Multiculturalism is not a complete failure.
Christian, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, Judaism, Taoism, and Confucianism all seem to get along in Britain without much trouble.
The one outlier of course is Islam, which seeks to convert or destroy all other religions.
GIve them time and power then see what they do. I’m wondering whether to seek out the odds on J K Rowling serving repeated 2 year sentences once Labour get in.
Exactly. It appears that we will have to believe Starmer’s lie if we want to stay out of prison. I understand that the woke gloabist’s richest organisation is backing labour. Has he a right to be affilated with such a massive WEF supporter? this could be dangerous for Britain. It is what he is not saying in their convention which gives an inkling of where he is at.
It appears that the grooming of the nation’s children will not stop under Starmer but get worse as he does not give women the dignity of representing an unalterable sex. I have lapsed from the Tories because of their inaction on this but Starmer looks like he will increase the danger in schools.
You forget to mention the West Indians who might have cause for serious complaint, but generally don’t whine and whinge and shout nonsensical theocratic obscenities unlike the demented followers of the so called prophet.
Opinion polling shows consistently that average Muslims are very much closer to what most people would recognize as the violent extremes. Orthodox Jews or Christians do not order Fatwahs. The sanctity of individual life is central to those faiths – however falteringly, and however many sinful mistakes and deviations. And right now the most violent religion other than Islam, cross the west is the woke religion of the secular left
Christianity was a militant religion once and the result was burnings at the stake and many genocides, often against other flavors of Christians. So, no, the difference between Christianity today and the Muslins is not largely the qualities of their prophets.
There have indeed been wars between states adhering to different types of Christianity , mainly in the 17th century .
However the difference between a warlord who believes he has been told to spread a new religion at the point of a sword and a sort of hippy figure like Jesus is absolutely fundamental to how their adherents in the modern world see themselves . How could it be otherwise ?
Should be OK. All he said was ‘demented followers of the the so called prophet…who ‘whine and whinge and shout nonsensical theocratic obscenities’.
I can’t imagine why anyone might think he was referring to the Religion of Peace.
Yes but black actual drug dealing and the gangsta culture / music which derives from it and which influences other young people is not exactly a great thing is it. Plus lots of black drug dealers convert to Islam of one kind or another . Especially in prison .
That is not true.. the ‘religion’ you speak of is a twisted version of Islam.. extremist, fanatics exist in every religion.. “by their works shall ye know them” …Jesus
The Koran took many years to be finalised and conquest was well under way when it was. We know this from the overwritten fragments preserved.
The Dome of the Rock was likely completed before the book – the sign is the interpolation of the journey on the flying horse to Jerusalem so Mahomet could ascend from the building, which otherwise would have been built with no purpose. This one of many tangles you get into when you relocate your history for strategic reasons.
That’s what we hear but in practice something else happens when there is opportunity. Britain is more unsafe than it has ever been but one cannot say that. But you can say what you like against christians and you will still be safe.
Yes indeed; however it is crucial to distinguish between man-made religions and the fundamental message of the founder which, oddly is broadly the same, viz.. Love your neighbour. Evangelicals believe to opposite.
Judaism is a little different but not very…
“The most important teaching and tenet of Judaism is that there is one God, incorporeal and eternal, who wants all people to do what is just and merciful. All people are created in the image of God and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect”
… obviously Zionists believe the complete opposite about Palestinians.
If so called Christians, Muslims are Jews followed their founders’ teachings we would all live in love and harmony, wouldn’t we? But religious nutjobs believe do the opposite.
Such a waste of a comment. The pertinent question would be whether Islam advances the notion that “[a]ll people are created in the image of God and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect”. If it does not, well…
The founder in this case urged ethnic cleansing, procured the death of a poetess who humiliated him by being a better writer than he was, and on the death of his wife, seems to have pursued the career path of errrr, warlord.
Among other things, too many to list.
Whether these are part of the message, one can even so, convey messages by example, and it’s difficult to avoid the impression that this is not ‘broadly the same’ as other faiths.
It’s becomes one it appears. Pleading for tolerance. When given, then comes the oppression and opposition to our culture and infiltration into our schools, businesses and government. Thank you Cameron.
True, that’s the worst one, nowadays. But haven’t Christians done their fair share of slaughtering in the name of god, in the past? It’s that damn in the- name- of- god, or Allah or some other supernatural thingy, that’s the problem.
Nonsense. There are large populations of Muslim people you never hear about in the news but meet every day. The very successful Turkish population, which nobody has an issue with. The highly valued Egyptian doctors and engineers we benefit from. The amazing Lebanese chefs, creatives and business people. And more. Some practice Islam devoutly, more are relaxed about it while being as Muslim as I am Christian.
Open your eyes.
What percentage of the muslim population are these? If it came to the court of law would they give evidence against a fellow Muslim in favour of a Jew ? This is a simple test for any religion or political creed. Will someone tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth even if their testimony is detrimental to a person of their own creed and to the benfit of an enemy of that creed. If this is not the case, then the country is corrupt.
I was thinking something very similar as I was reading the piece. It’s the thing that can’t be named. I would add that Aris, I am sure, prides himself as being someone who is willing to call out the powers that be in the name of pointing out uncomfortable truths in our world. But, even he managed to avoid that one. I’m fairly sure he’s not ignorant of it.
You say we get along without much trouble but that is largely because our interests do not currently conflict with the groups you mention.
Lest we forget it was not always so.The Jewish Lehi or Stern Gang staged a now forgotten bombing campaign in the UK after the last War This came after the assasination of the Colonial Secretary and Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Moyne, in Cairo in 1940. In 1947 they left a bomb in the Colonial Club on St Martin’s lane and later that year they planted an enormous bomb in the Colonial Office of Whitehall. The timer failed on that one but it would have been a bombing on the scale of the King David Hotel, but in London. Then followed an extensive letter bomb campaign which targeted the Cabinet.
Had we not ended our involvement in Palestine so precipitously in 1948 the terrorism would have continured, no doubt.
P.S.
I’m not sure the widow of Sir Michael O’Dwyer would have shared your view of the conformability of the Sikh community either, considering he was murdered by a Sikh Terrorist still lionised as a ‘freedom fighter’ in that community.
Arab colonialism and Muslim imperialism are the root causes of the Mideast conflict. Every town from the river to the sea has Hebrew roots. Muslim settlers built nothing from scratch. Once conquered by Islam must remain Muslim – that is their core belief that fuels violence and war.
As a poignant analogy, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia and later Afghanistan under similar dogmatic views: once “socialist” must stay socialist. Which in turn led to the unraveling of Soviet Russia’s geopolitical hegemony in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Walter Marvell
6 months ago
But there IS violence here already. See the first cover up of a terror incident here. Watch the highly aggressive masked mobs chanting their hatred return to our streets while Jewish vigils are stopped for their protection.
Agreed, it is only a matter of time before there is yet another major ‘Islamic outrage’ on the streets of Britain, probably before Christmas in fact.
Then there will follow the usual ‘weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth’ but absolutely NOTHING will be done to address the root cause of this problem.
Short of mass repatriations, what can be done? Of course, even now, we could shut the stable door to stop future jihadis arriving (and deporting those that do so on dinghies). But beyond that, it is down to the security services to disrupt terrorist acts. Is there something they are not doing?
Anyway, Happy Trafalgar Day Charles.
The home office fail miserably in their roll. They appear to sift out the needy ones being persecuted in their countries and accept masses in who would be the persecuters.
I’m for mass (re)patriation.. Wyoming is almost empty, a state bigger than the UK with fewer than a million inhabitants! Next door is Utah for the Mormons.. sure the Jews would be right at home, totally safe and can again turn a desert into a paradise there. What’s not to like?
It is quite likely that a terrorist organisation much like Hamas will form the next government of the Kerrygold Republic. Also the leader of that organisation holds parades to venerate the memory of a previous leader who was N*zi collaborator who we must presume would have strongly approved of Hamas’s recent operations.
No, you’re way too harsh on Dev. While preserving a determined front of neutrality, for obvious enough historical reasons, the Irish Government was actually quite helpful to Britain during the war. There was actually by 1940 a mutually-agreed plan, with airstrips made ready, for British forces to reoccupy Munster in the event of a German invasion attempt there, something London and Dublin both feared: see Leo McKinstry’s excellent book on Operation Sealion.
We’re working on it Charlie; 20% of our population is now non Irish-born.. all are welcome and contribute greatly to our economy and culture.. but the Zionists would be safer in Wyoming and the weather and land would be closer to what they’re accustom to.
Our Jewish population boxes well above their wright in Irish life, politically, culturally and economically.
The Jews are not safe in the Middle East.. that’s the whole point.. they have to flee.. Many already have and are doing so in increasing numbers.. The Palestinians are safe where they are or would be if the Jews settled in America.
That’s what started America in the first place remember? Nobody wants Palestinians, but Jews are super welcome the US.
Mass immigration silly.. 80% of Americans are immigrants or offspring of immigrants. 13% are offspring of imported slaves.. Only 7% are indigenous Native Americans.. Didn’t you know that??
Not according to devout Hasidic Jews! They say Zionists are flying in the face of God because the Diaspora has never been rescinded! They btw are fully supportive of the Palestinian cause..
If you know otherwise please tell us chpt and verse where God is calling the Jews back to Palestine.. (and let the ill-informed Hasidics know while you’re at it).. I’m a keen Bible reader and I’ve not seen it!
Though the large Ultra-Orthodox haredi sect are, on theological grounds, militantly against the existence of the modern State of Israel – despite many of them living within the territory it controls and, er, on Israeli Government benefits. They’re now being forced into the draft and don’t like it a bit.
Quite. Ever see the episode of South Park in which Stan mistakenly ends up in a grim Border Patrol juvenile detention centre with a hundred Mexican and Guatemalan children – then has a brainwave and makes them all little kippahs?
The Jews are starting to go to Israel. They are feeling more and more unsfafe here as time moves on. Our country will feel the loss but that is how it is going to be. I hope they stay safe until then.
Not the Palestinians then? ..because Palestinians ARE a Semite people like the ancient Jews.. most Zionists today are Poles, Russians, Germans and Americans – barely a Semite among them!
Well the Ashkenazi have virtually nil genetic link with the Holy Land at all. On the other hand, what’s striking when you go to Israel is how Arab the other roughly two-thirds of the Jews there – the Sephardis and Misrahis – look: in manner, posture, skin tone, everything. Most of them had Middle Eastern grandparents, from Morocco and Algeria to Iraq and Syria, often quite poor, and are darker than the Palestinians.
Some of the spleen-venters in the Daily Telegraph would have a stroke if they knew that.
Perhaps not allow them to wear the hijab to school. It’s akin to a Christian child wearing a cross. It’s divisive. Keep your bloody supernatural beliefs to yourself.
One thing we can do is to stop pandering to their stupid demands. Prayer rooms, time off during the working day for prayers, special considerations that would not be granted to anyone else – even special consideration during ramadan (underperforming because they are hungry, and expecting normal people not to eat in front of them.)
The hijabs merely make them look risible, but the prayer demands inconvenience everone else
Personally I think the Hijab is elegant.. when I worked in Malaysia you could tell a Christian woman easily because they mostly dressed like prostitutes. The Muslim women dressed in their “trouser suits” and hijabs looked fabulous by comparison.
Almost certainly! A dying breed, sadly, are Real Christians, ie those who follow the teachings of the Christ..
Love God
Love your neighbour
Love your enemies
..not a lot of it about is there!
The cross or crucifix is worn by many as an ornament and I suspect many of them probably don’t know who the bloke is that is represented on the crucifix.
…And the certainty that any criticism of such violence will in the Brave Starmerite New World be made illegal. Its Islamophobic. And Labours proposed extension of EQ/Race legislation will see any expression of alam made blasphemous and worthy of visit from the State Militia.
I would say if you have a good Tory MP, which I haven’t, vote for them. I cannot vote for my tory woke MP. I think I will vote Reform and not have a vote for labour on my conscience. Pity the tories couldn’t have done better.
I occasionally attend rather large football matches, held in stadiums that resemble the Colosseum. The audience is predominantly white, working class, otherwise known as ‘the salt of the earth’. I am normally accompanied by an interpreter as my understanding of various regional accents is rather limited.
What I have gleaned from this experience is that the vast majority of the crowd/audience are thoroughly fed up with this multi racial claptrap and in particular the obscene pandering to Islam. One day, in the not too distant future there will be a furious reaction, the like very of which we haven’t seen since the Gordon Riots*. The catalyst may well originate in Europe, my guess would be France**, but it will be both contagious and catastrophic.
Sadly I shall be too ossified to participate, or even spectate!
“I am normally accompanied by an interpreter as my understanding of various regional accents is rather limited.”
Thanks for making me laugh this grey and rainy morning Charles (and for your comment yesterday).
Ironically you may discover a similar ‘Salt of the Earth’ audience in Iran’s football stadia who also aren’t so keen on their leaders or, it appears, the Palestinian flag.
I am thoroughly encouraged by your view of football crowds. However, for some reason, I’ve assumed that you must have been in the military which would surely have made you able to interpret their vernacular for yourself. Married (still, and throughout his service) to a Brigadier Retd. and being a northerner myself, I was defeated only once – by a Glaswegian corporal whose incredible courage and indefatigable chattiness I continue to remember with respect and affection decades after his death. But to the point : I’ve noticed a tendency for people on YouTube to declare that we – the British, perhaps specifically the English – won’t have the spine to fight should some ill defined uprising occur. All my experience tells me otherwise. I’m pleased you concur.
Ah yes, the English: Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Normans (the Britons driven out to Wales) …now hugely infiltrated by an estimated 20 million Irish over several generations, Scots, West Indians, Pakistanis, Indians etc. these the only ones who know how how to, or wish to, breed.. What is an Englishman? Does he or she exist any more? There’s only yerself and Charlie Stanhope left as far as I can see! No, wait.. sure you must be Viking? That leaves Charlie all alone… the last of the Nohiggins!
Truly the Irish are a wonderful race of story tellers. They invited in the Normans, who had just conquered the Anglo-Saxons then were surprised when the Normans decided they may as well take Ireland as well as England and Wales. The Irish then whinge for 1000 years (almost) about the English. PS Cromwell practiced on the Northern English Catholics before he turned up in Ireland. But then, as I say, they tell a good tell the Irish, I blame the Blarney Stone.
Ireland’s best days were at the time of the Celtic church before Catholicism. It was amazing how they civilised England, Scotland and many parts of europe.
Indeed it did.. but they were not Saxons Charlie; they were Normans, ie Vikings who became French who became English (tho’ the headman called himself the Earl of Pembroke which I’m told is in Wales!)
John Bull nowhere to be seen: retired to Sherwood forest of somewhere like that, or died out maybe?
I’m an Englishman – born here of one Irish parent and one English mother, who was also born of two Irish parents. I believe the best decision my ancestors made was to move to England. Truly I have won the lottery of life. Though curiously Unherd doesn’t print my responses. Still , their loss not mine.
I had an Irish father (long deceased) and an English mother (not so long deceased). Like you Unherd, to have been born on English soil is indeed to have won the lottery of life. I love England (and the English) with a passion. As for Ireland…hardly a passing thought. From Maureen Newman.
Me too.. I spend 6 months every year in the Mediterranean (being an EU citizen) and for sure, I hardly give the old sod a second thought.. still I do return for the summer as I have family and one or two friends not dead yet.. I despise the concept of Nationalism. I’m a big fan of good people irrespective of the usual divides!
My name is a very old English name although my mother was Irish.The Celtic church in ireland was very powerful before they became Catholic and had a huge influence on Britain and Europe.
You’re over-reaching. From c. 1200 – about the time it took for the Normans to blended in to the Anglo-Saxon population – right through to the 1970/80s, the ethnic make up of the British Isles population was pretty settled, with no major changes – other than southern Scots moving to Ulster in the 17th century and southern Irish moving to the industrial cities of Great Britain in the 19th. Stuff – politics, history – happened, but we were a culturally and socially cohesive people.
Within little more than one generation, that’s all gone. Britain is now polyglot, chaotic, humourless, a glum, deracinated, increasingly impoverished, low-trust, post-democratic, post-truth airport lounge with no communal identity and no happy future ahead of it: bombing, stabbing, organised crime, bride-burning, blasphemy riots, honour killings, modern slavery, hand car washes, and over it all, a creeping authoritarian Corporate Communism. But hey: ‘Strength Through Diversity’, eh?
The same can be said of a majority in the US with regard to the obscene pandering to fashionable, “protected” ethnic groups. Instead of following the MLK jr. model, which was the best and most obviously sane approach, hero martyrs are made of low-life criminals, violent riots are excused, gang warfare is ignored, and race hustlers grow rich declaring all white people are racists.
All of this is fixable, but Western governments refuse to take the necessary actions required to restore sanity. The last time we were in London, my husband and I were gobsmacked at the sheer number of Muslims we encountered: in nearly every restaurant huge groups of men in keffiyehs were clearly annoyed that they were sharing space with non-Muslims.
That was 1993.
As I write some 20,000+ of these b*ggers are ‘protesting’ on the streets of London.
Ideally the most sophisticated photo recognition equipment available should be deployed recording and archiving their every move.Subsequently they should persuaded to the very end of the earth, for a myriad of offences.
Sadly this will NOT happen today or even tomorrow, but one day the worm will turn and these wretches will find then there is nowhere to hide.
According to Douglas Murray Musims outbreed Johnny Blueyes by 5:1 so, given their population, Muhammad and Johnny Blueyes with have the same number of grandchildren starting to breed today.. Better start showing some respect then Johnny Blueyes is my advice!
The Muslim population is but a small percentage of the total English population, ie 6½% ..So if Blueyes and Mahommad breed at the same rate Blueyes would outnumber Muslims 14 to 1.. but as they breed like Irish people (used to), at 5 times the rate and the Muslim population is growing anyway.. in approx 60 years time Muslim births = Blueyes births! Millions of liytle Rishi Sunaks running amok..
I believe Fishi Snack is actually a Hindoo: a Parsee, to be exact. Hence, at least in part, his 1000% support for Israel and offer to supply additional HE bombs. Ever seen Suella Braverman in a hijab? Me neither. I think she’s Hindoo too. Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary? I’m not sure. Judging by his swift and supine visit to Israel, I’d again assume not.
Bumza Useless and the poison dwarf, Mayor Khan, are both Muslim, nominally anyway, though Useless is reportedly against throwing homosexuals off high buildings – or at least, he’s against it when speaking to the (few remaining) NUSNP faithful.
The fact that Sadiq Khan is the mayor of London blows my mind. How could that happen? Who would turn their crowning city over to a Muslim pretending to be a “liberal” Man of the Left? I return to those crowds of keffiyeh-wearing men we encountered in 1993. No other explanation for it.
