Those who think the London bombings finally brought Tony Blair’s government to its senses should think again. Hard on the heels of the appointment of the less than moderate MCB spokesman Inayat Bunglawala to the new Home Office task force set up to combat Muslim extremism, we now learn that the government has also appointed to this same task force none other than Tariq Ramadan. This is beyond a joke. Ramadan, a smooth and sophisticated operator, is also anything but a moderate. He has been banned from America and France because of his seditious views – although he says the French ban was successfully challenged, and he has been invited to reapply for a US visa. If so, more fool them. Ramadan -- who has also just been appointed to a year's fellowship at St Antony's college, Oxford -- is more dangerous than the more rabid extremists because he is superficially more plausible, having taken care, particularly in recent times, to make statements opposing Islamic terrorism and antisemitism. But he has not, so far as is known, repudiated his stated goal to Islamicise the west. He just presents it in a way that shrewdly plays to the British government’s instinct for appeasement. The Guardian, which reports Ramadan’s appointment, also reports the reaction from those who have some expertise in reading the extremist directory:

'Mike Whine, spokesman for the Jewish Community Security Trust which monitors alleged Muslim extremists, said: "It's a strange choice given his past statements which some have viewed as being anti-Jewish. Some of our community view him as extreme. He speaks with two voices, one for his European audience which appears moderate, and one for his Arab hinterland where he voices many of the demands of Islamists. He is at the soft end of the Islamist extreme spectrum."'

This is what the Islam scholar Daniel Pipes has revealed of Ramadan’s history:

•‘He has praised the brutal Islamist policies of the Sudanese politician Hassan Al-Turabi. Mr. Turabi in turn called Mr. Ramadan the "future of Islam." • Mr. Ramadan was banned from entering France in 1996 on suspicion of having links with an Algerian Islamist who had recently initiated a terrorist campaign in Paris. • Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian indicted for Al-Qaeda activities, had "routine contacts" with Mr. Ramadan, according to a Spanish judge (Baltasar Garzón) in 1999. • Djamel Beghal, leader of a group accused of planning to attack the American embassy in Paris, stated in his 2001 trial that he had studied with Mr. Ramadan. • Along with nearly all Islamists, Mr. Ramadan has denied that there is "any certain proof" that Bin Laden was behind 9/11. • He publicly refers to the Islamist atrocities of 9/11, Bali, and Madrid as "interventions," minimizing them to the point of near-endorsement. And here are other reasons, dug up by Jean-Charles Brisard, a former French intelligence officer doing work for some of the 9/11 families, as reported in Le Parisien: • Intelligence agencies suspect that Mr. Ramadan (along with his brother Hani) coordinated a meeting at the Hôtel Penta in Geneva for Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy head of Al-Qaeda, and Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, now in a Minnesota prison. • Mr. Ramadan's address appears in a register of Al Taqwa Bank, an organization the State Department accuses of supporting Islamist terrorism.’

‘Ramadan believes that Islam should replace western civilisation. He wants western culture Islamicised, gradually excising all references to Christianity and Judaism altogether. He has been accused of outright prejudice against Jews. One writer has said of him: ‘His problem is not the modernization of Islam, but the Islamification of modernity’ (‘Esprit et Vie,’ February 17, 2000).’

The government’s desperation to engage with ‘moderate’ Islam appears to mean that it is keen to embrace even those who believe in Islamicising the west, as long as they make ritual noises denouncing the terror that flows from such an agenda. At the root of this is its determination to avoid at all costs being thought to have a problem with the current state of Islam itself as opposed to a few ‘unrepresentative’ terrorists, whose motivation will therefore be ascribed to everything but. Such myopia spells cultural suicide.

Another fine example of the overwhelming wisdom and common sense of our wholly tuned-in and responsible judges implementing our security-enhancing, life-affirming human rights law. The Guardian reports:

'A teenager who was ordered not to wear a hooded top as part of an antisocial behaviour order has been allowed to don it again after a court heard the ban breached his human rights. Under the interim Asbo, the 16-year-old was forbidden from wearing a hoodie or a baseball cap that could obscure his face. He was also prevented from entering certain streets in Portsmouth and barred from associating with named youths...William Ashton, representing the teenager, told Portsmouth magistrates court that the headwear ban is "a breach of his right to personal development".'

But of course! What’s the fact that hoods are worn in order to intimidate innocent people and to obscure the faces of those who are about to attack or rob them so they cannot be identified by comparison with the right of such youths to ‘personal development’ – which of course will be stunted by having to display their faces, a horrific encroachment on their right to intimidate which will undoubtedly blight their lives and cause them to seek counselling for trauma. Doubtless Scotland’s approach is nearer to the judiciary’s sophisticated grasp of human rights. As the Times reports:

'Angus Council in Scotland has outraged locals by its decision to spend £1,500 of taxpayers' earnings on a bronze statue of a teenager in a "hoody" and baggy trousers... Residents say the council is wasting money on a celebration of unruly youths. The sculpture, Nike, will be created by Des Smith, an art student at Dundee University, who won the Angus Art Commission. The council says the work will force people to re-evaluate their concept of the state of youth.'

Re-evaluate the state of Britain's sanity, surely?

Another powerful (although in parts, elliptical) article in The American Thinker, this time by Jonathan David Carson, offers a sharp warning to America that it is fighting two wars – one against global terror and one against its own appeasement-minded tendency to sanitise that terror and attack itself instead:

‘As has been documented scores of times by The American Thinker, the homeland battle of ideas is an attempt by the mainstream media, the academic world, government schools, textbook publishers, establishment churches, wealthy foundations, city governments, Hollywood liberals, State Department bureaucrats, the Ivy League playpen at the CIA, pop stars, rap artists, civil libertarians, and other assorted noisemakers to mislead the public about the nature of the enemy, an attempt repeatedly frustrated by the enemy himself, who reveals his nature with every attack.

'The “war on terrorism” is thus a shooting war with Islamofascist terrorists and a battle of ideas with respectable society, which, for its own truly perverse reasons, at best exhibits a dull-witted indifference to the terrorist threat to our lives and way of life…
‘Twenty Marines die in Iraq; Cece Connely says their deaths pose a big problem for Bush. One might think that the deaths are first of all a problem for the dead Marines and second for their loved ones, that Zarqawi’s car bombs are a problem for the United States and the rest of the world, that they are, in other words, a serious problem. But if they are Bush’s problem, and Bush is evil, they must in some sense be good, or if a problem not a serious one...

‘It should be obvious even to intellectuals that George Bush’s neck did not bleed when terrorists beheaded Daniel Pearl, so respectable society must have a more fundamental interest in deluding itself and the rest of us than mere contempt for Mr. Bush. This interest must be an exceedingly powerful one to overcome the fear and anger that people naturally feel when skyscrapers are toppled and subways bombed and to overcome the horror and revulsion that, to be fair, even respectable people feel when adulterers and homosexuals are stoned, thieves punished with amputation, girls sold into polygamous marriages, priceless works of religious art dynamited, black Africans murdered by the millions or held as slaves, women summarily executed for dress code violations, and so on, and on, and on.

‘So what is this powerful interest? What do reporters, academics, artists, intellectuals, mainline Christians, government functionaries, liberal politicians, and the rest of the defenders of the sorry status quo share? Hostility to Christians who seem actually to believe in Christ. And what is the reason for this hostility? A guilty conscience.’

As Carson warns, the war against Islamofascism may well be lost if the elites of America – and, although he doesn’t say so, Britain – don’t wake up to the fact that President Bush is not the enemy and start training their rhetorical guns on the people who actually threaten the life of their nation rather than the person who is trying to defend it. Never has the capacity of the intellectual class for national immolation been more evident, and more lethal, that at this present difficult time.

