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught in southern Israel and the start of the Gaza war.
In a Facebook post in 2011, Elzaenen wrote: “My message to the Zionist Jews: We are going to take our land back, we love death for Allah’s sake, the same way you love life. We shall burn you as Hitler did, but this time we won’t have a single one of you left.”
Then, more than a decade later, in 2022, he wrote: “When things go awry for us, shoot the Jews, it fixes everything.”
According to The Telegraph, Elzaenen has praised over 30 terror attacks against Israeli civilians, including a February 2023 car-ramming attack that killed two boys and a 20-year-old man in Jerusalem.
In the aftermath of the October 7 assault, in which some 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and 251 were seized as hostages, Elzaenen praised the Hamas “resistance fighters” who led the onslaught.
After the initial Telegraph report, the BBC told the newspaper that Elzaenen is not an employee of the company and that the BBC uses “a range of eyewitness accounts from the Strip,” since its journalists are not allowed to enter during the war.
“These are not BBC members of staff or part of the BBC’s reporting team,” the spokesperson said. “We were not aware of the individuals’ social media activity prior to hearing from them on air. We are absolutely clear that there is no place for antisemitism on our services.”
Months later, the BBC Arabic channel has continued to feature Elzaenen as a frequent commentator on Palestinian affairs and the Gaza war, despite the revelations about his antisemitic posts.
Responding for comment on the follow-up report, the BBC admitted to the Telegraph that Elzaenen “should not have been used as an expert contributor.”
The BBC has faced heavy scrutiny over the past 18 months for what many perceive to be an anti-Israel slant to its coverage of the war in Gaza.
In February, the news service was forced to apologize after it emerged that a new documentary titled “Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone” had been narrated by the son of Hamas’s former deputy minister of agriculture.
BBC chair Samir Shah said at the time that the documentary was a “dagger to the heart” of the broadcaster’s impartiality, and vowed that “appropriate action” would be taken.
More widely, the BBC has been criticized for its refusal to describe Hamas as terrorists, even though the group’s military wing is proscribed by the United Kingdom as such, and even after widespread documentation of its systematic targeting of civilians on October 7, 2023.
A spokesperson for the news service has previously said that it avoids labeling any group as terrorists unless quoting remarks by others, as it is a charged word, and thus goes against the broadcaster’s efforts at objective reporting.
The Times of Israel Community.