Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Purifying Sweida

    From MEMRI TV. 

    On July 16, 2025, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR) published on its Facebook page a video showing a Syrian soldier wearing an ISIS patch on his body armor. In the video, the soldier said that the Ansar Al‑Tawhid Brigades of the Syrian 82nd Division were preparing to enter the Druze city of Sweida in order to "purify it" from what he called the "filth" of Druze leader Hikmat Al‑Hijri and his followers.

    Syrian Soldier: "In the name of Allah, the Merciful, and Compassionate, prayers and salutations upon our Prophet and Muhammad. Right now, the Ansar Al-Tawhid Brigades of the 82nd Division are preparing to enter the city of Sweid, in order to purify it from the filth of [Druze leader Hikmat] Al-Hiiri and his followers. Oh Allah, give us success."

    For the BBC, meanwhile, this is just "sectarian violence", with the nice Syrian government intervening to calm things down:

    The Syrian presidency has announced an "immediate ceasefire" in the southern city of Suweida to try to bring an end to a week of sectarian violence that has left hundreds dead.

    There have been chaotic gun battles on city streets between the local Bedouin tribesmen and the Druze community, with both accused of atrocities. Graphic footage shows bodies strewn in the streets."

    "This moment requires unity of ranks and complete cooperation in order to overcome what we are all going through," Syria's interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa said.

    A bit on the hot-blooded side, these Bedouin tribesmen. Mind you, these Druze chappies are just as bad. Heigh-ho.

  • Dead hanging Jews

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    And dressed as concentration camp victims. Couldn't be more vile.

  • At the congressional hearing on campus antisemitism

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    A report:

    UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons forcefully defended his institution against allegations of tolerating antisemitism during a congressional hearing on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times reported.

    The hearing, which also included leaders from the City University of New York (CUNY) and Georgetown University, was the latest in a series of high-profile clashes between universities and Republicans over the campus climate for Jewish students following the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel.

    "Forcefully" isn't quite the word I'd use.

  • Nice girls and a gaggle of hags

    Jo Bartosch at The Critic on the Sandie Peggie case:

    The storyline is familiar: a man wreaking vengeance on the woman who bruised his ego, flanked by a chorus of co-operative handmaidens — the nice girls who shaft their sisters to get ahead. Sandie Peggie may be the central character, but she’s supported by a gaggle of hags — crones who won’t wheest. After a hiatus of five months, season two started this week.

    First up was Isla Bumba, NHS Fife’s youthful yet handsomely paid equality and diversity officer — a woman who almost certainly sees herself as one of the righteous. Her answers could’ve populated a DEI bingo card. She disputed the term “biological sex” and claimed that men who identify as women pose less of a threat to women than other men. With the dead-eyed calm of the ideologically possessed, she told Peggie’s lawyer Naomi Cunningham that she would unquestioningly accept someone’s trans identity. But it was Bumba’s declaration — “I don’t know what my own body is made of biologically. No one knows what their chromosomes are or their hormonal composition” — that marked the moment many critical observers shouted “full house.”

    Perhaps – one hopes – in a few years time the wretched Bumba will look back on her youthful and absurd obeisance to gender ideology, and cringe.

    Meanwhile, Dr Upton, who during the hearing in February mystifyingly described himself as biologically female in court, is a bully with the swagger of a tomcat. He thought he was untouchable, presenting himself as part of an apparently vulnerable minority granted him unchecked power to push through demands. As the nice girls climbed the internal hierarchy by signalling their compliance with gender ideology, Upton saw an opportunity. He knew that women trained to be accommodating, those who valued seeming ‘kind’, would hesitate to push back. He was right.

    The complaint he submitted against Peggie was finally dismissed after 18 months due to “insufficient evidence”. It was a year and a half in which Peggie, while the media picked over everything from her menstrual flooding to her husband’s political views aired in court, was still being put through the rigours of NHS Fife’s internal investigation. It’s almost as if Upton threw together a complaint in a fit of pique to punish a woman for not playing along with his delusion.

    It's notable how the NHS Fife doctors – "co-operative handmaidens" all – report on how upset poor Dr Upton was: sobbing, apparently, after his encounter with this woman who was prepared to stand up to him. Hard to imagine this six-foot burly man sobbing – only women sob, of course – but it's all part of the well-worn victim narrative in this and just about every other trans story.