The Angles came from Denmark, the Saxons came from Germany, the Vikings came from Norway and Sweden, the Normans came from France, the Paddies came from Ireland, the West Indians came too. ALL became “English” (those a white supremacy, racist movement reared its ugly head).. The Muslims will too, become English I mean like all those footballers and Tory politicians!
Like I said, if Angels, Saxons, Danes and Normans can become English (having driven out the indigenous Celt8c Britons to Wales) then surely ANY old dog or divil can become English? Note i omitted the 20 million or so Irish as that would be out of the question!
There’s one key difference: all the previous people you mentioned were European. Even the Irish.They could blend together a lot more easily, without colour as a highly visible mark of cultural division.
What a prejudiced remark. Britain used to have the finest football hooligans in the world, famed from Holland to Japan. But it is true that they’ve gone soft, weak and fat. These days, Russia’s hooligans are the Gold Standard: big, fit, strong lads, trained in martial arts.
“The obscene pandering to Islam”, exactly it pisses me off. And to see women succumbing to male oppression by wearing the f*****g hijab in 2023 is so disheartening.
That’s why The Party is so frightened of football crowds: with factories, industrial communities and Methodist chapels gone, they are the last rallying/ mobilising force for the white working class. Hence creepy Lineker’s long tenure on MoTD, and the Woke-BLM-Rainbow-KickItOut takeover of the FA, now far more of a Woke campaign group than a sporting body.
…the root cause being? Britain’s inept and cowardly actions in 1940s Palestine? USUK arming the IDF to the teeth and giving carte blanche to commit genocide? ..and turning a blind eye to endless abuses, war crimes, crimes against humanity, breaches of UN mandates …or are they all irrelevant Charlie?
Come off it Liam that is the most juvenile statement of the many you have made today. You can do better than that.
Incidentally the only “cowardly actions” perpetrated in 1940’s Palestine were those of various Arab and Jewish terrorists organisations. The very nature of the war encourages such deplorable behaviour as your own beloved IRA was to prove over and over again from 1971-1997.
This is true but you did run away Charlie.. and leave the place in rag order, as usual! I know the place was alive with terrorists of all kinds but wh9 armed them and trained them?
Btw my good friend Col. Gerry %$# (I don’t want him assassinated) who served in Lebanon said he could deal with all factions there.. rough and ruthless but he could deal with them all.. all except the IDF.. absolute bustards he said, untrustworthy liars to a man!
Truman and the New York lobby wanted the British Empire out PDQ – so that the Zionists could crack on with their project. And Attlee needed the latest tranche of New York loans, so the US was able to dictate the timetable.
But yes, given their history of rabid and always-unpunished violence against even the RAF, US Navy (see the USS Liberty) and UNMOs, and their long-established pattern of weasel words (e.g.’IDF troops fired towards’ (!) the deceased) I wouldn’t them much either.
The Czech’s supplied much equipment to Israel. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem recruiting Bosnian Muslims into the SS would not have pleased Stalin.
Britain had India, rebuilding Britain, feeding Germany,founding the NHS and Welfare State to worry about post 1945.
Fair point.. you’d think the US economy and civil unrest etc would cause them to likewise but not a bit of it! War in Ukraine, two carriers off Tel Aviv and 800 bases around the world!
You d9 Islam a gross disservice by saying “Islamic outrage” ..the correct phrase is Islamist outrage.. Whenever an outrage is committed by a Jew or a Christian (they greatly outnumber the first) we immediately think of the word “fanatic” and never give a second thought to their religion; but when it is committed by a Muslim it is the first thing that comes to mind! That is hardly fair!
It is absolutely fair. Mainstream Jews or Christians don’t (any longer, at least) promote outrages at nearly the frequency that mainstream Muslims do. Things which are different are not the same.
The author write, “Hemmed in by past political failures, all that Britain can do is ensure that the coming bloodshed will not reach our streets.” But of course there is no sign that Britain can do any such thing. Because it has already let in too many MUSLIMS.
On the Daily Telegraph site is a story with this headline; Terrorist attack in UK linked to Gaza
No comments are being allowed.
In a separate incident a few days ago a 70 year old Hartlepool man was stabbed to death by a ‘refugee’
Now the MP for Hartlepool, Jill Mortimer, complains that her constituency office is besieged by refugees who intimidate her staff.
It may not be Britain’s war, but it’s already here.
The mistake you made was insisting all those colonised natives spoke English! If you had vision you’d have made sure they spoke French or German!
Of course if you’d stayed in the EU you could send them all back to France as per the EU Dublin Accord. BJ didn’t put that on his bus did he?
You must have a really terrible life over there in Ireland. Pity. If you parents had been as smart as my grandparents, you too could have been born English, and you’d be much happier for it.
It is certainly here and it has been here for a long time. I have plenty of personal stories that do not make the news.
Matt M
6 months ago
It’s a bit tough on Britain this article. We only ended up holding the Palestine baby because the Hun invaded France and eventually the Ottoman Empire fell to pieces. We were handed an intractable situation by the League of Nations and had to make the best of it.
Given that we diced and sliced the original Israel that was supposed to arise from the ashes of the Ottoman empire to a rump State that had the Arabs not attacked it in 48 would probable already have been overrun in later attacks. I find it a bit cheeky that the Palestinians aren’t more grateful to us.
I’m uncertain how much Britain can (let alone should) do, going forward. It isn’t your aircraft carrier group that’s moored off the coast of Judea and Samaria. British soldiers and sailors aren’t at risk, and perhaps they shouldn’t be.
There are two nations on this planet where Jews have lived relatively freely, and are able to defend themselves, and those two countries are, of course, the United States, and Israel itself. Both countries today posses fearsome militaries, of course, and both nations have political and strategic interests at stake. The UK doesn’t, really.
Insofar as the Philiistinians are concerned, their own history works against them.
Palestinians evacuated “their” lands ahead of the various Arab armies attacking Israel, and then found themselves very much adrift. Jordan took in thousands of Palestinians, and one of them assassinated King Abdullah. Lebanon took in thousands of them as well, and they quickly turned that country into an abattoir. Egypt won’t open its gates, understandably, nor will Syria. It seems no one wants millions of permanently aggrieved and impoverished people, particularly if they have a penchant for violent psychopathy.
That leaves Israel, whom most Palestinian groups have vowed to obliterate, as the court of last resort. Israel provides them with food, water, and electricity, and in most conflicts tries to avoid civilian casualties.
This conflict may be different, as Hamas – the ruling party in Gaza – intentionally targets civilians, and makes the IRA look like a church social. Hamas, if Israel is to survive, needs to be finished off, completely crushed, and wiped away from the world, from their foot soldiers to their senior leadership, in either the gritty precincts of Gaza, or in the glittering high rises of Qatar and Dubai, where Hamas’ real leaders reside.
Northern Ireland achieved peace when its partisans laid down their weapons and took up politics. Hamas and probably most Palestinians will do neither of those things at present, and probably into the foreseeable future. Israel will likely have to occupy Gaza, then, for years, until Gazans demonstrate the capacity for responsible or at least relatively peaceful behavior.
‘…until Gazans demonstrate the capacity for responsible or at least relatively peaceful behavior.’
Rather a schoolmarmy and hypocritical post. Well, at least Hamas didn’t murder a UN peace envoy (Count Bernadotte), murder a British peace envoy (Lord Moyne), blow up the King David Hotel (91 killed), hang two British Sergeants from a eucalyptus tree, shoot down five RAF aircraft in an unprovoked attack from behind and, more recently, deliberately sink the USS Liberty – which was flying a stars n’stripes the size of barn door – and spend eight hours steadily demolishing a clearly-marked UN OP with artillery, killing four European UNMOs, all while ignoring their desperate radio pleas to desist. Israel’s certainly a State that likes to make statements.
It’s easy to be ‘relatively peaceful’ when you can have whatever you want through massive military superiority, continued occupation, martial law, mass urban kettling, blockades, punitive demolitions and thuggish, illegal land seizures – demonstrating an ‘penchant for violent psychopathy’ if ever there was one; especially when the only section of the ‘international community’ with real power to stop you, the US, just smiles and gives you a cheery thumbs-up and more free money.
The Palestinians have had 56 years of ‘politics’ and it has got them NOWHERE. By the end of the decade, at the rate things are going, there will be little of the West Bank left for them to negotiate over – and Israel knows it. Successive Israeli governments have just run down the clock, while – as Ehud Olmert put it – eating up the pizza. ‘The facts on the ground’: softly softly, bit by bit, that’s the tactics. A fait accompli.
Britain couldn’t even give asylum to Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman who had actually been sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan. She was turned away because she wouldn’t have been safe from reprisals here in the UK.
Shameful case.
I seem to recall reading of a Palestinian Christian terror group involved in firing rockets into Israel, or Gaza depending upon how well they are built. But I could be wrong.
The Muslim world is more than large enough to accommodate the Palestinians, the problem is wherever they go they seem to end up fighting their hosts whether they are Jews or Arabs.
Yes, the brutal treatment of Palestinian Christians has been greatly underreported by the global press. In 1945 there were over 135,000 Christians living in what’s now called Palestine…today there are only 47,000, mostly living in the West Bank. The media shies away from that fact that Christians have been, and are being, systematically expelled from Gaza…because it clouds the Jews versus Muslims narrative.
Yet, Christian, Arab Israelis also report discrimination in Israel. It seems that ethnicity and territory, not religion, are the driving forces behind the discrimination against Palestinians.
Last edited 6 months ago by William Edward Henry Appleby
Christians are treated very poorly in many places, sadly. We don’t hear much support or demonstration on their behalf in the West. Usually they are the more educated and enlightened subgroup of their respective populations, and generally manage to make it abroad to a sensible host country.
Last edited 6 months ago by William Edward Henry Appleby
Don’t worry, William, I’m sure the Archbishop of Canterbury will be looking into it once he’s finished sorting out the Government’s immigration policy.
He would better serve Christians by visiting countries with Anglican populations who are being persecuted, and berating the governments there that condone it. I have little time for Stonewall, but Peter Tatchell showed great bravery confronting the persecutors of homosexuals; Justin Welby should show some more courage.
Last edited 6 months ago by William Edward Henry Appleby
Oh dear, there are none so blind as a bigotted anti-semite Irish republican. The Palestinians blew it up by accident. They are pretty good at hitting their own people with their home-made rockets. Perhaps you should pop over and show them how it should be done so only Israeli women and childen die?
Liam would support the Islamic approach to Christians I’m sure, as would a few others on here (and no I’m an atheist or perhaps an agnostic, but there’s no doubt Christ had a far better influence on the world than anything before or possibly since.
Excellent point. It wasn’t that long ago that 10% of all Arabs were Christians.
And at one time, there were hundreds of thousands of Sephardim and Mizhrai Jews living in numerous Arab countries, from Yemen to Syria to North Africa. Up until recently, there was even a Jewish man living in Afghanistan, the last lone congregant of his synagogue.
Hundreds of thousands of human beings.
What do we suppose happened to them all? They seem to have vanished.
One imagines those with brains and money are leaving this cursed land in their droves? Only a mad Christian would stay among the millions of lunatics in that God awful place. Would you?
Before 1945 of course, when Christian, Jew and Muslim lived in relative harmony under the Ottamans, was a totally different situation, ie before the British did their divide and conquer thing as they did all over the world! ..and f¤ck up the whole shebang!
Ironically Palestinian Muslims would not welcome the silly people protesting their cause.
Shrunken Genepool
6 months ago
It IS our war. Judeo-Christianity is the foundation of western civilization. The barbarians are not at the gate, they are in the kitchen. Anti-semitic and anti-western muslim immigrants are in an incoherent but loud coalition with woke Marxian iconoclasts who want to do what they always do, which is to bring down society. It’s not ‘tribalism’ Wake up.
It’s not Britains war. The Israeli’s made that very clear when they murdered the British in order to create their state in the first place, and again when they armed the Argies during the Falklands. We have no duty or responsibility to the place. We don’t even share a religion, not that I’m a religious man
Nik Jewell
6 months ago
At last, an article I largely agree with and endorse. Thank you, Aris Roussinos.
Just one question. I am a critic of wokeness, gender ideology and Net Zero. I wasn’t as critical at the time of Covid restrictions as I either should have been or am now. Does that allow you to predict my views on the conflict, where I am Mary Harrington’s “fool”, somebody who understands the moral complexity of the situation and refuses to pick a side?
Nik, understanding the moral complexity of the situation does not preclude you from picking a side and it certainly doesn’t preclude you from picking a side during a particular episode.
Decontextualising this particular situation with regard to the overall situation, giving Israel the nod to do whatever it wants in response, is what I fear is about to lead to catastrophic consequences.
“Nod” or not, the Israelis will have their revenge. The alternative, to stand down and pretend it never happened, is far too dangerous for Israel. All this talk of “proportions” and “restraint” is useless. The international community should be helping the Gazans get out of the way.
There are other alternatives ..an examination of the root causes would be a good start. If justice (rather than blind revenge) is required (it is) then focusing on the guilty might be more fruitful than slaughter of the innocents..
But there are two diametrically opposed definitions of justice at work here. Now what? Would you agree that the crimes of October 7th need to be dealt with first. Or should we start back in 1948?
Deal with the appalling, heinous crimes committed on Oct 7th first.. the usual approach is to hunt down the guilty, arrest them if you can (shoot them is you can’t), try them in s court of law and, if found guilty, punish them accordingly. This system is called justice and is practiced in civilised countries.
Slaughtering thousands of defenceless women and children is the preferred method but that is a hopeless approach as it will only engender more of the same – a pointless, endless vicious cycle of death and destruction.. it simply isn’t a viable way forward.
Annihilating all 6 million Palestinians might actually end the problem but I can see a few issues with that as well.
I like the South African solution best: Truth and Reconciliation partly because it aligns with my Christian faith (the Jesus version, nott the Evangelical heresy) and partly because it is the only one that has any chance of ever working successfully.
But Hamas must be exterminated if that’s possible. The problem is there are other terrorist groups that will fill the void because there are millions of Muslim males, filled with hate, who have nothing better to do than kill anyone who is not one.
I don’t know that every member of Hamas was involved in the Oct 7th atrocities.. the usual arrangement is for the guilty to be tried and punished accordingly. It’s called justice.
Extermination is not perhaps the best term in the circumstances..
Zionists demonstrate as much (if not more) hatred as Palestinians do.. the result of the hatred in death and destruction and since Zionists kill 24 times as many Palestinians as vice versa I must conclude Zionist hatred is 24 times greater. That is a reasonable assumption, surely. I have friends in Gaza who have never (thats right, never, not once) expressed hatred for anyone, to me at least. All they want is to be allowed to live a half decent life and that is denied to them.
The same thing applies to Israelis. It’s just the conservative extremists who are hate-filled. The average Jew is educated, liberal and not even particularly religious.
It doesn’t matter what the “average Jew” is, whatever that may mean. What matters is that Israel, as a nation state, has routinely subjugated a significant minority of its population, based on ethno-religious distinctions. There will be no peace in Palestine until there is a 2 state solution, supported politically and financially, by the West and middle-eastern countries.
Nope.. he was poisoned by Mosad and Hamas was fashioned out of the Muslim Brotherhood (by Israel! )..to counter the PLO and thereby scupper the impending 2 state solution.. Netanyahu supports Hamas via Qatar.. it’s the big picture that counts.. Israeli expansion and Palestinian genocide. Hamas caused it, conveniently for Israel since it is now their ‘justification’ for the genocide! Why do you think Israel ignored Egyptian warnings??
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Well, that does seem a bit complex and prone to unforeseen developments. But Ha’aretz does claim Bibi sent envoys to Qatar last year to urge them to continue their funding of Hamas. When you look at past false flag operations, the clear strategic goal and cui bono, I wouldn’t completely rule it out. It does seem bizarre that on the 50th anniversary of the Ramadan War, the IDF managed to be caught completely off guard (again!) and apparently took up to eight hours to get troops into the line.
Because the terms he was offered were too poor. It’s a negotiation: it’s no good blaming one side, when the result is ‘no sale’. ISTM, judging by the conduct of Israel over the past 20 years, that the Israeli State never wanted a deal anyway: with the Egyptian army on Washington’s payroll, they reckoned they could slowly but steadily take whatever territory they wanted anyway, with no need for any concessions – let alone Palestinian statehood – and there’d be nothing anyone could or would do about it.
I’ve seen the evidence of Zionist hatred over and over and over again, incessant, brutal and heartless. Actually if you switch on your TV you’ll see quite persuasive evidence of that hatred in action.. 3,500 innocent people slaughtered in their homes, schools, mosques and hospitals (22 hospitals attacked by the IDF, maybe only 21 though, we’re not sure, yet).. and not a Hamas terrorist among them.. they are underground in their tunnels..
The Zionists know it’s women and children being slaughtered by hundreds of bombs but they’re quite happy to see Palestinian children blown to pieces.. you think not? You don’t know them then. Of course many are not quite that bad and a tiny minority are good decent people who call out their wicked, evil countrymen risking their lives in doing so.. check out B’tSelem.. astonishing courage!
Any observations, then, on the Irgun and Palmach terrorist groups, which were incorporated into the IDF in 1948; and on Lehi, a.k.a. the Stern Gang, two of whose peace envoy-murdering, British soldier-hanging, policeman-shooting, village burning, ethnic cleansing, King David Hotel-bombing leaders, Begin and Shamir, went on to serve as PMs of Israel?
I assume you would similarly class both, and their thousands of followers, as ‘males, filled with hate’ who ‘had nothing better to do than kill anyone’ who was not Jewish? Those characters weren’t ‘exterminated’, of course. No. They got the State they wanted – which, a generation on, showed its utter revulsion for terrorism by, er, holding a State Funeral for the (exhumed) murderers of Lord Moyne and awarding all surviving members of the Stern Gang the ‘Lehi Medal’.
Trouble is, the Israeli government doesn’t want ‘justice’. It wants to stay in power, avoid jail, get more US arms and tax dollars, smash Gaza to powder and seize the sections of the West Bank it hasn’t already settled for living space. For the past 15-20 years, it’s been clear that Israel hasn’t wanted a peaceful settlement while it could gradually get what it wanted through blockade, heavy-handed military occupation and steady, plot-by-plot settler land seizures. ‘The facts on the ground.’
I didn’t read the piece, but if la Harrington thinks that then the fool is her, not you.
Does she think she’s watching a Hollywood movie here? Lord of the Rings IV, or something? The western centrist and supposedly rightist press have been labouring under the same delusion with Ukraine.
Tyler Durden
6 months ago
It might be under the guise of transhuman body politics and, indeed, biopolitical interventions, but the trend I sense over the past 10 years is post-Marxist politics moving towards the Fascist end of the spectrum
This month saw new extremities with leftist support for Islamofascism. It’s the bizarre revolution of sensibilities come to full fruition where the world of Amis’ intellectual generation has been turned completely on its head.