A scholarly and sobering article by Suzanne Gershowitz and Emanuele Ottolenghi in the Middle East Quarterly makes a parallel point to Carson (see post above), but this time about Ariel Sharon and the way he is viewed by Europe. The demonisation of Sharon and of Israel are not examples of national self-immolation by a country’s own elite (although there’s plenty of that going on within Israel too) but rather the Europe-wide scapegoating of a country and a leader who, with monstrous injustice, have been turned into pariahs on account of just about everything they do, especially their struggle against annihilatory terror, while their aggressors are indulged. As the article records, this European savagery towards Sharon and, through him, towards Israel, is based on systematic distortions and lies – not least about the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982, the point at which the Europeans gleefully fabricated their first Jewish war criminal:

‘The European press exaggerated Sharon's role in the Sabra and Shatila massacres and used it as original sin to cast blame upon Sharon and, by extension, Israel for subsequent events regardless of fact. In an October 2 editorial, the French establishment daily Le Monde declared that Sharon's "provocation" was "enormous," and cited his role in covering up "the massacre by his Lebanese allies of a thousand [sic] women, children, and old Palestinian men in the camps of Sabra and Shatila." Von Heiko Flottau of the German Sueddeutsche Zeitung described how Sharon's troops "watched" as the massacre unfolded. Alexandra Schwartzbrod of the French Libération declared Sharon to be "responsible" for the massacres. Seldom is any other detail of Sharon's career, such as his coordination of the dismantling of the Sinai settlement of Yamit, mentioned.

‘Sharon was defense minister during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. But he was not at the camps during the raid, nor did he order the Lebanese troops to wage such an atrocity. The Israeli army ordered the Lebanese Phalangists out of the camps as soon as they heard that the massacre took place. While the Kahan Commission found Sharon one of the persons "indirectly responsible" for the massacre because he did not foresee the possibility that Lebanese troops might wage a massacre, it labeled "baseless libel" the accusation that Israeli troops were in the camps at the time of the massacre.

‘Both the fundamental bias and ignorance of the European media is exposed by the fact that few raised concerns that Elie Hobeika, the Phalangist leader who ordered the massacre, subsequently became a minister in the Syrian-dominated Lebanese government in which capacity he met with a number of EU officials. Karen Coleman, foreign affairs editor for Dublin's NewsTalk 106 FM radio, condemned Sharon for perpetrating the massacre but had not heard of "allegations" of Hobeika's involvement. Hobeika subsequently held several Lebanese ministerial positions under pro-Syrian governments in which capacity he met with European officials and journalists who did not mention his past. For example, in February 1998, a German news agency covered a pan-Mediterranean energy conference in Beirut opened by the head of the European Commission and featuring then minister of water and electricity Hobeika; it made no mention of his past.’

This demonisation, the authors suggest, has unleashed an irrational hatred of Israel and resurgence of anti-Jewish feeling, and calls into question Europe’s fitness to exercise any role in the search for peace in the Middle East:

‘Israel is a controversial nation and Sharon a controversial figure. But the European media's demonization of Sharon has become irrational. This bias has become so customary that, within Europe, the legitimacy of Israel-bashing and Sharon-baiting has enabled a mainstream airing of conspiracies. Recently, for example, a Guardian column suggested Israeli rather than Syrian responsibility for the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

‘Hatred of Sharon and condemnation of Israel have also made anti-Zionism mainstream. In a May 2001 European parliament session, Paul Marie Coûteaux, a French deputy, said Europe "must consider giving the Arab side a large enough force, including a large enough nuclear force, to persuade Israel that it cannot simply do whatever it wants." The president of the British Humanist Association, Claire Rayner, said in April 2002 that the idea of a homeland for the Jewish people was a "load of crap." In a 2004 lecture in Alexandria, Egypt, former French prime minister Michel Rocard called the Balfour Declaration, which allowed for Israel's creation, a "historic mistake."

‘The growing legitimacy of anti-Zionism has contributed to a resurgence of European anti-Semitism, again often wrapped with and, in many European eyes, legitimized by the caricature of Sharon. Violent anti-Semitic incidents in Europe have risen in proportion to the violence between Israel and the Palestinians, which suggest a relationship between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. In Dublin, there were banners of swastikas over stars of David which read "Stop the Palestinian Holocaust"; in Paris, posters read "Hitler Has a Son: Sharon"; in Berlin, they read, "Stop the Genocide in Palestine" and "Sharon Is a Child Murderer." The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia has shown that during the second Palestinian uprising, anti-Semitic incidents increased by more than 600 percent in France alone.

‘Israel has often been isolated. Pilloried in the United Nations, both European and U.S. media put the Jewish state's actions under a magnifying glass. Media influences public opinion, and its bias in Europe has encouraged prominent Europeans to speak out openly against Israel. This in turn colors European policy already ambivalent about Israel. A vicious cycle ensues.

‘The monomaniacal criticism has taken a new edge under Sharon that threatens to undercut the productiveness of any European contribution to regional peace. Many European officials, diplomats, and journalists translate their hatred of Sharon into skepticism for any position he takes. They dismiss the security fence because Sharon implemented it, even if it was Nobel Laureate Yitzhak Rabin who first declared, "We have to decide on separation as a philosophy." Likewise, while Sharon pursues unilateral disengagement from Gaza, a concession more significant than Menachem Begin's decision to withdraw from the Sinai, European commentators cast doubt upon Sharon's motives. As the Israeli government begins to face other issues—such as the future of Jerusalem, defensible borders, the Iranian nuclear bomb, and demographic requirements to remain a Jewish state—Europe's media-driven hatred of Sharon has emboldened forces questioning Israel's legitimacy and, in the process, both undercuts peaceful solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and jeopardizes the lives of Israel's six million citizens.’

One of the many double standards employed by Europe to judge the Middle East conflict is that Israel’s military measures to defend itself against terror are condemned while similar measures taken by the west are upheld (targeted killings of Hamas leaders, say, get the big thumbs down while the coalition does its best to kill leaders of al Qaeda) on the grounds that Israel’s war is completely different from and has nothing to do with Islamic terror against the west; and yet in the next breath the same critics claim that Israel’s policies are the principal cause of the global jihad. The fact is that Israel is in the front line of the same war that we are all having to fight to defend the free world; that the demonisation of Israel and Sharon is simply a more extreme version of the demonisation of America and Bush, by the same ideological idiots; and that until and unless Britain and Europe stop gunning for America and Israel and start identifying the real enemy who threatens us all, we will not win this war.

I return from holiday to find that the alchemy of terrorism has apparently transformed mice into lions. Much ferocious growling and snarling from Tony Blair and Charles Clarke about throwing certain extremist foreign imams and other undesirables out of the country – even, forsooth, amending the Sacred Human Rights Act! ‘

Let no one be in any doubt, the rules of the game are changing,’

declares the Prime Minister. The exodus will start next week, asserts Clarke. Golly!

This has provoked rueful admiration in the US, where Mr Blair’s robust rhetoric since the July bombings has been contrasted with the reluctance by President Bush to identify the enemy. As the Sunday Times reported on August 14:

‘Blair by contrast is getting credit for naming the enemy as Muslim extremists and for criticising the Wahhabi ideology spreading from Saudi Arabia, which remains a leading American ally. Although faulted for allowing “Londonistan” to grow into a haven for terrorism in the first place, the prime minister is regarded as going on the offensive while the Bush government dithers. “Since the London bombings, Tony Blair has emerged as the public face of the global war on terror,” said Nile Gardiner, a former adviser to Baroness Thatcher and who is now based with the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “He is setting the agenda with tough new anti-terrorist measures.”’

Hmmn.

