must be persuaded that their long-term future lies in Britain... The minister said there needed to be a new approach in which people did not simply ‘rub along together and as long as people obey the law that’s quite sufficient.’ ‘I think it’s a common experience now that we know less about each other than we used to and I think there’s a very strong feeling that we need to understand each other and we need to be working together as a nation,’ Lady Neville-Jones added. ‘[We are] trying to convince minorities in this country that First of all, their declared policy is utterly incoherent. They claim that their aim in Libya is not regime change. Yet bombing Gaddafy’s compound hardly signals their desire that he should stay alive, let alone in power. Yesterday Obama said Gaddafy should leave power. Today he said overthrowing Gaddafy by force would be a mistake. In similar vein, Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague saysthe UK wants Gaddafy to leave power -- but that’s not regime change, because apparently it’s up to him to decide to do so. Presumably, for both Hague and... The more I read, the more the BBC's broadcast silence amazed me. What if a settler had entered a Palestinian home and sawn off a baby’s head? Might we have heard about it then? ...The next morning, the BBC's public affairs team emailed me a response that amounted to a shrug. The story ‘featured prominently on our website’, they said. It was important to report on the settlements to put the murder in context, they said. Jewish Chronicle, 25 March 2011 For a moment I thought it was a Purim spiel. The Guardian devoted an entire story last weekend to the claim that I was being investigated by both the Press Complaints Commission and the police. The Bedfordshire police. My crime apparently lay in what I had written on my Spectator blog about the massacre of Udi and Ruth Fogel and their three children, 11-year-old Yoav, four-year-old Elad and three-month-old Hadas, who had their throats cut at home in the Samarian neighbourhood of Itamar while most of them were asleep. I had written about the moral depravity of the Arabs who almost certainly committed this atrocity - and also the savagery of the Palestinian Authority whose institutions incite hatred of Jews and the murder of Israelis, and which honours such murderers by naming streets and squares after them. The complaint was that I had thus accused every single Arab in the world of being savage and depraved. This was totally absurd. As was obvious from the context, I was referring specifically to those Arabs behind the atrocity and those who incite and glorify such deeds. The complainants also airbrushed out of the picture the unstoppable torrent of deranged, Nazi-style vilification of Jews which pours out of the Arab and Muslim world and which fuels the genocidal hysteria behind such attacks. All of this, plus the fact that the Arab world has been murdering Jews in the land of Israel for more than nine decades in order to drive them out, means that to refer to ‘Arab moral depravity’ is more than justified. To tar this as a racist slur against every single Arab is as absurd as to claim that referring to the moral depravity of the Germans or Japanese in the 1940s is a racist slur against every single German or Japanese individual. And what on earth had this got to do with the Bedfordshire police? You may well ask. A clue was surely provided by the Muslim activist, Inayat Bunglawala, one of the PCC complainants, who raged that I had defamed the entire Arab people. Bunglawala lives in Luton, Bedfordshire. Might it be, therefore, that Bunglawala had gone to his local plods to complain? I don’t know why otherwise the Bedfordshire police would be asked to avenge this alleged insult to the entire Arab nation. But, at the time of writing, I have not heard that either the police or the PCC is in fact investigating these complaints. It would appear that the Guardian simply took what Bunglawala told them and published it as fact. Moreover, for Bunglawala to accuse me of racism is a sick joke. For he has serious form as a Jew-hater. In his younger days he described the TV executives Michael Green, Michael Grade and Alan Yentob as all belonging to ‘the tribe of Judah’ whose close friendship gave the lie to a ‘free media’. He also claimed that the ‘Zionist movement’ was ‘at the core of international banking and commerce’. Ed Husain, in his book, The Islamist, describes how Bunglawala used to take him to weekly meetings of Muslim extremists where Jew-bashing was ‘part of the curriculum’. Hate-crime legislation, which has turned the police into a thin blue inquisition against dissent, provides such people with the means to smear their chosen targets, and encourages them to try to silence views with which they disagree. This is given rocket-fuel by the current frenzy of demonisation, dehumanisation and delegitimisation against Israel. And the leader of this baying media mob is the Guardian, whose reporting of the Itamar massacre claimed that the Fogel family were ‘hard-line settlers’ a comment that insinuates that they were responsible for their own slaughter. Such malevolent indifference to Israeli victimisation is matched by the paper’s excitement at the chance to smear the person who protests at the moral depravity of both the culture that produces such acts and those westerners who endorse it. My impression that I had wandered on to the set of a surrealist Bunuel film deepened with an attack from a quite different direction. According to the anti-Islam site, Jihadwatch, I was in hot water because I had referred to the Fogel family murderers as depraved Arabs, whereas I should have referred to them instead as depraved Muslims. And the reason I had not done that was — wait for it — that I suffered from ‘lingering’ political correctness. Don’t tell the Guardian: it might get in the way of the hate. Daily Mail, 28 March 2011 Once again, a demonstration has degenerated into violent thuggery and vandalism on the streets of London. Saturday’s trades union-organised march against the proposed cuts in public spending was largely a peaceful and orderly event. More than a quarter of a million people marched without incident through Central London to deliver their protest. Nevertheless, the event was effectively hijacked by several hundred who went on the rampage around Oxford Street, hurling coins, water bottles and lightbulbs filled with ammonia. They targeted conspicuous symbols of wealth including the Ritz hotel, banks and a luxury car dealer, and occupied the upmarket food store Fortnum & Mason. Such scenes have become wearisomely familiar. In recent years, anti-globalisation protests have repeatedly turned violent; last year, a student fees demonstration degenerated into chaos when participants stormed buildings, smashed windows and hurled missiles, including a fire extinguisher thrown from the top of a building at the police. At the weekend, those committing the violence seemed to have precious little to do with the issue of cuts in public spending. They were a rag-tag bunch of self-styled anarchists, far-Leftists, squatters and students simply piggy-backing on this demonstration for the sole purpose of creating violent mayhem. Indeed, there now seems to be a kind of permanent standing army of anarchists who seize upon every major demonstration to spring into action. Moreover, they stand out from the main body of demonstrators not just because of their violent tactics. For while last weekend’s march was composed mainly of trades unionists, those behind the violence were from a distinctly higher social class. One of the principal agitators, Chis Knight, who urged protesters to ‘take over, strike, occupy, release all hell’, is a Marxist former professor of anthropology. Another group behind the mayhem, UK Uncut, which protests that large firms pay what it claims are unfairly low rates of tax, was founded by Thom Costello, an aspiring playwright who gained a first class degree in English Literature from Oxford and who now advocates ‘non-violent direct action’ to shut down businesses. What is inspiring these groups to try to bring commercial London to a standstill is their belief that Britain is at a pre-revolutionary moment caused by the financial crisis, which they hope spells the death throes of capitalism itself. And they absurdly imagine that by giving the system a few violent shoves, they will help cause western society finally to turn up its toes. Hence they are riding the tiger of public fury against bankers, tax-avoiders and ‘fat cats’ of any stripe. That’s why they specifically smashed up businesses such as HSBC, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Topshop — owned by Sir Philip Green, who has been accused of (legitimate) tax avoidance. But what has Britain come to when such a rabble can regularly wreak such havoc with apparent impunity? And what has the Labour Party come to when its leader, Ed Miliband, feels the need to associate himself with such a demonstration? Of course, he may have felt he had little choice but to speak at the biggest union-organised event for more than 20 years, given the fact that he owes his position to the trades union movement. And doubtless he would say that the violence had nothing to do with the main body of the march itself. But elements of the party he leads are closely associated with some of the troublemakers. Ken Livingstone, the official Labour candidate for Mayor of London, hosted a conference with a speaker from UK Uncut only last month. And a bunch of other Labour Left-wingers signed a Commons Early Day Motion last year in which they congratulated UK Uncut ‘for the role it has played in drawing attention by peaceful demonstrations to tax evasion and avoidance and to the need for firm action to secure tax justice’. Yet, at the very moment that their leader was addressing the marchers, mayhem was breaking out, orchestrated in part by a body supported by members of the party he leads. Moreover, the cause which inspired Mr Miliband — the apparent imminent decimation of Britain’s public services — is in itself absurd. As has been pointed out, the total of public spending is actually set to rise. Yes, there will be jobs lost and some services will be cut back. But given the huge number of non-jobs in the public sector, the issue for Mr Miliband should surely be to urge that those are the jobs that will be lost in order to safeguard those upon which the public actually depend. Yet of this crucial distinction Mr Miliband makes not a mention. Nor does he acknowledge that, as Treasury officials have made plain, the Labour government of which he was a member all but wrecked Britain through its profligacy. Grotesquely, some of the demonstrators even declared their intention to ‘turn Trafalgar into Tahrir’ — comparing their protest in Trafalgar Square to the demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that dominated the Arab revolts a few weeks ago. Given the fact that Egypt was a repressive dictatorship and Britain a democracy, the analogy was obscene. But then Mr Miliband was just as bad when he compared the protesters with the suffragettes, the American civil rights movement and anti-apartheid demonstrators of the past. For heaven’s sake — all we’re talking about here is cutbacks in public services, not a wholesale denial of human rights! Is Mr Miliband so blinded by ideology that he really doesn’t understand the difference between a free society and its opposite? How can such a party leader ever expect to be taken seriously? In addition, he could hardly have been unaware that the demonstration might well turn violent since the troublemakers had been flagging up their intentions for weeks on internet forums and social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Indeed, given this fact, it is even more troubling that once again the 4,500 police on duty appear to have been powerless to stop the violence. After the debacle of last year’s student fees riot, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said the force should have anticipated the level of violence ‘better’ and that its failure to do so was ‘not acceptable’. Yet last weekend the police once again failed to prevent several hundred thugs from trashing a number of businesses and terrorising the public. These serial failures have drawn some alarming criticism from well-informed sources. Peter Smyth, chair of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said operations that have degenerated into pitched battles between demonstrators and the police have been hampered by ambiguity as orders are relayed down the chain of command. And the former Scotland Yard anti-terrorism chief, Andy Hayman, has said the police needed to be more ‘ruthless’ and must ‘start to be more intrusive and active ahead of any planned illegal demonstration’. Well, yes, of course; once upon a time such elementary precautionary action would have been considered essential to any policing worthy of the name. Yet, today, the police appear not to have a clue. Now there are fears that these troublemakers intend to cause mayhem on London’s streets during the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. There have been reports that last weekend’s violence was part of a softening-up process to spook the authorities so badly that the ceremony will be moved or abandoned altogether. That seems too absurd and incredible to be taken seriously. But then, who would have thought that the police would need to be told they have to take action in advance of trouble to prevent it from happening? The country appears to be regressing into a pre-modern, disorderly, less civilised age — and those upon whom we have relied to protect us appear to have lost the plot, too.
Friday, 1st April 2011
The need to understand
4:42pm
The Security Minister Baroness Neville-Jones has been given the task of drawing up the British government’s revised strategy on counter-terrorism – the last one having been more of a counter-counter-terrorism strategy. Today, the Telegraphhas reported her as saying that British Muslims
...Wednesday, 30th March 2011
A light in the darkness: British Muslims for Israel
6:52pm
A warm welcome to a new and very brave kid on the block – British Muslims for Israel. As I have often said, where someone stands on Israel is for me the litmus test of whether they are a decent and rational human being or pose a threat not merely to Jewish interests but to civilised values. Unfortunately, even among those many Muslims who are opposed to the jihad and support western democracy, animosity towards Israel often runs horrifyingly deep. Any Muslim who speaks up in defence of Israel runs significant personal risks. So those behind British Muslims for Israel, which has emerged from the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy, merit a huge amount of praise and support. They also offer a ray of hope for the future. They show that there are Muslims who pass that key civilisational...Tuesday, 29th March 2011
Humpty in Toytown and the Arab Boomerang
11:12pm.jpg)
One can only gape in stunned amazement at the extent of the idiocy being displayed by the leaders of America, Britain and Europe over the ‘Arab Spring’ – which should surely be renamed ‘the Arab Boomerang’.Thursday, 24th March 2011
AN MP speaks out against the BBC on Israel
9:07am
A startling opinion piece in this morning’s Daily Telegraph by Conservative MP Louise Bagshawe shows there is still some decency and integrity left in Britain’s governing class. Ms Bagshawe was stunned to discover only via Twitter the circumstances of the Fogel family massacre – and even more stunned to discover the cursory and misleading BBC coverage of the atrocity. She writes:
...
Saturday, 2 April 2011
How I became a hate ’suspect’
Disorderly Britain and the powerless blue line
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