Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Prioritising Islam

    From the Telegraph – Lisa Nandy accused of prioritising Islam over other religions. 

    The Culture Secretary is facing criticism after she appointed the boss of a Muslim charity as an adviser to a new civil society project but no one from Christian, Jewish or other specific faiths.

    Lisa Nandy has made Fadi Itani, the chief executive of the Muslim Charities Forum (MCF), a member of the steering committee of her Civil Society Covenant.

    The 15-strong Civil Society Covenant aims to boost social cohesion with the help of “volunteers, charities, faith organisations” and others.

    Ms Nandy has described the committee as “a new chapter in the relationship between this Government and the remarkable civil society organisations that form the backbone of our communities”. She describes such organisations as “the eyes, ears and voice of the people”.

    Yet the MCF is the only faith-specific group to be represented on its advisory group. The only other religious organisation is Faith Action, which represents all faiths.

    It gets better.

    In 2015 the MCF was stripped of £138,000 of government funding after a Telegraph investigation reported alleged links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood….

    The group was founded in 2008 by Dr Hany El-Banna, who was awarded an OBE in 2004 and remains a trustee of MCF.

    In 2020 he posted a video on X of a lecture he gave in which he described the Yazidi people – thousands of whom were massacred by Islamic State terrorists – as “devil worshippers”.

    Massacred and raped – used as sex slaves.

    The appeasing of Islam by the left does not have a good history.

  • Linguistic fiat

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  • Welcome in Ireland

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    Not exactly a full house. Besiktas the winners 4-1.

  • Anti-Zionism and antisemitism

    Eloquent, from the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt:

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    Full text:

    The ADL has never recorded antisemitism at today’s levels. October 7 unleashed a new wave of Jew-hatred, and Jonathan sees it up close.

    “When you normalize language like ‘from the river to the sea,’ like ‘globalize the intifada,’ like ‘Israel is a Nazi state,’ this creates the conditions in which people feel not just compelled but almost obligated to do horrible things.

    So I think ideas have consequences, and it starts with words.”

    Thank you Jonathan for saying it so precisely.

    Izabella Tabarovsky: "What I like about this video is how Jonathan Greenblatt refuses to concede that antizionists have a right to redefine words and concepts as they please. They don’t — and we shouldn’t let them."

  • At Boston Children’s Hospital

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    Plenty more to see in the thread. Lovely kind doctors talking about vaginoplasty, surgically removing female body parts, and all the other delights of "gender-affirming care" for kiddies. 

    Kathleen Stock:

    Nice colours, bright primary school teacher voices, soothing music, euphemistic descriptions of removing children's healthy reproductive organs.

    "People who are getting gender-affirming hysterectomies do not have to have their ovaries removed" (coy smile, reassuring little headshake). Well strictly speaking, Frances, they don't have to have hysterectomies either because there is absolutely nothing wrong with their wombs.

    Good to keep these, as a reminder of the gender madness…

  • On the EHRC and trans women

    Some letters to the Times this morning:

    Sir, We agree that it is “time for ministers to impose their authority” (leading article, Aug 7) and that the public sector cannot be allowed to treat the law, clearly stated by the Supreme Court on April 16, as optional. No one can.

    The government has allowed a leadership vacuum to develop on complying with the law. It falls to the government to fill it. We disagree on one point, however. Far from being derelict in its duty, the Equality and Human Rights Commission is one of the few organisations that has come close to fulfilling its legal duty. The Health and Safety Executive, in particular, which has a remit to explain and enforce workplace regulations that mandate single-sex toilets and changing rooms, has by comparison been missing in action.

    There is no need for anyone, least of all the government, to wait to be told what to do by the EHRC.

    Every day women are subjected to harassment and discrimination because of this failure. The delay is shameful.
    Maya Forstater chief executive
    Helen Joyce director
    Fiona McAnena director
    Sex Matters

    Sir, I agree that the Supreme Court definition of sex, namely as meaning biological sex, ought to have been the final word in a particularly ugly chapter of public discourse. To achieve this result in practice, the nettle should be grasped by acknowledging that the Gender Recognition Act was a mistake, and repealing it.
    David Iwi
    London NW11

    Sir, Your leading article says that the Equality and Human Rights Commission “should state that trans women must not be allowed in single-sex spaces” and that trans people cannot take part in women’s sport. If the EHRC were to publish such guidance, it would be wrong.