Mass tech participation, multiculturalism and the fostering of extreme cultural politics within universities may be the main drivers of this phenomenon of extreme inversion.
Interestingly, 64% of Palestinians refugees admitted into Denmark since 1996 have since managed to accrue a criminal record there………we do NOT need to be importing more of these things into our country…….when will people here realise the awful thing we have done already ????…….probably in about 20 years time when they ( The Muslim refugees) are running things and the white Christian minority we will have become are being oppressed in our own country to levels unimaginable now………..
Sounds like chickens coming home to roost then.. justice at last, eh?
Katharine Eyre
6 months ago
Very good article. Again, a few sentences I had to read 3 times to understand (seems to be a feature of Aris’s writing…) but the thoughts presented were highly interesting.
I struggle to get my head around what might be coming at us in the coming months and years.
9 times out of 10, it’s worth pursuing Aris’s articles despite having to hack through the odd linguistic thicket.
Mary Harrington’s writing never “snags” in this way.
Yes, I gave up, can’t struggle today. Mary Harrington is so readable, or as I like to say user-friendly.
Dougie Undersub
6 months ago
A thoughtful article but the author is deluding himself by believing that not all those Palestinian flags being waved in British streets indicate support for Hamas and support, too, for eradicating Israel and Israelis from the face of the earth.
It is, of course, very unfortunate for civilians in Gaza (and I’ve got no idea how deep the support for Hamas is amongst the general population) that Hamas controls the Gaza Strip. It turned out to be very unfortunate for ordinary Germans that Adolf came to control Germany. But Hamas must be defeated just as Adolf had to be. Iran poses an existential threat to our way of life and the battle against Hamas, and Hezbollah to follow shortly, are essential preludes to neutralising the Iranian threat.
As with the threat from Putin’s Russia, far better to combat this by proxy and at a distance, than on the streets of Britain, although some spillover is inevitable and must be prepared for.
Alan Hill
6 months ago
“……Instead, the priority for the British government ought to be to ensure the safety of the British population as a whole…..”
Absolutely, but is our government up to the job ? Current events re illegal immigration would suggest not and the thought of a Palestinian Jewish conflict on British soil doesn’t bear thinking about.
If the safety of the British population was truly a priority for the British government, then it would not consistently reduce the effectiveness of our armed forces and law enforcement (and I mean the ancient laws, the ones which protect body and property and, for that matter, unobstructed use of the King’s highways).
It wouldn’t last long, the Jewish community would be erased and I suspect the left would cheer and Government would hold an Inquiry.
The attitude to the ‘Jewesses’ who were Labour MPs in Liverpool from Corbyn’s Labour supporters was beyond belief, and they weren’t Palestinians.
Perhaps parachuting in an outsider, from a middle-class, London upbringing, into a Liverpool seat, was the reason for the attitude against Luciana Berger, don’t you think?
Steven Carr
6 months ago
The population of Israel is smaller than the population of Cairo, but there are people in the world who want everywhere to be Judenrein.
Saul D
6 months ago
We all see the imminent storm, brooding, full of unstoppable destruction and wrath. What we need is the break in the clouds and the shaft of revelatory light. Israel doesn’t need to make the war. It still needs the agreements with the Arab nations under the Abraham Accords – that sideline the Palestinian hardliners. To shake the Arab world would be just what Hamas wants. If the Saudis use the principles and culmination of those accords to negotiate a stand-down with Israel, the hardliners will not win, the attack need not happen and the idiocy of taunting a bear may change the political situation in Palestine. But it needs an unexpected miracle from what we see.
Perhaps what is needed is a switch from Palestinians to Iran’s leadership. https://twitter.com/glnoronha/status/1711101913544966265
A counter revolution in Iran would appear to have a potential ground swell of support. IF NATO could do it in Ukraine, why not Iran? Would it not be better to sort Iran out now, before they get hold of a Nuke?
Waffles
6 months ago
Enoch Powell was condemned for his rivers of blood speech, warning about multiculturalism. Maybe he was right but early?
Hardly anyone today would comprehend his classical references.
Prashant Kotak
6 months ago
Fine piece, sophisticated reflections.
Ray Andrews
6 months ago
“Such a reading would easily lend itself to conservative fears over unchecked immigration”
One might have thought so, but remember that the Victim Narrative trumps all other narratives. The Israelis are largely white Europeans and therefore automatically the Oppressors, the Palestinians are POC, therefore automatically the Victims. It’s that simple.
Richard Ross
6 months ago
“The root of the Palestinian tragedy was, after all, the influx of Jewish migrants….” – No, the root of the Palestinian tragedy was Islam, and more particularly the Ottoman Empire, which both destroyed the culture and civilization that had grown there for many centuries, and replaced it with nothing of value. Read Mark Twain’s description of “Palestine” in 1881 and marvel at what the Jews were able to make of the wasteland that Islam had created.
That rather goes for nearly everywhere that Islam settled.
A pastoral culture NOT an agricultural one, its goat herds all but destroyed what had been Roman North Africa. Mesopotamia and Egypt only survived thanks to the fecundity of their respective river systems.
All in all, the advent of Islam was a dark for Civilisation.
Islam is not into creating it’s into destroying. Judaism is creative. One just has to ask oneself where would I rather live Israel or Palestine to see the difference.
Daniel Lee
6 months ago
“…our social media-fuelled culture war.”
No, social media reflects the very real war between competing cultures that was being fought long before Facebook, Twitter, etc. were launched. The Archie Bunker slander on ordinary working men was among the first shots fired.
It’s a negative feedback loop: the more A, then the more B. so the more A etc. Doesn’t matter who started it. You’ll never know (“Why are you staring at me?” “I’m not staring at you; you’re staring at me.”) and even if you did, that knowledge won’t enable you to design an effective intervention.
The fact is multiculturalism DOES NOT WORK. History has shown time and time again that more diversity societies have less social cohesion. We are literally importing instability on to our shores.
Ever hear of a place called the United States? Only 5% are indigenous; the rest are the greatest multicultural mix on Planet Earth. There is unrest but its not about multiculturalism is it?
Abe Stamm
6 months ago
The murder of this American rabbi was inevitable [see below NY Post article]. It happened in the shadow of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s congressional district, which includes a portion of Detroit. A large number of her constituency is Muslim and pro-Palestinian…and since October 7th she’s been spewing anti-Israeli and antisemitic rhetoric from her bully pulpit. She should be held to account. Tlaib says she’s a Palestinian refugee, but she was born in Detroit. Tlaib says her mother and grandmother are Palestinian refugees, but they were born in Ramallah, Jordan and the British Mandate of Palestine (which has no relationship to so called ‘ Palestinians’), respectively.
This murdering of innocent Jews can potentially happen in all of those civilized cities that have been embracing pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist hate speech, like “Gas the Jews”, and displaying Nazi swastikas, at their public gatherings. https://nypost.com/2023/10/21/detroit-synagogue-leader-samantha-woll-fatally-stabbed/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news_alert&utm_content=20231021?&utm_source=sailthru&lctg=635fd76b3273b2b3b003d010&utm_term=NYP%20-%20News%20Alerts
This happened in Germany for God’s sake!
I just heard about this. It’s very, very scary. They’re bloody fanatics. Since It’s their own self-hatred projected onto an easy scapegoat, it’s beyond reason. They don’t understand it’s their unconscious that’s driving them.
I believe the suffering of Palestinians may also have a part in it.. bombing of homes, schools, mosques and hospitals tends to have that effect. When children mutilated horribly by such slaughter die in agony in their families’ arms that can cause hatred. When their children are imprisoned without trial, tortured and sexually abused that too can cause hatred. When farmers are driven from their land and used for target practice or burned alive in their homes by illegal settlers that too, sometimes upsets people. It’s odd isn’t it?
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As you know perfectly well the death of Palestinian children is of zero interest to anyone except poss8bly Zionists who treat us as a cause for celebration.
Yes, shocking! ..but please don’t use the term anti Semitic when talking about Palestinian hatred of their Zionist oppressors.. Palestinians ARE a Semitic people.. most Israelis are ex Poles, Russians, Germans and Americans!
Perry de Havilland
6 months ago
Waving the Palestinian flag is not glorification of terrorism in itself
Context is everything. You’d have to be wilfully blind not to interpret waving the Palestinian flag immediately after the slaughter of 1300 mostly civilian Israelis to think this was not a call for more of the same.
Sadly, terrorism gets attention. Quiet peace negotiations get urinated upon.. politically, financial and militarily powerful overlords tend to ignore or manipulate moderates and peacemakers.. The UN is a peacemaking organisation and look at how it is mocked and ignored by the powerful nations! Rules are flaunted, the law is ignored, human rights are sacrificed. Only terrorism gets results.
Those in power will, engage in gerrymandering, oppression, apartheid, land theft, exploitation of resources and even murder, torture and rampant imprisonment without trial of children FGS!.
The victims eventually realise they are being mocked and laughed at, in their efforts to get justice; exasperation and hatred fester and eventually explode into dreadful, vile, savage violence and mayhem.. you can only kick a dog so much before it turns on you!
David Lindsay
6 months ago
Even in what is generally a good article, you have to pay your membership dues to the British commentariat, don’t you?
the elderly communist’s sixth-form anti-imperialism
Being right about every war of the last 25 years, at least.
… the antisemitism scandal which brought Corbyn down
An utterly discredited load of old cobblers. The most basic of checks would have confirmed that the wreath, and the mural, and the “not understanding English irony”, and the “friends from Hamas and Hezbollah”, and all the rest of those, were total rubbish, as everyone who did bother to check did find out. The EHRC found precisely two cases in its entire report, neither of them involved Jeremy Corbyn or indeed anyone who was still a member of the Labour Party, and even in relation to those, it was found in court that it was, “arguable that the Defendant [the EHRC] made an error of law in relation to Article 10 ECHR.” Rather than defend that at judicial review, the EHRC recently settled with Ken Livingstone, whom it had continued to pursue despite knowing that he had Alzheimer’s disease, and with Pam Bromley. As a matter of record, “Labour anti-Semitism” never existed.
Yet it continues to be screamed at anyone who opposes the two-child benefit cap, or who supports the Triple Lock, or who wants to ban fire and rehire, or who wants to ban zero hours contracts, or who wants to implement John Smith’s signature policy that employment rights should begin with employment and apply regardless of the number of hours worked, or who wants to increase statutory sick pay, or who wants to renationalise the railways, or who wants to renationalise the utilities, or who wants to renationalise the Royal Mail, or who opposes the privatisation of the NHS in England, or who supports free prescriptions in England, or who supports free eye and dental check-ups in England, or who supports free hospital carparking in England, or who supports universal free school meals in England outside London, or who supports the universal free broadband that the whole of Europe and the Old Commonwealth apart from England (but very probably including London) will have in 10 years’ time and which may even exist in the United States by then, or who supports the taxation of unearned income at the same rate as earnings, or who thinks that taxation ought not in principle to be voluntary for the rich, or who supports democratic political control over monetary policy, or who opposes the war machine, including its attacks on civil liberties at home. All this, and the Online Safety Bill is about to become law.
A word soup in which the writer tries to be too clever by half whilst revelling what he sees as a story of continuous British failure. I think I would call that simplistic nonsense – but one certain correction Britain didn’t import any meaningful quantities of gas from Russia
I tried to follow some of the hyperlinks but they were not very illuminating.
Christian Moon
6 months ago
Are there any other liberal enthusiasts of cultural diversity who are rather looking forward to witnessing the enactment of biblical retribution of a sort that is wholly uncontaminated by any of our own Christian sentiment.
If you’re a Nietzschean vitalist not everything about the Bronze Age was worse.
R Wright
6 months ago
An excellent and measured article. I am glad I am not the only one tired of the boomer right’s slavish adherence to a country ruled by the descendants of Irgun, which murdered British people while we were fighting the Second World War. It also rightfully skewers the hypocritical that left that adores any nationalism but their own nation’s.
None of this is our problem anymore and the best thing we can do is leave Israelis and Palestinians to fight their generational struggle as far away from us as possible.
But it wasn’t Irgun who governed to the new Israeli state, it was the Palmach. Netenyahu’s extreme right wing coalition is an anomaly in Israeli politics, entirely due to Bibi’s desire to avoid going to prison on a number of corruption based charges. The massive demonstrations by everyday Israelis on the right, left and middle, for the last 9 months is a clear indication that this coalition does not have broad support and will eventually fall, sooner rather than later. In the end, all of the Western, so called “civilised” countries will have to get their heads out of the sand and realise that an existential fight must be fought if they want their values and ethics to survive the insidious infiltration of militant Islam.
The ‘Civilized’ Western countries are heading for economic collapse if they continue on the road to Net Zero. Arguably we are already well on the way to societal collapse, because virtually every organisation that has power over us is Woke.
The only way to solve it won’t be a GE – it will probably be riots on the streets. The rate Net Zero insanity is going to hollow out whole industries is going to shock many. 27 years to Absolute Zero according to the FIRES report. IF it is pursued, then it will be many fewer years to riots.
As Doomberg pointed out
“The path from abundance to starvation includes riot.”
Try writing to your MP about that and see the drivel you get back. We are ruled by a scientifically illiterate bunch who appear to think Manna is going to fall from heaven and keep us all fed.
Yes, Israel has had 37 governments, with a broad range of representative leadership, since the inception of the Knesset in 1948. The Netanyahu government will eventually end, and whatever new government is created, whatever coalition is formed in this parliamentary democracy, rest assured that all 50 Muslim dominated nations will scorn it. That’s a given. And, here’s another guarantee, the United Nations will sanction whatever coalition government replaces the present Netanyahu government, led by the majority Likud party.
The flip side of the demonstrations against the Netanyahu government is that they were ALLOWED! No teargas, no water guns, no batons crushing protester skulls…because Israel is a true democracy that allows disparate political views to be publicly demonstrated by the electorate. Try publicly demonstrating against the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, GAZA et. al. Just look at the short-lived Arab Spring, where the slogan “the people want to bring down the regime” was shoved back down the protesters throats.
‘The flip side of the demonstrations against the Netanyahu government is that they were ALLOWED! No teargas, no water guns, no batons crushing protester skulls…’
The reason mass demonstrations were allowed in Israel, chummy, is that they were by Jewish Israelis representing half the Jewish population – and also, half (if not more) of the heavily reservist-dependent IDF. The riot police themselves would have been similarly split. It wouldn’t be much of a ‘Jewish State’ if one half of it started trying to beat and arrest the other half. A mass demo by Israeli Arabs would get very different treatment. And Palestinians who make peaceful protests even 100m inside the security fences behind which they are penned very frequently end up shot dead.
Given that Netanyahu is the devil you know and his hard line approach to Hamas & Hezbollah must surely resonate with the electorate, isn’t his position strengthened as long as there is an existential threat to Israel?
There was of course a bit of a civil war around the end of the Mandate period between the various Zionist armed factions. It’s a bit reminiscent of the Irish Free State vs IRA conflict in 1920-21 and the continuing Fianna Foyle/ Fine Gael split,
One minor Israeli militia group, for instance, was Stalin-backed, while another – the Lehi/ Stern Gang assassins – had originally been armed and funded by Goebbels. The Palmach had a reputation as the best-trained, best disciplined fighters of them all: but they were also more or less terrorists, guilty of murderous attacks against Mandate police stations and of bombing and burning Arab villages to drive the native population away and really, not much more civilised in their conduct than Hamas.
They’re sensible enough not to want one – or to waste billions of their (vanishing) money on it, as our State does, in a pitiful attempt to pretend it is still a Great Power.
Or we could take the more mature view that there is no such thing as ‘human rights’ ordained by nature and realise that such so called rights are cultural memes produced by various Western societies. Then we could perhaps realise that this means we therefore cannot extend these so called rights beyond the boundaries of the societies in which they were formed.
Paul Beardsell
6 months ago
A lot of sense written in this article!
AJ Mac
6 months ago
Nearly all Major World Events now serve as a proxy for our kulturkampf. It’s true that the Hamas atrocities of 10/7, the hostages, and the percentage of more-or-less innocent Gaza residents who may become pawns to the retaliatory slaughter represent a heightened situation in every sense.
But I’m 90% convinced that Mr. Roussinos could only use his obvious correllary metrics to predict someone’s stance on the war with about 88% accuracy. And those would be the public stances. I certainly hope (and partly believe) that many more people hold–or are at least willing to a “entertain”–more nuanced views than the camp headcounts of our culture war would suggest. Under horrible circumstances, I’m learning more by the day about this conflict and region which has been fraught to the marrow since so-called Biblical Times, if not longer. But I’m gonna put aside a bad habit of mine by not pretending to any expert knowledge or special insight here.
I do find that the most well-informed and first-hand knowledgeable commentators on this current global shockwave tend to express views that are not uniform or absolute. A lot of worthwhile, instructive analysis in this essay.
Dr. G Marzanna
6 months ago
I didn’t go to the march and am absolutely sitting this one out as it doesn’t concern me. But I know people who did go and I disagree that “many of the attendees at the protests — … — openly or privately support Hamas.” Some probably do but the vast majority are driven by sympathy for the people affected by oppression
I don’t think that the problem is soluble since it’s funded and supported to continue by so many expat and other players. If Israel and Palestines leaders had to sort it out in their own, they’d soon make an agreement.
Indeed, before 1945 all three religions lived side by side in relative harmony under their civilised Ottoman rulers.. Then the British arrived….
Steve Hall
6 months ago
The first major Islamist terror attack indiscriminately targeting British citizens was in 2005, two years after the illegal invasion of Iraq. Since then, Islamic terrorism has become a serious problem, although not yet of the scale or frequency of the IRA attacks in previous decades. Zionist terrorism was at its peak in British Mandate Palestine in the 1930s and 40s, which coincides with the attempted genocide of Jews in Nazi Germany. Israel has been accused of state terrorism ever since, as was Britain during its imperial times. For anyone willing to put visceral prejudices aside, there’s an obvious causal pattern here, complex in its detail but quite simple in its principles.
Such a brilliant, nuanced piece that finally redresses the entirely one sided coverage in Unherd so far.
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Aris, the reason my grandparents and their contemporaries took the Arabs’ side was anti-semitism, I’m afraid. I imagine your grandparents lived elsewhere so wouldn’t expect you to know how virulent it was here in their generation.
I think we understand this much better now. Plus we also have a better understanding of the true nature of Islamic imperialism. Hence why most thoughtful people not subject to fashionable trends support Israel. We know the Jews are the canaries in the coalmine.
Gordon Black
6 months ago
“Such is the power of tribalism …” – Yes, my straw poll here in Scotland is still at 100%: what a predictive tool!
