Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • The vague sense that it’s ‘the right thing to do’

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    Full thread:

    1) As per a Memorandum signed with the PA, the UK recognises this state on 1949 armistice lines.
    The Western Wall, Temple Mount, Jerusalem Old City, Cave of the Patriarchs, Rachel's Tomb – *all* Judaism's holiest sites- are now considered by the UK under Palestinian sovereignty.

    2) The UK appears to be recognising the Palestinian Authority – a corrupt gerontocracy – as the official government.
    Mahmoud Abbas was elected President in 2006 for a 4 year term. 19 years on and with no further elections, he's still the President.

    3) Why? Well, because the alternative is far worse – Hamas itself. One of the key reasons the PA hasn't held elections since 2006 is because *everyone knows* that if they did Hamas would win.
    I can't even call it an open secret because it's not a secret at all.

    4) Of course, once Hamas won it would do the exact same thing as the PA did – never hold another election. We know that because they won in Gaza 20 years ago, soon after massacred anyone affiliated with the PA, and then ruled as a religious dictatorship.

    5) This isn't Northern Ireland, I beg you to understand that. The only 'peace' Hamas is interested in is a pause that will allow them to regroup & rearm.
    What you saw on 7 October 2023 is their plan for every man, woman and child in Israel.

    6) The only way to ensure a two-state solution which works was to a) do everything to destroy Hamas and b) create a clear plan of recognition by *all* Arab countries, explicitly tied to Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state.
    This was not done.

    7) So, the UK, Australia and Canada, among others, have recognised a Palestinian state based on the ultimate political lodestar of soft-left governments – the vague sense that it's 'the right thing to do'.

  • Framed as an Israeli failure, regardless of the facts

    Jonathan Sacerdoti in the Spectator – Where is the outrage over the aid trucks hijacked in Gaza?

    Unicef has confirmed it in black and white: armed men in Gaza hijacked aid trucks at gunpoint, stealing ready-to-use therapeutic food meant for thousands of severely malnourished infants. According to the UN, at least 2,700 children have been deprived of life-saving nutrition as a result. And yet, the world barely blinked.

    When Israel takes military action, the scrutiny is immediate and unforgiving. When images of hungry children emerge from Gaza, they are broadcast with relentless urgency, almost always with the implicit or explicit framing that Israel is to blame. But when terrorists intercept UN aid trucks, seizing food for their own infants in need, that story scarcely registers.

    That's the line the media have been pushing – and they're sticking with it. It was the same before October 7th, but it's become increasingly strident since: the little state of Israel, surrounded by Muslim states who wish only for its destruction, are really the colonisers, the oppressors, the villains. The brave Palestinian resistance are the freedom fighters – the Vietcong for the new generation of young westerners, who know nothing of history and chant the cliches of "settler colonialism" to the original inhabitants of the land of Israel.

    This pattern is not unique to the UK; it reflects a broader international consensus that has become ideologically and diplomatically entrenched: humanitarian suffering in Gaza is to be framed as an Israeli failure, regardless of the facts. Any Palestinian terrorists deliberately causing suffering to their own are to be ignored at all costs.

    But the facts are stubborn. This latest incident is not a deviation. On Saturday, reports confirmed by Cogat, Israel’s military coordination body for the territories, described another deliberate sabotage of aid efforts: Hamas terrorists are said to have fired at UN teams working to open a new humanitarian corridor in southern Gaza. Armed men seized UN vehicles and reportedly used them to blockade roads meant to carry food and medicine. It is all part of a deliberate strategy to obstruct aid distribution in order to engineer a crisis and externalise blame.

    If Israel were truly trying to starve Gaza, why would it coordinate with the UN to open new routes for food and shelter supplies? Why would it allow in therapeutic nutrition and medical equipment that is then stolen or intercepted en route by Palestinian terrorists? The uncomfortable truth is that Israel’s logistical and military apparatus has, despite the war, continued to facilitate aid, often at the expense of its own operational freedom, in a desperate attempt to separate civilians from combatants. It is the terror groups embedded within the civilian population who blur that line.

    There is a deeper rot exposed here: the moral degradation of the aid discourse itself. Humanitarian law is predicated on neutrality and civilian protection. But in Gaza, that framework is regularly distorted by a UN system unwilling to hold Palestinian actors accountable, either out of fear, political alignment, or institutional corruption. The result is grotesque: children are being deprived of food by the very actors who claim to be their protectors, shielded from scrutiny by a media and diplomatic class that prefers to heap condemnation on the democratic, free nation acting to remove that very evil which threatens both Israelis and its own population.