What tough new measures, exactly? The government’s strategy seems to have been to roar very loudly in the hope that certain people will conveniently fall down without it actually having to do anything. Thus it has broadcast through the loudest of megaphones that it is about to arrest certain Muslim extremists and set in train procedures to deport them. The purpose of this curiously open but so far notional exercise appears to be to prompt these said extremists to depart of their own free will, thus avoiding the problem of confronting the dreaded judiciary, Sacred Human Rights Act and so forth. As for the SHRA itself, the government is clearly also hoping that the judges will have grasped the fact that the British public is in a steaming incandescent white-hot rage about this law, and so the judiciary will therefore not put up a fight if anyone is deported, allowing the Act’s fabled Article Three – the bit whose interpretation has prevented us from throwing out of Britain anyone who poses a threat to us if there’s a possibility they may be ill-treated in their home country – to fade into the background without the Act having to be amended.

But as anyone familiar with the Wizard of Oz knows, there is nothing so pathetic as a cowardly lion, whose roar conceals a spineless reluctance to act. Threatening to do things merely advertises weakness. It's only completed actions that count. The government is banking on doing deals with Arab tyrannies to get them to promise not to ill-treat any extremist who it may wish to send their way. This will not work because a) it’s a ridiculous idea and b) the said tyrannies aren’t playing ball. Not surprisingly, the forces of extremism have been gleefully thumbing their noses. Omar Bakri Mohamed, who was said to have fled Britain for Lebanon after Mr Blair announced that ‘the rules of the game are changing,’ subsequently announced that he had merely gone on holiday. Yesterday, the Daily Mail reported that his fellow jihadis appear to have the human rights lawyers solidly behind them (now there’s a surprise):

‘Headed by asylum seeker Yasser Al-Siri, who is suspected of involvement in a series of terrorist incidents, they gloated that lawyers would halt any attempt at their removal. The Egyptian, who fled to London more than a decade ago and is wanted in the U.S., said: 'I am not worried about expulsion. My legal team think it is impossible.'

Today, another prospective deportee followed suit with similar defiance. Who can be surprised that such people are gloating? For apart from this legal shadow-boxing with a legal profession that plays ideological human rights politics via a hitherto balefully obstructive judiciary, we also learn the surreal news that the Home Office is apparently appointing as a convener of its new task force to tackle Muslim extremism none other than the media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, Inayat Bunglawala. Among Bunglawala’s statements are the following from his time as editor of Trends, a magazine for young Muslims, around twelve years ago:

1)

'The Jews consider themselves to be God’s chosen people - although the blessed prophet Jesus called them the children of the Devil (John 8:44) - and so can do just whatever the hell they like'.

2) He cited claims that the Zionist movement is

'at the core of international banking and commerce'

and observed

'Nonsense? You be the judge'.

3)

‘The chairman of Carlton Communications is Michael Green of the Tribe of Judah. He has joined an elite club whose members include fellow Jews Michael Grade

[then the chief executive of Channel 4 and now BBC chairman]

and Alan Yentob

[BBC2 controller and friend of Salman Rushdie].

The three are reported to be "close friends… so that's what they mean by a 'free media.'

4) According to an excellent – and deeply alarming – new report by the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity,‘Islam in Britain’, he has written that Hamas is

‘an authentically Islamic movement’

and

‘a source of comfort for Muslims all over the world’

. The report goes on:

‘In the same article, Bunglawala supported the radical Wahabbi Muslim clerics in Saudi Arabia, Salman al-‘Awadh and Safar al-Hawali (later linked to Osama bin Laden) and the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria. In other issues of Trends he attacked the Bin-‘Ali regime in Tunisia while supporting the Islamist Egyptian cleric ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman, spiritual leader of the Egyptian Islamic jihad terrorist group, who was arrested by the US authorities for alleged links to the first bombing of the Twin Towers. Bunglawala claimed ‘Umar was simply “calling on Muslims to fulfil their duty to Allah and to fight against oppression and oppressors everywhere”. This looks like clear agreement with the violent Islamist call for jihad by terror anywhere and at any time.’

And as the Telegraph reported:

‘In January 1993, Mr Bunglawala wrote a letter to Private Eye, the satirical magazine, in which he called the blind Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman "courageous" - just a month before he bombed the World Trade Center in New York. After Rahman's arrest in July that year, Mr Bunglawala said that it was probably only because of his "calling on Muslims to fulfil their duty to Allah and to fight against oppression and oppressors everywhere". Five months before 9/11, Mr Bunglawala also circulated writings of Osama bin Laden, who he regarded as a "freedom fighter", to hundreds of Muslims in Britain.’

Bunglawala now attempts to dismiss such remarks as ‘indefensible’ youthful indiscretions with which he no longer agrees. But consider his reaction to John Ware’s excellent Panorama broadcast last week, in which the MCB for which Bunglawala is media secretary was exposed as anything but moderate:

‘The Panorama team is more interested in furthering a pro-Israeli agenda than assessing the work of Muslim organisations in the UK…The BBC should not allow itself to be used by the highly placed supporters of Israel in the British media to make political capital out of the July 7th atrocities in London.’

Ah, the world-wide Zionist conspiracy -- the signature obsession of the Muslim fanatic. The claim is, of course, utterly ludicrous. The MCB was eviscerated on that programme by three things: Ware’s robust and well-informed questioning and his refusal to take the supine approach now practised by so many broadcasting journalists; denunciations by Muslims who are appalled by the MCB’s extremism; and the performance of the MCB’s own general secretary, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, who condemned himself out of his own mouth by repeatedly refusing to condemn or distance himself from Islamist extremism and indeed even openly supported it. For Bunglawala to claim sinister ‘Zionist’ influence within the BBC is not only – considering the BBC’s generally venomous bile towards Israel – demonstrably ludicrous, but in its irrationality and prejudice gives his own extremist game away in the most public fashion. Appointing such a man to combat Muslim extremism is like appointing Mafia boss John Gotti to advise on crime control.

Nor is this the only recent triumph by our tough-minded, agenda-setting government. It seems to have leaked a suggestion that Islamists might be tried for treason -- only for this to be slapped down instantly by the Lord Chancellor. Meanwhile, Home Office minister Hazel Blears has been making one daft statement after another. First, she suggested to general derision that ethnic minority groups should be renamed as, for example ‘Asian-British’ rather than simply as ‘Asian’, to induce integration. Then she said that the police should not use racial profiling in their operations to prevent a repeat of terror attacks. This was after Ian Johnston, Chief Constable of the British Transport Police, suggested that his officers would be concentrating on particular racial groups, and would not ‘waste time searching old white ladies’. Now, it seems, he will have to do precisely that.

All this provoked John Denham, chairman of the Commons committee investigating the bombings, to accuse ministers of bumbling incompetence:

‘The last few days really give the sense that the Government has got into a real state of nerves about the whole thing, displaying a lack of confidence in its own strategy. They have got to get a grip on it very, very quickly, stop floating half-baked ideas and get back to proper cross-party consensus on the serious measures that need to be taken.’

But it’s not just the government that hasn’t got a grip. After the London bombings, the Nottinghamshire police displayed the unerring instinct of the British establishment for solidarity against terror – solidarity with the Muslims. As the BBC reported:

'Police in Nottinghamshire are being given green ribbons to show solidarity with the Muslim community after a rise in racist attacks. The "Good Faith" ribbon is being backed by chief constable Steve Green. Racially motivated attacks in the county have doubled since the attacks on the 7 July, according to figures from Victim Support. Twenty thousand of the ribbons have been made to symbolise belief in Muslims as a people of peace.

'Mr Green said: "We have a huge number of Muslim citizens in Nottinghamshire who are just going around trying to do their everyday business. But they feel intimidated and sometimes ostracised by racist incidents and by the perception that the white community suspects everybody with a brown face of being a suicide bomber. Many people feel fully supportive of the Muslim communities but have no way of showing it and this is a way of allowing them to do that." He added: "Officers will not be compelled to wear these but I have written to my force urging them to take part."'