    These dynamics are woven into the operation of organisations. There’s no social capital in defending a middle-aged woman who refuses to play nice, and there is a risk to standing up to men like Upton. And so, despite begging the Nursing Union to do its job and represent her, Peggie has been left unsupported. Meanwhile the likes of Scotland’s Engender, which claims to “work to dismantle structural sexism to increase women’s social, political and economic equality” and the Fawcett Society have steadfastly ignored the case. Presumably they’ve found it more profitable to keep quiet.

    In the end, it’s not kindness that drives women to prioritise men — it’s conditioning. It’s a pattern of behaviour that gives them status and mitigates the risk posed by dangerous men. Upton didn’t act alone; his allies were everywhere, smiling as they tightened the screws. That’s why this courtroom drama resonates. The names change, but the plot stays the same: a woman speaks, and the system rushes to shut her up.

  • Sweida update

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  • The routine elevation of the Gaza Health Ministry

    Further to that post about the BBC and Hamas…

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    Report here:

    In May 2025, the U.S. Department of State began a special aid initiative through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to deliver meals and direct food assistance to Palestinian civilians throughout the Gaza Strip. The mandate was straightforward: to securely move aid into a network of Secure Distribution Sites which would facilitate the distribution of millions of meals to hungry civilians1. The effort has delivered over 60 million meals since its inception.

    Within days of GHF’s first meal deliveries, it became the target of a deliberate narrative assault, driven less by verifiable facts than by the demands of a competing narrative. Reports and evidence of violence at aid sites began to surface, and international and U.S. media outlets, social media influencers, and NGOs started publishing articles that ascribed blame to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) or GHF for intentional violence against civilians, war crimes, and complicity in the crime of genocide.

    The reports quickly condensed into viral headlines, but the claim that the IDF was systematically murdering civilians was usually sourced from Hamas-run ministries or anonymous accounts, and often unverified. Moreover, evidence that Hamas could be responsible for violence around aid sites – evidence provided by non-Hamas Palestinian sources, by Hamas’s online communications, and by video that in some cases shows Hamas operatives deliberately firing on Palestinian civilians – was almost never suggested.

    A significant number of headlines from mainstream media outlets thus elevated one side of the story – the side promoted by a designated foreign terrorist organization – without waiting for forensic clarity and countervailing evidence. Although in some cases the body texts of news articles did make an effort to present a more holistic exploration of sources, the verdict or tone in the headlines – that the IDF and/or GHF was responsible for the killings at aid sites – was already given.

    A core failure of media coverage is the routine elevation of the Gaza Health Ministry, a Hamas-run agency, as a trusted source on culpability for violence. While violence itself is not always in dispute, the headlines overwhelmingly frame Israel or GHF as responsible, burying in the body text that these claims originate from Hamas if this fact is revealed at all. The result is a narrative that masks its source and misleads the public about who is to blame.

    The Gaza Health Ministry itself is run by Hamas and for that reason alone cannot be quoted as a politically neutral source for answering questions of culpability or fact. The Ministry has a proven and systematic history of lies, deceptions, duplicated data, and exaggerations which strain credulity of any nonpartisan observer….

  • In Sweida

    The new rulers of Syria are revealing their true colours. Andrew Fox at Spiked:

    Fighting has engulfed the Druze-majority city of Sweida in southern Syria, leaving over 200 people dead. This week, Druze villages have been overrun by Syrian regime forces and allied Islamist militias under the guise of ‘restoring order’, only for those forces to unleash executions, looting and arson upon Druze neighbourhoods. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 92 Druze were killed (including 21 civilians executed by government troops) in the space of a few days. In one incident, an 80-year-old Druze sheikh had his moustache, a symbol of honour, forcibly shaved by invading fighters. He was reportedly killed shortly afterwards. This is, it appears, the dark reality of ‘national unity’ under Syria’s new rulers.

    The Druze of Sweida are not the only minorities being targeted. In March, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, over a thousand Alawite civilians were slaughtered in sectarian pogroms. Jihadist militants of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army rampaged through Alawite villages, committing mass murder and revenge killings. A Reuters investigation found that nearly 1,500 Alawite men, women and children were killed between 7 and 9 March by Sunni fighters in Alawite areas.

