According to the Daily Mirror, this is what’s going on in Belmarsh prison where a number of Muslim Brotherhood terror suspects are being held:

Violent Islamic extremists are terrorising inmates at Britain's toughest jail with an iron fist as they trawl for al-Qaeda recruits. The gang of thugs - known as The Muslim Boys - intimidate frightened inmates at Belmarsh into joining their faith, beating those who refuse their bullying demands.Some bloodied victims have been slashed by razor blades attached to toothbrushes. Others have had boiling water hurled over them. Prisoners say they are in fear for their lives.

A leaked report by the prison’s head of security apparently says:

Prisoners reported abuse, assaults, intimidation and threats. Some of the atrocities were carried out with impunity during associations causing victims to fear for their lives.’Most of the perpetrators are believed to be members of the Muslim Boys gang who intensified their drive to recruit other prisoners to the fold.They force prisoners to accept the Muslim faith - those who refuse suffer assaults. They promise potential converts protection from other prisoners and staff who they challenge at every opportunity.’

A source said: ‘These people are terrifying. Extreme Muslims are pulling together and the jail has experienced a surge in violence, drugs and intimidation.The Muslim Boys' gangmaster orders most of the assaults on fellow prisoners. They rule through fear and are very hard to infiltrate.’

Security chiefs are most worried at the weekly seminars held by the gang in Belmarsh's multi-faith chapel. Our source said: ‘Belmarsh has got a huge problem tackling the recruitment of terrorist cells. These people hold religious services every week. Around 125 Muslims attend and top members of al-Qaeda preach.None of the staff has a clue what they're talking about. Six officers attend each service, but all they can do is stand and watch.Those in the chapel could be planning a major terrorist attack but the officers wouldn't know.We can't even tape the service and get it translated because it is against Human Rights. It's frightening.’

Question: why are ‘top members of al-Qaeda’ being allowed to preach in Britain’s prisons? Answer: it’s called promoting ‘diversity’, ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘combating Islamophobia’.
Isn’t it wonderful to know that the British establishment is now taking the terrorist threat seriously!

Useful article by Michael Herzog in Foreign Affairs explains why the idea that Hamas will be tamed by office is an illusion. Quite apart from the non-negotiable nature of its oft-stated and now firmly repeated position that it intends to destroy Israel, Herzog observes that the conditions under which other terrorist organisations have come in from the cold do not apply here:

The most important lesson to be drawn from these cases is that co-optation through political participation is not a given, but rather depends on the existence of certain conditions in the local political context. No Islamist movement has renounced violence or moderated its ideology of its own volition; when one has done so at all, it has been for lack of a better alternative. It appears that at least three factors need to be present for co-optation to occur: the existence of a strong, healthy, and relatively free political system into which the Islamists can be absorbed; a balance of power tilted against the Islamists that forces them to play by moderate rules; and sufficient time for co-optation to take effect…

Unfortunately, if one looks closely at the case of Hamas, hardly any of these potentially moderating factors are present. Elections in the PA may be relatively free. But Palestinian political, security, and other institutions are a chaotic mess, and the pragmatic political center, represented by Fatah, is in complete disarray. Hamas is launching its political career in the legislative and executive branches without having disarmed and is quite possibly stronger than the rest of the state apparatus…

The ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict, meanwhile, adds fuel to the fire of domestic Palestinian turmoil and to extremism. It provides an excuse for tolerating private armies within the PA and enhances the legitimacy of Hamas' rejectionist stance. Opinion polls show that although most Palestinians disagree with Hamas' ideological extremism and support a two-state solution to the conflict, they also accept the notion of "armed struggle" as a legitimate route to get there, citing the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as an example of what such pressure can achieve. This complicated preference structure gives Hamas a perverse incentive to disrupt progress in diplomatic negotiations, since the normalization of Palestinian-Israeli relations could well lessen Hamas' appeal. As long as its military and political power enhance each other, Hamas will be able to fend off pressures to disarm and will derail progress toward peace. Given the urgency of moving the conflict toward resolution, finally, there simply is no time to let Palestinian domestic politics play out long enough for Hamas' political socialization to occur.

Quite so.

The claim that Saddam’s infamous WMD were moved clandestinely to Syria just won’t go away. An article in the New York Sun reports on a new book, Saddam’s Secrets, by the man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force, Iraqi general, Georges Sada. He says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.

‘There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands,’ Mr. Sada said. ‘I am confident they were taken over.’ Mr. Sada's comments come just more than a month after Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam ‘transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.’

...Mr. Sada, 65, told the Sun that the pilots of the two airliners that transported the weapons of mass destruction to Syria from Iraq approached him in the middle of 2004, after Saddam was captured by American troops. ‘I know them very well. They are very good friends of mine. We trust each other. We are friends as pilots,’ Mr. Sada said of the two pilots. He declined to disclose their names, saying they are concerned for their safety. But he said they are now employed by other airlines outside Iraq.

The pilots told Mr. Sada that two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, Mr. Sada said. Then Special Republican Guard brigades loaded materials onto the planes, he said, including ‘yellow barrels with skull and crossbones on each barrel.’ The pilots said there was also a ground convoy of trucks. The flights - 56 in total, Mr. Sada said - attracted little notice because they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in June of 2002. ‘Saddam realized, this time, the Americans are coming,’ Mr. Sada said. ‘They handed over the weapons of mass destruction to the Syrians.’