Mike K
6 months ago
Those that bless thee will I bless
Those that curse thee will I curse
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy’. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” -Jesus of Nazareth: Galilee, Israel under Roman rule, Palestine.
Funny stuff, to many of us.
He was certainly some combination of fortunate and skilled to survive three years of opening his prophetic mouth so wide and loud.
Gautama Siddhartha, nicknamed Buddha , managed to last about 40 years. Granted, his inspired message, as preserved, was less disruptive and confrontational toward the earthly powers that were be.
A life-time of reading history suggests to me that it’s far too late for appeals to anyone’s better angels.
If we wanted to be helpful we would be talking about the disposition of the innocent Gazans. Where will they be in April ’24? In 2030? How can we enable good lives for their children?
The Israelis will look out for themselves. They’ve been doing a good job of it for many decades.
People are more likely to look out for themselves when it is blindingly obvious that no-one is looking out for them. It’s a case of ‘do unto others what they are trying to do unto you’. A very Arabic outlook, of course , utterly foreign to christian values. Of course, Jewish civilisation has the excuse of being pre-christian. Islam is post-christian, but uncivilised.
TheElephant InTheRoom
6 months ago
Gaza is now a sh*t show on the global stage. Take heed.
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
6 months ago
I am no fan of Liverpudlians, but you cannot by any stretch call what happened in Liverpool in 1947 a pogrom
Peter Joy
6 months ago
At last! A rational, even-handed, level-headed, decent, perceptive, realistic, original and HONEST piece about the current Gaza-Israel conflict, by a well-informed, intelligent writer. Mr Roussinos puts to shame the writers of the some of the predictable tribal dreck UnHerd has otherwise served up on this subject.
He’s right about the 99% thing too. I seem to be in the 1%. To my dismay, writers with whom I agree wholeheartedly on Covid, Nut Zero and Woke have come out with blind, dismissive, pig-ignorant, moralistic rant-pieces against the Palestinians (the native people of their own country!), who do indeed seem to have become a proxy for said writers’ detestation of mass Muslim migration to Europe: even though a. that is a completely different issue and b. in Palestine, it is the Israelis who are the unwanted mass-migrants and dispossessors.
Vern Hughes
6 months ago
As a reader of UnHerd since its inception, I once thought Aris Roussinos had something to say. But in the last 12 months I have struggled to know what it is. On reading this article, I have no idea what it is.
The only strong theme to emerge from recent UnHerd articles on Israel-Palestine seems to be a curious diatribe against ‘centrists’. What the hell does this mean? The only morally legitimate position one can take on the Zionist-Hamas war is surely to say “They are both mad!”. If this is ‘centrist’ then let a thousand centrist voices be heard in every street. The only solution, surely, is that moderate Israelis and moderate Palestinians must be enabled to live together, with equal rights, free from the extremists on either side of them. This indeed is centrism – and it is desperately needed. The smart-alec pooh-poohing of centrists may have some validity in the UK on a bad day, and perhaps in France on alternative weeks. But in Israel-Palestine it is the Voice of Heaven..
Tragically, the major powers support the extremists as pawns in their diabolical, wicked, geopolitical games.. If those powers supported the moderates the problem might have been sorted out 70 years ago.. but no, Britain backed Irgun, Netanyahu backed Hamas, the US backed Islamic Jihad, Al Qaida and ISIS.. all to swell the coffers of the military industrial complex, cull unwanted populations and bring uncooperative governments to their knees.
Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa
6 months ago
The foreign policy of a country is like any other policy enacted and pursued by a State, in that it is ultimately the outcome of the same political process that gives rise to other policies. There is nothing strange or even wrong about this, it is merely inevitable. This is just as true in modern States (democratic or not) as it was in the past and will continue to be in the future.
The United Kingdom willingly and deliberately disengaged from what was then Mandate Palestine and many other regions in the world. The governments of the time had their own reasons, and the United States picked up some of that slack (also picked up France’s slack, by the way), with varying success, and I cannot see why anyone would ask Britain to do anything other than offering every support short of help. Even if the British were willing offer help, they are really not in an economic or military position to do so.
Xenofon Papadopoulos
6 months ago
The comments on this otherwise good and nuanced article have degenerated into rampant islamophobia. Every religion, including Christianity and Islam, have historically contained several conflicting schools of thought with vastly different interpretations of the “original teachings”. They have also all been used to both elevate our consciousness and justify attrocities.
On more practical grounds, Islam isn’t going anywhere so we have to learn to live with it, ideological attitude vs multiculturalism aside. This article alludes to a much bigger problem, our existential energy dependency on countries with opposing interests. Take Saudi Arabia, a country that breeds Wahhabism, the most radical form of Islam, which is what most of the comments here seem to think of when they speak of Islam – one of our main dependencies for energy and investment. Or Russia and Turkey, which control the supply of almost all natural gas to Europe. Even if you believe in a Green Revolution, in practice the industry is fully dependent on China. Even the US, our closest ally, is one election away from withdrawing even its nominal support. These are much more serious issues than demonstration in London, and so far completely outside any political debate.
Andrew Boughton
6 months ago
My goodness! This is the first accurate historical summation of the whole conflict and interleaved, no less, with profoundly astute observations on the reverse-polarization, the inversion, of so many of our own political ideologies. One of the most astute and insightful essays I have ever read on this or any other political subjects, thank you.
It is of note that whenever UK is forced to give it’s colonies or mandates their independence, they almost always leave 2 or more ethnic/religious factions fighting for dominance. The worst example is India sucked dry, leading to angry starving peoples fighting for scraps in a huge illogically created country. As for the Holy Land, didn’t GB promise it separately to the Jews And the Arabs? Oversight or malicious intent? If Europe felt guilty about the Holocaust in which numerous countries participated (also for the pogroms, ghettos, Inquisition, etc), shouldn’t they have given them a homeland in Europe instead of making the Palistinians, who had done nothing to the Jews, pay for Europe’s Abominations?
Charles Stanhope
6 months ago
This fine essay should be read with a glass of the finest U-boat fuel in one hand, and a smoked salmon sandwich in the other, whilst listening to Wagner’s ‘Trauermusik’,*composed for the funeral of Carl Maria (von) Weber.
(*Preferably the organ recital version played by Marie-Andrée Morisset-Balier, on the grand organ of the incomparable Abbey of Saint-Ouen.)
For me, certain facts are decisive and not “arbitrary” at all: The Arabs comprise only about 6% of the global population – yet their actions are responsible for over 40% of the global refugees and also over 50% of global terrorist attacks prior to this month’s events have been Jihadist in origin. Also, medical studies have shown that Palestinian women – and by extension any women forced to wear excessive covering in public – are severely deficient in Vit D while their brothers show no such deficiency.
How can any sane, civilized humanist – most especially one who values the health of women – support these outcomes under any circumstance? Add radical theology and you get – Hamas, ISIS and Hezbollah et al. We must support Israel because this is not just a regional conflict, this is secular civilization’s existential fight.
Are you confusing Arab with Muslim? It’s an east mistake to make but only if you’re a racist!
Rob C
6 months ago
The only way to solve the conflict is to resettle all Palestinians (or Israelis, doesn’t matter) in Western nations of their choice. Perhaps even pay them to move. But not many will support this.
Wyoming is also empty and the Mormons are next door in Utah.. perfect! S8nce Palestine b3longs to the Palestinians and since God’s Diaspora hasn’t been rescinded (by God) clearly its the people known as israel that should be relocated.. Wyoming can be renamed Zioning!
William Brand
6 months ago
We must find a place to put the Palestinian people. That place must not border Israel. Either dump. them on Iran as punishment for their support of terrorism or central Asia or Africa. African government is corrupt enough to allow us to buy the land out from under its people to place the Palestinians there. The attractive nuisance of the holy places can be delt with by stuffing them with radioactive waste. so no one can enter.
Eh, you’re sick mate.. you need help!bI suggest an exorcist..
Last edited 6 months ago by Liam O'Mahony
0 0
6 months ago
‘ There is nothing, beyond vague expressions of encouragement for both sides to respect human rights, that Britain can or should offer.’
Why such cynicism – why shouldn’t Britain (do we mean the British government here) be robust in its encouragement to respect human rights. That surely could be a minimum rather than ‘vague’ expressions.
Especially given a recent yougov poll that suggests 76% of UK adults think there probably should be a ceasefire and only 8% think their probably or definitely shouldn’t be a ceasefire. The rest not knowing. This despite the relentless progaganda in mainstream media supporting Israel’s so called ‘right to self-defence’.
Self defence meaning that under the guise of defeating hamas war crimes will inevitably lead to loss of life from disease etc (as a result of forced moving of 1 million people (half of them children) and denial of water, fuel and aid. Something condemned when done in Ukraine but not now. Almost certainly the right wing Israeli government would like a permanent solution of ethnic cleansing as they could not tolerate a one-state solution which would risk the Jewish majority and they have destroyed the two state solution with the extent of the settlements on the west bank. So they have only a nihilst solution.
There are risks of attacks in the UK. Similar fears of the Irish were to be seen throughout the 30 year armed conflict in Ireland – and the failure to take a human rights stance in the UK only added to the problem. If we stand for robust human rights then the risk of attacks is diminished. To be seen to be hypocritical and weasel worded is the worst thing our politicians can do. The MSM with its relentless baiting of poltiticians when expressing concern for Palestinians has much to answer for.
By creating a just negotiated peace – the admitted purpose of Israel creating the Gaza siege back in 2005 (and allowing the endless settlements on the West Bank) was to freeze the peace process. The Israeli’s have never wanted a two state solution – if they had they could have achieved it.
Self-defence, according to the Geneva convention, should be proportionate not deliberately target civilians – 4000 dead already. It also means not depriving them of water and ethnically cleansing sections of the territory – one million on the move (half of them children) with no safe place to go – and you mock at our humane sentiments. We can’t believe the inhumanity of those who support Israel uncritically and never condemn the country for war crimes.
Curiously the people you defend seem to have a penchant for attacking women and children. How Manchester and the Ariane Grande concert and all those young girls attending it had anything to do with Israel has yet to be explained. Surely even the bloke who did it understood Manchester isn’t in Israel?
j watson
6 months ago
Yes a good read.
I think like alot of commentators Author misses that Bibi deliberately allowed Hamas to grow in Gaza to split the Palestinian leadership and prevent the two state option he opposes. Israeli’s are becoming more aware of how he and others actually stoked this and then failed to prepare. His time is thus limited.
As regards Britain’s role, be in no doubt we are already an integral part of the eastern Med force deterring Hezbollah and the Theocrats in Tehran. We’ll have moved our launch platforms into strike range in close unison with the US, and if a broader conflict triggered we’ll use them and Parliament will sanction. Of course ground forces will not be deployed. Whatever the failures of recent Israeli leadership it remains the one democracy in the region. Deterrence will probably be sufficient and let’s hope so.
As regards the broader points about multi-culturalism – Britain remains a success story. This means our basic values come with the ‘deal’ too. You can hold distasteful views but if we catch you enacting them the force of the Law will be applied against you. That’s how it should be. As generations change the rock of British values remains solid, albeit that does not include some of the legacy values we too needed to shed ourselves.
Israeli domestic politics are far too complex and nuanced for the UK press. These days, retailing us an approved chapter of the ongoing Manichean struggle of Good v Evilitude is about their limit – and if Israel, as they tell us, is On the Side of Good, well, Prime Minister Netanyahu must be too. They wouldn’t want to confuse us.
No, the law is not applied equally by the police, they have moved on Jewish people promoting the hostages (CAA) while letting pro-palestinians run riot because they’re afraid of them. They have moved on Christians at speakers corner while letting Muslims intimidate them. They forced an autistic boy who accidentally dropped a Koran to apologise. They ignored BLM protestor criminality whilst attacking women marching for Sarah Everard and anti lockdown protestors. This is an extremely complacent and unrealistic comment that in no way reflects what is happening.
Complacency is FAR too generous, dereliction of duty far more like, if not downright conspiracy/treason.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), London, for one, has much to answer for.
Incidentally does anyone know who ‘judges the CPS’ as Juvenal might have put it?
The forthcoming prosecution of the Tory MP, Colonel Bob Stewart, DSO being a case in point.
The great success story for the left wing clique boosted under Blair has been the creation or recruitment to agencies and institutions staffed by fellow thinkers, in a position to pass judgement on them or their enemies.
Upvote for your first par, downs for the latter two. Tunisia is a parliamentary democracy, for what that’s worth and so, for that matter, is Iran. Unlike ‘our steadfast allies’, the brutal Gulf autocracies Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Never mind: just chant ‘celebrate our shared values’ 50 times. It worked for Gordon Brown.
Liam O'Mahony
6 months ago
Two points, if I may, or indeed whether I may or not:
1) The writer’s comment: “…as the Israelis cannot accept the risk of occasional murderous rampages from Palestinian territory, nor will the Palestinians accept that they must be driven from what remains of their land” …seems to imply: one side engages in mayhem, murder and torture while the other side merely engages in land theft? Really? No indiscriminate bombings by the land thieves? No killing of innocents at a rate of 24:1? No imprisonment of children and subjecting them to torture and sexual abuse? No “drying out”? No “mowing the lawn”? No target practice on ordinary, peaceful Palestinians in the West Bank? ….How nice!
2) Americans seem to be more sympathetic to Palestine victims than the British? Quelle surprise! For once, the original cause is British incompetence and cowardice rather than American! I guess they gotta take it when it comes cuz it comes rarely! The US IS however culpable in that it
A) supplies the IDF with most* of its murderous equipment and
B) carte blanche to commit genocide
…with *GB playing its part ie doing the same albeit to a lesser extent that the US’s $6bn input.
Multiculturalism is not a complete failure.
Christian, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, Judaism, Taoism, and Confucianism all seem to get along in Britain without much trouble.
The one outlier of course is Islam, which seeks to convert or destroy all other religions.
Don’t forget the Woke religion, whose zealots are also a problem.
A problem, yes, but at least they are not killing people, yet.
GIve them time and power then see what they do. I’m wondering whether to seek out the odds on J K Rowling serving repeated 2 year sentences once Labour get in.
Exactly. It appears that we will have to believe Starmer’s lie if we want to stay out of prison. I understand that the woke gloabist’s richest organisation is backing labour. Has he a right to be affilated with such a massive WEF supporter? this could be dangerous for Britain. It is what he is not saying in their convention which gives an inkling of where he is at.
They are aligned with the Woke, or is it the other way around. Nevertheless they are leading to deaths.
They are killing young gender confused kids
It appears that the grooming of the nation’s children will not stop under Starmer but get worse as he does not give women the dignity of representing an unalterable sex. I have lapsed from the Tories because of their inaction on this but Starmer looks like he will increase the danger in schools.
Yet. Mainly because the adherents are all either female or have arms like noodles.
Nazis were not killing people in 1923, they started a decade later
The Transatollahs, you mean?
That’s the worst one
You forget to mention the West Indians who might have cause for serious complaint, but generally don’t whine and whinge and shout nonsensical theocratic obscenities unlike the demented followers of the so called prophet.
An omission…
And Rastafarianism.
Or any of the isms.
The first Zionists were Christians looking to hasten the rapture, meaning pure Christians would go to heaven while Jews and Moslems to hell.
Uh oh.. Fatwah on Charlie I fear!
Yes, it takes courage to speak out against Muslims, which says a lot about them right there.
Every religion has its extremists.. a tiny but vocal minority.. they occur also in Judaism and Christianity..
How large is the minority ?What percentage supports violence against Israel ?
Away from a country with the rule of law the extremism is far higher than a vocal minority.
Opinion polling shows consistently that average Muslims are very much closer to what most people would recognize as the violent extremes. Orthodox Jews or Christians do not order Fatwahs. The sanctity of individual life is central to those faiths – however falteringly, and however many sinful mistakes and deviations. And right now the most violent religion other than Islam, cross the west is the woke religion of the secular left
Nonsense , just analyse the lives and purported sayings of Jesus and Mohammed and consider their likely effects as role models for their followers .
Christianity was a militant religion once and the result was burnings at the stake and many genocides, often against other flavors of Christians. So, no, the difference between Christianity today and the Muslins is not largely the qualities of their prophets.
There have indeed been wars between states adhering to different types of Christianity , mainly in the 17th century .
However the difference between a warlord who believes he has been told to spread a new religion at the point of a sword and a sort of hippy figure like Jesus is absolutely fundamental to how their adherents in the modern world see themselves . How could it be otherwise ?
Should be OK. All he said was ‘demented followers of the the so called prophet…who ‘whine and whinge and shout nonsensical theocratic obscenities’.
I can’t imagine why anyone might think he was referring to the Religion of Peace.
Yes but black actual drug dealing and the gangsta culture / music which derives from it and which influences other young people is not exactly a great thing is it. Plus lots of black drug dealers convert to Islam of one kind or another . Especially in prison .
So really a true democracy would stop this? If only we British were represented by a true democracy!
I think it started to fall in Cameron’s premiership.
Yeah, like the bloody Christians!
Yes. It’s religion itself which has always been the problem. It’s divisive, which is an understatement.
Love they Neighbour, do good to them that hate you, go the extra mile – yea, I’m sure religion is really the worst.
It depends on the religion and it’s work. Jesus only taught to do good, but sometimes religion can be the enemy of God.
That C of E approach hasn’t been doing England much good lately. It’s Communism in a cassock.
Except only one religion condones terrorism today.
That is not true.. the ‘religion’ you speak of is a twisted version of Islam.. extremist, fanatics exist in every religion.. “by their works shall ye know them” …Jesus
But Arthur said only one religion “condones” terrorism. One might say even encourages it.
Tell that to the IRA and the orange loons.
Mainly one religion let’s say. I know we have the IRA and Orangemen but by their fruits you will know them, not by their words.
It seems to be the only version of Islam around though.
There’s nothing ‘twisted’ about it.
Conquest is at Islam’s heart. Its claimed founder was a warlord.
It is quite likely that the conquest *preceded* the commencement of the centuries-long process of writing its holy book.
A peaceful version of Islam?
Now that would be more of a twist.
It was spread by the sword if you read the history. Christianity was spread by the gospel and many gave their blood because of it.
The Koran took many years to be finalised and conquest was well under way when it was. We know this from the overwritten fragments preserved.
The Dome of the Rock was likely completed before the book – the sign is the interpolation of the journey on the flying horse to Jerusalem so Mahomet could ascend from the building, which otherwise would have been built with no purpose. This one of many tangles you get into when you relocate your history for strategic reasons.
Have you read K S Lal on Muslim rule in India? What about Timur the Lame?
That’s what we hear but in practice something else happens when there is opportunity. Britain is more unsafe than it has ever been but one cannot say that. But you can say what you like against christians and you will still be safe.
A key point.
Utter nonsense. The Muslims who observe a “twisted version of Islam” are the non-violent ones.