Following this revelation, a reader sent me the following remarkable message:

‘I thought you may be interested in a quite extraordinary exchange I had with Nottinghamshire Police this morning. Incensed upon reading how the Chief Constable has issued his 4,000 officers with badges pledging support to the Muslim community in the wake of the London bombings I phoned and was put through to his P.A and suggested that perhaps he wouldn't take such a softened and liberal view if his office, like mine, was close to Liverpool St.

‘I was given the usual gumph about how we shouldn't tar one entire community with the same brush etc etc etc...usual liberal/public sector clap- trap. I suggested that they should in fact wear badges showing solidarity with the community under attack by the fanatical Muslims and the poor devils killed and maimed in these latest attacks. Whereupon I was accused of being a racist and that I am not allowed, by law, to air such views.

‘I responded if that was the case, could I say the main bone of contention is that the community at large is basically disappointed that the Muslim community has done little to help the police. The fact that many of its members receive overseas guerrilla training having been recruited in 'back street' (and less back street) mosques indicates a far too lenient approach by the police. They were aghast at my suggestion and made it clear that voicing such an opinion is an offence and I could be in trouble! BINGO, I had them! I suggested they read an article by Tarique Ghaffur, the [Metropolitan] police's most senior Muslim, as I was merely quoting him! Sadly these are the double standards and liberal pussyfooting that has put us in the position we are today. Neither the French nor the Germans face these problems simply because they have applied common sense and a hardline. I feel so much better having taken this action but rather suspect I may be facing a visit by the boys in blue, PC division.’

Are the ‘rules of the game’ changing, in the face of the lethal threat to this country ? Not yet, in morally compromised, politically correct, victim-culture victimised, appeasement-minded Britain; not by a long chalk.

Since the London bombings, and the (to certain journalists) astonishing discovery that some people think Jewish lives are not worth as much as anyone else’s, interviewers have taken to asking Muslim interviewees whether they condemn the killing of ‘innocent Israelis’. While the interviewees often answer ‘Yes’, their tone of voice as often betrays an ambiguity or even an implicit ‘No’. Now Daniel Pipes offers an important explanation, citing three fatwas ostensibly condemning the London bombings:

•‘British Muslim Forum: "Islam strictly, strongly and severely condemns the use of violence and the destruction of innocent lives." (July 18, 2005) •120 Canadian imams: "Any one who claims to be a Muslim and participates in any way in the taking of innocent life is betraying the very spirit and letter of Islam." (July 21, 2005) •Fiqh Council of North America: "Islam strictly condemns religious extremism and the use of violence against innocent lives." (July 28, 2005)

‘Non-Muslims can be forgiven if they assume the reference to "innocent lives" includes those traveling on the Underground and bus lines in London three weeks earlier. But the term "innocent lives" can be much more restricted in application, as a fascinating article in today's Sunday Times (London) makes clear. Titled "Undercover in the academy of hatred," it is based on the undercover research by Ali Hussain of the newspaper's Insight team. Ali joined the Saviour Sect in June, a few weeks before the 7/7 bombings and took along his tape recorder. What he heard is hair-raising – it is imperative for Muslims to "instil terror into the hearts of the kuffar," "I am a terrorist. As a Muslim, of course I am a terrorist," "They will build tall buildings and we will bring them down," the bombings were "a good start" and Allah should "bless those involved".

'He also heard two speakers discuss whom they consider to be innocent.
•Zachariah, referring to the London passengers: "They're kuffar [infidels]. They're not people who are innocent. The people who are innocent are the people who are with us or those who are living under the Islamic state."
•Omar Bakri Mohammed, the sect's leader, who publicly condemned the deaths of "innocents," but at the Selby Centre in Wood Green, north London, on July 22 referred to the 7/7 bombers as the "fantastic four" and explained that his grief for the "innocent" applied only to Muslims. "Yes I condemn killing any innocent people, but not any kuffar."

'Comments: (1) Muslim statements condemning the killing of "innocents" cannot be taken at face value but must be probed to find out who exactly are considered innocent and who not. In brief, can infidels be innocents?’

The rules of the BBC Radio Four Today programme’s game clearly have not changed one whit. Wednesday’s edition demonstrated that, bombs or no, it is still performing its iconic function as the noticeboard of a sick establishment. First came London’s Mayor Ken Livingstone, the groupie for Sheikh Yusuf Quaradawi who endorses human bomb attacks on Israelis and Iraqis, to give us the benefit of his wisdom about the measures being taken against terror. He reiterated his support for Qaradawi, and for good measure blamed Islamic terrorism on Israel, saying a clear majority of Muslims identified with the Palestinians and that there was a ‘clear parallel’ between Islamic terror and the South African ANC because Israel had ‘occupied other people’s lands’.

That last assertion is of course untrue; the disputed territories are actually no-man’s land, having been previously illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt. As for the comparison with the ANC, Livingstone was of course implying that Israel is guilty of apartheid, which is another great and baseless libel. The ANC fought a war of liberation against a minority which had deprived the majority of political power and relegated it to separate development. The Israelis are fighting a 50-year war of survival against Arabs who want to destroy their lawfully established and democratic country in which Arab Israelis have full equal rights; the Palestinians have repeatedly been offered a state of their own but have turned it down in order to continue fighting for their goal of the ethnic cleansing of the Jews from their historic homeland. The comparison is therefore grotesque. The Today programme of course made no attempt to challenge these lies, nor did it put up anyone else to counter them.

Having given the anti-Israel bigotry of the British left its regular airing, the programme showed its commitment to balance by broadcasting a sample of anti-Israel bigotry from the Israeli left. Amos Oz, Israel’s revered novelist, read out the text of a piece that had been published in that day’s Times. The whole thing was an out-and-out attack on religious Judaism, and bore the despicable implication that a) religious Judaism had created the monstrous injustice of the settlements and that b) the settlements were the obstacle to peace with the Arabs:

‘But we, too, have a dream for Israel, totally different from the settlers’ religious fantasy. We want to live in peace and in freedom, not under the rule of the rabbis, not even under the rule of the Messiah, but under our own elected government. We have a dream of being free from the lasting occupation of the Palestinian territories. Israel and Palestine, for almost 40 years, are like a jailer and a prisoner, handcuffed to each other. After so many years there is almost no difference — the jailer is not free and the prisoner is not free. Israel will only be a free nation when the occupation and the settlements are terminated and Palestine becomes an independent next-door country...

‘The struggle in Gaza was not essentially a struggle between the army and the settlers, not even between hawks and doves. No. It was a struggle between Church and State (to be more accurate, between Synagogue and State). This is something many nations have experienced: what should be the position and the influence of religion and of clerics in the business of running a country? Some countries have sorted this out centuries ago. Other nations have been struggling with it endlessly. The Muslim world, with the exception of Turkey, has not even begun.

‘During these past days in Gaza we have been witnessing what might prove to be the first battle between Synagogue and State in Israel, the first showdown over the nature of the Jewishness of the only Jewish state. Are we first and foremost a religion, or are we first and foremost a nation? In this first round it looks like secular, rational, pragmatic Israel painfully prevails over fanatic Israel. But let us not forget that this is only the first round.’