Mr. Sada said that the Iraqi official responsible for transferring the weapons was a cousin of Saddam Hussein named Ali Hussein al-Majid, known as ‘Chemical Ali.’ The Syrian official responsible for receiving them was a cousin of Bashar Assad who is known variously as General Abu Ali, Abu Himma, or Zulhimawe. Short of discovering the weapons in Syria, those seeking to validate Mr. Sada's claim independently will face difficulty. His book contains a foreword by a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, David Eberly, who was a prisoner of war in Iraq during the first Gulf War and who vouches for Mr. Sada, who once held him captive, as ‘an honest and honorable man.’

We, of course, have no way of verifying either that statement or the information itself. But we should note it.

I was abroad all last week and so have only just been catching up with the reaction in Britain to the creation of Hamastan in the West Bank and Gaza. As one might have expected, much of it has been a woeful combination of the staggeringly ignorant and the wilfully blind. The prevalent view seems to be that a) now they have the weight of responsibility on their shoulders, Hamas will be forced to become more moderate b) only if we talk to them will we have any chance of persuading them away from violence and into a peaceful democratic process.

Oh dear.

Since the election, Hamas operatives have been making it plain beyond any shadow of doubt that they are not going to moderate their aims one whit. There will be no recognition of or peace with Israel, period. It’s war to the finish. End of argument? Far from it. Western ostriches don’t hear or believe this because they don’t want to hear or believe it. They look for example at Northern Ireland and say, well, the IRA turned into Sinn Fein and now they are part of a peaceful and democratic government.

Let’s leave aside for the present the issue of Northern Ireland’s unfinished business and the mafia-society that has been created there. The key point is that the Islamist terror represented by Hamas is of a completely different order from Irish republican terror. The latter represented a negotiable position. One may not have approved of its demand for a united Ireland and disapproved even more of its terrorist methods; but the bottom line was that if Britain had given in to that demand, it would not have been the end of Britain. The IRA did not want to eradicate the British, murder all Britons and impose a Catholic tyranny. The Islamists want to eradicate Israel, murder all Jews and impose an Islamist theocracy on the land. That is a non-negotiable position. It is not susceptible to moderation. The Hamas agenda is not a political agenda as understood by the west, which separates church and state. The Hamas agenda is pure, undiluted religious fanaticism.

People should read the Hamas Covenant in full. Here are some extracts which show how absurd it is to imagine that these people could ever become ‘moderate’:

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight. "Allah will be prominent, but most people do not know… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors... The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up...liberation of Palestine is then an individual duty for very Moslem wherever he may be...in the face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised...

Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah's promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him...
In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad. This would require the propagation of Islamic consciousness… We must spread the spirit of Jihad among the [Islamic] Umma... introducing fundamental changes in educational curricula in order to cleanse them from all vestiges of the ideological invasion which has been brought about by orientalists and missionaries... 'I swear by that who holds in His Hands the Soul of Muhammad! I indeed wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I will assault and kill, assault and kill, assault and kill'...

The various Zionist Organizations which take on all sorts of names and shapes...Islam...will wipe out those organizations which are the enemy of humanity and Islam... The Nazism of the Jews does not skip women and children, it scares everyone. They make war against people's livelihood, plunder their moneys and threaten their honor….
It stands behind the diffusion of drugs and toxics of all kinds in order to facilitate its control and expansion... Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims...

It is this uncompromising reality which has led some commentators to hope that Hamas has actually walked into a trap. They didn’t actually expect or want to win, goes this thinking, because they didn’t want the responsibility. Now they will have to choose: moderate themselves in order to be accepted by the world, or not moderate themselves in which case their genocidal, fascistic character will be entirely unambiguous. The two-faced game the Palestinians have played for the past forty years will thus finally be exposed.

Emanuele Ottolenghi has provided an elegant exposition of this argument that ‘worse is better’:

As the government of the Palestinian Authority, now they will have to say whether they accept the roadmap. They will have to take control over security and decide whether they use it to uphold the roadmap or to wage war. There will be no excuses or ambiguities when Hamas fires rockets on Israel and launches suicide attacks against civilian targets. Until Tuesday, the PA could hide behind the excuse that they were not directly responsible and they could not rein in the 'militants.' Now the 'militants' are the militia of the ruling party. They are one and the same with the Palestinian Authority.

If they bomb Israel from Gaza — not under occupation anymore, and is therefore, technically, part of the Palestinian state the PLO proclaimed in Algiers in 1988, but never bothered to take responsibility for — that is an act of war, which can be responded to in kind, under the full cover of the internationally recognized right of self-defense. No more excuses that the Palestinians live under occupation, that the PA is too weak to disarm Hamas, that violence is not the policy of the PA. Hamas and the PA will be the same: What Hamas does is what the PA will stand for.

Continuing to pursue a violent path will automatically switch off all international aid. Perhaps Hamas intends to offset the resulting loss of revenue by hosting Holocaust-denial conferences in Gaza and terrorist training camps in Rafah, but it will still have to explain to the Palestinian public why it’s better to renounce public aid to wage war.

Meanwhile, Hamas will have to confront the Egyptians (and the Jordanians) and tell them what the PA under Hamas now stands for. And Egypt and Jordan will have to change course, accordingly. Egypt has an increased military presence along the Gaza border and several officers in Gaza to help 'stabilize' the security situation — which so far has meant keeping the flames low enough not to bother Egypt but high enough not to let Israel off the hook completely. What will Egypt do now? Cooperate with Hamas in Gaza while it dreads Hamas’ twin, the Muslim Brotherhood, at home? Will it act more decisively to stop the ever growing flow of illegal weapons being smuggled into Gaza from the Sinai, or turn a blind eye even as the increased militancy in Gaza might embolden the Brotherhood in Egypt? No more ambiguity for Egypt either...

