WHEN the scale and horror of the October 7 attack on Israel by the Islamist terrorist group Hamas became apparent, I knew that it ought to be a line-in-the-sand moment for the western Left. Scales should have fallen from eyes, as they did for thousands of British communists and their fellow travellers after the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary in 1956. I also knew that this would not happen, and that an uneasy silence and a bit of special pleading would be the order of the day.
So it proved. BBC News, always the bellwether of Left-wing news and language management, was immediately up to its usual tricks: Islamist mass murderers were neutrally referred to as ‘militants’. A corporation grandee, John Simpson, defended this form of anti-journalism – ie giving the audience less information than it needs to be fully informed. He said it was the BBC being impartial. Even if the BBC was not completely biased to a decaf Marxist worldview, this denuding of facts from the biggest news story in the world at that moment was outrageous. Doubly so from an organisation which funds itself on mandatory payments on pain of court action.
Since all our institutions are run by the Left, which is hostile to Israel, it was obvious which way things would go. Its absurd moral relativism was there for all to see: for years we have seen virtue-signalling indignation from the political, administrative, cultural and celebrity classes on everything from rainbow flags and climate change to knee-taking and the death of George Floyd. Yet when deliberate mass murder and torture of families by Islamist terrorists occurs we find that, for example, the FA cannot have the gumption to light the Wembley arch in Israel’s colours, the BBC runs for cover in weasel words, Israel’s flag is torn down from town halls and the celebrity Leftie Gary Lineker – usually so vocal about the world’s problems – has virtually nothing to say about it on his Twitter feed (the great intellectual merely retweeted links to a couple of podcasts featuring his employee, Tony Blair’s old enforcer Alastair Campbell) .
There are untold incidences of similar reactions, or glossing and/or support from the great humanitarians and stars of social media and the British liberal-Left (the loony Left have always sided with Hamas, the PLO or whatever maniacs are ranged against Israel; just remember Jeremy Corbyn calling Hamas and Hezbollah his ‘friends’).
The mounting evidence of bestial violence against babies, women and children could not wake these people from their smug, purblind positions, and that is a disgrace.
Meanwhile the huge, thuggish pro-Islamist demonstrations in the wake of the Hamas attacks illustrate where Britain is now after decades of uncontrolled mass immigration and having the fallacious and damaging Left-wing credo of multiculturalism rammed down its throat by the ruling classes: open and rampant anti-Semitism in the streets, chants of ‘jihad’ in Mayfair, and Oxford University students supporting the slaughter.
It was obvious from the moment the first demonstrations hit the street that the police would be yet again revealed as a political force captured by culturally Marxist doctrine enforced by training schemes provided by ‘the Left-wing freemasonry’ of Common Purpose.
Compare and contrast: On March 6 this year Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested for silently praying in a ‘buffer zone’ around an abortion clinic in Birmingham (which was closed at the time). A policeman said to her: ‘You’ve said you’ve been engaging in prayer, which is the offence.’ There followed a six-month investigation, with all the public money-burning that involves, after which the police decided not to pursue any charges after all.
This week the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir – which campaigns for the establishment of a caliphate across the world – held a pro-Palestine demonstration outside the Egyptian embassy in Mayfair, during which a man chanted ‘jihad’ and was filmed. Banners urging ‘Muslim armies to rise up’ were unfurled. The police did nothing. When Scotland Yard was criticised over this inaction, this turning a blind eye to hate, Sir Mark Rowley was evasive, saying that it was not the job of his force to police ‘taste and decency’. Oh, really? They are usually very keen on policing political and social attitudes, particularly online and often to the neglect of real crime in the real world.
I’m a believer in freedom of speech and liberty within reason, and so I do not think the man should have been arrested for saying the word ‘jihad’ (in some respects he is doing us all a favour in alerting the public to the vast problem of non-integrated members of the Islamic diaspora). Nevertheless, by their own lights the police should have at least questioned the man and his motivations, particularly in a capital city which is permanently on high terrorist alert because of Islamist atrocities. Yet they did nothing. Islam seems to get special protections from our Left-wing officialdom, just as Hamas atrocities are not unequivocally denounced in the strongest possible terms. This is rank hypocrisy and double standards: you can have a large wager that if the demonstration had been, say, composed of Christian fundamentalists featuring Bible readings and condemning abortion, someone would have got their collar felt.
This moment must change everything in official thinking, but it will not. PM Rishi Sunak opined that chanting ‘jihad’ in the street is a ‘threat to our democracy’. He and the rest of the political class need to wind back a bit and realise that their treasured and well-protected policy of mass, uncontrolled immigration of cultures inimical to Britain’s is the real threat to our democracy and our civic peace and order; yet when this current crisis passes, that policy as well as all its official underpinnings in ‘police guidelines’, multiculturalism, political correctness and institutional amorality towards Islamist atrocities will go on as usual. Britain’s intellectually and morally bankrupt public servants stand exposed.