Agreed.
Can’t see what he said.
Yes indeed; however it is crucial to distinguish between man-made religions and the fundamental message of the founder which, oddly is broadly the same, viz.. Love your neighbour. Evangelicals believe to opposite.
Judaism is a little different but not very…
“The most important teaching and tenet of Judaism is that there is one God, incorporeal and eternal, who wants all people to do what is just and merciful. All people are created in the image of God and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect”
… obviously Zionists believe the complete opposite about Palestinians.
If so called Christians, Muslims are Jews followed their founders’ teachings we would all live in love and harmony, wouldn’t we? But religious nutjobs believe do the opposite.
All religions are man-made. “The founder” that’s cute!
Makes him sound so cuddly.
We know almost zip about the founder’s life in the case of Islam too.
Very little that is contemporaneous.
Way less than we know of Jesus, 600 years prior.
Such a waste of a comment. The pertinent question would be whether Islam advances the notion that “[a]ll people are created in the image of God and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect”. If it does not, well…
The most interesting thing about religion is so people can hold onto it was so much devotion practice the teachings of it not one bit
Could we have that in English please?
The founder in this case urged ethnic cleansing, procured the death of a poetess who humiliated him by being a better writer than he was, and on the death of his wife, seems to have pursued the career path of errrr, warlord.
Among other things, too many to list.
Whether these are part of the message, one can even so, convey messages by example, and it’s difficult to avoid the impression that this is not ‘broadly the same’ as other faiths.
Powell knew what was happening way back, but most were too nice to believe him. Everybody is as nice as us they thought.
I don’t trust in religion personally only a person.
Father Ted went down ok, try broadcasting Ayatollah Ted then see the difference. 😉
I could not imagine any of them being like Father Ted.
Exactly. A well-said succinct comment.
But wrong. Ask anyone who dares to speak out against the LBGQTIA++++ . Or is that a religion too?
It’s becomes one it appears. Pleading for tolerance. When given, then comes the oppression and opposition to our culture and infiltration into our schools, businesses and government. Thank you Cameron.
True, that’s the worst one, nowadays. But haven’t Christians done their fair share of slaughtering in the name of god, in the past? It’s that damn in the- name- of- god, or Allah or some other supernatural thingy, that’s the problem.
Obviously religion has been abused in the past and still is. Religion can be the enemy of God.
Nonsense. There are large populations of Muslim people you never hear about in the news but meet every day. The very successful Turkish population, which nobody has an issue with. The highly valued Egyptian doctors and engineers we benefit from. The amazing Lebanese chefs, creatives and business people. And more. Some practice Islam devoutly, more are relaxed about it while being as Muslim as I am Christian.
Open your eyes.
What percentage of the muslim population are these? If it came to the court of law would they give evidence against a fellow Muslim in favour of a Jew ? This is a simple test for any religion or political creed. Will someone tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth even if their testimony is detrimental to a person of their own creed and to the benfit of an enemy of that creed. If this is not the case, then the country is corrupt.
I will try to remember that when the next person is murdered in it’s name. Be nice if they would protest but they seem to be rather silent.
I was thinking something very similar as I was reading the piece. It’s the thing that can’t be named. I would add that Aris, I am sure, prides himself as being someone who is willing to call out the powers that be in the name of pointing out uncomfortable truths in our world. But, even he managed to avoid that one. I’m fairly sure he’s not ignorant of it.
Everyone is allowed to blaspheme Jesus but you cannot blaspheme him.
You say we get along without much trouble but that is largely because our interests do not currently conflict with the groups you mention.
Lest we forget it was not always so.The Jewish Lehi or Stern Gang staged a now forgotten bombing campaign in the UK after the last War This came after the assasination of the Colonial Secretary and Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Moyne, in Cairo in 1940. In 1947 they left a bomb in the Colonial Club on St Martin’s lane and later that year they planted an enormous bomb in the Colonial Office of Whitehall. The timer failed on that one but it would have been a bombing on the scale of the King David Hotel, but in London. Then followed an extensive letter bomb campaign which targeted the Cabinet.
Had we not ended our involvement in Palestine so precipitously in 1948 the terrorism would have continured, no doubt.
P.S.
I’m not sure the widow of Sir Michael O’Dwyer would have shared your view of the conformability of the Sikh community either, considering he was murdered by a Sikh Terrorist still lionised as a ‘freedom fighter’ in that community.
Arab colonialism and Muslim imperialism are the root causes of the Mideast conflict. Every town from the river to the sea has Hebrew roots. Muslim settlers built nothing from scratch. Once conquered by Islam must remain Muslim – that is their core belief that fuels violence and war.
As a poignant analogy, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia and later Afghanistan under similar dogmatic views: once “socialist” must stay socialist. Which in turn led to the unraveling of Soviet Russia’s geopolitical hegemony in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
But there IS violence here already. See the first cover up of a terror incident here. Watch the highly aggressive masked mobs chanting their hatred return to our streets while Jewish vigils are stopped for their protection.
Agreed, it is only a matter of time before there is yet another major ‘Islamic outrage’ on the streets of Britain, probably before Christmas in fact.
Then there will follow the usual ‘weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth’ but absolutely NOTHING will be done to address the root cause of this problem.
Short of mass repatriations, what can be done? Of course, even now, we could shut the stable door to stop future jihadis arriving (and deporting those that do so on dinghies). But beyond that, it is down to the security services to disrupt terrorist acts. Is there something they are not doing?
Anyway, Happy Trafalgar Day Charles.
Indeed, and very remiss of me NOT to mention Trafalgar!
I shall endeavour not to forget Agincourt in four days time!
It’s good to see tradition being maintained, and even exported, wherever the RN finds itself.
https://twitter.com/britisharmydeu/status/1714948272031174828?s=48&t=bEVONVOu0wLxB2XXGnKYIw
Like the Home Office, who refused entry to a Christian refugee from Pakistan, and the police, they are all subject to their diverse employees.
Big problem
The home office fail miserably in their roll. They appear to sift out the needy ones being persecuted in their countries and accept masses in who would be the persecuters.
Ban all concerts where young girls are likely to make up the majority of the audience for a start?
I would be very happy with the mass repatriations…….
What was wrong with your first idea? Deport any non-citizens with Islamacist leanings.
I’m for mass (re)patriation.. Wyoming is almost empty, a state bigger than the UK with fewer than a million inhabitants! Next door is Utah for the Mormons.. sure the Jews would be right at home, totally safe and can again turn a desert into a paradise there. What’s not to like?
The Kerrygold Republic would be a better choice,
It would make up for the Famine losses of the 1840’s would it not?
It is quite likely that a terrorist organisation much like Hamas will form the next government of the Kerrygold Republic. Also the leader of that organisation holds parades to venerate the memory of a previous leader who was N*zi collaborator who we must presume would have strongly approved of Hamas’s recent operations.
That’s unworthy of a comment..
No, you’re way too harsh on Dev. While preserving a determined front of neutrality, for obvious enough historical reasons, the Irish Government was actually quite helpful to Britain during the war. There was actually by 1940 a mutually-agreed plan, with airstrips made ready, for British forces to reoccupy Munster in the event of a German invasion attempt there, something London and Dublin both feared: see Leo McKinstry’s excellent book on Operation Sealion.
We’re working on it Charlie; 20% of our population is now non Irish-born.. all are welcome and contribute greatly to our economy and culture.. but the Zionists would be safer in Wyoming and the weather and land would be closer to what they’re accustom to.
Our Jewish population boxes well above their wright in Irish life, politically, culturally and economically.
Well, I can think of Bob Geldof and Leopold Bloom: are there many others?
We’re not talking about the repatriation of Jews. They’re no problem, they have no interest in converting anyone. Islam is the problem.
The Jews are not safe in the Middle East.. that’s the whole point.. they have to flee.. Many already have and are doing so in increasing numbers.. The Palestinians are safe where they are or would be if the Jews settled in America.
That’s what started America in the first place remember? Nobody wants Palestinians, but Jews are super welcome the US.
What “started America in the first place?”
The Pilgrim fathers were the main influences in how America turned out. These are those who were sidelined by the Church of England.
Mass immigration silly.. 80% of Americans are immigrants or offspring of immigrants. 13% are offspring of imported slaves.. Only 7% are indigenous Native Americans.. Didn’t you know that??
According to scripture God is calling them back after two thousand years. Take it or leave it. He doesn’t make mistakes.
Not according to devout Hasidic Jews! They say Zionists are flying in the face of God because the Diaspora has never been rescinded! They btw are fully supportive of the Palestinian cause..
If you know otherwise please tell us chpt and verse where God is calling the Jews back to Palestine.. (and let the ill-informed Hasidics know while you’re at it).. I’m a keen Bible reader and I’ve not seen it!
Though the large Ultra-Orthodox haredi sect are, on theological grounds, militantly against the existence of the modern State of Israel – despite many of them living within the territory it controls and, er, on Israeli Government benefits. They’re now being forced into the draft and don’t like it a bit.
Quite. Ever see the episode of South Park in which Stan mistakenly ends up in a grim Border Patrol juvenile detention centre with a hundred Mexican and Guatemalan children – then has a brainwave and makes them all little kippahs?
The Jews are starting to go to Israel. They are feeling more and more unsfafe here as time moves on. Our country will feel the loss but that is how it is going to be. I hope they stay safe until then.
They’re safer here than in Israel, I’d say – though that’s not the case with France.
Anti-semites would still attack them.
Not the Palestinians then? ..because Palestinians ARE a Semite people like the ancient Jews.. most Zionists today are Poles, Russians, Germans and Americans – barely a Semite among them!
Well the Ashkenazi have virtually nil genetic link with the Holy Land at all. On the other hand, what’s striking when you go to Israel is how Arab the other roughly two-thirds of the Jews there – the Sephardis and Misrahis – look: in manner, posture, skin tone, everything. Most of them had Middle Eastern grandparents, from Morocco and Algeria to Iraq and Syria, often quite poor, and are darker than the Palestinians.
Some of the spleen-venters in the Daily Telegraph would have a stroke if they knew that.
Perhaps not allow them to wear the hijab to school. It’s akin to a Christian child wearing a cross. It’s divisive. Keep your bloody supernatural beliefs to yourself.
One thing we can do is to stop pandering to their stupid demands. Prayer rooms, time off during the working day for prayers, special considerations that would not be granted to anyone else – even special consideration during ramadan (underperforming because they are hungry, and expecting normal people not to eat in front of them.)
The hijabs merely make them look risible, but the prayer demands inconvenience everone else
True. But here in America, I don’t think those things apply. The hijab is bad enough for children. A blessing for women having a bad hair day.
I suppose the hair cover is not so bad but the covering of the face is spooky. One needs to relate at work not hide ones expressions behind cloth.
Personally I think the Hijab is elegant.. when I worked in Malaysia you could tell a Christian woman easily because they mostly dressed like prostitutes. The Muslim women dressed in their “trouser suits” and hijabs looked fabulous by comparison.
I doubt if they were true christians dressing like prostitutes. Probably christians in name only.
Almost certainly! A dying breed, sadly, are Real Christians, ie those who follow the teachings of the Christ..
Love God
Love your neighbour
Love your enemies
..not a lot of it about is there!
The employer has to pay for the loss of time not them.
The cross or crucifix is worn by many as an ornament and I suspect many of them probably don’t know who the bloke is that is represented on the crucifix.
As a christian I agree.
…And the certainty that any criticism of such violence will in the Brave Starmerite New World be made illegal. Its Islamophobic. And Labours proposed extension of EQ/Race legislation will see any expression of alam made blasphemous and worthy of visit from the State Militia.
That is true. Under Labour, this will get much worse.
I would say if you have a good Tory MP, which I haven’t, vote for them. I cannot vote for my tory woke MP. I think I will vote Reform and not have a vote for labour on my conscience. Pity the tories couldn’t have done better.
I occasionally attend rather large football matches, held in stadiums that resemble the Colosseum. The audience is predominantly white, working class, otherwise known as ‘the salt of the earth’. I am normally accompanied by an interpreter as my understanding of various regional accents is rather limited.
What I have gleaned from this experience is that the vast majority of the crowd/audience are thoroughly fed up with this multi racial claptrap and in particular the obscene pandering to Islam. One day, in the not too distant future there will be a furious reaction, the like very of which we haven’t seen since the Gordon Riots*. The catalyst may well originate in Europe, my guess would be France**, but it will be both contagious and catastrophic.
Sadly I shall be too ossified to participate, or even spectate!
(*1780.)
(** A rerun of 1789.)
“I am normally accompanied by an interpreter as my understanding of various regional accents is rather limited.”
Thanks for making me laugh this grey and rainy morning Charles (and for your comment yesterday).
Ironically you may discover a similar ‘Salt of the Earth’ audience in Iran’s football stadia who also aren’t so keen on their leaders or, it appears, the Palestinian flag.
https://twitter.com/glnoronha/status/1711101913544966265
The fastest growing church in the world is in Iran but they are persecuted severely by the Islamic leaders if they find a bible in your house.
I am thoroughly encouraged by your view of football crowds. However, for some reason, I’ve assumed that you must have been in the military which would surely have made you able to interpret their vernacular for yourself. Married (still, and throughout his service) to a Brigadier Retd. and being a northerner myself, I was defeated only once – by a Glaswegian corporal whose incredible courage and indefatigable chattiness I continue to remember with respect and affection decades after his death. But to the point : I’ve noticed a tendency for people on YouTube to declare that we – the British, perhaps specifically the English – won’t have the spine to fight should some ill defined uprising occur. All my experience tells me otherwise. I’m pleased you concur.
I’m probably going deaf! But won’t admit it.
Ah yes, the English: Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Normans (the Britons driven out to Wales) …now hugely infiltrated by an estimated 20 million Irish over several generations, Scots, West Indians, Pakistanis, Indians etc. these the only ones who know how how to, or wish to, breed.. What is an Englishman? Does he or she exist any more? There’s only yerself and Charlie Stanhope left as far as I can see! No, wait.. sure you must be Viking? That leaves Charlie all alone… the last of the Nohiggins!
Shouldn’t you be referring to Ireland? or ‘The Land the Saxons stole’ as you say?
‘We’ were there for nearly 800 years, that can have only IMPROVED the somewhat limited gene pool!
Truly the Irish are a wonderful race of story tellers. They invited in the Normans, who had just conquered the Anglo-Saxons then were surprised when the Normans decided they may as well take Ireland as well as England and Wales. The Irish then whinge for 1000 years (almost) about the English. PS Cromwell practiced on the Northern English Catholics before he turned up in Ireland. But then, as I say, they tell a good tell the Irish, I blame the Blarney Stone.
Ireland’s best days were at the time of the Celtic church before Catholicism. It was amazing how they civilised England, Scotland and many parts of europe.
Indeed it did.. but they were not Saxons Charlie; they were Normans, ie Vikings who became French who became English (tho’ the headman called himself the Earl of Pembroke which I’m told is in Wales!)
John Bull nowhere to be seen: retired to Sherwood forest of somewhere like that, or died out maybe?
You are correct.
Pembrokeshire was always ‘the little England beyond Wales’ – even in the days of the Romans.
I’m an Englishman – born here of one Irish parent and one English mother, who was also born of two Irish parents. I believe the best decision my ancestors made was to move to England. Truly I have won the lottery of life. Though curiously Unherd doesn’t print my responses. Still , their loss not mine.
I believe you.
So do I, as a closet Anglophile! Don’t tell Charlie.. he’ll have no one to fight eith!
I had an Irish father (long deceased) and an English mother (not so long deceased). Like you Unherd, to have been born on English soil is indeed to have won the lottery of life. I love England (and the English) with a passion. As for Ireland…hardly a passing thought. From Maureen Newman.
Me too.. I spend 6 months every year in the Mediterranean (being an EU citizen) and for sure, I hardly give the old sod a second thought.. still I do return for the summer as I have family and one or two friends not dead yet.. I despise the concept of Nationalism. I’m a big fan of good people irrespective of the usual divides!
My name is a very old English name although my mother was Irish.The Celtic church in ireland was very powerful before they became Catholic and had a huge influence on Britain and Europe.
Yep I’m aware of that.. Charlemagne’s tuitor / advisor was an Irish monk. Sure we civilised the English too, as best we could!!
You’re over-reaching. From c. 1200 – about the time it took for the Normans to blended in to the Anglo-Saxon population – right through to the 1970/80s, the ethnic make up of the British Isles population was pretty settled, with no major changes – other than southern Scots moving to Ulster in the 17th century and southern Irish moving to the industrial cities of Great Britain in the 19th. Stuff – politics, history – happened, but we were a culturally and socially cohesive people.
Within little more than one generation, that’s all gone. Britain is now polyglot, chaotic, humourless, a glum, deracinated, increasingly impoverished, low-trust, post-democratic, post-truth airport lounge with no communal identity and no happy future ahead of it: bombing, stabbing, organised crime, bride-burning, blasphemy riots, honour killings, modern slavery, hand car washes, and over it all, a creeping authoritarian Corporate Communism. But hey: ‘Strength Through Diversity’, eh?
Why-eye man. Y-alreet
The same can be said of a majority in the US with regard to the obscene pandering to fashionable, “protected” ethnic groups. Instead of following the MLK jr. model, which was the best and most obviously sane approach, hero martyrs are made of low-life criminals, violent riots are excused, gang warfare is ignored, and race hustlers grow rich declaring all white people are racists.
All of this is fixable, but Western governments refuse to take the necessary actions required to restore sanity. The last time we were in London, my husband and I were gobsmacked at the sheer number of Muslims we encountered: in nearly every restaurant huge groups of men in keffiyehs were clearly annoyed that they were sharing space with non-Muslims.
That was 1993.
As I write some 20,000+ of these b*ggers are ‘protesting’ on the streets of London.
Ideally the most sophisticated photo recognition equipment available should be deployed recording and archiving their every move.Subsequently they should persuaded to the very end of the earth, for a myriad of offences.
Sadly this will NOT happen today or even tomorrow, but one day the worm will turn and these wretches will find then there is nowhere to hide.
It’s a good thought, however, they breed like rabbits so reasonable folk will be/are outnumbered.
According to Douglas Murray Musims outbreed Johnny Blueyes by 5:1 so, given their population, Muhammad and Johnny Blueyes with have the same number of grandchildren starting to breed today.. Better start showing some respect then Johnny Blueyes is my advice!
I don’t understand how they will “have the same number of grandchildren.” Surely Muslims will have more.
The Muslim population is but a small percentage of the total English population, ie 6½% ..So if Blueyes and Mahommad breed at the same rate Blueyes would outnumber Muslims 14 to 1.. but as they breed like Irish people (used to), at 5 times the rate and the Muslim population is growing anyway.. in approx 60 years time Muslim births = Blueyes births! Millions of liytle Rishi Sunaks running amok..