The appeasers and the apologists are already queueing up to argue that Hamas has already embarked on the road to realism. But unless Hamas reneges on its ideology and endorses a new course, then Israel’s claim that there is no Palestinian partner is vindicated. The resulting Israeli policy of unilateralism is vindicated. Israel’s argument that the Palestinians do not want peace is vindicated. Israel’s argument that Islamists’ nuances and differences of opinion are just tactical, not strategic, is also vindicated. And the prospects of a Palestinian state will become even more remote.

It's a sophisticated analysis, and maybe this is indeed what will happen. The rogue card in Ottolenghi's pack, however, is the attitude of the west. If this were a sane and rational world, Ottolenghi’s logic would be unanswerable. But unfortunately it is very far from sane and rational. The west shows daily that it will go to extraordinary lengths to deny the screamingly obvious and take refuge in its lethal fantasies of rational actors prosecuting irrational conflicts. Thus Hamas is guaranteed to sow terminal confusion by engaging in precisely the same kind of lies and mind-twisting manipulation that has brought such success for the Palestinian cause among the dupes of the west. For a taster of this strategy, read the MAB activist and Hamas supporter Azzam Tammimi in today’s Guardian (where else?):

The fact that Hamas does not, and will not, recognise the legitimacy of the state of Israel does not mean that Hamas is not capable of negotiating a peace deal that would end the bloodshed. Hamas is prepared to negotiate a settlement based on the concept of a hudnah (truce). As far as Hamas is concerned - and that is the position of the majority of Palestinians inside as well as outside Palestine - Israel has been built on land stolen from the Palestinian people. The creation of the state was a solution to a European problem and the Palestinians are under no obligation to be the scapegoats for Europe's failure to recognise the Jews as human beings entitled to inalienable rights. Hamas, like all Palestinians, refuses to be made to pay for the criminals who perpetrated the Holocaust.

However, Israel is a reality and that is why Hamas is willing to deal with that reality in a manner that is compatible with its principles. Contrary to the claims of alarmists who see the Hamas election victory as a threat to peace, new opportunities for making peace could now emerge. The peacemaking episodes of the past were based on assumptions absolutely unacceptable to the majority of Palestinians and those who support the justice of their cause. From Oslo to the road map it was always assumed that Israel was the victim that needed to live in peace and security and that the key to this was the end of Palestinian terrorism. The new peace process that Hamas may indeed be willing to be part of should be based on the fact that the Palestinians are the victims and have been victims since Israel was created on their soil. It is not Palestinian terrorism that is the problem, but Israeli aggression.

Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, who was cut to pieces when Israel shot him with an air-to-surface missile, spelled it out long ago. We shall never recognise the theft of our land, he said, but we are willing to negotiate a ceasefire whose duration can be as a long as a generation, and let future generations on both sides decide where to go then. His ceasefire conditions are fully compatible with international law. Israel would have to give back what it occupied in 1967 - then without any Jewish settlements - and release all Palestinian prisoners. For that Hamas would halt its armed struggle and instead pursue peaceful means.

The IRA, whose leaders negotiated a deal with the British government, continues to dream of uniting Northern Ireland with the Republic; it was never a condition for the peace talks that they should first abandon that dream. Well, let the Palestinians dream of the end of Israel and let the Israelis dream of Eretz Yisrael from the Nile to the Euphrates, but let's negotiate an end to the violence. Hamas alone is capable of that because Hamas will not give up the right of Palestinians to go back to the villages and towns from which the terrorists who stole their land drove them.

Ah yes, the IRA. Tammimi’s argument is calibrated to chime with the inexhaustible gullibility of his western audience which so desperately does not want to believe that what it is looking at is a threat the like of which has never before been seen on this planet and which makes the analogy with Irish terrorism or any other kind of terrorism simply ludicrous (quite apart from the fact that the IRA only entered the political process because militarily they were beaten). The fact is that Hamas is a religious army whose jihad is said to be prosecuted in God’s name. And that programme is founded upon a pathological prejudice against the Jews, based on their belief that the grotesque libels of European Jew-hatred are true. Here’s that Covenant again:

With their money, they [the Jews] took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there...

They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it....Their plan is embodied in the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'...Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people. 'May the cowards never sleep.'

Tammimi is a smart guy, and may be more than just a Hamas ‘supporter’. On BBC Radio Four’s Moral Maze not long ago, he said -- in response to evidence of the Hamas Covenant’s virulent Jew-hatred -- that ‘I am rewriting the Covenant’ to exclude such material. He knows perfectly well that the west is eager to hear that Hamas has excluded such material so that it can persuade itself that it no longer hates the Jews. Just to write that sentence is to expose the risibility of the thinking. Read the Covenant and then ask whether people who have sanctified boundless, irrational, demented hatred in the name of God can really unthink this and resile from their ‘sacred’ duty to kill Jews wherever they find them. But the capacity for self-delusion in the west appears to be boundless.

President Bush is currently talking tough: no assistance or financial support unless Hamas renounces violence and recognises Israel. But the danger is that Hamas will adopt the brilliant strategy employed by Arafat – to be sufficiently ambiguous in their public pronouncements to enable the west to continue with the farce of the ‘peace process’ while Hamas continues either to kill Jews or plot how to achieve a final solution to the Jews’ presence on the Jews' own, historic, reclaimed land.

