Tomorrow - Jon Benjamin | Charlie Rose

My background is that I was born in London and raised there as well.

Uh, still very much my hometown, despite living in the best possible alternative in the world, which is New York.

And after college, I took the Foreign Service exams, and I've been a, a diplomat for the UK for the last 21 years, and, um, I'm currently posted as the acting Consul General for the UK in New York City, which covers the city and the state, as well as New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

And, uh, my next move should be as a British ambassador to, uh, a country yet to be determined, something I have to negotiate with my employer quite soon.

As far as the content of my job is concerned, I do do kind of quite a lot of work on counterterrorism with, um, the FBI and NYPD and other law enforcement agencies here in New York.

I think, uh, we've all got to be mindful there's a very real threat out there, and we know from what has already happened that, um, terrorist movements such as Al-Qaeda have New York and London and other major Western cities in their sights.

But I don't think we should, uh, alter the way we live our lives.

That would be handing them a victory in many ways.

We...

And we should carry on and have faith in, in the, uh, our law enforcement, intelligence, and other agencies which have proven that they are able to nip a lot of the, the plots in, in the bud.

The issue of antisemitism, uh, funnily enough, is some-something I publicly, uh, debated last week with one of the major Jewish organization leaders here in New York.

I think there is a difference of perception.

I'm Jewish myself, so if there is increasing antisemitism, and there is some evidence of it in Western Europe, then that's of concern to me, not just professionally, but privately, because it affects my friends and family, my own professional future, my place in society, my home country, and so on.

So I'm as acutely aware of it as anyone here.

But I do think that there is, uh, perhaps something of an exaggeration in the perception here in the United States in some quarters.

If you look at the hard statistics, it's clear that the position of the Jewish community in Britain is well safeguarded.

Uh, it's wrong, as some people say here, that, that somehow the 1930s are being repeated because now the Jewish community, as with every other ethnic minority community in Britain and the whole of Europe, has the protect-- the legal protection of the, the rule of law.

Uh, there's a robust democracy.

They're able to make their claim, rely on the protection of laws.

And in some regards, you could argue that we can do things in the UK that aren't possible here in the US.

A number of people, radical Muslim clerics, for example, have been jailed in the UK for antisemitic incitement and racial hatred in a way which, because of the First Amendment here in the UK for w-- in the US for which we have, uh, a, a huge respect, uh, means, however, that, uh, such antisemitic and other racist statements can't lead to an indictment or imprisonment.

So depends which way you approach it from.

Uh, but we need to be very vigilant, and, uh, antisemitism is a very vir-virulent and persistent form of racism, which the g-- our government and those of the entire, uh, European continent are committed to combating.

I think anti-Americanism, unfortunately, there has been something of an upsurge in it in Europe.

I'm sure it's very closely related to some of the widespread opposition to the Iraq war at the time.