Stunned staff and gym members allegedly heard him shout: ‘F**king Israelis, f**king Jews’. It is alleged he also said Israeli soldiers should be ‘wiped off the face of the earth’. His rant reportedly continued even after he was approached by other gym users. Laxton is no minnow. He is head of the South Asia Group at the Foreign Office, a former Deputy Ambassador to Afghanistan and before that Head of Chancery in Islamabad. He is in other words a very senior diplomat. And so now we know that a very senior diplomat in the British foreign service hates the f**king Israelis and the f**king Jews with such unbridled venom that he loses control of himself altogether when watching TV reports about Israel and starts raving. It’s enough to give an Arabist a bad name. But why was he arrested for inciting religious hatred? Surely this was racialhatred? Jews have always been considered to be a race for the purposes of the law against incitement to racial hatred; and Israel certainly isn’t a religion. Incitement to religious hatred is the extremely dodgy law that was introduced to buy off Muslim pressure to prosecute anyone who talked about ‘Islamic terrorism’ and such like. It was such a bad law that after a terrific row it was amended so that the bar for a successful prosecution was set extremely high. As the Estimable Joshua observes on his blog, Laxton is thus unlikely to be charged. So what were the police playing at? And why is Laxton still at his Foreign Office desk?
Anti-Jew Frenzy At The FCO
And now the frenzy of Jew-hatred has broken cover at the very heart of Britain’s political establishment. The Daily Mail reports that a high-ranking Foreign Office diplomat, Rowan Laxton, has been arrested after he launched into a screaming anti-Jew tirade. He apparently lost it altogether while watching TV reports of the Israeli attack on Gaza as he used an exercise bike in a gym:
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
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