The dust has not yet settled on this development. We will soon see whether we are indeed into a new game, or a continuation of the old dance of death.

After the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad so memorably called recently for Israel to be wiped off the map, the UN duly obliged by doing precisely that. At a UN meeting last November, a map of the Middle East displayed on a frame at the front of the room with a flag of the United Nations on one side, and a Palestinian flag on the other omitted altogether the presence of the UN’s member state, Israel. The occasion was the annual UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

This astounding cartographical ethnic cleansing was revealed by the UN-watcher Anne Bayefsky, who had the wit to take a photograph of this map. As a result American UN Ambassador John Bolton write to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on January 3 to ask: ‘First, who is the highest level official within the Secretariat who approved the use of the map for the event? Second, does the United Nations intend to use the map in future U.N. sponsored functions and events? Third, in light of prohibitions under U.S. law to fund events such as this one, do you consider it appropriate for the United Nations to advertise and promote the event on its general website and other venues, which do in fact benefit from U.S. funds?’

As Ms Bayefsky reports in an update of the affair, Annan's office replied with a weaselly and evasive brush-off:

To recap what the Secretary-General's junior answered in response to Ambassador Bolton's queries.

Question: Who is the highest level official within the Secretariat who approved the use of the map for the event?
Answer: Nobody, since nobody at the secretariat is responsible for anything. Everything is the fault of member states.

Question: Does the United Nations intend to use the map in future U.N. sponsored functions and events?
Answer: 'The Secretary-General...hopes that the Member States' Committee...will consider deciding not to display the 1948 map in future...You may wish to discuss the issue further with Ambassador Badji [Chairman of the Committee].'
Translation: It's not my problem, and as for its use beyond that Committee, I'm making no commitments. My lips are sealed.

Question: In light of prohibitions under U.S. law to fund events such as this one, do you consider it appropriate for the United Nations to advertise and promote the event on its general website and other venues, which do in fact benefit from U.S. funds?
Answer: '...the observance of the Day of Solidarity...has been mandated by the General Assembly...and is organized by...a committee of the General Assembly. In providing information about the event on the UN website, therefore, the Secretariat is simply doing its job.'
Translation: We're just a collection agency. We take the annual 1.5 billion dollars of U.S. money and we don't care if there are strings attached for activities to which Americans have strong objections. And if you have a problem with that, don't pay.

The grotesque Durban hate-fest against the Jews in 2001 revealed beyond doubt that the UN is an organisation that promotes Judeophobia and winks at genocidal terrorism against Israel. Far from policing the world against violence, terrorism and tyranny, it actually connives at these evils. Bolton has threatened to cut US funding to the UN if it continues to promote such anti-Israel events. The time for such action is long overdue.

From the Independent:

Europe's biggest exhibition of modern-day Islam will take place in London a year after the 7 July bombings in an effort to depict the religion in a positive light. The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, is set to launch the event which hopes to ‘combat the myths, misconceptions and misunderstandings of Islam’. IslamExpo will consist of a series of exhibitions on Islam's cultural heritage, lectures, debates, films, stand-up comedy and workshops at Alexandra Palace. Organisers plan to invite survivors of the Tube attacks to attend with a special commemoration on the day.

It is hoped that the event will help to improve relations between Britain's 1.8 million Muslims and the wider community. The exhibitions will be divided into three zones: ‘Discover Islam’, which will feature famous mosques and a demonstration on a prayer platform; ‘Muslim Civilisation’, which traces Islam's history; and ‘Muslim World’, which covers Palestinian history, religious chants and a gallery of famous converts. Seminars ranging from democracy and jihad to Muslim gardening and agriculture will also take place.

The event has received the backing of numerous Muslim groups as well as the al-Jazeera news channel and the Greater London Authority If it is successful, it could become an annual event in London.

The exhibition is being organised by the Muslim Association of Britain. The MAB is the British arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, while not espousing violence in itself, promotes the extremist Salafi version of Islam which is behind the global jihad. The MAB accordingly supports Hamas and Sheikh Qaradawi, who are behind or support genocidal violence against Israel and human bomb terrorism in Iraq against British and American targets. The MAB is profoundly anti-west and anti-Jew. This is the organisation that is about to launch a charm offensive in Britain. Doubtless its desire to ‘educate’ the public will not involve telling the truth about itself.

David Cameron delivered an excellent speech on social justice earlier this week which received next to no media coverage. In it he set out some very interesting and potentially far-reaching ideas which pressed many of the right buttons. Thus he criticised the

top-down, centralised approach

to the delivery of public services, and saw no limits to what the

voluntary sector, social enterprises and community groups can do

to alleviate poverty and spring people from disadvantage. But does he mean it? He has, after all, just committed himself to the Treasury-funded and therefore inevitably top-down model for health and education. He also said:

More and more evidence shows that family breakdown causes poverty and poverty causes family breakdown. Our prisons are full of people whose homes broke up and they ended up in care. The problems of substance abuse and poor educational achievement are rooted in the fact they never knew the constant love of a parent.

I have said that the tax and benefits system should encourage families to come together and stay together, and to support marriage. I invite this group to examine how that might best be done. I also hope the working group will examine the potential of relationship education in preventing family breakdown. No couple starts a relationship wanting it to fail. But many need help.