I believe Fishi Snack is actually a Hindoo: a Parsee, to be exact. Hence, at least in part, his 1000% support for Israel and offer to supply additional HE bombs. Ever seen Suella Braverman in a hijab? Me neither. I think she’s Hindoo too. Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary? I’m not sure. Judging by his swift and supine visit to Israel, I’d again assume not.
Bumza Useless and the poison dwarf, Mayor Khan, are both Muslim, nominally anyway, though Useless is reportedly against throwing homosexuals off high buildings – or at least, he’s against it when speaking to the (few remaining) NUSNP faithful.
COVID Mk II, that should do the job nicely, IF Porton Down is up to stratch!
Sure, but they’ll have to up their game to identify religion next time, won’t they? Or is ethnicity close enough do you think?
I expect Dr Fauci is doing The Science on that right now.
The fact that Sadiq Khan is the mayor of London blows my mind. How could that happen? Who would turn their crowning city over to a Muslim pretending to be a “liberal” Man of the Left? I return to those crowds of keffiyeh-wearing men we encountered in 1993. No other explanation for it.
The Angles came from Denmark, the Saxons came from Germany, the Vikings came from Norway and Sweden, the Normans came from France, the Paddies came from Ireland, the West Indians came too. ALL became “English” (those a white supremacy, racist movement reared its ugly head).. The Muslims will too, become English I mean like all those footballers and Tory politicians!
Surely they became British not English. I don’t think immigrants can ever become English.
Like I said, if Angels, Saxons, Danes and Normans can become English (having driven out the indigenous Celt8c Britons to Wales) then surely ANY old dog or divil can become English? Note i omitted the 20 million or so Irish as that would be out of the question!
There’s one key difference: all the previous people you mentioned were European. Even the Irish.They could blend together a lot more easily, without colour as a highly visible mark of cultural division.
The Paddies came from Iberia.
“persuaded”??
No Whites, No Irish, No dogs eh?
You’re a funny old curmudgeon, Charles. The fact that you’re an atheist is your redeeming feature. I’m sure you’d be a hoot at the dinner table.
Ah yes, the English football hooligan; salt of the earth.. ignorant, racist yobs.. salt of the earth? ..more just plain earth I would have thought?
What a prejudiced remark. Britain used to have the finest football hooligans in the world, famed from Holland to Japan. But it is true that they’ve gone soft, weak and fat. These days, Russia’s hooligans are the Gold Standard: big, fit, strong lads, trained in martial arts.
“The obscene pandering to Islam”, exactly it pisses me off. And to see women succumbing to male oppression by wearing the f*****g hijab in 2023 is so disheartening.
That’s why The Party is so frightened of football crowds: with factories, industrial communities and Methodist chapels gone, they are the last rallying/ mobilising force for the white working class. Hence creepy Lineker’s long tenure on MoTD, and the Woke-BLM-Rainbow-KickItOut takeover of the FA, now far more of a Woke campaign group than a sporting body.
God help us all!
Sounds like a dangerous country, even morally, that we will be entering under Starmer. Islam + LGBT/transgender. How sweet.
The root again cause is ..?
Our own feebleness, decadence, lack of moral fibre, call it what you will.
Ah the truth at last Charlie!
…the root cause being? Britain’s inept and cowardly actions in 1940s Palestine? USUK arming the IDF to the teeth and giving carte blanche to commit genocide? ..and turning a blind eye to endless abuses, war crimes, crimes against humanity, breaches of UN mandates …or are they all irrelevant Charlie?
Liam you forgot to mention than we also gave them the Bomb! Or at least according to the late Anthony Wedgwood Benn Esq
That would be around 1966: and the ‘stuff’ came for the fabulously named ‘Dounreay’ facility in Caithness.
Come off it Liam that is the most juvenile statement of the many you have made today. You can do better than that.
Incidentally the only “cowardly actions” perpetrated in 1940’s Palestine were those of various Arab and Jewish terrorists organisations. The very nature of the war encourages such deplorable behaviour as your own beloved IRA was to prove over and over again from 1971-1997.
This is true but you did run away Charlie.. and leave the place in rag order, as usual! I know the place was alive with terrorists of all kinds but wh9 armed them and trained them?
Btw my good friend Col. Gerry %$# (I don’t want him assassinated) who served in Lebanon said he could deal with all factions there.. rough and ruthless but he could deal with them all.. all except the IDF.. absolute bustards he said, untrustworthy liars to a man!
Truman and the New York lobby wanted the British Empire out PDQ – so that the Zionists could crack on with their project. And Attlee needed the latest tranche of New York loans, so the US was able to dictate the timetable.
But yes, given their history of rabid and always-unpunished violence against even the RAF, US Navy (see the USS Liberty) and UNMOs, and their long-established pattern of weasel words (e.g.’IDF troops fired towards’ (!) the deceased) I wouldn’t them much either.
The Czech’s supplied much equipment to Israel. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem recruiting Bosnian Muslims into the SS would not have pleased Stalin.
Britain had India, rebuilding Britain, feeding Germany,founding the NHS and Welfare State to worry about post 1945.
Fair point.. you’d think the US economy and civil unrest etc would cause them to likewise but not a bit of it! War in Ukraine, two carriers off Tel Aviv and 800 bases around the world!
As with the Yookay’s Trident WMD, the US war machine will be the one thing the Deep State holds onto to the bitter end.
True, though the NHS didn’t build a single hospital until 1963. It just confiscated charitable ones that existed already.
How does one do that?
‘Heavy water’.
You d9 Islam a gross disservice by saying “Islamic outrage” ..the correct phrase is Islamist outrage.. Whenever an outrage is committed by a Jew or a Christian (they greatly outnumber the first) we immediately think of the word “fanatic” and never give a second thought to their religion; but when it is committed by a Muslim it is the first thing that comes to mind! That is hardly fair!
It is absolutely fair. Mainstream Jews or Christians don’t (any longer, at least) promote outrages at nearly the frequency that mainstream Muslims do. Things which are different are not the same.
The author write, “Hemmed in by past political failures, all that Britain can do is ensure that the coming bloodshed will not reach our streets.” But of course there is no sign that Britain can do any such thing. Because it has already let in too many MUSLIMS.
Maybe they are afraid of them and value their lives. Edward Heath started the mass immigration of them.
I have Islamic friends.. not very devout mind, but they’re Aok, peaceful, quiet, kind and easy going; just hardworking, normal folk.
Letting them in was nonetheless a mistake.
No, just more astroturf Home Office posters, yet another candlelit vigil and some more ‘community leaders’ reading their agreed lines on the BBC.
On the Daily Telegraph site is a story with this headline;
Terrorist attack in UK linked to Gaza
No comments are being allowed.
In a separate incident a few days ago a 70 year old Hartlepool man was stabbed to death by a ‘refugee’
Now the MP for Hartlepool, Jill Mortimer, complains that her constituency office is besieged by refugees who intimidate her staff.
It may not be Britain’s war, but it’s already here.
If these ‘nutters” were to replicate the tactics of their forebears, the fabled Assassins, there would be a very RAPID response indeed.
The assassins were Shia not Sunni; they even tried to kill Saladin.
Your point is?
The current Muzzies kill each other, too. That doesn’t make it any better an idea to let them into Britain.
Indoctrination by the threat of violence!
The mistake you made was insisting all those colonised natives spoke English! If you had vision you’d have made sure they spoke French or German!
Of course if you’d stayed in the EU you could send them all back to France as per the EU Dublin Accord. BJ didn’t put that on his bus did he?
You must have a really terrible life over there in Ireland. Pity. If you parents had been as smart as my grandparents, you too could have been born English, and you’d be much happier for it.
I’m pretty sure it was the reverse..
It is certainly here and it has been here for a long time. I have plenty of personal stories that do not make the news.
It’s a bit tough on Britain this article. We only ended up holding the Palestine baby because the Hun invaded France and eventually the Ottoman Empire fell to pieces. We were handed an intractable situation by the League of Nations and had to make the best of it.
Noblesse oblige!
Given that we diced and sliced the original Israel that was supposed to arise from the ashes of the Ottoman empire to a rump State that had the Arabs not attacked it in 48 would probable already have been overrun in later attacks. I find it a bit cheeky that the Palestinians aren’t more grateful to us.
It became important to have Chaim Weizmann’s support in 1917.
Paul Warburg’s was better.
I’m uncertain how much Britain can (let alone should) do, going forward. It isn’t your aircraft carrier group that’s moored off the coast of Judea and Samaria. British soldiers and sailors aren’t at risk, and perhaps they shouldn’t be.
There are two nations on this planet where Jews have lived relatively freely, and are able to defend themselves, and those two countries are, of course, the United States, and Israel itself. Both countries today posses fearsome militaries, of course, and both nations have political and strategic interests at stake. The UK doesn’t, really.
Insofar as the Philiistinians are concerned, their own history works against them.
Palestinians evacuated “their” lands ahead of the various Arab armies attacking Israel, and then found themselves very much adrift. Jordan took in thousands of Palestinians, and one of them assassinated King Abdullah. Lebanon took in thousands of them as well, and they quickly turned that country into an abattoir. Egypt won’t open its gates, understandably, nor will Syria. It seems no one wants millions of permanently aggrieved and impoverished people, particularly if they have a penchant for violent psychopathy.
That leaves Israel, whom most Palestinian groups have vowed to obliterate, as the court of last resort. Israel provides them with food, water, and electricity, and in most conflicts tries to avoid civilian casualties.
This conflict may be different, as Hamas – the ruling party in Gaza – intentionally targets civilians, and makes the IRA look like a church social. Hamas, if Israel is to survive, needs to be finished off, completely crushed, and wiped away from the world, from their foot soldiers to their senior leadership, in either the gritty precincts of Gaza, or in the glittering high rises of Qatar and Dubai, where Hamas’ real leaders reside.
Northern Ireland achieved peace when its partisans laid down their weapons and took up politics. Hamas and probably most Palestinians will do neither of those things at present, and probably into the foreseeable future. Israel will likely have to occupy Gaza, then, for years, until Gazans demonstrate the capacity for responsible or at least relatively peaceful behavior.
‘…until Gazans demonstrate the capacity for responsible or at least relatively peaceful behavior.’
Rather a schoolmarmy and hypocritical post. Well, at least Hamas didn’t murder a UN peace envoy (Count Bernadotte), murder a British peace envoy (Lord Moyne), blow up the King David Hotel (91 killed), hang two British Sergeants from a eucalyptus tree, shoot down five RAF aircraft in an unprovoked attack from behind and, more recently, deliberately sink the USS Liberty – which was flying a stars n’stripes the size of barn door – and spend eight hours steadily demolishing a clearly-marked UN OP with artillery, killing four European UNMOs, all while ignoring their desperate radio pleas to desist. Israel’s certainly a State that likes to make statements.
It’s easy to be ‘relatively peaceful’ when you can have whatever you want through massive military superiority, continued occupation, martial law, mass urban kettling, blockades, punitive demolitions and thuggish, illegal land seizures – demonstrating an ‘penchant for violent psychopathy’ if ever there was one; especially when the only section of the ‘international community’ with real power to stop you, the US, just smiles and gives you a cheery thumbs-up and more free money.
The Palestinians have had 56 years of ‘politics’ and it has got them NOWHERE. By the end of the decade, at the rate things are going, there will be little of the West Bank left for them to negotiate over – and Israel knows it. Successive Israeli governments have just run down the clock, while – as Ehud Olmert put it – eating up the pizza. ‘The facts on the ground’: softly softly, bit by bit, that’s the tactics. A fait accompli.
…or the worst of it! At least in India you oversaw a two state solution!
.
oh, I thought you had.
Unfortunately Allenby was too effective a General by half.
Israel is multicultural. The Gaza Strip is not.
Palestinian Christians have been almost eliminated.
Maybe the West could offer asylum to Christian Palestinians only? There are still a few left in Israel and the occupied territories.
Britain couldn’t even give asylum to Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman who had actually been sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan. She was turned away because she wouldn’t have been safe from reprisals here in the UK.
Shameful case.
Surely that shows that our whole establishment is afraid of Muslims? Is it too late to redress the balance? Not without bloodshed I fear but so be it.
Yes indeed, thank you Mrs Theresa May, MP.
I seem to recall reading of a Palestinian Christian terror group involved in firing rockets into Israel, or Gaza depending upon how well they are built. But I could be wrong.
The Muslim world is more than large enough to accommodate the Palestinians, the problem is wherever they go they seem to end up fighting their hosts whether they are Jews or Arabs.
Yes, the brutal treatment of Palestinian Christians has been greatly underreported by the global press. In 1945 there were over 135,000 Christians living in what’s now called Palestine…today there are only 47,000, mostly living in the West Bank. The media shies away from that fact that Christians have been, and are being, systematically expelled from Gaza…because it clouds the Jews versus Muslims narrative.
Yet, Christian, Arab Israelis also report discrimination in Israel. It seems that ethnicity and territory, not religion, are the driving forces behind the discrimination against Palestinians.
Christians are treated very poorly in many places, sadly. We don’t hear much support or demonstration on their behalf in the West. Usually they are the more educated and enlightened subgroup of their respective populations, and generally manage to make it abroad to a sensible host country.
Don’t worry, William, I’m sure the Archbishop of Canterbury will be looking into it once he’s finished sorting out the Government’s immigration policy.
He would better serve Christians by visiting countries with Anglican populations who are being persecuted, and berating the governments there that condone it. I have little time for Stonewall, but Peter Tatchell showed great bravery confronting the persecutors of homosexuals; Justin Welby should show some more courage.
Mr Tatchell isn’t quite so loudly proclaiming his ‘protection’ of children.
They did run a hospital in Gaza until the IDF saw fit to blow it to pieces using, presumably British or US bomb or shells!
Oh dear, there are none so blind as a bigotted anti-semite Irish republican. The Palestinians blew it up by accident. They are pretty good at hitting their own people with their home-made rockets. Perhaps you should pop over and show them how it should be done so only Israeli women and childen die?
Wrong it wasn’t the IDF. It was, in fact, Hamas who did it by mistake.
Liam would support the Islamic approach to Christians I’m sure, as would a few others on here (and no I’m an atheist or perhaps an agnostic, but there’s no doubt Christ had a far better influence on the world than anything before or possibly since.
Excellent point. It wasn’t that long ago that 10% of all Arabs were Christians.
And at one time, there were hundreds of thousands of Sephardim and Mizhrai Jews living in numerous Arab countries, from Yemen to Syria to North Africa. Up until recently, there was even a Jewish man living in Afghanistan, the last lone congregant of his synagogue.
Hundreds of thousands of human beings.
What do we suppose happened to them all? They seem to have vanished.
One imagines those with brains and money are leaving this cursed land in their droves? Only a mad Christian would stay among the millions of lunatics in that God awful place. Would you?
Before 1945 of course, when Christian, Jew and Muslim lived in relative harmony under the Ottamans, was a totally different situation, ie before the British did their divide and conquer thing as they did all over the world! ..and f¤ck up the whole shebang!
Yea, I seem to remember the Saudi’s loved the Ottomans. As did the Armenians, as did ….
Why did the the Al Sauds and Hashemites rise up against the Ottomans?
Ironically Palestinian Muslims would not welcome the silly people protesting their cause.
It IS our war. Judeo-Christianity is the foundation of western civilization. The barbarians are not at the gate, they are in the kitchen. Anti-semitic and anti-western muslim immigrants are in an incoherent but loud coalition with woke Marxian iconoclasts who want to do what they always do, which is to bring down society. It’s not ‘tribalism’ Wake up.
There are also Reds under the bed and the yellow peril is hiding in your custard. Run! Run for your life.. the sky is falling!
It’s not Britains war. The Israeli’s made that very clear when they murdered the British in order to create their state in the first place, and again when they armed the Argies during the Falklands. We have no duty or responsibility to the place. We don’t even share a religion, not that I’m a religious man
At last, an article I largely agree with and endorse. Thank you, Aris Roussinos.
Just one question. I am a critic of wokeness, gender ideology and Net Zero. I wasn’t as critical at the time of Covid restrictions as I either should have been or am now. Does that allow you to predict my views on the conflict, where I am Mary Harrington’s “fool”, somebody who understands the moral complexity of the situation and refuses to pick a side?
Well, he did say 99% certainty not 100% certainty.
Agree – good read.
Agree, it’s an excellent article.
Nik, understanding the moral complexity of the situation does not preclude you from picking a side and it certainly doesn’t preclude you from picking a side during a particular episode.
Decontextualising this particular situation with regard to the overall situation, giving Israel the nod to do whatever it wants in response, is what I fear is about to lead to catastrophic consequences.
I agree 100%
“Nod” or not, the Israelis will have their revenge. The alternative, to stand down and pretend it never happened, is far too dangerous for Israel. All this talk of “proportions” and “restraint” is useless. The international community should be helping the Gazans get out of the way.
I don’t doubt it. All our leader’s words are empty; I’m tired of hearing them. They’re like Maybots.
But revenge is a dish best served cold, as they say. Operation Bayonet was much classier than bombing defenceless civilians, kettled in Gaza.
There are other alternatives ..an examination of the root causes would be a good start. If justice (rather than blind revenge) is required (it is) then focusing on the guilty might be more fruitful than slaughter of the innocents..
But there are two diametrically opposed definitions of justice at work here. Now what? Would you agree that the crimes of October 7th need to be dealt with first. Or should we start back in 1948?
Deal with the appalling, heinous crimes committed on Oct 7th first.. the usual approach is to hunt down the guilty, arrest them if you can (shoot them is you can’t), try them in s court of law and, if found guilty, punish them accordingly. This system is called justice and is practiced in civilised countries.
Slaughtering thousands of defenceless women and children is the preferred method but that is a hopeless approach as it will only engender more of the same – a pointless, endless vicious cycle of death and destruction.. it simply isn’t a viable way forward.
Annihilating all 6 million Palestinians might actually end the problem but I can see a few issues with that as well.
I like the South African solution best: Truth and Reconciliation partly because it aligns with my Christian faith (the Jesus version, nott the Evangelical heresy) and partly because it is the only one that has any chance of ever working successfully.
Might make sense to start at the beginning of the chain of causation, don’t you think?
But Hamas must be exterminated if that’s possible. The problem is there are other terrorist groups that will fill the void because there are millions of Muslim males, filled with hate, who have nothing better to do than kill anyone who is not one.
I don’t know that every member of Hamas was involved in the Oct 7th atrocities.. the usual arrangement is for the guilty to be tried and punished accordingly. It’s called justice.
Extermination is not perhaps the best term in the circumstances..