    The only support for the beleaguered Druze comes, of course, from Israel:

    Beginning on Wednesday, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) targeted Syrian troops in Sweida, and struck the Syrian military headquarters in the centre of Damascus. Jerusalem took a firm stance: leave the Druze alone, or face the consequences. Unlike the hollow threats we hear so often from Western countries, Israel’s warning was supported by force. Israeli strikes destroyed Syrian tanks and vehicles near Sweida and targeted over 160 sites in Syria this week. The IDF has also moved two divisions to the Israel-Syria border in case a broader confrontation ensues.

    Israel’s intervention is not purely altruistic. From Israel’s perspective, the Syrian regime’s deployment of armed forces into southern Syria posed a direct threat to its border. Furthermore, the Druze community within Israel, an Arabic-speaking minority that serves conspicuously in the IDF, has close kinship ties to the Syrian Druze. The outrage within Israel over the Sweida massacres quickly turned into protests blocking highways. Hundreds of Israeli Druze even crossed into Syria to defend their brethren. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing internal controversies, seized an opportunity to appear tough and decisive. Launching airstrikes in support of the Sweida Druze has proven popular domestically, earning him political points while signalling strength.

    See also:

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  • The BBC’s legitimisation of Hamas

    Danny Cohen, former director of BBC Television, in the Times:

    For almost two years now I have been raising serious concerns about antisemitism and systemic anti-Israel bias by the BBC in its coverage of Israel’s war against Hamas. This week the BBC was forced to admit a major breach of editorial standards following revelations that its film Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone was narrated by the 13-year-old son of a Hamas government official.

    Some might hope that this failure would be a turning point for the BBC. Yet hours later Deborah Turness, the CEO of BBC News, told journalists during an all-staff meeting that there is a “difference” between the political and military wings of Hamas. “I think it’s an important point of detail that we need to continually remind people of,” she stressed.

    Turness’s guidance is simply not true. The UK government makes no such distinction. Under British law Hamas is “proscribed in its entirety” as a terrorist organisation because any attempt to distinguish “between the various parts of Hamas is artificial”.

    As the leader of BBC News, on a £430,000 salary, Turness ought to know such basic points. Ironically, she is also the driving force behind the much-derided BBC Verify fact-checking service. Perhaps they could help her out here.

    This leaked video is damning evidence of the failures of accuracy that are corroding the BBC’s output when it comes to the Gaza war. Crucially, it also reveals that those who lead the BBC simply do not understand the genocidal terrorist ideals that infuse every element of Hamas. This has played a critical role in creating a public perception that Hamas is legitimate, a resistance movement rather than a terrorist army that seeks the death of all Jews.

    The BBC’s legitimisation of Hamas began as soon as they started murdering babies and raping women on October 7. The refusal to call Hamas terrorists has been followed as the war progressed by the corporation’s daily willingness to report unverified figures and spurious claims from the “Hamas-run health ministry”. Driven by a hunger to break news and get clicks on social media, the BBC’s approach has been to report first and ask questions later.

    Hamas know that any press release they issue will go straight onto the BBC's headlines. Nice work for a terrorist organisation that makes no secret of its Islamist ideology and its hatred of Jews.

  • At the NHS Fife tribunal

    The latest:

    A nurse who confronted a transgender doctor in a changing room behaved in an "unacceptable" way, an employment tribunal has heard.

    Gillian Malone – who is head of nursing at NHS Fife – said nurse Sandie Peggie should have raised concerns about sharing facilities with Dr Beth Upton – a trans woman – in a different way.

    Ms Peggie and Dr Upton exchanged words on Christmas Eve 2023 after the nurse told the doctor they should not be in the same changing room at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy.

    Ms Malone said Ms Peggie's comments that Dr Upton was a man constituted unacceptable conduct.

    Why doesn't NHS Fife just throw in the towel? Yesterday their head of Equalities and Human Rights didn't know what sex she was, and now the head nurse tells us it was unacceptable for Sandie Peggie, coming in to the women's changing room to change herself during a heavy period she was experiencing and finding a man there, to mention the fact that he was a man.