    Trans women are welcome in single-sex spaces, just not in those for women. Trans women can play sport, just not in the women’s category. Activists claim that trans people are banned from various organisations and activities, that they have been taken out of the Equality Act and that their existence is under threat. Misinformation like this feeds that narrative, to the detriment of us all, and particularly to women who are arguing for safety and fairness across the board.
    Ursula Doyle
    London SW16

  • Embracing the idea that some male people are in fact vulnerable women

    Victoria Smith at UnHerd on how the media is distorting EHRC ruling on women-only spaces:

    If the “gender wars” of the past decade have taught us anything, it’s that framing matters. Take, for instance, the shocking headlines that have emerged in response to the EHRC’s latest recommendations on women-only spaces.

    According to the Times and the Independent, trans women are to be “banned from single-sex spaces”. Except this isn’t true. As the Telegraph more accurately puts it, trans women — that is, biologically male people who claim to be women — are to be “banned from public female-only spaces”.

    Such a ruling should not be controversial. As the barrister Naomi Cunningham points out, “single-sex spaces for women can’t have men in them, because if they do, they’re not single-sex”.

    The difference in headlines is all-important. The first example suggests a singling out of trans women, targeting them for exclusion merely for being trans. The second simply states that female-only spaces are to be female-only in more than just name.

    It's the way that "trans" has been presented as the new "gay" – a persecuted minority who form the latest in the progressive list of victims to be rescued from the prejudices of the past. Noting that we're talking here about men pretending to be women, and insisting on their right to access women-only spaces, somehow robs them of their magic.

    At the heart of it all is the miscasting of members of a dominant group (males) as vulnerable victims of members of a subordinate group (females). In academic articles, Stonewall training sessions, books, and newspaper think pieces, something very justifiable and ordinary — women’s fear of male violence and right to privacy — has been recast as privileged, bigoted “cis” women’s paranoia about anyone who is different.

    How deeply ingrained this narrative has become was seen recently in the Sandie Peggie employment tribunal. Dr Beth Upton, a male employee who failed to respect Peggie’s need for a female-only changing room, ought to have been seen as precisely the kind of man who creates the need for such spaces. Instead Upton’s colleagues and employer rushed to portray Peggie as the aggressor.

    To many people, it is obvious how wrong this is. There is nothing different or boundary-shattering about the likes of Upton. Nonetheless, the past decade has seen a certain class of people embrace the idea that some male people are in fact vulnerable women. The law may have been clarified, but it will be a long time before such people stop insisting that the law is both confusing and a gross violation of human rights.

  • This is no longer tolerable

    An impassioned piece from Philipp Peyman Engel, editor-in-chief of Germany’s most important Jewish newspaper the Jüdische Allgemeine, at the JC:

    Did you know that Israel has delivered around 34,000 tonnes of aid into the Gaza Strip this month alone to help feed the Palestinian civilian population? Did you know that the US agency “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” distributes several million meals per day? Did you know that just the week before last, Israel sent over 600 truckloads of goods into Gaza?

    Did you know that hundreds of tonnes of aid have been rotting in the sun on the Gazan side of the border because the UN and other organisations simply weren’t collecting them, even as those same organisations loudly accuse Israel of starving Gaza’s population? Did you know that Egypt has almost completely sealed its border with Gaza? Did you know that many of the shocking images of emaciated Palestinian children circulating online and in mainstream media show children suffering from incurable diseases?

    Did you know that Israel is the only country in history to deliver humanitarian aid to the civilians of a territory that attacked it, holds its citizens hostage, and continues to launch rockets – knowing full well that the aggressors, Hamas, divert some of that aid for war?

    Anyone relying primarily on Western media, including in my own country, Germany, would almost certainly answer most of these questions with a resounding “no”. Worse still, they might view the questions themselves as an attempt to downplay or even deny the suffering in Gaza – which they are not.

