Algemeiner Editor-in-Chief Dovid Efune appears on i24 News. Photo: Screenshot.

A recent BBC panel debate on whether Jews are an ethnic minority was a “ridiculous” affront to the Jewish community, said Algemeiner editor-in-chief Dovid Efune during an interview Wednesday with i24 News.

The Monday television segment — which asked “Should Jews Count As An Ethnic Minority?” — was prompted by comments from the Labour party’s deputy leader Angela Rayner, who had called the new head of the party’s Scottish branch, Anas Sarwar, “the first ever ethnic minority leader of a political party anywhere in the UK.”

The framing drew condemnations from Benjamin Cohen, the panel’s lone Jewish member, as well as groups like the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

“The only reason why this may become a question, and may be something that is pushed to the fore as a debate, is really to undermine Jewish sensitivities,” Efune said Wednesday. “And as panelists on that discussion quite rightly pointed out, the fact that non-Jewish people are being asked to weigh in on this is the height of hypocrisy and an insult to the Jewish community.”

Efune pointed to other Jews who have risen to the top of British politics over time, from Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, whose first term began in 1868, to Ed Miliband, who led the Labour party from 2010 to 2015.

“Undermining the Jewish community as an ethnic minority class really takes away the tools that governments and other agencies and that the wider community can deploy to address the specific and unique challenges that they face,” he said. “And time and again, the people that are calling this question into doubt are people that certainly do not have Jewish interests at heart, and are looking to cause damage and harm to the needs and concerns of the Jewish community.”

Watch Efune’s i24 News appearance below: