Tensions rose quickly during a BBC interview on Friday with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro , who cut the appearance short after accusing the network of being biased against conservatives.

Shapiro went on the defensive early in the 16-minute interview, when journalist Andrew Neil asked Shapiro to explain his staunch views on abortion, wanting his thoughts on whether the “extreme hard policies” he’s in favor of “takes us back to the Dark Ages.”

“Are you an objective journalist or are you an opinion journalist?” Shapiro asked. “You’re a supposedly an objective journalist calling policies with which you disagree barbaric and suggesting only one side of the of the political aisle has ideas. I want to point out that I wish you would be honest in your own biases.”

This went back and forth, with Shapiro pleading for Neil to reveal that he and BBC are on the left. Neil laughed - he is the chairman of a prominent conservative magazine, The Spectator.

Shapiro continued to berate Neil about his interview tactics.

“I hope you’re having fun going through every old tweet for ‘Gotcha’ questions,” Shapiro said, when asked about why he once called former President Obama a fascist. “If you want to discuss something I’ve done in the past five years, why don’t we do that.”

Neil followed up by mentioning that Shapiro once wrote that Palestinian-Arab politicians were “rotted to the core.” Shapiro threw down something on the desk and called the interview a “giant waste of time.”

“I don’t see how this forwards the debate,” Shapiro said. “You talk about undermining the public discourse — it seems to me that simply going through and finding lone things that sound bad out of context and hitting people with them is a way for you to make a quick buck on BBC off the fact that I’m popular and no one has heard of you.”

When the questions — most which were not answered, Neil noted — turned to Judeo-Christian values, Shapiro had had enough: “I’m not inclined to continue an interview with a person who is as badly motivated as you as an interviewer, so I think we’re done. I appreciate your time, sir.”

Neil got the last word: “Thank you for your time and showing that anger is not part of the American political discourse.”

Shapiro tweeted a partial apology on Thursday, after the interview was taped, for referring to Neil as a leftist.

Alyssa Fisher is a writer at the Forward. Email her at fisher@forward.com , or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

An e-commerce site was forced to stop selling miniskirts, tote bags and other merchandise printed with photos of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the Associated Press reported.

Australian online shop Redbubble carried items with black-and-white images of the Nazi death camp, its gas chambers and the railway tracks leading into it. A skirt in the collection went for $40 and a pillow for $45, according to The Washington Post . There was also a tote bag featuring a German-language warning sign at Auschwitz, where more than a million Jews and minorities were sent to their death during the Holocaust .

The Auschwitz Memorial and Museum in Poland recently condemned the site and its products. Employees were “shocked and outraged” for the lack of respect for Holocaust victims, museum spokesman Bartosz Bartyzel said Wednesday.

The museum reached out to Redbubble’s customer service department on Twitter.

. @redbubble Do you really think that selling such products as pillows, mini skirts or tote bags with the images of Auschwitz - a place of enormous human tragedy where over 1,1 million people were murdered - is acceptable? This is rather disturbing and disrespectful. pic.twitter.com/cdPvZGMXC6 — Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) May 7, 2019

“Do you really think that selling such products as pillows, miniskirts or tote bags with the images of Auschwitz — a place of enormous human tragedy where over 1.1 million people were murdered — is acceptable?” read the tweet. “This is rather disturbing and disrespectful.”

The company, in which artists can create a design and sell to consumers directly, admitted in a response tweet that “the nature of this content is not acceptable” and that it was taking “immediate action to remove these and similar works available on these product types.”

In a separate statement, it said: “Redbubble takes a strong stance against racism and violence, including the atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps.”

Alyssa Fisher is a writer at the Forward. Email her at fisher@forward.com , or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

( JTA ) — Louis Farrakhan punctuated a speech at a Chicago church Thursday with denials that he was anti-Semitic and an assertion that he was “here to separate the good Jews from the satanic Jews.”

The longtime leader of the Chicago-based Nation of Islam spoke at the St. Sabina Catholic Church at the invitation of the Rev. Michael Pfleger, after Farrakhan was banned last week from Facebook along with other purveyors of hate and conspiracy theories.

“I used that platform [Facebook] with respect,” Farrakhan told the crowd,  according to the Chicago Tribune . “I have not said one word of hate. I do not hate Jewish people. Not one that is with me has ever committed a crime against the Jewish people, black people, white people, no matter what your color is. As long as you don’t attack us, we don’t bother you.”

The Tribune noted that minutes before, Farrakhan spoke about how some are angry with him because “he exposed their hatred of Jesus in the Talmud” and said he was “here to separate the good Jews from the satanic Jews.”

Farrakhan’s speech was met with “standing ovations, claps and promises to post their own reports of the evening on social media,” according to The Tribune.

On Thursday, Illinois Holocaust Museum officials spoke out against Pfleger for inviting Farrakhan.

“What we don’t want to see is hatred being given a platform,” said Susan Abrams, the museum’s CEO, at a news conference.

Pfleger responded in a statement that he was a “defender of free speech. Too many people struggled and died for the right of free speech and I will continue to struggle to preserve it.”

Farrakhan also defended his past remarks condemning homosexuality and urging women to abandon their careers for homemaking.

He continued, “I’m not a misogynist. I’m not a homophobe. Don’t be angry with me if I stand up on God’s word.”

The Archdiocese of Chicago distanced itself from Pfleger’s decision to invite Farrakhan.

“There is no place in American life for discriminatory rhetoric of any kind,” the archdiocese said in a statement. “At a time when hate crimes are on the rise, when religious believers are murdered in their places of worship, we cannot countenance any speech that dehumanizes persons on the basis of ethnicity, religious belief, economic status or country of origin.”

( JTA ) — The gunman who killed a woman and wounded three others at the Chabad of Poway told a 911 dispatcher he had done it because “the Jewish people are destroying the white race.”

Prosecutors described the call Thursday in announcing 109 hate crime and other charges against John T. Earnest, 19. The nursing student was subdued after opening fire at the synagogue near San Diego on April 27 and killing Lori Gilbert-Kaye, 60, and wounding an 8-year-old girl, her uncle and the rabbi.

U.S. Attorney Robert S. Brewer Jr. said the suspect could face the death penalty.

The charges against Earnest also include an earlier arson at a nearby mosque.

“We will not allow our community members to be hunted in their houses of worship, where they should feel free and safe to exercise their right to practice their religion,” Brewer said at the news conference.

A federal affidavit offered new details of the attack. It said Earnest legally bought the AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle from a licensed dealer in San Diego a day before the April 27 attack.

After entering the synagogue and emptying one 10-round magazine, he stopped to reload, according to the affidavit. Several members of the congregation, including an off-duty Border Patrol agent, took advantage of the pause to chase Earnest from the synagogue.

Earnest then called 911 from his car and told a dispatcher what he had done. He said he thought had killed some people, and the he did so because “I’m just trying to defend my nation from the Jewish people…They’re destroying our people,” according to the affidavit.

He then told the dispatcher, “the Jewish people are destroying the white race.”

An imam who has been praised for his social justice work but criticized for his statements about Israel delivered the daily prayer at the House of Representatives on Thursday.

Omar Suleiman, the founder and president of the Dallas-based Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, was introduced by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after having been sponsored by Texas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. In his prayer, Suleiman called for “peace, not war; Love, not hate; benevolence, not greed; unity, not division. And we commit ourselves to not betraying our prayers with actions that contradict them.”

As The Jerusalem Post reported , Suleiman has a history of anti-Israel statements. During the 2014 Gaza war, Suleiman wrote on his Facebook page, “God willing on this blessed night as the 3rd Intifada begins, the beginning of the end of Zionism is here. May Allah help us overcome this monster, protect the innocent of the world, and accept the murdered as martyrs.”

He has also also reportedly claimed that Israel was the “51st state,” and wrote on Facebook in 2015, ““Want to know what its [sic] like to live under Nazis? Look no further than how the Palestinians are treated daily by apartheid Israel.”

Suleiman is also a supporter of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. A bill protecting states’ abilities to enact anti-BDS laws passed the Republican-controlled Senate but has not been brought up for a vote in the Democrat-controlled House.

Suleiman is a prominent activist in Dallas. He was selected to deliver a prayer at a 2016 memorial service for murdered police officers, where former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama stood behind him. And last year, he was among the dozens of Jewish and Muslim activists who were arrested on Capitol Hill protesting the Trump administration’s changes to the DACA program for undocumented immigrants.

Suleiman’s benediction was praised by Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress. “Love is the way! Ramadan Kareem [blessed Ramadan] @omarsuleiman504, thank you for sharing this beautiful message with all of us today,” she tweeted on Thursday.

But the decision to have Suleiman deliver the prayer was criticized by Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York, one of two Jewish Republicans in the House. “Totally unacceptable that @SpeakerPelosi had Omar Suleiman give the opening prayer yesterday in the House,” he tweeted Friday morning. “He compares Israel to the Nazis & calls them terrorists, supports Muslim Brotherhood, incites violence calling for a Palestinian antifada & the end of zionism, etc. Bad call.”

Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter at @aidenpink .