Zionists demonstrate as much (if not more) hatred as Palestinians do.. the result of the hatred in death and destruction and since Zionists kill 24 times as many Palestinians as vice versa I must conclude Zionist hatred is 24 times greater. That is a reasonable assumption, surely. I have friends in Gaza who have never (thats right, never, not once) expressed hatred for anyone, to me at least. All they want is to be allowed to live a half decent life and that is denied to them.
The same thing applies to Israelis. It’s just the conservative extremists who are hate-filled. The average Jew is educated, liberal and not even particularly religious.
It doesn’t matter what the “average Jew” is, whatever that may mean. What matters is that Israel, as a nation state, has routinely subjugated a significant minority of its population, based on ethno-religious distinctions. There will be no peace in Palestine until there is a 2 state solution, supported politically and financially, by the West and middle-eastern countries.
Arafat walked away from the Camp David Accord held by Clinton and the Jeddah Summit held by Saudi Arabia
You’ll have to explain your post a bit better, otherwise I’ll file it in my drawer marked “non-sequiturs”.
Nope.. he was poisoned by Mosad and Hamas was fashioned out of the Muslim Brotherhood (by Israel! )..to counter the PLO and thereby scupper the impending 2 state solution.. Netanyahu supports Hamas via Qatar.. it’s the big picture that counts.. Israeli expansion and Palestinian genocide. Hamas caused it, conveniently for Israel since it is now their ‘justification’ for the genocide! Why do you think Israel ignored Egyptian warnings??
.
Well, that does seem a bit complex and prone to unforeseen developments. But Ha’aretz does claim Bibi sent envoys to Qatar last year to urge them to continue their funding of Hamas. When you look at past false flag operations, the clear strategic goal and cui bono, I wouldn’t completely rule it out. It does seem bizarre that on the 50th anniversary of the Ramadan War, the IDF managed to be caught completely off guard (again!) and apparently took up to eight hours to get troops into the line.
Because the terms he was offered were too poor. It’s a negotiation: it’s no good blaming one side, when the result is ‘no sale’. ISTM, judging by the conduct of Israel over the past 20 years, that the Israeli State never wanted a deal anyway: with the Egyptian army on Washington’s payroll, they reckoned they could slowly but steadily take whatever territory they wanted anyway, with no need for any concessions – let alone Palestinian statehood – and there’d be nothing anyone could or would do about it.
I’ve seen the evidence of Zionist hatred over and over and over again, incessant, brutal and heartless. Actually if you switch on your TV you’ll see quite persuasive evidence of that hatred in action.. 3,500 innocent people slaughtered in their homes, schools, mosques and hospitals (22 hospitals attacked by the IDF, maybe only 21 though, we’re not sure, yet).. and not a Hamas terrorist among them.. they are underground in their tunnels..
The Zionists know it’s women and children being slaughtered by hundreds of bombs but they’re quite happy to see Palestinian children blown to pieces.. you think not? You don’t know them then. Of course many are not quite that bad and a tiny minority are good decent people who call out their wicked, evil countrymen risking their lives in doing so.. check out B’tSelem.. astonishing courage!
Any observations, then, on the Irgun and Palmach terrorist groups, which were incorporated into the IDF in 1948; and on Lehi, a.k.a. the Stern Gang, two of whose peace envoy-murdering, British soldier-hanging, policeman-shooting, village burning, ethnic cleansing, King David Hotel-bombing leaders, Begin and Shamir, went on to serve as PMs of Israel?
I assume you would similarly class both, and their thousands of followers, as ‘males, filled with hate’ who ‘had nothing better to do than kill anyone’ who was not Jewish? Those characters weren’t ‘exterminated’, of course. No. They got the State they wanted – which, a generation on, showed its utter revulsion for terrorism by, er, holding a State Funeral for the (exhumed) murderers of Lord Moyne and awarding all surviving members of the Stern Gang the ‘Lehi Medal’.
Trouble is, the Israeli government doesn’t want ‘justice’. It wants to stay in power, avoid jail, get more US arms and tax dollars, smash Gaza to powder and seize the sections of the West Bank it hasn’t already settled for living space. For the past 15-20 years, it’s been clear that Israel hasn’t wanted a peaceful settlement while it could gradually get what it wanted through blockade, heavy-handed military occupation and steady, plot-by-plot settler land seizures. ‘The facts on the ground.’
Well said.. sowing the grapes of wrath one WILL reap the whirlwind! There will be no other harvest
Picking a side is juvenile! There is a 3rd way, and maybe a 4th and 5th as well.
I’m not sure.. I’m working on it.
I didn’t read the piece, but if la Harrington thinks that then the fool is her, not you.
Does she think she’s watching a Hollywood movie here? Lord of the Rings IV, or something? The western centrist and supposedly rightist press have been labouring under the same delusion with Ukraine.
It might be under the guise of transhuman body politics and, indeed, biopolitical interventions, but the trend I sense over the past 10 years is post-Marxist politics moving towards the Fascist end of the spectrum
This month saw new extremities with leftist support for Islamofascism. It’s the bizarre revolution of sensibilities come to full fruition where the world of Amis’ intellectual generation has been turned completely on its head.
Mass tech participation, multiculturalism and the fostering of extreme cultural politics within universities may be the main drivers of this phenomenon of extreme inversion.
Islamofascism, exactly!
Interestingly, 64% of Palestinians refugees admitted into Denmark since 1996 have since managed to accrue a criminal record there………we do NOT need to be importing more of these things into our country…….when will people here realise the awful thing we have done already ????…….probably in about 20 years time when they ( The Muslim refugees) are running things and the white Christian minority we will have become are being oppressed in our own country to levels unimaginable now………..
I gather in ‘Oh so PC’ Denmark, that you have to try very hard indeed to get a Criminal Record.
Yes, and they don’t use birth control because they want more Muslims, and that’s what Allah dictates.
Just like d feckin’ Cathlicks!
Sounds like chickens coming home to roost then.. justice at last, eh?
Very good article. Again, a few sentences I had to read 3 times to understand (seems to be a feature of Aris’s writing…) but the thoughts presented were highly interesting.
I struggle to get my head around what might be coming at us in the coming months and years.
I find his writing style very challenging.
9 times out of 10, it’s worth pursuing Aris’s articles despite having to hack through the odd linguistic thicket.
Mary Harrington’s writing never “snags” in this way.
Yes, I gave up, can’t struggle today. Mary Harrington is so readable, or as I like to say user-friendly.
A thoughtful article but the author is deluding himself by believing that not all those Palestinian flags being waved in British streets indicate support for Hamas and support, too, for eradicating Israel and Israelis from the face of the earth.
It is, of course, very unfortunate for civilians in Gaza (and I’ve got no idea how deep the support for Hamas is amongst the general population) that Hamas controls the Gaza Strip. It turned out to be very unfortunate for ordinary Germans that Adolf came to control Germany. But Hamas must be defeated just as Adolf had to be. Iran poses an existential threat to our way of life and the battle against Hamas, and Hezbollah to follow shortly, are essential preludes to neutralising the Iranian threat.
As with the threat from Putin’s Russia, far better to combat this by proxy and at a distance, than on the streets of Britain, although some spillover is inevitable and must be prepared for.
“……Instead, the priority for the British government ought to be to ensure the safety of the British population as a whole…..”
Absolutely, but is our government up to the job ? Current events re illegal immigration would suggest not and the thought of a Palestinian Jewish conflict on British soil doesn’t bear thinking about.
If the safety of the British population was truly a priority for the British government, then it would not consistently reduce the effectiveness of our armed forces and law enforcement (and I mean the ancient laws, the ones which protect body and property and, for that matter, unobstructed use of the King’s highways).
It wouldn’t last long, the Jewish community would be erased and I suspect the left would cheer and Government would hold an Inquiry.
The attitude to the ‘Jewesses’ who were Labour MPs in Liverpool from Corbyn’s Labour supporters was beyond belief, and they weren’t Palestinians.
Perhaps parachuting in an outsider, from a middle-class, London upbringing, into a Liverpool seat, was the reason for the attitude against Luciana Berger, don’t you think?
The population of Israel is smaller than the population of Cairo, but there are people in the world who want everywhere to be Judenrein.
We all see the imminent storm, brooding, full of unstoppable destruction and wrath. What we need is the break in the clouds and the shaft of revelatory light. Israel doesn’t need to make the war. It still needs the agreements with the Arab nations under the Abraham Accords – that sideline the Palestinian hardliners. To shake the Arab world would be just what Hamas wants. If the Saudis use the principles and culmination of those accords to negotiate a stand-down with Israel, the hardliners will not win, the attack need not happen and the idiocy of taunting a bear may change the political situation in Palestine. But it needs an unexpected miracle from what we see.
Perhaps what is needed is a switch from Palestinians to Iran’s leadership.
https://twitter.com/glnoronha/status/1711101913544966265
A counter revolution in Iran would appear to have a potential ground swell of support. IF NATO could do it in Ukraine, why not Iran? Would it not be better to sort Iran out now, before they get hold of a Nuke?
Enoch Powell was condemned for his rivers of blood speech, warning about multiculturalism. Maybe he was right but early?
Most criticism of Powell’s speech is now criticism of his tone, rather than of the accuracy of his predictions. Tells a tale.
Hardly anyone today would comprehend his classical references.
Fine piece, sophisticated reflections.
“Such a reading would easily lend itself to conservative fears over unchecked immigration”
One might have thought so, but remember that the Victim Narrative trumps all other narratives. The Israelis are largely white Europeans and therefore automatically the Oppressors, the Palestinians are POC, therefore automatically the Victims. It’s that simple.
“The root of the Palestinian tragedy was, after all, the influx of Jewish migrants….” – No, the root of the Palestinian tragedy was Islam, and more particularly the Ottoman Empire, which both destroyed the culture and civilization that had grown there for many centuries, and replaced it with nothing of value. Read Mark Twain’s description of “Palestine” in 1881 and marvel at what the Jews were able to make of the wasteland that Islam had created.
That rather goes for nearly everywhere that Islam settled.
A pastoral culture NOT an agricultural one, its goat herds all but destroyed what had been Roman North Africa. Mesopotamia and Egypt only survived thanks to the fecundity of their respective river systems.
All in all, the advent of Islam was a dark for Civilisation.
Exactly.
Islam is not into creating it’s into destroying. Judaism is creative. One just has to ask oneself where would I rather live Israel or Palestine to see the difference.
“…our social media-fuelled culture war.”
No, social media reflects the very real war between competing cultures that was being fought long before Facebook, Twitter, etc. were launched. The Archie Bunker slander on ordinary working men was among the first shots fired.
It’s a negative feedback loop: the more A, then the more B. so the more A etc. Doesn’t matter who started it. You’ll never know (“Why are you staring at me?” “I’m not staring at you; you’re staring at me.”) and even if you did, that knowledge won’t enable you to design an effective intervention.
The old t*t-for-tat.
The fact is multiculturalism DOES NOT WORK. History has shown time and time again that more diversity societies have less social cohesion. We are literally importing instability on to our shores.
Ever hear of a place called the United States? Only 5% are indigenous; the rest are the greatest multicultural mix on Planet Earth. There is unrest but its not about multiculturalism is it?
The murder of this American rabbi was inevitable [see below NY Post article]. It happened in the shadow of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s congressional district, which includes a portion of Detroit. A large number of her constituency is Muslim and pro-Palestinian…and since October 7th she’s been spewing anti-Israeli and antisemitic rhetoric from her bully pulpit. She should be held to account. Tlaib says she’s a Palestinian refugee, but she was born in Detroit. Tlaib says her mother and grandmother are Palestinian refugees, but they were born in Ramallah, Jordan and the British Mandate of Palestine (which has no relationship to so called ‘ Palestinians’), respectively.
This murdering of innocent Jews can potentially happen in all of those civilized cities that have been embracing pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist hate speech, like “Gas the Jews”, and displaying Nazi swastikas, at their public gatherings.
https://nypost.com/2023/10/21/detroit-synagogue-leader-samantha-woll-fatally-stabbed/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news_alert&utm_content=20231021?&utm_source=sailthru&lctg=635fd76b3273b2b3b003d010&utm_term=NYP%20-%20News%20Alerts
This happened in Germany for God’s sake!
I just heard about this. It’s very, very scary. They’re bloody fanatics. Since It’s their own self-hatred projected onto an easy scapegoat, it’s beyond reason. They don’t understand it’s their unconscious that’s driving them.
I believe the suffering of Palestinians may also have a part in it.. bombing of homes, schools, mosques and hospitals tends to have that effect. When children mutilated horribly by such slaughter die in agony in their families’ arms that can cause hatred. When their children are imprisoned without trial, tortured and sexually abused that too can cause hatred. When farmers are driven from their land and used for target practice or burned alive in their homes by illegal settlers that too, sometimes upsets people. It’s odd isn’t it?
.
Is it any different to the bloke in the States that killed a child because he was Muslim in retaliation for Hamas’ attack?
Both acts are very sad and inexcusable
Disgusting is what they are
..but only one was mentioned in the contribution.. I wonder why?
As you know perfectly well the death of Palestinian children is of zero interest to anyone except poss8bly Zionists who treat us as a cause for celebration.
Yes, shocking! ..but please don’t use the term anti Semitic when talking about Palestinian hatred of their Zionist oppressors.. Palestinians ARE a Semitic people.. most Israelis are ex Poles, Russians, Germans and Americans!
Context is everything. You’d have to be wilfully blind not to interpret waving the Palestinian flag immediately after the slaughter of 1300 mostly civilian Israelis to think this was not a call for more of the same.
Sadly, terrorism gets attention. Quiet peace negotiations get urinated upon.. politically, financial and militarily powerful overlords tend to ignore or manipulate moderates and peacemakers.. The UN is a peacemaking organisation and look at how it is mocked and ignored by the powerful nations! Rules are flaunted, the law is ignored, human rights are sacrificed. Only terrorism gets results.
Those in power will, engage in gerrymandering, oppression, apartheid, land theft, exploitation of resources and even murder, torture and rampant imprisonment without trial of children FGS!.
The victims eventually realise they are being mocked and laughed at, in their efforts to get justice; exasperation and hatred fester and eventually explode into dreadful, vile, savage violence and mayhem.. you can only kick a dog so much before it turns on you!
Even in what is generally a good article, you have to pay your membership dues to the British commentariat, don’t you?
the elderly communist’s sixth-form anti-imperialism
Being right about every war of the last 25 years, at least.
… the antisemitism scandal which brought Corbyn down
An utterly discredited load of old cobblers. The most basic of checks would have confirmed that the wreath, and the mural, and the “not understanding English irony”, and the “friends from Hamas and Hezbollah”, and all the rest of those, were total rubbish, as everyone who did bother to check did find out. The EHRC found precisely two cases in its entire report, neither of them involved Jeremy Corbyn or indeed anyone who was still a member of the Labour Party, and even in relation to those, it was found in court that it was, “arguable that the Defendant [the EHRC] made an error of law in relation to Article 10 ECHR.” Rather than defend that at judicial review, the EHRC recently settled with Ken Livingstone, whom it had continued to pursue despite knowing that he had Alzheimer’s disease, and with Pam Bromley. As a matter of record, “Labour anti-Semitism” never existed.
Yet it continues to be screamed at anyone who opposes the two-child benefit cap, or who supports the Triple Lock, or who wants to ban fire and rehire, or who wants to ban zero hours contracts, or who wants to implement John Smith’s signature policy that employment rights should begin with employment and apply regardless of the number of hours worked, or who wants to increase statutory sick pay, or who wants to renationalise the railways, or who wants to renationalise the utilities, or who wants to renationalise the Royal Mail, or who opposes the privatisation of the NHS in England, or who supports free prescriptions in England, or who supports free eye and dental check-ups in England, or who supports free hospital carparking in England, or who supports universal free school meals in England outside London, or who supports the universal free broadband that the whole of Europe and the Old Commonwealth apart from England (but very probably including London) will have in 10 years’ time and which may even exist in the United States by then, or who supports the taxation of unearned income at the same rate as earnings, or who thinks that taxation ought not in principle to be voluntary for the rich, or who supports democratic political control over monetary policy, or who opposes the war machine, including its attacks on civil liberties at home. All this, and the Online Safety Bill is about to become law.
..yeah, but apart from all that:
A word soup in which the writer tries to be too clever by half whilst revelling what he sees as a story of continuous British failure. I think I would call that simplistic nonsense – but one certain correction Britain didn’t import any meaningful quantities of gas from Russia
I tried to follow some of the hyperlinks but they were not very illuminating.
Are there any other liberal enthusiasts of cultural diversity who are rather looking forward to witnessing the enactment of biblical retribution of a sort that is wholly uncontaminated by any of our own Christian sentiment.
If you’re a Nietzschean vitalist not everything about the Bronze Age was worse.
An excellent and measured article. I am glad I am not the only one tired of the boomer right’s slavish adherence to a country ruled by the descendants of Irgun, which murdered British people while we were fighting the Second World War. It also rightfully skewers the hypocritical that left that adores any nationalism but their own nation’s.
None of this is our problem anymore and the best thing we can do is leave Israelis and Palestinians to fight their generational struggle as far away from us as possible.
But it wasn’t Irgun who governed to the new Israeli state, it was the Palmach. Netenyahu’s extreme right wing coalition is an anomaly in Israeli politics, entirely due to Bibi’s desire to avoid going to prison on a number of corruption based charges. The massive demonstrations by everyday Israelis on the right, left and middle, for the last 9 months is a clear indication that this coalition does not have broad support and will eventually fall, sooner rather than later. In the end, all of the Western, so called “civilised” countries will have to get their heads out of the sand and realise that an existential fight must be fought if they want their values and ethics to survive the insidious infiltration of militant Islam.
The ‘Civilized’ Western countries are heading for economic collapse if they continue on the road to Net Zero. Arguably we are already well on the way to societal collapse, because virtually every organisation that has power over us is Woke.
The only way to solve it won’t be a GE – it will probably be riots on the streets. The rate Net Zero insanity is going to hollow out whole industries is going to shock many. 27 years to Absolute Zero according to the FIRES report. IF it is pursued, then it will be many fewer years to riots.
As Doomberg pointed out
“The path from abundance to starvation includes riot.”
Try writing to your MP about that and see the drivel you get back. We are ruled by a scientifically illiterate bunch who appear to think Manna is going to fall from heaven and keep us all fed.
Hear hear
Yes, Israel has had 37 governments, with a broad range of representative leadership, since the inception of the Knesset in 1948. The Netanyahu government will eventually end, and whatever new government is created, whatever coalition is formed in this parliamentary democracy, rest assured that all 50 Muslim dominated nations will scorn it. That’s a given. And, here’s another guarantee, the United Nations will sanction whatever coalition government replaces the present Netanyahu government, led by the majority Likud party.