The average taxpayer now contributes at least £570 every year to the direct costs of family breakdown, but only 21p is spent on trying to save troubled relationships. Paltry sums are invested in helping couples build healthy relationships in the first place…Everyone should be given the best opportunities to form stable, healthy relationships and, especially where children are planned, to develop happy, healthy marriages.

But does he mean it? Or will this eventually translate into talking up both marriage and anti-marriage simultaneously under the rubric of ‘relationships’ and ‘lifestyle choice’?

Because if he really means all this, a lot of people who he has encouraged to believe that he is lining the Tories up instead with socially suicidal libertinism are going to start jabbing fingers and crying foul. Real social justice means drawing moral lines in the sand, the very position he seems to be trying to persuade us the Tories have now abandoned. But if he doesn’t mean it, then Iain Duncan Smith, his Centre for Social Justice and all the voluntary groups who are daring to hope that maybe in David Cameron they have finally found a politician who will indeed start to move sclerotic, self-centred, amoral, fragmented Britain from welfare state to welfare society will have been taken for the mother and father of a ride.

Astounding omission from an item by Caroline Wyatt on yesterday’s BBC Radio Four Today programme about Ni Putes Ni Soumises, the courageous French Muslim women’s organisation that campaigns against violence by Muslim men against Muslim women. The item simply excised all references to Islam. It presented the issue instead as a problem of ‘north African immigrants’, of the French banlieues, of the ghetto. It was said to be all about the way women were perceived to uphold the ‘honour’ of ‘the ghetto’ and ‘the family’. But which ghetto? Which family? And by whom? All immigrants? All north Africans?

Of course not. The issue of honour is a specifically Islamic issue. It does not apply to, say, north African Christians or north African Animists. It is specific to those North African immigrants who are Muslims. The women were rightly quoted as saying that this violence towards them is then also expressed towards the outside world. But the reason for this violence was simply left dangling. Listeners were left none the wiser. Yet ‘ni putes ni soumises’ translates roughly as ‘neither whores nor submission’. It is not ‘north African immigrants’ who regard women as either whores or having to submit – such attitudes are specific to the Muslims among them.

This is from the Ni Putes Ni Soumises website:

To counter these problems, many young people in the ‘quartiers’ have turned to religion, in most cases Islam. In the fundamentalist, often distorted version of religion to which many of the youth adhere, women are inferior to men in every respect. At the same time, violence in the housing projects turned inward. In the 1980s and early 1990s, teen-age boys burned cars and scribbled graffiti to protest against marginalization and to attract the government's attention. Today, says Orain, boys are often belittled and discriminated against in jobs and in school, so they take out their aggression on those they can still dominate: girls. 20 years ago, women in the ‘quartiers’ were either ‘closed in and had no rights’ or were ‘considered prostitutes.’ But today, she says in an interview, ‘they also suffer from rapes and violence.' In fact, rapes in the housing projects have gone up by between 15-20% every year since 1999, according to government statistics, and women's-rights advocates estimate that unreported rapes make the figure even higher. Members of the group say girls are subjected to a hidden system of surveillance, in which neighbors, older brothers or even other girls scrutinize them everywhere they go. Any deviance -- smoking, hanging out with boys -- is promptly reported back to their parents. First and foremost, the girls are judged by their clothes, which, according to the code of the cites, are expected to cover up their bodies. Most girls drape themselves in baggy athletic jackets and track pants. Those who don't conform are harassed, called ‘prostitutes’ and ‘whores.’ So girls dress conservatively and make complicated detours to avoid walking in front of groups of boys. Some even resort to wearing a veil -- not necessarily because of their Muslim beliefs, but as a way to protect themselves, says Orain.

How is one to describe such an egregious distortion by the BBC, and at such a time? It is worse than censorship. It is an attempt to alter thought itself.

A typical article in the New York Times recently intoned:

As the toll of American dead and wounded mounts in Iraq, some economists are arguing that the war’s costs, broadly measured, far outweigh its benefits. Studies of previous wars focused on the huge outlays for military operations. That is still a big concern, along with the collateral impact on such things as oil prices, economic growth and interest on the debt run up to pay for the war. Now some economists have added in the dollar value of a life lost in combat, and that has fed antiwar sentiment...

Yadda yadda yadda. You can fill in the rest blindfolded. As a corrective to such defeatism and a restorative for sanity, it is well worth reading a pair of companion pieces by Norman Podhoretz in the current and previous issues of Commentary. The first, which asks Who Is Lying About Iraq? answers that it is not, as papers like the New York Times would have us believe, President Bush, Tony Blair et al but the media and anti-war groupies themselves. As he says:

the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed

is itself a Big Lie. First, says Pohoretz even if it is stipulated that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Saddam’s Iraq – which he does not accept -- it does not follow that Bush lied, for the very good reason that he actually believed that Saddam had them:

How indeed could it have been otherwise? George Tenet, his own CIA director, assured him that the case was ‘a slam dunk.’ This phrase would later become notorious, but in using it, Tenet had the backing of all fifteen agencies involved in gathering intelligence for the United States. In the National Intelligence Estimate ( NIE) of 2002, where their collective views were summarized, one of the conclusions offered with ‘high confidence’ was that Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions. The intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel, and—yes—France all agreed with this judgment. And even Hans Blix—who headed the UN team of inspectors trying to determine whether Saddam had complied with the demands of the Security Council that he get rid of the weapons of mass destruction he was known to have had in the past—lent further credibility to the case in a report he issued only a few months before the invasion: ‘The discovery of a number of 122-mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. . . . They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.’