There are a number of dishonest or unpleasant assumptions in this argument. The first is that the settlers were mainly motivated by religious fanaticism. Some undoubtedly were. But many – probably the majority overall, certainly in Gaza to which many had migrated from impoverished southern development towns – were not religious but merely poor people, lured to Gaza by the prospect of cheap housing. Second, Oz equates religious Judaism with nationalist fanaticism. Yes, some nationalist extremists are religious. Yet some ultra-religious Jews oppose the very existence of the state of Israel, which they think is illegitimate until the Messiah arrives. And most important of all, Israel was set up to be a secular state. Oz’s obsessive hatred of religious Judaism – which encompasses an enormous spectrum of attitudes -- indicates that it is he, the militant secularist, who is the fanatic. The third fallacy is his assumption that Israel’s agony will only end if the settlements go and the Palestinians have a state. Not so. Israel’s agony will only end if the Arabs end their war of extermination against Israel, which started long before the settlements came into being.

Oz’s desire to strip Israel of its religious Jewish identity -- tantamount to a desire to strip the soul from a human being – is illuminated by a devastating critique of his attitude in an excellent and thought-provoking recent book by American psychiatrist Kenneth Levin, ‘The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege’ (Smith and Kraus). Levin writes of Oz that, as a result of the Arab siege of Israel which has systematically prevented him from living a normal life, he is possessed by rage towards Jewish history, Jewish culture, Jewish ties to the land – the ‘Jewish mystique’ that for him is ‘a tyranny of the dead over the living’ and which can lead to a ‘murderous rage’. Levin observes:

‘It is most reminiscent of 19th century Jewish intellectuals in Europe who railed against the curse of the Jewish, of Jewish history and Jewish identity (often doing so – as Oz does – while professing individualism or universalism as more noble and high-minded than any narrow ethnic or religious or national identity) but whose indictments of all things Jewish were a response to Europe’s besiegement of the Jews and their own eagerness to escape the siege’.

Even his defence of Zionism is vitiated by his stated animosity towards the nation state, saying that ‘nationalism is the curse of mankind’. Levin comments:

‘He would prefer to have the world consist of “only spiritual civilisations tied somehow to their lands, without the tools of statehood and without the tools of war.” He is a Zionist only because of absolute necessity, because Israel is necessary to protect the lives of Jews: “I am forced to take it upon myself to play the ‘game of nations’… because existence without the tools of statehood is a matter of mortal danger.” But Oz’s impulse to define this utility of the state so narrowly and so starkly – saying nothing, for example, or cultural, ethnic and religious values and their free cultivation -- is in large part a reaction to the siege and a reflection of the wish that claiming little more for the state, eschewing everything that he chooses to perceive as going beyond the basic protection of life, will placate Arab hostility’.

Oz’s pathological disdain for his own people -- and the extent to which he is lionised by both Jews and their detractors -- is thus the Jewish tragedy incarnate.

Having said that, there’s religious and religious. The behaviour displayed during the disengagement from Gaza by some of the settlers portrayed on TV – as opposed to most of the religious and non-religious settlers who departed with impressive decorum and dignity – was a shocking perversion of religion. The way in which they insisted that the land was somehow sacred was not merely historically inaccurate but was itself sacrilegious. Jews do not worship land. To do so is a desecration of God’s name.

Their religious histrionics were all carefully staged for the watching media – prayers timed for the cameras, lamentations and the rituals of mourning signified by the ripping of clothes, as if they were suffering a fascist pogrom. You would hardly have believed that this expulsion from Eden merely amounted to Israel moving its citizens into Israel itself in order better to protect both them and the state. The exploitation of their children, moreover, whose distress at leaving their homes was enormously compounded by such hysterical manipulation, was nauseating. The nadir was a family leaving their home with their children screaming in terror, with Stars of David pinned to their clothing and their hands in the air, as if they were being dragooned by the Gestapo into the cattle trucks. Such an equation of the disengagement with the Nazi genocide was monstrous and obscene, a ghastly mirror image of the disgusting equation being made between Israelis and Nazis by British and European Jew-haters. For religious Jews to make such an equation was barely credible.

Moreover, as one Israeli newspaper article pointed out, territory never used to be a religious issue. Zeev Maoz wrote in Haaretz:

‘The religious establishment did not raise an outcry when the Old City [of Jerusalem] was evacuated in 1948, or when toward the end of the War of Independence it was within the Israel Defence Forces’ power to conquer the West Bank but David Ben-Gurion refrained. It is hard to find written evidence of even a single rabbi who opposed the evacuation of the Gaza Strip at the end of the Sinai campaign for religious reasons. Nor did the religious Zionist ministers who sat in Levi Eshkol’s government enlist the Jewish religion in the cause of land. They supported the June 1967 decision to condition Israel’s return to the international border on a peace agreement with Egypt – a decision that had it been implemented would apparently also have included the Gaza Strip.’

Having said all that, the disengagement was extremely upsetting to watch. As readers know, I believe that it was the right thing to do (see my post on July 28); from the start I had never thought it was right to settle the territories. I hope that Israel will – whatever Ariel Sharon has said to the contrary – withdraw its citizens from most of the settled areas, retaining only those that are truly essential to its security and well-being.

Yet I nevertheless found the disengagement from Gaza deeply affecting. It wasn’t simply that people were losing their homes of nearly forty years. It wasn’t even that the hysteria of crypto-religious land-worship itself painfully illustrated the deep and dangerous dysfunctionality in the national psyche created by fifty years of unbroken national siege. It was more the sense that, as has happened time and again in the history of Israel, the Jews are swallowing the fact that a wrong is being done to them in order to avoid a greater wrong. The greater wrong to be avoided here was the moral and strategic trap of ruling a million disaffected Arabs in Gaza (and a further three million in the West Bank). That is very different from the reason most people want Israel out of the territories – that they think Israel has stolen Palestinian land. This is a fundamental error which is a principal cause of the hatred of Israel that has developed in Britain and Europe. It is an error because of the following:

1) The territories did not belong to the Palestinian Arabs but were no man’s land, as they remain;
2) Unlike the previous illegal occupation of these territories by Jordan and Egypt, Israel’s presence was a defensive act taken for its own security, and was sanctioned under international law until such time as the Arabs ceased their annihilatory belligerency against Israel;
3) Far from Israel driving the Palestinian Arabs out, it is the Arabs who have tried to drive the Jews out of lawfully constituted Israel -- an act of aggression for which America, Britain and Europe believe they should be rewarded with a state of their own;
3) The land settled by the Israelis in Gaza was not ‘stolen’ from individual Palestinians. Much of it was originally vacant; much of it was bought by the Jews from the Arabs.

Take the evacuation of Kfar Darom, where some of the worst violence of the disengagement took place when settlers hurled missiles and chemicals from the roof of a synagogue – a synagogue! – at Israeli troops. You watch such scenes in horror and fury and disgust at the settlers. And then you learn that the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom was founded in 1946, two years before Israel itself, on land legitimately purchased by the Jews from the Arabs. Not stolen; not appropriated; not occupied. Freely bought from those who freely sold. As was so much of Israel itself. And you also learn that this tiny community of Kfar Darom halted the Egyptian advance for several days during the attempt by the Arabs to strangle the Jewish state at birth in 1948. And then you begin to realise what leaving this land actually means in terms of rightful ownership and the rule of law and a price paid in blood. And you watch the astonishing scenes of tough army commanders ejecting these settlers with their arms comfortingly round their shoulders and with tears streaming down their cheeks, and you weep with them even though you still think it is right that the settlers must go because it is not in Israel’s interests that they should stay, but you also understand that in this unique situation there is no one right thing and no one wrong thing because Israel is trapped between that rock and that hard place, with not one country in the world -- no, not even America -- prepared to release it from its lethal predicament.

Now, after disengagement, the ball is firmly in the Palestinians’ court. Even Amos Oz acknowledges that. The Palestinian Arabs now must reciprocate by dismantling their infrastructure of terror. Even to type the words, however, is to realise the hollowness of the expectation. Yet if this does not happen, will the so-called civilised world hold Arab feet to the fire – or will it remain mute in the face of renewed Arab terror, only to blame Israel once again when it takes further inevitable action to defend its people?

