Mick Hartley

Melanie Phillips adds her bit to the El_Fattah debate:

People like Sir Keir Starmer who campaigned for Fattah’s release have fallen into the usual western trap of viewing the developing world through western eyes. Presented with someone fighting an obviously repressive and authoritarian regime, they assume he must be a pro-democracy campaigner and a heroic figure. It never occurs to them that such an activist may also harbour a violent hatred of the West and be a danger to Britain.

Now, though, the government faces a dilemma if they throw Fattah out. There are others in Britain who harbour views like his. Should they be stripped of their citizenship and thrown out too? The answer must be yes. It would be insane not to do so — even if liberals scream “police state”.

No society should be forced to tolerate the intolerable. But in thrall to the dogma of non-discrimination, Britain has lost the ability to draw the line between what should and should not be tolerated. Fattah’s tweets were not just, in his words, “shocking and hurtful”. They incited murder. Yet while people get arrested for causing offence to “protected” minorities, a blind eye is turned towards incitement against white people, Jews and Christians.

At the heart of all this lies the issue of citizenship. In recent years, it’s come to be regarded as a right. But it’s not. It’s a privilege to be earned. Citizenship is a bargain between the individual and the state. The state undertakes to deliver certain benefits to the individual such as defence, public safety and voting rights. In return, the citizen undertakes to keep the laws of the land and to do nothing to imperil it.

The state has broken that bargain by bringing into the country many who never intended to keep it. Fattah is the latest egregious example of a liberal society committing cultural suicide.

Israel seems now to be the only liberal democratic society that is clear-eyed about this – from bitter experience.