The State Department was convinced; 20 UNSCOM inspectors were convinced; before them, Bill Clinton and Madeleine Allbright were convinced; Clinton’s Defence Secretary William Cohen was convinced; Tom Daschle and John Kerry were convinced. Next 'lie': President Bush said the threat from Saddam was imminent. Nope, he specifically rejected imminence as a justification for war. And as for the infamous case of former ambsssador Joseph Wilson, who bragged that he had debunked the 'lie' by President Bush that Saddam had sought to buy uranium from Niger – well, Wilson’s actual report on his trip actually strengthened the CIA’s belief in the accuracy of the claim that Saddam had tried to buy the stuff, while British intelligence separately upheld it (although from a different source). Podhoretz concludes:

And so long as we are hunting for liars in this area, let me suggest that we begin with the Democrats now proclaiming that they were duped, and that we then broaden out to all those who in their desperation to delegitimize the larger policy being tested in Iraq — the policy of making the Middle East safe for America by making it safe for democracy — have consistently used distortion, misrepresentation, and selective perception to vilify as immoral a bold and noble enterprise and to brand as an ignominious defeat what is proving itself more and more every day to be a victory of American arms and a vindication of American ideals.And for those who will have blinked at those last few words, now read the second piece in the current issue, The Panic Over Iraq, in which Podhoretz suggests of the rapidly spreading mood of panic that

the real fear behind it is not that we are losing but that we are winning, and that what has catalyzed this fear into a genuine panic is the realization that the chances of pulling off the proverbial feat of snatching an American defeat from the jaws of victory are rapidly running out.

Of course, to anyone who relies entirely or largely on the mainstream media for information, it will come as a great surprise to hear that we are winning in Iraq. Winning? Militarily? How can we be winning militarily when, day after day, the only thing of any importance going on in that country is suicide bombings and car bombings? When neither our own troops nor the Iraqi forces we have been training are able to stop the 'insurgents' from scoring higher and higher body counts? When every serious military move we make against the strongholds of these dedicated and ruthless adversaries is met with 'fierce resistance'? When, for every one of them we manage to kill, two more seem to pop up?

Winning? Politically? How can we be winning politically when the very purpose for which we allegedly invaded Iraq has been unmasked as a chimera? When every step we force the Iraqis to take toward democratization is accompanied by angry sectarian strife between Shiites and Sunnis and between each of them and the Kurds? When our clumsy efforts to bring the Sunnis into the political process have hardly made a dent in their support for the insurgency? When the end result is less likely to be the stable democratic regime we supposedly went there to establish than a civil war followed by the breakup of Iraq into three separate countries?

There has been one great exception to this relentless drumbeat of bad news: it occurred in January 2005, in the coverage of the first election in liberated Iraq. To the astonishment of practically everyone in the world, more than 8 million Iraqis came out to vote on election day even though the Islamofascist terrorists had threatened to slaughter them if they did. This very astonishment was a measure of how false an impression had been created of the state of affairs in Iraq. No one fed by the mainstream media could have had the slightest inkling that these 8 million people were actually there, so invisible had they been to reporters who spent all their time interviewing the discontented Iraqi Man in the Street and to cameras seemingly incapable of focusing on anything but carnage and rubble…

Several Iraqi bloggers, and many letters written by American soldiers in the field that have found their way onto the Internet, paint a very different picture. Like Arthur Chrenkoff, these close-range observers do not overlook the persistence of major problems, and they do not deny that we still have a long way to go before Iraq becomes secure, stable, and democratic. But they document with great detail the amazing progress that has been made, even under the gun of Islamofascist terrorism, in building—from scratch—the political morale of a country ravaged by ‘post-totalitarian stress disorder,’ in setting up the institutional foundations of a federal republic, in getting the economy moving, and in reconstructing the physical infrastructure.

Great stuff. Read it all.

Posted by melanie at 07:28 PM

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, delivered a long address to the Fabians last weekend on the subject of Britishness, a subject that has preoccupied him for years. He is certainly right to keep raising it. The fracturing of British identity, the uncertainty about what it means and whether it is desirable -- or whether, indeed, the very notions of a nation, of national pride or patriotism are desirable at all -- are all examples of what Brown rightly identifies as a chronic loss of national self-confidence, a phenomenon which at any time would pose grave social and cultural danger but is even more lethal in the current circumstances of global threat.

However, his speech was disappointing because, having raised this great issue, he failed to follow through with a properly targeted analysis of what has caused this slide in national feeling. Indeed, how could he when the Blair government has been responsible for taking an axe to the country’s traditions, values and integrity? This is, after all, the ‘year zero’ government which has ripped the heart out of the unwritten British constitution on the basis that tradition is bunk, thus fragmenting the United Kingdom, destroying the independence of the second chamber and politicising the judges; which has done its best to destroy national self-government by ceding ever more powers to the European Union and promoting supra-national governance wherever possible; which has destroyed social cohesion by encouraging uncontrolled immigration and promoting ‘multiculturalism’; and which has all but wiped out the country’s bedrock moral values through policies which wittingly or unwittingly have promoted family breakdown, fatherless children, victim culture, rising drug and alcohol dependency and the almost complete implosion of the concept of education.

Britishness, says Brown, resides in

the values we share and because of the way these values are expressed through our history and our institutions.

And so these are?

in addition to our qualities of creativity, inventiveness, enterprise and our internationalism, our central beliefs are a commitment to – liberty for all, responsibility by all and fairness to all.