    The UN – notably the UNRWA – are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

    Meanwhile, Britain, France and others press forward with plans to ‘recognise’ an imaginary Palestinian state – an impossible and undesirable entity that in its current form exists only as an idea, not as a functioning polity. And what is the fantasy state they are recognising? One in which a terror group starves the country’s children for political point-scoring? That obstructs aid corridors with armed force? That creates and exploits its own population’s misery as a weapon of diplomacy? To recognise this as a state is to recognise the strategy of hostage governance. It is to endorse a political culture in which children’s hunger is not a crisis to be solved, but a tool to be cynically and ruthlessly engineered and leveraged.

    If that is the foundation upon which Europe intends to recognise statehood, then it is not recognising a future of peace and sovereignty, but entrenching a system of impunity, cruelty, and permanent conflict.

  • The American left

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  • Strategic and moral pusillanimity

    Matthew Syed in the Times:

    It’s not often I see a story of Hamas celebrating, at least not since the delirious joy that greeted the attack on October 7 when operatives stormed over the border, raped and murdered, seemingly with the kind of glee that most ordinary people reserve for family occasions. I won’t bore (or repulse) you with the stories of young Gazans torturing and maiming while video-calling their parents, hoping for an outburst of filial pride. One can’t help thinking of the words of Umberto Eco’s line in The Prague Cemetery: “People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.”

    Afterwards, Hamas leaders helpfully came on to the airwaves to explain that they would commit mass murder again and again, if they had half a chance, not so they could kill some Jews, but all Jews, as proclaimed in their charter. This isn’t a series of abstract words but the galvanising force of a group that won power in Gaza through a democratic vote and has since ruled as a totalitarian dictatorship: indoctrinating kids, torturing critics, snaffling the funds lavished on them to build an infrastructure of tunnels and hideouts under hospitals and schools — more labyrinthine than the London Underground — so that any counterattack by Israel would kill as many of their own citizens as possible. Human shields is the conventional term, but scarcely does justice to the requisite evil.

    So why were they so happy a month ago after the British prime minister — the leader of a nation of huge symbolic significance, given the UK’s role in the foundation of Israel 80 or so years ago — gave what was billed as a “significant speech” from the lectern at Downing Street? Well, this was the moment that paved the way for the statement on Sunday for the UK to “recognise” a Palestinian state.

    An interesting word, that: “recognise”. As I write these words, I am unclear about the borders of this state, its government, how it will operate, or what we are supposed to make of the fact that hostages within this putative jurisdiction are still being held in horrific conditions.

    This, by the way, was the Hamas response to Sir Keir Starmer’s statement, perhaps the greatest evocation of glee from within the terrorist group in months. “The fruits of October 7 are what caused the entire world to open its eyes to the Palestinian issue — and they are moving towards it with force,” Ghazi Hamad, a senior operative, said. “That is, that the Palestinian people are a people who deserve a country. The initiative by several countries to recognise a Palestinian state is one of the fruits of October 7. We have proven that victory over Israel is not impossible, and our weapons are a symbol of Palestinian honour.”

    So there you have it: Hamas regards the British policy as an explicit vindication of mass murder, of gaining by killing. And it isn’t just this group of psychopaths who see it in these terms. Security insiders tell me that other jihadi networks also regard official British policy as an exoneration of terrorism as they busily recruit across the Middle East via propaganda pumped out daily over social media. One might call it appeasement, although I am not sure this quite does justice to the strategic and moral pusillanimity of what we’re seeing, not just from the British government but the French, Canadians and more….

  • The refusal to accept a Jewish state

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    Worth reading in full, but the essential point: "They are reinforcing the illusion that the absence of a Palestinian state is the root of the conflict, when in fact it is the refusal to accept a Jewish one."

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  • Back in the closet

    Jenny Lindsay in the Times on where we are now – talking to members of the support group for gender-critical gay men who have to gather in secret:

    Alan lives in a small town. Meeting other gay men is not easy. He was recently banned from the gay dating app Grindr. I ask why. “Well, I put in my profile I’m not attracted to women, y’see, and apparently that’s awfully offensive.”

    Though he laughs, Danny pulls out his phone to show me the Grindr profile of a young “gay trans man” (a female who identifies as a gay male). “That’s what we’re dealing with. He gets chucked off, and she gets to stay?”