Whatever Israel does is not enough. And that is the single most important reason for the continuation of the Middle East impasse – the persistent refusal by America, Britain and Europe to hold the true aggressor to account, rewarding it instead at every stage for its aggression, and expecting its victim to meet impossible expectations within indefensible borders. In its own terms, the disengagement from Gaza was a triumph, an act of moral heroism and consummate military professionalism. But alas, as we are once again reminded by yesterday's random murder of a British boy in Jerusalem and the wounding of another as they went about their innocent routines of piety, it is almost certainly but another staging post in Israel's unending tragedy.

This Diary is now taking a break until the end of August. I hope everyone has a good and peaceful summer.

Dr Mohammed T al-Rasheed, writing in Arab News, speaks more sense than much of the British media and intelligentsia rolled together:

‘Rushing off to war in Iraq did not bring terror to London. Those who are in their ivory towers pontificating about this matter are wrong — dead wrong! For once Blair is right and he should be supported unconditionally...

‘It is too late to ask for American and British withdrawal from Iraq. If that happens, Iraq will sink into a more gruesome, if at all imaginable, bloodbath and bring down the area with it. So let us stop discussing this matter for the time being and concentrate on the real and dangerous issue: Terror at home and abroad — home being where you actually live and abroad is just about fifty yards from where you are all the way to the South Pole.

‘Here is the solution: If we know that at least one of the London bombers is a teenager, and assume that many in Iraq and elsewhere are of the same age, the question is what sort of brainwashing pushes these people to do what they do. If you talk to government officials you will not get anywhere. They will simply tell you that they “condemn” it. Go to the streets, enter the schools, and infiltrate the dreamy paradise-seekers. In their eyes, if not in their actions, you will find the answers.

‘Read the books that their mentors publish and distribute for free. If you must, dress up your best agents as veiled drag queens and send them to “study” in those madrasas. Listen to the voices in the wilderness that are crying for help. Trust that your global interests are best served by helping those who want to bring their children up as citizens of the world and not by tying them to short-term political gains. In other words, be a visionary and not simply a mundane politician.

‘One question to Mr. Blair: Do you, sir, want to be an Eden who fought to preserve an empire that did not exist, or a Churchill who saw his empire swallowed and chose to save the homeland?’

Much indeed hangs upon the answer.

The Anglican Consultative Council has issued a statement on the divestment controversy which achieves a truly egregious conflation of sanctimoniousness, disingenuousness and sheer moral humbug:

‘There has been much comment, and not a little misunderstanding, about what the resolution said about investments. It did not call for dis-investment in Israel. Instead, it commended the Episcopal Church (USA) for resolving to take appropriate action 'where it finds that its corporate investments support the occupation of Palestinian lands or violence against innocent Israelis' and encourages others to do likewise within the framework of their ethical investment strategies. It further 'encouraged strategies that support the infrastructure of a future Palestinian State', which I understand is Israeli government policy also.’

So rather than saying the ACC endorsed divestment from Israel, it would be truer to say that it endorsed divestment from companies or organisations on the grounds that they refuse to condemn Israel’s attempt to defend itself against attack -- since that’s what its ‘occupation’ is all about, and of territory that is also not ‘Palestinian’ but no man’s land; companies or organisations which accordingly refuse to go along with the grotesque campaign of lies, libels and delegitimisation being mounted against Israel. For this principled stand, such companies are to be punished in the name of Christianity. The ACC then caps this moral corruption by a piece of stomach-turning piety:

‘Jewish-Christian relations, especially within Britain, are much valued by Anglicans, who have always been to the forefront of these dialogues, both national and local.’

But it’s clear that such ‘dialogue’ is itself to be conducted within a set of tramlines:

‘Anglicans make a clear distinction between Jewish / Christian dialogue which they value greatly, and the current policies of the Israeli government.’

So the ACC’s message to Jews is clear: we value you enormously, just as long as you don’t support Israel. If you do support it, we’ll treat you as a pariah. In other words, Jews are in one box, Israel is in another. This is to deny Jewish peoplehood. It is also to deny the anti-Jewish nature of its singling out of the Jewish state for pariah status.

Thank goodness there are Christians who can see through all this. Clifford Longley, who recently attended the annual conference of the International Council of Christians and Jews in Chicago, struck a much more rational and decent note on BBC Radio Four’s Thought for the Day this morning:

‘Thirty years ago when I first started going to conferences like this there would have been many Jewish people there who had themselves survived the concentration camps, many Christians who had fought Hitler personally. It was a shared bond, not just psychologically but spiritually. That generation, united in seeing Israel as a Jewish refuge from persecution, has more or less passed. Christian responsibility for the pre-war rise in antisemitism no longer brings an automatic sense of shame, or colours how Christians see their duty towards the Jews. Good relations with Muslims, they would insist, are just as important as Christian relations with Jews.

‘Yes and No to that, I would say. It is too soon to forget what centuries of what is called the "teaching of contempt" towards Jews did to the Christian soul of Europe. It is a religious obligation - or to put it another way, it is what God wants - that Christians should try to undo the consequences of that dark tradition. That means denouncing anything that seems to call in question Israel's right to exist.’

Well said. But the ACC has put the church back in the direct shadow of that dark tradition. And meanwhile, alas, the new Pope also appears to be taking the Catholic church backwards, as the Telegraph reports:

'The Pope will not be dictated to by Israel, the Vatican declared yesterday, as it hit back at officials of the Jewish state who criticised him for "failing" to condemn a Palestinian suicide bombing.

'A sharply worded Vatican statement said the Pope could not be expected to condemn every Palestinian bombing because Israel's retaliation for such attacks was "not always compatible with the rules of international law". It would be "impossible" to condemn a Palestinian attack while letting any Israeli military reaction "pass in silence".

'The staunch defence of the pontiff by Vatican officials came after the Israeli foreign ministry complained that he had "deliberately" failed to mention - during his Angelus prayer last Sunday - a suicide bombing in the town of Netanya. The Pope condemned recent terrorist strikes in Britain, Egypt, Iraq and Turkey, but not the attack that killed five Israelis on July 12.'

So to the Pope, Jewish victims are invisible -- because he doesn't like the fact that Israel defends itself. Far from undoing the consequences of its dark tradition in its dealings with the Jews, Christianity now seems hell-bent on reviving it.

Anthony Browne in the Times focuses with his customary and commendable directness upon our enemy within:

‘The support of Islamic fascism spans Britain’s Left. The wacko Socialist Workers Party joined forces with the Muslim Association of Britain, the democracy-despising, Shariah-law-wanting group, to form the Stop the War Coalition. The former Labour MP George Galloway created the Respect Party with the support of the MAB, and won a seat in Parliament by cultivating Muslim resentment. ‘When I revealed on these pages last year both the fascist views of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the fact that he was being welcomed to Britain by Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, it caused a storm that has still to abate. Mr Livingstone claims that Sheikh al-Qaradawi is a moderate — which he is, in the same way that Mussolini was. ‘The BBC and The Guardian regularly give space to MAB to promote sanitised versions of its Islamist views. John Ware, one of the BBC’s most-respected reporters, spent years trying to make a programme on Islamic fundamentalism in Britain, but was repeatedly blocked by senior editors who feared it was too sensitive. Last month it emerged that The Guardian employed a journalist, Dilpazier Aslam, who is a member of the Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group that wants a global theocracy, and is described by the Home Office as “anti-Semitic, anti-Western and homophobic”. The Guardian used Dilpazier Aslam to report not just on the London bombings, but on Shabina Begum, the Luton schoolgirl who, advised by Hizb ut-Tahrir, won a court case allowing her to wear head-to-toe fundamentalist Islamic clothes. ‘The tale illustrates Britain’s naivety in many ways. Hizb ut-Tahrir is still legal, despite being banned in many European and Muslim countries, and despite President Musharraf of Pakistan pleading with Britain to ban it after it plotted to assassinate him. The useful idiots of the Left insisted that Ms Begum’s victory was a victory over Islamophobia, but even the Muslim Parliament of Britain gave warning that it was a “victory for fundamentalism”, bringing Shariah law one step closer.’

