Mick Hartley

Again the Sunday Times, with Hadley Freeman:

Jews are used to being caught in a pincer movement. Scapegoated throughout history by the right and the left, condemned as communists, reviled as money hoarders. What has felt different in recent years in this country is that the antisemitism has come from three directions: the far right, the far left and radical Islam. And since October 7 the last two are increasingly allying with each other.

It is what the philosopher James Orr has described as an alliance of “rainbow and crescent”, united by a shared loathing of Israel. The fringe hard left has been mining the rainbow and crescent alliance for years — see: Jeremy Corbyn, George Galloway — insisting that Islam’s less than progressive views on women, gay people and Jews could be jazz-hands-ed away for the greater good of joining to rail against Israel. But that fringe has been moving towards the mainstream over the past decade, ever since Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, and it has accelerated rapidly since October 7.

Glastonbury blanketed with Palestinian flags, but no mention of the Nova music festival, where young Israelis were murdered by Hamas; the Green Party now run by Zack Polanski, a Jewish gay man who once claimed he could make women’s breasts grow with the power of his mind, and his deputy, Mothin Ali, a conservative Muslim, who celebrated his electoral victory last year by chanting “Allahu akbar”; everyone’s favourite protest group, Queers for Palestine: such are some recent examples of the rainbow and crescent alliance.

Which brings me to last week. To recap, a man named Jihad al-Shamie — honestly, Chris Morris would have rejected this plotline for Brass Eye as too on the nose — rammed his car into Heaton Park synagogue, caused the deaths of two Jewish men and attempted to slaughter the entire synagogue of Manchester Jews on the holiest day of the Jewish year. Twenty-four hours later it emerged he was on bail for rape and his father, Faraj, a trauma surgeon, had described the October 7 attacks as “a miracle by all standards”. At least we know he meant his son’s name to be taken literally.

How did pro-Palestinian activists react to this, the worst antisemitic atrocity in this country in living memory? By holding anti-Israel protests on Thursday and Saturday, featuring the usual demographics: young white people in keffiyehs (cultural appropriation is good when it’s Palestine, FYI), older white people, some in keffiyehs (ditto), men who look like they got lost on the way to a Millwall game and conservative Muslims.

And not so conservative Muslims. Lots of young radical Muslims.

But imagine if a British mosque were attacked on Ramadan, British Muslims murdered. And imagine if a planned anti-immigration protest still went ahead that night, decking the town in Union Jacks and (gasp) St George’s flags. That would seem pretty callous, wouldn’t it? Cruel, even? Well, that’s how this feels.

The British community is tiny but strong, and we can withstand the lone crazies. But mobs so obsessed with a foreign country that they no longer see the pain of their neighbours? That’s a problem.

The witlessness of the “progressives” who march in step with the Islamists never ceases to amaze – happily chanting about “globalising the intifada” and “from the river to the sea” without understanding that they’re calling for the death of Israel and the killing of Jews.

Or maybe they do understand….