    Having lived through it, Joe judges this trend as part of “the most existential crisis facing gay men since Aids”.

    He is referring not just to the younger men’s gall that gay men are being pushed to reframe their sexualities to accommodate females. Joe is profoundly angered that, as a “fey child”, he might have been pushed to consider himself trans if he had been born today.

    Modern gay culture feels “oppressive”, he says. It is a word used repeatedly throughout the day….

    In between the free-flowing ales, the laughter, the camaraderie and solace, Joe summed up the feelings of the group, lamenting: “Having to meet in secret, fearing loss of employment for who we are. Having been through the whole gay liberation experience, it’s absolutely enraging to find myself back here again.”

    And that's why the LGB needs to split from the T.

  • The Greens and Mothin Ali

    I missed the recent election of Mothin Ali as co-deputy leader of the Greens. Good lord. The man who shouted Allahu akbar and described getting a seat on Leeds city council as a “win for the people of Gaza”.

    He was also involved in the harassment of a Jewish university chaplain, who was driven from his home.

    A rabbi targeted in an antisemitic hate campaign has expressed concern that a businessman who played a key role in amplifying the attacks has become deputy leader of the Green Party.

    On October 7, 2023, Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch was working as a student chaplain at Leeds University. An Israeli citizen, he was called up as a reservist for a tour of duty with the Israel Defence Forces. Deutsch acted as a guard for food and ammunition convoys entering Gaza.

    His presence in Gaza provoked protests back in Leeds, but these took on a particularly vicious hue upon his return to the city in early February 2024. Days later, Mothin Ali, the influencer Dilly Hussain and the Muslim Association of Britain all attacked Deutsch online. Ali’s post on TikTok picked up traction and Deutsch — along with those who supported him — view his social media activity as having been a central factor in the hate campaign that followed…

    In one post, subsequently deleted, Ali referred to him as a “creep” and a “low-life”. He said: “Leeds University should be protecting its students against this kind of animal. You should be protecting people. You should be protecting students from this kind of animal, because if he’s willing to kill people over there, how do you know he’s not going to kill your students over here?”

    Almost immediately, the Deutsches started receiving phone threats to their home in Woodhouse, central Leeds. “Tell that Jewish son of a bitch we’re coming for him,” said one male caller, speaking in a local accent to Deutsch’s wife, Nava. “We’re coming to his house and we’re going to kill him, and you as well, you f***ing racist bitch. Stupid little slag.”

    In answerphone messages that have been heard by The Sunday Times, another caller said: “We know your address. We’re ten minutes away.” Another said: “You killed innocent Muslims, and they’re going to get you.”

    The couple received 400 calls in one night, February 8. The onslaught slowed but continued for weeks. At one point, advised by West Yorkshire police, the couple left Leeds and took their two young children to stay with friends in Nottingham. “It was scary,” Deutsch later recalled. “They were threatening my wife and children. There’s no real way to protect yourself here.”

    The Deutsches returned to Israel last summer, at the end of their chaplaincy posting in Leeds.

    A fine victory for the Greens. Let's hope they're proud.

  • Dressing up weakness as principle

    In the Sunday Times – Starmer says that recognising a Palestinian statehood is a moral duty.

    Starmer’s announcement before this week’s UN general assembly meeting in New York has already provoked backlash in America, with a number of congressional Republican leaders writing to the UK, France, Canada and Australia on Saturday urging them to pause their plans or risk empowering Hamas and undermining Israel’s security.

    It has also been condemned by a group of Israeli hostage families, who wrote an open letter to the prime minister on Saturday stating: “We write to you with a simple plea — do not take this step until our loved ones are home and in our arms.”

    Addressing the criticism head-on, Starmer is expected to say the demands he made on Hamas this summer “remain absolute”. This includes releasing all hostages, agreeing to an immediate ceasefire, accepting it will have no role in governing Gaza, and a commitment to disarmament.

    What does that even mean? How will that be enforced? Once you have a Palestinian state – as happened in Gaza twenty years ago – Hamas or their Islamist equivalents will find the way to power. He's just giving them exactly what they want, as a reward – as has been said often enough – for terror and brutality. 

    Most recommended comment:

    Gaza was meant to be a blueprint for a Palestinian state. In 2005, Israel dismantled every settlement, withdrew every soldier, and handed the strip to its people. For a moment, there was a chance to build something better. The Palestinian Authority held power, but it soon collapsed. In 2006 Hamas won at the ballot box. By 2007, they had slaughtered rivals, driven Fatah into exile, and seized absolute power.

