Mick Hartley

Tony Blair in the Sunday Times today – We must end left’s unholy alliance with the Islamists:

Jewish people in the UK and in Europe are genuinely fearful. Some have already left the countries they were born and grew up in, because they know these countries are not dealing with the roots of modern antisemitism and the environment of tacit permission that stalks parts of western politics.

So we end up in the bizarre situation that a community, relatively small in the case of Britain, which on the whole works hard, does well, and gives proportionately more philanthropically than any other, is targeted by bigotry — and in any other case would provoke not just firm action but a concerted attempt to challenge the ideology behind it.

To state the obvious, antisemitism is not new. It rolls on through the centuries with some in each generation seemingly finding new reasons, justifications, explanations or excuses for it.

But today it has new forms, on the right and on the left. The left-wing version is a pernicious and novel development in progressive politics: the alliance with Islamists….

The suffering of Gaza, the death and destruction, is undeniable. You can make a legitimate criticism of Israel’s tactics in the conduct of the war. Many Jews around the world make exactly those critiques.

But you cannot engage in such criticism legitimately if you do not also condemn the terrorism of October 7. You cannot pretend that Israel does not face a substantial terrorist threat from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Iranian regime and other groups that do not recognise Israel’s right to exist.

You cannot complain about the restrictions on goods and material going in and out of Gaza unless you also reference the reasons for the restrictions: the fear in Israel that such materials will be used for the purpose of building a terrorist infrastructure, which is precisely what nearly 300 miles of tunnels underneath Gaza represent.….

The problem is that, under pressure from party activists and parts of the Muslim community, many progressive politicians who do sincerely reject antisemitism are not making these arguments, and failing to take head-on this literally “unholy alliance” between parts of the left and Islamists in our own societies whose ideology leads inexorably to antisemitism.

Because failure to do so creates the climate in which, even if antisemitism is not explicitly condoned, it flourishes.

One poll during the Gaza war showed that only 24 per cent of the British Muslim community believed that October 7 happened in the way it did. Some even believe it was all an elaborate Israeli plot. That is frankly unacceptable.

I know some say that defending the State of Israel is not the way to defeat antisemitism. But there is more at stake than simply defending Israel. It’s about defending reason. Defending facts. Standing up to the noise and intimidation to assert the truth.

Well said.