The flip side of the demonstrations against the Netanyahu government is that they were ALLOWED! No teargas, no water guns, no batons crushing protester skulls…because Israel is a true democracy that allows disparate political views to be publicly demonstrated by the electorate. Try publicly demonstrating against the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, GAZA et. al. Just look at the short-lived Arab Spring, where the slogan “the people want to bring down the regime” was shoved back down the protesters throats.
‘The flip side of the demonstrations against the Netanyahu government is that they were ALLOWED! No teargas, no water guns, no batons crushing protester skulls…’
The reason mass demonstrations were allowed in Israel, chummy, is that they were by Jewish Israelis representing half the Jewish population – and also, half (if not more) of the heavily reservist-dependent IDF. The riot police themselves would have been similarly split. It wouldn’t be much of a ‘Jewish State’ if one half of it started trying to beat and arrest the other half. A mass demo by Israeli Arabs would get very different treatment. And Palestinians who make peaceful protests even 100m inside the security fences behind which they are penned very frequently end up shot dead.
Given that Netanyahu is the devil you know and his hard line approach to Hamas & Hezbollah must surely resonate with the electorate, isn’t his position strengthened as long as there is an existential threat to Israel?
There was of course a bit of a civil war around the end of the Mandate period between the various Zionist armed factions. It’s a bit reminiscent of the Irish Free State vs IRA conflict in 1920-21 and the continuing Fianna Foyle/ Fine Gael split,
One minor Israeli militia group, for instance, was Stalin-backed, while another – the Lehi/ Stern Gang assassins – had originally been armed and funded by Goebbels. The Palmach had a reputation as the best-trained, best disciplined fighters of them all: but they were also more or less terrorists, guilty of murderous attacks against Mandate police stations and of bombing and burning Arab villages to drive the native population away and really, not much more civilised in their conduct than Hamas.
Well you sound well and good disconnected from reality!
Aren’t we supposed to put aside past hostilities? The Germans killed far more Britons in the 40s than Irgun but they’re our friends now. Aren’t they?
‘They’ are NOT allowed an Atomic Bomb, so perhaps not really?
They’re sensible enough not to want one – or to waste billions of their (vanishing) money on it, as our State does, in a pitiful attempt to pretend it is still a Great Power.
Or we could take the more mature view that there is no such thing as ‘human rights’ ordained by nature and realise that such so called rights are cultural memes produced by various Western societies. Then we could perhaps realise that this means we therefore cannot extend these so called rights beyond the boundaries of the societies in which they were formed.
A lot of sense written in this article!
Nearly all Major World Events now serve as a proxy for our kulturkampf. It’s true that the Hamas atrocities of 10/7, the hostages, and the percentage of more-or-less innocent Gaza residents who may become pawns to the retaliatory slaughter represent a heightened situation in every sense.
But I’m 90% convinced that Mr. Roussinos could only use his obvious correllary metrics to predict someone’s stance on the war with about 88% accuracy. And those would be the public stances. I certainly hope (and partly believe) that many more people hold–or are at least willing to a “entertain”–more nuanced views than the camp headcounts of our culture war would suggest. Under horrible circumstances, I’m learning more by the day about this conflict and region which has been fraught to the marrow since so-called Biblical Times, if not longer. But I’m gonna put aside a bad habit of mine by not pretending to any expert knowledge or special insight here.
I do find that the most well-informed and first-hand knowledgeable commentators on this current global shockwave tend to express views that are not uniform or absolute. A lot of worthwhile, instructive analysis in this essay.
I didn’t go to the march and am absolutely sitting this one out as it doesn’t concern me. But I know people who did go and I disagree that “many of the attendees at the protests — … — openly or privately support Hamas.” Some probably do but the vast majority are driven by sympathy for the people affected by oppression
I don’t think that the problem is soluble since it’s funded and supported to continue by so many expat and other players. If Israel and Palestines leaders had to sort it out in their own, they’d soon make an agreement.
Indeed, before 1945 all three religions lived side by side in relative harmony under their civilised Ottoman rulers.. Then the British arrived….
The first major Islamist terror attack indiscriminately targeting British citizens was in 2005, two years after the illegal invasion of Iraq. Since then, Islamic terrorism has become a serious problem, although not yet of the scale or frequency of the IRA attacks in previous decades. Zionist terrorism was at its peak in British Mandate Palestine in the 1930s and 40s, which coincides with the attempted genocide of Jews in Nazi Germany. Israel has been accused of state terrorism ever since, as was Britain during its imperial times. For anyone willing to put visceral prejudices aside, there’s an obvious causal pattern here, complex in its detail but quite simple in its principles.
Yep, join the dots..
Such a brilliant, nuanced piece that finally redresses the entirely one sided coverage in Unherd so far.
Aris, the reason my grandparents and their contemporaries took the Arabs’ side was anti-semitism, I’m afraid. I imagine your grandparents lived elsewhere so wouldn’t expect you to know how virulent it was here in their generation.
I think we understand this much better now. Plus we also have a better understanding of the true nature of Islamic imperialism. Hence why most thoughtful people not subject to fashionable trends support Israel. We know the Jews are the canaries in the coalmine.
“Such is the power of tribalism …” – Yes, my straw poll here in Scotland is still at 100%: what a predictive tool!
Those that bless thee will I bless
Those that curse thee will I curse
Curse times folks. Laugh all you want.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy’. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” -Jesus of Nazareth: Galilee, Israel under Roman rule, Palestine.
Funny stuff, to many of us.
Great sentiments from JC, but look what happened to him!
Aye, too true!
*One thing that happened is that the accounts of his life and teachings became history’s all-time bestseller.
‘He’ was very fortunate to get off with a ‘Friday afternoon job’. Pilate must have been unwell.
He was certainly some combination of fortunate and skilled to survive three years of opening his prophetic mouth so wide and loud.
Gautama Siddhartha, nicknamed Buddha , managed to last about 40 years. Granted, his inspired message, as preserved, was less disruptive and confrontational toward the earthly powers that
werebe.Exactly!
A life-time of reading history suggests to me that it’s far too late for appeals to anyone’s better angels.
If we wanted to be helpful we would be talking about the disposition of the innocent Gazans. Where will they be in April ’24? In 2030? How can we enable good lives for their children?
The Israelis will look out for themselves. They’ve been doing a good job of it for many decades.
People are more likely to look out for themselves when it is blindingly obvious that no-one is looking out for them. It’s a case of ‘do unto others what they are trying to do unto you’. A very Arabic outlook, of course , utterly foreign to christian values. Of course, Jewish civilisation has the excuse of being pre-christian. Islam is post-christian, but uncivilised.
Gaza is now a sh*t show on the global stage. Take heed.
I am no fan of Liverpudlians, but you cannot by any stretch call what happened in Liverpool in 1947 a pogrom
At last! A rational, even-handed, level-headed, decent, perceptive, realistic, original and HONEST piece about the current Gaza-Israel conflict, by a well-informed, intelligent writer. Mr Roussinos puts to shame the writers of the some of the predictable tribal dreck UnHerd has otherwise served up on this subject.
He’s right about the 99% thing too. I seem to be in the 1%. To my dismay, writers with whom I agree wholeheartedly on Covid, Nut Zero and Woke have come out with blind, dismissive, pig-ignorant, moralistic rant-pieces against the Palestinians (the native people of their own country!), who do indeed seem to have become a proxy for said writers’ detestation of mass Muslim migration to Europe: even though a. that is a completely different issue and b. in Palestine, it is the Israelis who are the unwanted mass-migrants and dispossessors.
As a reader of UnHerd since its inception, I once thought Aris Roussinos had something to say. But in the last 12 months I have struggled to know what it is. On reading this article, I have no idea what it is.
The only strong theme to emerge from recent UnHerd articles on Israel-Palestine seems to be a curious diatribe against ‘centrists’. What the hell does this mean? The only morally legitimate position one can take on the Zionist-Hamas war is surely to say “They are both mad!”. If this is ‘centrist’ then let a thousand centrist voices be heard in every street. The only solution, surely, is that moderate Israelis and moderate Palestinians must be enabled to live together, with equal rights, free from the extremists on either side of them. This indeed is centrism – and it is desperately needed. The smart-alec pooh-poohing of centrists may have some validity in the UK on a bad day, and perhaps in France on alternative weeks. But in Israel-Palestine it is the Voice of Heaven..
Tragically, the major powers support the extremists as pawns in their diabolical, wicked, geopolitical games.. If those powers supported the moderates the problem might have been sorted out 70 years ago.. but no, Britain backed Irgun, Netanyahu backed Hamas, the US backed Islamic Jihad, Al Qaida and ISIS.. all to swell the coffers of the military industrial complex, cull unwanted populations and bring uncooperative governments to their knees.
The foreign policy of a country is like any other policy enacted and pursued by a State, in that it is ultimately the outcome of the same political process that gives rise to other policies. There is nothing strange or even wrong about this, it is merely inevitable. This is just as true in modern States (democratic or not) as it was in the past and will continue to be in the future.
The United Kingdom willingly and deliberately disengaged from what was then Mandate Palestine and many other regions in the world. The governments of the time had their own reasons, and the United States picked up some of that slack (also picked up France’s slack, by the way), with varying success, and I cannot see why anyone would ask Britain to do anything other than offering every support short of help. Even if the British were willing offer help, they are really not in an economic or military position to do so.
The comments on this otherwise good and nuanced article have degenerated into rampant islamophobia. Every religion, including Christianity and Islam, have historically contained several conflicting schools of thought with vastly different interpretations of the “original teachings”. They have also all been used to both elevate our consciousness and justify attrocities.
On more practical grounds, Islam isn’t going anywhere so we have to learn to live with it, ideological attitude vs multiculturalism aside. This article alludes to a much bigger problem, our existential energy dependency on countries with opposing interests. Take Saudi Arabia, a country that breeds Wahhabism, the most radical form of Islam, which is what most of the comments here seem to think of when they speak of Islam – one of our main dependencies for energy and investment. Or Russia and Turkey, which control the supply of almost all natural gas to Europe. Even if you believe in a Green Revolution, in practice the industry is fully dependent on China. Even the US, our closest ally, is one election away from withdrawing even its nominal support. These are much more serious issues than demonstration in London, and so far completely outside any political debate.
My goodness! This is the first accurate historical summation of the whole conflict and interleaved, no less, with profoundly astute observations on the reverse-polarization, the inversion, of so many of our own political ideologies. One of the most astute and insightful essays I have ever read on this or any other political subjects, thank you.
It is of note that whenever UK is forced to give it’s colonies or mandates their independence, they almost always leave 2 or more ethnic/religious factions fighting for dominance. The worst example is India sucked dry, leading to angry starving peoples fighting for scraps in a huge illogically created country. As for the Holy Land, didn’t GB promise it separately to the Jews And the Arabs? Oversight or malicious intent? If Europe felt guilty about the Holocaust in which numerous countries participated (also for the pogroms, ghettos, Inquisition, etc), shouldn’t they have given them a homeland in Europe instead of making the Palistinians, who had done nothing to the Jews, pay for Europe’s Abominations?
This fine essay should be read with a glass of the finest U-boat fuel in one hand, and a smoked salmon sandwich in the other, whilst listening to Wagner’s ‘Trauermusik’,*composed for the funeral of Carl Maria (von) Weber.
(*Preferably the organ recital version played by Marie-Andrée Morisset-Balier, on the grand organ of the incomparable Abbey of Saint-Ouen.)
Are you enjoying your smoked salmon?
For me, certain facts are decisive and not “arbitrary” at all: The Arabs comprise only about 6% of the global population – yet their actions are responsible for over 40% of the global refugees and also over 50% of global terrorist attacks prior to this month’s events have been Jihadist in origin. Also, medical studies have shown that Palestinian women – and by extension any women forced to wear excessive covering in public – are severely deficient in Vit D while their brothers show no such deficiency.
How can any sane, civilized humanist – most especially one who values the health of women – support these outcomes under any circumstance? Add radical theology and you get – Hamas, ISIS and Hezbollah et al. We must support Israel because this is not just a regional conflict, this is secular civilization’s existential fight.
Are you confusing Arab with Muslim? It’s an east mistake to make but only if you’re a racist!
The only way to solve the conflict is to resettle all Palestinians (or Israelis, doesn’t matter) in Western nations of their choice. Perhaps even pay them to move. But not many will support this.
Wyoming is also empty and the Mormons are next door in Utah.. perfect! S8nce Palestine b3longs to the Palestinians and since God’s Diaspora hasn’t been rescinded (by God) clearly its the people known as israel that should be relocated.. Wyoming can be renamed Zioning!
We must find a place to put the Palestinian people. That place must not border Israel. Either dump. them on Iran as punishment for their support of terrorism or central Asia or Africa. African government is corrupt enough to allow us to buy the land out from under its people to place the Palestinians there. The attractive nuisance of the holy places can be delt with by stuffing them with radioactive waste. so no one can enter.
Why not move the Israeli’s? The Arabs were there first judging by their skin tone
Of course they were.. the Zionists are from Russia, Poland, Germany and America..
Eh, you’re sick mate.. you need help!bI suggest an exorcist..
‘ There is nothing, beyond vague expressions of encouragement for both sides to respect human rights, that Britain can or should offer.’
Why such cynicism – why shouldn’t Britain (do we mean the British government here) be robust in its encouragement to respect human rights. That surely could be a minimum rather than ‘vague’ expressions.
Especially given a recent yougov poll that suggests 76% of UK adults think there probably should be a ceasefire and only 8% think their probably or definitely shouldn’t be a ceasefire. The rest not knowing. This despite the relentless progaganda in mainstream media supporting Israel’s so called ‘right to self-defence’.
Self defence meaning that under the guise of defeating hamas war crimes will inevitably lead to loss of life from disease etc (as a result of forced moving of 1 million people (half of them children) and denial of water, fuel and aid. Something condemned when done in Ukraine but not now. Almost certainly the right wing Israeli government would like a permanent solution of ethnic cleansing as they could not tolerate a one-state solution which would risk the Jewish majority and they have destroyed the two state solution with the extent of the settlements on the west bank. So they have only a nihilst solution.
There are risks of attacks in the UK. Similar fears of the Irish were to be seen throughout the 30 year armed conflict in Ireland – and the failure to take a human rights stance in the UK only added to the problem. If we stand for robust human rights then the risk of attacks is diminished. To be seen to be hypocritical and weasel worded is the worst thing our politicians can do. The MSM with its relentless baiting of poltiticians when expressing concern for Palestinians has much to answer for.
Self-defence is a human right.
How should Israel defend its citizens from the Gaza population, in your opinion?
By creating a just negotiated peace – the admitted purpose of Israel creating the Gaza siege back in 2005 (and allowing the endless settlements on the West Bank) was to freeze the peace process. The Israeli’s have never wanted a two state solution – if they had they could have achieved it.
Self-defence, according to the Geneva convention, should be proportionate not deliberately target civilians – 4000 dead already. It also means not depriving them of water and ethnically cleansing sections of the territory – one million on the move (half of them children) with no safe place to go – and you mock at our humane sentiments. We can’t believe the inhumanity of those who support Israel uncritically and never condemn the country for war crimes.
Curiously the people you defend seem to have a penchant for attacking women and children. How Manchester and the Ariane Grande concert and all those young girls attending it had anything to do with Israel has yet to be explained. Surely even the bloke who did it understood Manchester isn’t in Israel?
Yes a good read.
I think like alot of commentators Author misses that Bibi deliberately allowed Hamas to grow in Gaza to split the Palestinian leadership and prevent the two state option he opposes. Israeli’s are becoming more aware of how he and others actually stoked this and then failed to prepare. His time is thus limited.
As regards Britain’s role, be in no doubt we are already an integral part of the eastern Med force deterring Hezbollah and the Theocrats in Tehran. We’ll have moved our launch platforms into strike range in close unison with the US, and if a broader conflict triggered we’ll use them and Parliament will sanction. Of course ground forces will not be deployed. Whatever the failures of recent Israeli leadership it remains the one democracy in the region. Deterrence will probably be sufficient and let’s hope so.
As regards the broader points about multi-culturalism – Britain remains a success story. This means our basic values come with the ‘deal’ too. You can hold distasteful views but if we catch you enacting them the force of the Law will be applied against you. That’s how it should be. As generations change the rock of British values remains solid, albeit that does not include some of the legacy values we too needed to shed ourselves.
Given how long this is going to drag on, I wonder if Netanyahu will see the end of it. The Israeli media is on his case, even if the UK media isn’t.
Israeli domestic politics are far too complex and nuanced for the UK press. These days, retailing us an approved chapter of the ongoing Manichean struggle of Good v Evilitude is about their limit – and if Israel, as they tell us, is On the Side of Good, well, Prime Minister Netanyahu must be too. They wouldn’t want to confuse us.
No, the law is not applied equally by the police, they have moved on Jewish people promoting the hostages (CAA) while letting pro-palestinians run riot because they’re afraid of them. They have moved on Christians at speakers corner while letting Muslims intimidate them. They forced an autistic boy who accidentally dropped a Koran to apologise. They ignored BLM protestor criminality whilst attacking women marching for Sarah Everard and anti lockdown protestors. This is an extremely complacent and unrealistic comment that in no way reflects what is happening.
Complacency is FAR too generous, dereliction of duty far more like, if not downright conspiracy/treason.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), London, for one, has much to answer for.
Incidentally does anyone know who ‘judges the CPS’ as Juvenal might have put it?
The forthcoming prosecution of the Tory MP, Colonel Bob Stewart, DSO being a case in point.
The great success story for the left wing clique boosted under Blair has been the creation or recruitment to agencies and institutions staffed by fellow thinkers, in a position to pass judgement on them or their enemies.
Upvote for your first par, downs for the latter two. Tunisia is a parliamentary democracy, for what that’s worth and so, for that matter, is Iran. Unlike ‘our steadfast allies’, the brutal Gulf autocracies Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Never mind: just chant ‘celebrate our shared values’ 50 times. It worked for Gordon Brown.
Two points, if I may, or indeed whether I may or not:
1) The writer’s comment: “…as the Israelis cannot accept the risk of occasional murderous rampages from Palestinian territory, nor will the Palestinians accept that they must be driven from what remains of their land” …seems to imply: one side engages in mayhem, murder and torture while the other side merely engages in land theft? Really? No indiscriminate bombings by the land thieves? No killing of innocents at a rate of 24:1? No imprisonment of children and subjecting them to torture and sexual abuse? No “drying out”? No “mowing the lawn”? No target practice on ordinary, peaceful Palestinians in the West Bank? ….How nice!
2) Americans seem to be more sympathetic to Palestine victims than the British? Quelle surprise! For once, the original cause is British incompetence and cowardice rather than American! I guess they gotta take it when it comes cuz it comes rarely! The US IS however culpable in that it
A) supplies the IDF with most* of its murderous equipment and
B) carte blanche to commit genocide
…with *GB playing its part ie doing the same albeit to a lesser extent that the US’s $6bn input.