It would be some small comfort if the London attacks had brought an end to this madness once and for all. Alas, despite some evidence of movement towards realism, I fear that the legions of useful idiots are still very much in charge.

Absolutely blistering analysis in The Business of the British government's gross and persistent failings over the jihad:

‘If Mr Blair had truly woken up post-9/11, the laws now being belatedly proposed would already be on the statute book; the jihadists masquerading as Islamic preachers pouring poison into vulnerable young Muslim minds would already be expelled or incarcerated, as they have been in France. But that has not happened and there is no rush to change the status quo, despite the mood of crisis gripping the country. Instead, the feckless British Parliament is off on an 80-day holiday and the new laws will have to wait until spring 2006 before they become operable. There could be no more dismal measure of the extent to which Great Britain is now a country without opposition - indeed in the wake of the attacks has become a country ruled by a mushy government of national unity incorporating all three major parties - than the fact that not a single significant opposition figure has complained about Parliament's extended vacation in the midst of the terrorist crisis; nor has anybody demanded an early recall. Lying on a sunny beach for as long as the most indolent of university students on extended vacation clearly matters more to opposition politicians than demanding an urgent and robust response to those who would destroy us…

‘Nor should the welcome news that the failed 21 July bombers have been caught deflect us from asking some hard questions about the performance of the police and the intelligence services. We cannot be sure that MI5 and MI6, in particular, are equipped for this new terrorist era. With a joint budget only one third of Labour's useless Department of Trade & Industry, it would be miracle if they were. It is now apparent that MI5 did not have enough manpower to track Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of the 7 July bombers, whose name came on to the intelligence radar in connection with a lorry bomb plot which was disturbed in March 2004. Hussain Osman, the suspected bomber arrested in Rome on Friday, was able to leave Britain at a time when his name and picture were splattered across every airport and ferry terminal in the country. Yet he found it as easy to leave as the 310,000 to 570,000 illegal immigrants (to borrow the Home Office's range) have found it to stay. Even in the current state of highest alert, Britain's borders remain hopelessly porous; and its security services congenitally inadequate.

After 9/11 the White House "woke up" enough to convene the 9/11 Commission, which produced a brutally frank report questioning the preparedness of the US intelligence, security and political apparatus. Great Britain badly needs an equivalent inquiry in the wake of its own terrorist attacks. Its remit should be everything from the causes of home-grown Islamo-fascism to why Londonistan was allowed to take root; to the proper shape of, and resources for, the security and intelligence services in an age of global Islamic terror. It is the proper purpose of responsible opposition and a free press in a mature democracy to ask probing questions about these things and to call for such matters to be investigated, even at a time of national crisis. Instead, the media has been muted and the opposition co-opted in the government's cause. It is time the opposition (and the media) woke from their current consensual slumber and started insisting on answers to the hard questions that victory in the war on terror demands.’

Peter Taylor’s TV three-parter The New al Qaeda, being transmitted on BBC2. is laying out some useful material. Personally, I find that the sensationalist presentation, tricksy camera work and scary music gets in the way of any profound analysis. But for those who believed the spin that al Qaeda was just a few assorted fanatics or indeed that it represented no threat at all, the programmes are helping dispel those particular myths. Indeed, in tonight’s programme Taylor made an oblique reference to the appalling — but heavily garlanded — Power of Nightmares (see previous posts), when he sardonically dismissed its ludicrous conspiracy theory that the terrorist threat had been dreamed up to keep the public in thrall to the politicians. If his trilogy does nothing else, it at least shows up the Power of Nightmares for the politicised drivel that it was — while those who mindlessly parroted its argument were already exposed as fools in the most brutal way by the London bombings.

In Taylor’s first episode last week, he conducted a chilling interview with Mohammed Al-Massari, who runs a jihadi website from his home in London and sees nothing wrong with using the images of beheadings and car bombs shown on his site to incite murderous hatred. People who saw this have told me they were profoundly shocked that such a man is allowed to do this. Welcome to Londonistan; where have you been all these years? It also dwelt upon the way the internet is used to recruit, train and motivate jihadis who were scattered after their infrastructure in Afghanistan was destroyed. Tonight, he amplified this further by revealing — via an interview with the head of Moroccan intelligence — that after the Afghan terror camps were destroyed the order went out to the mujahideen to ‘take the jihad to their own countries’.

So much for the claim that ‘it’s all about Iraq’.

Other useful details tonight included the fact that the three Madrid bombers completely concealed their fanaticism — one was a drug-dealing playboy, the second was a phone technician and the third was an estate agent — and that, as this Diary has noted before, although the Atocha station bombings toppled the government and brought Spanish troops out of Iraq, they were followed by another attack to blow up a railway line — and plans were found on the bombers’ computer to blow up yet more targets, including the Real Madrid football stadium.

So much, once again, for the claim that ‘it’s all about Iraq’.

The BBC News website is now actively propagandising for the jihad against Israel. It has taken upon itself to present a pictorial representation of ‘refugee life’ in Balata camp on the West Bank. Picture eight is captioned:

‘Posters celebrating militant leaders line the walls of the camp’.

The pictures are taken from an exhibition being mounted at a London gallery. What the BBC does not give us is the caption that the gallery itself has appended to this particular photograph:

‘The shrine in remembrance of our hero Khalil Marshoud, who was assassinated by an Israeli missile on June 14th 2004’.

Khalil Marshoud was a leader of the terrorist organization, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and was responsible for more than twenty terror attacks against Israel:

‘Among other terror activities, Marshoud is suspected of involvement in dispatching a suicide bomber into Jerusalem at the beginning of June (an attack which was thwarted by security forces) and the planned dispatch of a car bomb with some 100 kilograms of explosives at the beginning of May.’

So the BBC has presented as some kind of hero a man who turns his own people into human bombs in order to kill Jews.

The gallery which has been exhibiting these pictures was — whatever it may have thought it was doing – propagandising this death cult. As its website declared:

‘The photographs are invaluable because through the children's simple and honest storytelling, they provide us with a wider understanding of the impact of war. At the same time, they depict how children living in the centre of a conflict and in a camp which is about one quarter of a square kilometre have the same preoccupations and desires as children in any other place in the world.’

But of course these children do not have ‘the same preoccupations and desires as children in any other place in the world’. They are the victims of systematic brainwashing into a cult of hatred and death, which encourages them to turn themselves into human bombs to kill as many Jews as possible. This exhibition, which appears to make no mention of this terrible process, thus sanitises it.

That’s bad enough. But how can the BBC allow itself to do the same thing? And why should it give space to pictures from an exhibition in the first place? Who are the News website editors responsible for this? Are the BBC governors still alive? And where is the wider outcry?

Alastair Crooke is the former MI6 officer who repeatedly calls for Hamas and Hezbollah to be brought in from the cold. Last Thursday, he was at it again in the Guardian where he boasted that he had been taking part in meetings to bring Americans and Europeans together to promote engagement with Hezbollah and Hamas. Calls for such groups to renounce violence as a precondition of their being treated as interlocutors for peace were, he scolded, ‘a misunderstanding of the psychology of groups engaged in conflict’ because, apparently,

‘conflict and the experience of trauma and humiliation generate intense feelings that can be overwhelming… During the last Palestinian intifada it was possible to see an entire community presenting the symptoms of trauma: an inability to sleep, deep depression, lack of motivation and loss of appetite. Psychologists tell us that humiliation and trauma typically generate feelings of violence that endure for years even among those living in stable societies. Most of us have little experience of armed conflict, and so we do not appreciate how hard it is to make transitions under the bitter weight of anger and irreparable personal loss.’