    Let’s be clear: the suffering in Gaza is real. And both the international community and Israel must do more – everything possible – to end that suffering as swiftly as possible.

    At the same time, everything stated above is factually accurate. While Israel may be on the verge of defeating Hamas militarily, it has long since lost the war of images and information – aided and abetted by the failure of Western journalists and politicians. As Ulf Poschardt, editor of the German daily Die Welt, recently observed: the West is being poisoned – above all by the media’s growing acceptance of Hamas propaganda. The accusation – or rather, the lie – that Israel is starving Palestinians or committing genocide has now become mainstream.

    Meanwhile antisemitism in Europe escalates to levels not seen since the 1930s.

    The essayist, resistance fighter and Holocaust survivor Jean Améry once observed that modern antisemitism no longer presents itself as such. On the contrary, when challenged, it denies its nature, claiming: “I’m not antisemitic – I’m just anti-Zionist.” Today, even that fig leaf is gone. Now everything is allowed. All barriers have collapsed. Jew-hatred is now expressed openly and without shame.

    Europe is currently being swept by a storm of antisemitism more intense than anything seen in decades. Antisemitic incidents are skyrocketing. More and more Jews in Berlin are considering emigration. In Austria, Jews are being thrown out of restaurants and campsites simply for being Israeli. In France, a rabbi is beaten. In Spain, Jewish teens are forced off a plane – for singing in Hebrew.

    “Resist the beginnings”? Too late. Instead, we hear: “But international law!” “But the supposed genocide in Gaza!” Enough is enough. This is no longer tolerable.

  • The ends being seen to justify the means

    Dave Rich at Jewish News:

    There is a growing campaign against the proscription of Palestine Action, the group that used organised criminality to pursue its anti-Israel politics until they were banned as a terrorist group by the Home Secretary last month.

    The latest statement in their support is a letter to the Guardian (where else?) by a predictable list of academics and veteran activists. It includes this revealing sentence:

    “We fully share the aim of ending the flow of weapons from Britain to Israel and the belief that all participants in the pro-Palestine movement should be free to make our own decisions about how best to achieve that goal.”

    So, no restrictions. Anything goes. It's up to the activists themselves – whose noble motives rise above the law..  

    Cutting through the high-blown political rhetoric, it is hard to avoid the view that the signatories of that Guardian letter support Palestine Action because they believe the Palestinian cause is just, and therefore the suffering in Gaza justifies any response. The same goes for the people getting themselves arrested in Palestine Action’s name every weekend. But this is not an example of cause-agnostic support for free expression or political protest. If a far right group used Palestine Action’s tactics to attack immigration centres, asylum hotels and the offices of law firms who work on immigration cases, using organised criminal damage and intimidation to try to bring about an end to immigration, similar support would not be forthcoming from the people now supporting Palestine Action. This is a case of the ends being seen to justify the means: which is, ironically, the logic that terrorists have used for decades.

  • EHRC guidance on the way

    So many organisations have delayed following the law about women-only spaces by saying they were waiting for guidance. Well, now they're getting it:

    Schools, hospitals, leisure centres and cinemas will be told to ban trans women from using single-sex spaces including lavatories and changing rooms under equalities guidance to be submitted to ministers this month.

    The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is understood to have rejected demands from campaigners to water down rules that would restrict the ability of trans people to access services of their chosen gender.

    The statutory guidance will spell out that transgender competitors can be excluded from single-sex sporting competitions and that it would be reasonable for a woman to object to the presence of a transgender woman if she will be getting undressed or in a vulnerable situation.

    The guidance applies to any organisation that provides services to the public.

    Clear enough?

    Shops and gyms will be included in its scope but the guidance also extends to government departments, the NHS and prisons. It covers private organisations or charities if they are providing a public service, for example a private care home providing care on behalf of a council.

    The EHRC will submit its updated guidance to Bridget Phillipson, the women and equalities minister, before the end of the month. It is believed Phillipson will approve the guidance as long as it is in line with the law. It will then be laid before parliament.