Jonathan Sacerdoti at the JC echoes Melanie Phillips’ concern – Britain’s upside-down approach to Islamism, Iran, and Israel is putting us all in danger:
When it comes to Britain’s security, immigration, Islamism and extremism policies, everything is upside down. The situation is beyond urgent. It’s a natural human instinct to connect events and look for patterns. Sometimes when we do that, we see things that aren’t really there. But sometimes we see things so clearly which we knew were there all along, and wonder why others remain blind to them….
There’s the case of the Hamas bodyguard given asylum, the lavish money being spent on on the home of Abu Hamza’s wife. the bail given to the five men at Fairford airbase – a courtesy not extended to the man who slashed an illegal migrant boat. The list goes on…
So you can understand the concern shared by many that our Home Secretary has announced that the Government is reopening the UK Resettlement Scheme to new referrals, specifically prioritising Palestinians who have fled Gaza alongside Afghan women and girls. Yes, Gaza, from where we admitted the Hamas bodyguard we later gave citizenship, not long before he planned that mass-casualty Jew-shooting spree. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the first arrivals would begin this year. The government says entrants will go through security and criminality checks. One wonders if they’ll be more thorough than the Hamas bodyguard’s.
How will we know what their criminal past is? If the Hamas government back home hasn’t imprisoned or convicted them, will we assume their clean record is a sign of good-natured brotherhood? What sort of cultural acclimatisation will they be given when they get here? Perhaps they’ll be given the government’s pamphlet on how not to rape people, because it’s not part of our culture. Maybe we’ll produce a new one on how not to plot mass killings and terror attacks – or have those, in fact, become part of British culture now?
And now consider who is making the decision to prioritise Palestinians for resettlement in Britain. Shabana Mahmood’s own political history on Israel is hardly a secret. She has described her support for “Palestinian rights” as lifelong. In 2014, she joined around 200 activists in direct action against a Birmingham Sainsbury’s over goods from Israeli settlements, lying down in the road and inside the shop until the store closed. She subsequently told a Gaza rally that the action had shut the supermarket at peak time and urged the audience to educate themselves about boycott campaigns and get involved. That has now become state policy here….
To top it all, Ed Miliband – our ridiculous posturing Foreign Secretary, fresh from his friendly handshake with Iran’s Foreign Minister.
He actually began his conference speech yesterday by invoking the attempted attack at RAF Fairford and declaring that Britain would “always stand up for our security against those who would do us harm”. Yet when he reached the Middle East, the concrete action he announced was directed entirely at Israel. He blamed the suffering of those in Gaza only on Israel, insisting it was inflicted by the Netanyahu government – “a stain on the conscience of the world”. He accused “settler terrorists” of ethnic cleansing, invoked evidence of Israeli war crimes and told those who had protested Labour’s previous Israel-related policy: “We hear you. You were right.”
When were they right? On October 7, 2023, when they first applied to hold an anti-Israel protest? When they intimidated Parliament, prompting the then-Speaker to express concerns for the safety of MPs engaged in a vote? When they vandalised the statue of Churchill, smashed up Jewish-owned businesses, or shattered a police officer’s spine? When their leaders were convicted of breaching conditions imposed under the Public Order Act during one of their constant protests? When they called for an intifada? When they shouted support for Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists? When they formed an intimidating mob outside a synagogue? They were right, were they?
Britain, he announced again, will ban imports from Israeli settlements and disrupt British finance, construction and services connected to them. And yes, he condemned Hamas’s October 7 massacre as “murderous” and promised to oppose those seeking Israel’s destruction. But there was no corresponding sanction, financial measure or new penalty announced against Hamas, the Palestinian Authority or any Palestinian institution, even as they continue to preach hatred of Jews or pay terrorists and their families for carrying out murderous attacks. In fact, he recently promised them £88 million of our money, with not a single qualifying action required on their part. Nothing.
So, in a speech that opened with terrorists allegedly targeting a British military base, our Foreign Secretary’s new programme of Middle Eastern punitive action was aimed at the democratic Western ally fighting Islamist terrorist organisations and Iranian proxies, not at any of those organisations or their sponsors.
It no longer matters why Labour is doing all this – whether it is to try to win back the West-hating, Jew-hating, Islamist or extreme-left portion of the electorate, or out of a genuinely misguided belief in these punitive and unconstructive policies – the damage to Britain is extreme, whatever the motivation. And the Conservatives weren’t exactly blameless when in office, either. Hamas terrorists, foreign extremists, those with immoral sexual cultural norms, subjugators of women or homosexuals – they’ve all been flocking to our green and pleasant land for years.
So forgive me if I sound like a broken record. It’s just that it’s getting harder and harder to bear. Not just for me. Not just for Jews. All of this harms Britain. It endangers us all. None of it makes sense. Yet it is only the start. We all know exactly where this is leading.
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