Yes, he is right to say that Britain gave the world its idea of liberty. But the government he serves has all but destroyed that unique idea, which was based on the English common law and the belief that everything was permitted unless expressly prohibited, and deliberately replaced it by the continental idea that nothing is permitted unless it is expressly codified. The Human Rights Act, one of the most significant policy changes made by the Blair government, along with the European ‘anti-discrimination’ directives to which the Blair government is such an enthusiastic party, has made a bonfire of traditional English liberty – to the uniqueness of which Mr Brown, as a Scot, may well not have the most visceral of attachments.

To his credit, he calls explicitly for a return to the teaching of the narrative of British national history, the destruction of which has done so much to prevent the transmission of a sense of national identity. But in a society which has been culturally, socially, educationally and morally disembowelled, ‘values’ such as ‘liberty for all, responsibility by all and fairness to all’ degenerate into the most vapid of verbiage signifying precious little that is distinctively British. National identity surely rests above all on a shared collective memory. In Britain, that has been progressively eroded, surrendered, mislaid, unpicked, undermined and destroyed. What’s left is people like Britain’s Chancellor sifting through the fragments and hailing the piles of shards as a brave new dawn.

In the Times, Oliver Kamm makes deserved mincemeat of General Sir Michael Rose, the former army top brass who has said in a TV documentary fronted by Martin Bell that Tony Blair should be impeached over the Iraq war:

Perhaps Mr Bell recalls his 1996 judgment of Sir Michael’s service in Bosnia: ‘By the time he left, there was little muscular or robust about the force he led, or his leadership of it.’ Sir Michael’s performance caused the greatest rift in transatlantic relations since Suez. That record does not invalidate his criticisms now. But Sir Michael’s judgment of the impact of his hypothetical resignation indicates a rare confidence in the way others see him.

Sir Michael argues, conventionally, that the Government misled the Commons over Iraq’s WMD. He also practises a conventional omission. Nowhere does he refer to 9/11. Those attacks inevitably changed policymakers’ perception of strategic risk. The foundations of postwar security policy — deterrence and containment — had been undermined in a morning.

Sir Michael holds Mr Blair responsible for not testing flawed intelligence. He gives no advice on how to do that beyond waiting till the intelligence is confirmed or refuted. That was the route Sir Michael chose in 1994 when he disastrously played down reports that Gorazde was about to fall. No prime minister can afford to be so mistaken.

Saddam welcomed 9/11 and sought a WMD capability in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. Intelligence about current capabilities was wrong, but Iraq did possess dual-use facilities that, according to Charles Duelfer of the Iraq Survey Group, could quickly have produced chemical and biological weapons. Saddam was a sponsor of terrorism, and remained the most likely route by which Islamist groups could obtain WMD. How to weigh those factors was a political judgment, not a perfidious wangle.

Quite so. Sir Michael’s comments may strike rational folk as idiotic beyond belief; they may marvel that such a senior military type should be mouthing the same poisonous inanities as the far left, which in a time of war might be thought to be distinctly treacherous. The terrible thing is that he is far from alone. A large swathe of the British establishment now think just like this. The scale of such a suspension of rationality, logic and truth throughout the British political, intellectual, religious, military and intelligence world in Britain is simply terrifying at a time of such desperate global peril. They just don’t get it.

South Korea's disgraced cloning ‘pioneer’ Hwang Woo-suk has now apologised for the fact that his claim to have cloned a human being was a load of fraudulent bilge. Given the scale of the claim, this was a simply massive fraud. He says he was deceived by junior researchers into using fabricated results:

'The use of fake data... is what I have to take full responsibility for as first author. I acknowledge all of that and apologise once again,’ he said.

However, one further question has so far not been raised. Dr Hwang’s paper making the false claim that he had cloned a human being was published in Science, the leading journal of scientific research, in 2004. A further paper that he published on the subject in Science in 2005 similarly contained false data. Like other such scientific journals, Science’s reputation is based on the fact that its papers are all peer-reviewed, the gold standard of scientific credibility and authority. Peer-review is supposed to be the ultimate protection against flaky science passing itself off as the real thing.

So how did Science come to publish such lies -- and of the most high-profile kind? What kind of checks does it make on the material it publishes, including the peer-reviewers? Just who peer-reviewed Dr Hwang’s papers? And what does this imply more broadly about the standards used by the peers who do the reviewing for the papers published in such journals, and indeed the credibility of those journals?

For some time now, some scientific researchers have been expressing mounting unease about the standards of scientific journals which claim to be utterly authoritative but in fact have agendas of their own. It is said that some such journals refuse to publish rigorous work which punctures the ideological viewpoint of the journal’s editor, or conversely publish rubbish which is shoe-horned in on the basis of highly inadequate peer-reviews simply because it does correspond to those prejudices. The scandal over Dr Hwang surely makes an investigation into standards at these journals now very pressing.

Further evidence that the Civil Partnerships Act, which bestows the contractual and legal benefits of marriage on same-sex couples, is part of an agenda to destroy marriage altogether. The Daily Mail reports (no link available) that register offices have been instructed to purge the words ‘marriage’ and ‘wedding’ from signs inside their buildings. They are being forced to remove signs directing couples and guests to ‘marriage’ or ‘wedding suites’. References to marriage will be retained only where they are a legal requirement; signs outside will now say ‘Registrars of births, deaths, marriages and civil partnerships’. The order has been given by the government’s Women and Equality Unit which is run by Angela Mason who, as the former chief executive of the gay pressure group Stonewall, has been a leading proponent of the wildly successful agenda of destroying Britain’s fundamental moral values, a process over which she now has oppressive invigilatory powers.