    What she should have done: she should have kept quiet, changed herself while the man looked on, then later approached her line manager with her concerns – at which point she would have been instructed to attend a compulsory course on transphobia, and how people with penises can be women especially if they wear a wig and a dress and some make-up and tilt their head to one side in a coquettish manner, and how trans people are especially sensitive to being misgendered so it's something you must never do. Then everyone would have lived happily ever after.

  • Defining Islamophobia

    From the Times.

    Forcing universities to comply with definitions of Islamophobia could lead to breaches of free speech laws, academics have suggested.

    You think?

    Steven Greer, emeritus professor of human rights at Bristol University and research director at the Oxford Institute for British Islam, said he was driven out of Bristol after being falsely accused of Islamophobia.

    He said: “None of the dozen or so definitions of Islamophobia has yet achieved any consensus and it is very doubtful if any official, non-statutory definition will fare any better. The concept itself is too vague and elusive.

    “The solution to the problem of anti-Muslim hatred and discrimination lies in the effective enforcement of existing laws against hatred and minority discrimination and not in non-statutory definitions crafted for any specific minority.”

    He said the panel drawing up the proposed definition had been drawn from a very narrow spectrum of opinion and that it had been difficult for interested parties to make submissions to the working group.

    Greer added: “Based on the apparent assumption that any criticism of Muslims and Islam is ‘Islamophobic’, I was wrongly accused of Islamophobia simply for referring students to the academic literature on Islam and human rights.”

    As has been said often enough, "Islamophobia" is a nonsense concept anyway, and Labour's proposed new definition could effectively introduce the offence of blasphemy into the UK by the back door. It elides the protection of individuals from hatred with the protection of ideas from scrutiny. We already have laws to deal with the former: we don't need any new laws to deal with the latter.

    A case in point:

    An Islamic radio station fined for broadcasting hate speech against Jews has accused Ofcom of Islamophobia.

    Salaam BCR, a community radio station, included a speech by a radical imam denouncing Jews as “the biggest enemies of humanity” during its broadcast to the Muslim community of Bury in Urdu and English. The station is run by the charity Markaz Al-Huda.

    MPs and campaigners have warned that the incident is an example of the risk the government will create by introducing an official definition of Islamophobia, arguing that it will shut down the ability to punish Islamic-extremist rhetoric.

    At 2pm on October 17, 2023 — ten days after Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel — the station broadcast a 38-minute speech by the radical imam Shujauddin Sheikh. He had delivered it to an audience outside the Karachi Press Club in Pakistan five days earlier.

    Sheikh said of Jewish people: “Their history is from killing prophets to only protecting their own interests, to instigating war, to instigating war and then lending money with interest and strengthening their economy, to achieving a bigger purpose for themselves and a very big reason for that is for their vision of a ‘Greater Israel’.”

    Ofcom fined the station £3,500, concluding: “This broadcast contained antisemitic hate speech and abusive and derogatory statements, which were potentially highly offensive and not justified by the context.”

    In response, Markaz Al-Huda handed back the station’s Ofcom licence and accused the regulator of being a “puppet instrument heavily run and supportive of a Zionist agenda which makes [it] a discriminative and Islamophobic organisation”.

    Markaz Al-Huda is now being reviewed by the Charity Commission over its remarks. It was reported to the charity watchdog by the National Secular Society.

    Megan Manson, the society’s head of campaigns, said: “Ofcom was right to sanction this group. These comments, broadcast within days of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, were antisemitic in the extreme and could have contributed to the division and hate crime in the wake of that attack.

    “We urge the Charity Commission to take an equally robust stance on this charity and ensure it cannot publish hateful or divisive sermons in the future — even if that means removing the charity from its register. Charities must never be permitted to be exploited by extremists.

    “That this charity responded to Ofcom’s concerns by calling the regulator ‘Islamophobic’ also demonstrates the pitfalls of trying to create an official definition of ‘Islamophobia’. Regulators trying to protect the public must not be hindered by fears of such accusations.”

    MPs and campaigners have warned that the extremist broadcast exposes the real-world risk of the government’s plans to introduce a new Islamophobia definition.