Decent people with un-warped thinking processes might think that the those who have suffered the real trauma and might find it hard to bear ‘the bitter weight of anger and irreparable personal loss' are in fact the Israeli victims of Palestinian terror, who unfortunately have had extensive ‘experience of armed conflict’ by being vapourised by the human bombs manufactured by the death cult that Crooke is so anxious to sanitise and sympathise with.

But Crooke has a great deal of form in such appeasement of genocidal terror. Until he was suddenly — and inexplicably — recalled to London, he was apparently being used by the British government to open a dialogue with Hamas. As this article in the Jerusalem Post bitterly observed last month:

‘In order to reduce Arab-Muslim criticism of Britain's campaign against terrorism and terrorist regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, Blair's government has always tried to pay in Israeli coin. Blair's personal envoy, a former MI6 officer, Alistair Crooke, visited the heads of Hamas in Gaza and Yasser Arafat in Ramallah. He believed that Israel must accept Hamas as a partner for negotiations. On Blair's behalf, Crooke wandered around the corridors of the GSS, the Ministry of Defense and the IDF to improve the image of this terrorist organization. He even endeavored to have Israeli journalists help brainwash Israeli citizens. More than any other, the Blair government tried to appease Hamas, at Israel's expense. Israel succeeded in killing, if somewhat belatedly, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the men behind Hamas terror, evoking criticism from Crooke.’

As another article observes, Crooke’s name seems to crop up whenever Britain or the EU are trying to confer respectability on the jihad. So not only did he help organise this meeting in Beirut in March:

‘The rare meeting took place on Monday and Tuesday and included leaders of Hamas and American notables close to decision-making circles. The report said a former officer in the British intelligence forces arranged the meeting, attended by Hamas leaders as well as representatives from the Lebanese Hizbullah terrorist organization, and Islamic Jihad in Lebanon and in Pakistan’

but three years earlier, the Jerusalem Post reported:

'Given Egypt's leading role as an inciter of hatred against Israel and the Jewish people, it was also not surprising that Cairo hosted this week's Palestinian terror conference between Fatah and Hamas. ... Slightly more surprising is that the European Union sponsored the conference. Alistair Crook, EU Middle East envoy Miguel Moratinos's security adviser, was in Cairo. According to Javier Sancho, Moratinos's spokesman, the EU's role was "to facilitate" the dialogue as "part of its ongoing efforts to stop terrorism.'

So where is Crooke coming from — apart from a past (and possibly, a present) in the half-world of espionage? According to the Guardian, Crooke is

‘a director of Conflicts Forum, a UK and US-based non-profit organisation working for dialogue with Islamists’.

This is what the US scholar Daniel Pipes has to say about Conflicts Forum, which was founded last year:

‘It has the immodest goal of not just changing policy toward radical Islamic terrorist groups, but changing how Westerners see radical Islam itself. Conflicts Forum wants to challenge "the prevailing western orthodoxy that perceives Islamism as an ideology that is hostile to the agenda for global democracy and good governance."

‘Conflicts Forum has several advantages, starting with the fact that what it terms the "prevailing Western orthodoxy" is – as noted above – quite soft. The group's founder and leader, Alastair Crooke, 55, was a ranking figure in both British intelligence and European Union diplomacy, someone who hobnobs with insiders, gives upbeat speeches at premier venues ("It is Essential to Negotiate with Terrorists" at the London School of Economics," "Can Hamas Be A Political Partner?" at the Council on Foreign Relations), and enjoys a fawning press.

‘But Crooke's true identity came out in a clandestine meeting he held with the Hamas leadership in June 2002, at a time when he still represented the European Union. We have an account of the meeting prepared by Hamas (which Crooke claims is inaccurate). It deserves reading in full for an insight into Crooke's amoral, craven, appeasing, and dhimmi-like, mentality.

• He recounts to Hamas having insisted to two high-ranking European politicians that "the status of Europe in the eyes of the Palestinians has started to deteriorate" because Europe did not adequately support the Palestinians.
• "The main problem [in the Middle East] is the Israeli occupation," which is music to Hamas ears.
• "As for terrorism, I hate that word," he tells leaders of a leading terrorist organization, going on to imply that he instead sees Hamas operatives as "freedom fighters."

‘This last fits Crooke's routine public dismissal of terrorism as a threat. The West, he says, faces not "terrorism" (his quote marks) but a distinctly less nasty "sophisticated, asymmetrical, broad-based and irregular insurgency." And his Conflicts Forum, dubbed by journalist Patrick Seale "a club of disaffected diplomats and intelligence officers," engages in a pleasant form of personal diplomacy that diminishes the horror of Islamist terrorism.

‘Thus, at a Conflicts Forum meeting last month in Beirut with the leadership of four Islamist terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hizbullah, the mood and the food were too good to allow this inconvenient subject to intrude. Stephen Grey, a journalist covering the event, later reflected on it: "Invited to dinner with the participants in the Beirut talks, and sharing jokes with the Hamas men over tiger prawns, avocado, pasta and cherry tomatoes, I wondered privately how one would explain all this intimacy to the mother of a child killed by a suicide bomber."

‘Conflicts Forum offers a seductive alternative to the hard business of waging and winning a war. Unfortunately, its wrong-headed, defeatist, and doomed approach amounts to preemptively losing the war. Its counsel deserves a round rejection.’

And here is part of the official response to this by CF’s director Mark Perry, which Pipes published on his website:

‘The simple truth is that while the U.S. lists Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization, the group has never -- not once -- attacked or killed any Americans. Has the organization attacked and killed Israelis? Yes, unfortunately it has. And many of their operations have been reprehensible, killing and maiming innocent people. But as the directors of our organization, who have spent years working on the ground in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel will confirm, there is certainly enough blood to go around, including that of innocent Palestinians needlessly caught in the crossfire of a complex conflict.’

So although Perry presents CF’s aims in talking to Hamas as a pragmatic move towards attaining peace, the dirty truth is – as the paragraph above reveals -- that it draws a moral equivalence between the murdered and maimed of Israel, attacked in pursuit of Hamas’s genocidal objective to kill the Jews, and those ‘innocent’ Palestinians who are killed inadvertently by Israel in its attempt at self-defence as it pursues those who deliberately murder its people. And no mention at all of the fact that the vast majority of Palestinians killed by Israel are not innocent at all, but are actual and would-be mass murderers of Jews.

The disturbing thing is that Crooke’s approach appears to be making inroads even in the US where, despite the 'Bush doctrine', American representatives took part in Crooke’s Beirut meeting and are flirting with recognising Hamas. The Brits, of course, seem gung-ho for such a relationship -- but then, what’s new? Perfidy over Israel and the betrayal of the Jewish innocents is part of the British DNA.

And one only has to look at the current rush by HMG to embrace the self-styled ex-terrorists of the IRA (who we now know did not, after all, renounce the IRA as a condition of taking part in the Good Friday agreement and thus have demonstrated conclusively not only that anything they say cannot be believed but also that HMG is an all-too willing terrorists’ patsy) and to dismantle the last vestiges of the defence of democracy against terror in Northern Ireland on the assumption that the terrorists’ word is their bond, to see how -- for the Brits -- any ‘peace process’ is an appeasement process, and their willingness to betray the victims of terror and the defence of democracy and human life to the perpetrators of mass slaughter is truly bottomless.

And then they wonder why there are suicide bombs in London. Cynical, amoral – and stupid.