    Since then, Gaza has lived under a one-party dictatorship. There is no dissent, no freedom, no opposition. Speak out, and you vanish. Hamas siphoned aid, stole fuel and cement, and poured it into rockets and tunnels instead of homes, hospitals, or schools. Thirty thousand missiles later, the result speaks for itself.

    Hamas thrives on misery. They use women and children as shields, hunger as a weapon, and the suffering of innocents as propaganda. Their strategy is not governance but perpetual conflict. They have no legitimacy. Only blood, fear, and ruin.

    And yet our prime minister gives them legitimacy with weasel words. Worse, he does so in a bid to cling to votes that will desert him and Labour anyway. What happened in Tower Hamlets will happen nationally if this cowardice continues.

    Moral? Never appease terror. Never reward lies. Never dress up weakness as principle.

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  • At Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral

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  • Staff networks

    Over the past twenty years or so staff networks and the notion of "allyship" have spread across the public sector like poison ivy.  Chris Bayliss at The Critic:

    The concept of “allyship” is a vague and nebulous one. Supposedly, it is meant to involve those of “non-marginalised” or “privileged” groups (heterosexuals, men, white people etc) “amplifying the voices” of and “advocating” for their “marginalised” colleagues. In practice, it usually meant intelligent if slightly spineless middle-aged Senior Civil Servants being fed intersectional social justice dogma by an HEO fresh out of university, and being judged on how completely they digested it and accepted its premises. Anybody who had any exposure to the British public sector during this period will have had the connotations of the word “ally” completely changed in their minds, and will now no longer be able to watch a documentary about the Second World War without imagining a balding 54 year old DEFRA Director wearing a rainbow lanyard storming ashore at Anzio, or launching a dogged attack through the bocage around Saint-Lô.

    If this experience was miserable enough for everyone else, it was especially humiliating for those who did not feel “marginalised” or defined by their own “protected characteristics” — those for whom being gay, or being Asian or whatever was not a professional identity. Particularly those who were slightly older, and who felt their own career progress thus far was down to their own efforts or merits, rather than a result of their being “advocated” for by “allies”. When these groups were first formed, an individual could simply choose whether to participate or not, but by the late 2010s that was ceasing to be an option one could get away with quietly, especially for those at more senior grades.

    It’s worth taking a brief moment to dwell on the especially noxious role of the so-called “mental health” networks, which were often populated mainly by individuals with the kind of personality disorders that made them especially unpleasant or professionally dangerous to be around. These networks could be the most vocal within any government department, mainly because they believed that they had lessons to teach everyone else about their own “mental health”. As such, they tended to elevate the most malign and narcissistic individuals into moral authorities within their workplaces.

    It will be difficult to prove the precise level of influence that LGBTQ+ networks had over senior officials in government, and over clinicians within the NHS, during the controversy over “gender affirming care” (hormone blockers and the removal of health body parts) during the decade while that debate was in contention in the UK. But throughout that time, scepticism toward gender ideology was framed by these groups as if it were a threat to the safety of staff. It’s known that the LGBTQ+ network within the BMA attempted to attack the methodology of the Cass Review, and that officials attempted to block Kemi Badenoch while she was Secretary of State for Women and Equality from meeting with gender critical campaigners. It is important to remember that every single decision made, and each piece of policy advice issued by officials, was done in an atmosphere in which groups like this wielded real influence over people’s careers.

    It's the familiar story of efforts to help the less fortunate taking over and becoming the tail wagging the dog. 

    Prompted by stories like this:

    Warwickshire County Council's LGBTQ+ staff group has warned of the "deeply unsettling" effect of not guaranteeing that the Pride flag will be flown at the council headquarters in the future.

    The council's new leader, Reform UK's Councillor George Finch, wanted the Progress Pride flag taken down before the end of Pride month in June but chief executive Monica Fogarty refused.

    For people like Fogarty here, keeping the Pride flag flying is a hill they're ready to die on.

    What this all means is that in organisations like the police, or the NHS, or the Civil Service – or the BBC – the people who rise to the top now are not so much those who've proved their capability and leadership skills, but those who've embraced the latest shibboleths about inclusivity and so on with the most enthusiasm: those who came top in the Stonewall seminar tests and were loudest in their commitment to the LGBTQ+ cause.

    In other words, as we've seen recently – especially with the police – the people at the top may well be idiots.