Mick Hartley

Marc Weitzmann writes at Tablet Magazine on the fall of Europe, where antisemitism is once again becoming the new norm, driven by an increasingly militant Muslim influx. By focusing on three countries – France, Belgium, and the UK – he hopes to provide a warning to the US not to follow the same sorry route. Zohran Mamdani has, after all, just been elected as New York’s first Muslim mayor, in a city celebrated as a symbol of Jewish success. This marked, according to the Qatari state daily Al Sharq, “a major shift against the Zionist narrative” in “the capital of the Zionist lobby”. So yes, there is cause for concern.

In the UK Weitzmann focuses in particular on Birmingham and the Maccabi Tel Aviv debacle, but also on the grooming gangs. It’s a grim read – as it should be. What comes across, I think, is the mindless complicity in all this of what might be called the soft left – the BBC, the Guardian, the Labour party. There’s still that same refusal to take the grooming gangs seriously. There’s still the feeling that it’s all some kind of racist dog-whistle; that it’s all a far-right talking point. The Labour government’s response is to propose a new definition of Islamophobia.

But read it all. It’s a powerful and well-researched piece.

In July 2024, newly elected Birmingham MP Iqbal Mohamed said during his victory speech: “We must take over the whole of Birmingham. The whole of West Midlands. The whole of the U.K. We will not be taken for granted, and we will win.”