The marginalisation and progressive undermining of marriage has destroyed civil order in Britain and in due course will bring the country to its knees. I have been writing about the lethal effects of family breakdown and mass fatherlessness for more than fifteen years. During that time, articles by mainstream journalists in the British press expressing concern about this gathering catastrophe have been about as rare as airborne pink objects with trotters. Things must be really bad: today there’s not just one such reference but two. In a comment in the London Evening Standard (no link available) about Tony Blair’s ‘respect’ agenda, Nick Cohen observes of the proposed extension of parenting orders that there are now simply too many children whose upbringing is going pear-shaped, and for one very good reason. As the probation officers’ union spokesman Harry Fletcher told him:

pretty much every poor child whose parents had split up was a potential problem.

Meanwhile in the Times Alice Miles writes a propos the ‘respect’ proposals:

With the new Tories sounding more and more like new Labour, who is going to talk about the missing element? Fathers. Where are the fathers? Look at acceptable behaviour contracts. Some 13,000 of these have been signed, twice the number of ASBOs. Drawn up individually between youth workers and individuals, they warn a child, under threat of an ASBO, to avoid a range of actions from writing graffiti to hanging around in stairways, throwing things or swearing. They are doing the job traditionally done by a father: don’t do that again, or else. 'There aren’t any fathers' is what you hear when you talk to members of teenage gangs and those who get involved in crime at a young age...

Somehow the women’s rights movement, and the extension in the legal powers of mothers over their children that followed it, have hurried or forced fathers out of the picture and then accepted the relegation of their responsibilities. Make it a legal responsibility if necessary, with severe penalties for walking away from a child, and use that signal to create a social stigma (one that must apply too to any parent preventing access to a child).

Hey, great idea, Alice! We can give it a whizzy new name too. I know – let’s call it marriage!

The Blair ‘Respect’ speech today is simply astounding. From what he said, you would think that the rule of law itself is being offered up as a sacrifice to the cause of being tough on crime. His whole pitch is that the presumption of innocence until guilt is proved and the whole process of court appearances, appeals and the rest of the criminal justice system is simply ‘too cumbersome, too remote from reality to be effective’. Antisocial offences would henceforth be dealt with by summary offences which ‘reversed the burden of proof’ by dispensing summary justice and with a right of appeal only after punishment had been thus apportioned by the police. So far, so clear and, many might say, so appalling for the police to be given such draconian powers dispensing with the courts altogether.

But then look at what the Home Office actually said and you find that this is all total balderdash. There are no new summary powers at all. There are a few relatively minor extensions to the existing ones, the fixed penalty notices for disorder (PNDs). That’s it. These PNDs, moreover do not reverse the burden of proof; they are merely sanctions accepted voluntarily by the miscreant in exchange for waiving of a prosecution. A fine legal point, perhaps – but one that shows the PM is talking through his wife’s wig. Even the one truly draconian penalty that is proposed, to deprive antisocial neighbours of their houses even if they own them, is not a summary police power but would be enforced as ‘a court order with all the necessary safeguards.’

So all the rhetoric in Blair’s speech about redefining the very concept of liberty in order to get on top of antisocial behaviour is just that – rhetoric. It consists of precious little practical change. It is designed instead to give the impression of tough action while the government continues to ignore or even exacerbate the real causes of antisocial behaviour: the collapse of self-discipline caused by family breakdown, school failure, welfare dependency, the chronic absence of the police from the streets, the collapse of drug law enforcement, the repudiation of jail sentences and the very concept of punishment, the consequent collapse of the authority of the courts, and last but not least the human rights culture which has made discipline – the prerequisite for respect – impossible.

What a scam.

Remember our old friend Muammar Ghaddafi, the Arab leader who beat his terrorist sword into the ploughshare of peace to such unbridled rejoicing in the west? Well just look at what he’s been saying:

In our current circumstances, we don't need to buy tanks, airplanes, missiles, or other huge things like this. If the enemy is a superpower like NATO, America, Russia or China, which occupies Libya, I will not fight it with tanks, missiles or cannons. I will fight it with explosives belts, car bombs and Kalashnikovs. If every Libyan is booby-trapped, every car is booby-trapped, every house is booby-trapped and every road is booby-trapped – the enemy will not be able to survive. The enemy will be unable to use their nuclear bombs, their airplane carriers or their inter-continental missiles. They will not be able to use them against people who booby-trap themselves, and fight the enemy…

Right now, I have nothing against America, except for the fact that it opposes the Palestinian people, and is destroying Iraq. Apart from this, America and I agree on everything… So America and I agree these theocratic regimes must be fought. America used to support dictatorships, while I was against them, and I called to confront them. Now America says: I am against dictatorships. Great! 'Opposing dictatorship' is the slogan of the Libyan revolution. We oppose all types of terrorism. When I say 'all types.' I'm referring to terrorism of fleets, of WMDs, and terrorism by individuals.

America is now talking about fighting 'all types' of terrorism. So that's it. We agree. America is talking about liberalism now. Fine, I'm a liberal too. Liberalism means freedom. It means popular capitalism, rule by the people, people's committees, and leadership by the people. That's liberalism! That's liberalism! Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom... No oppression, no persecution, no exploitation. America is saying these things. So that's it, we agree.

Isn’t it grand to have such reliable friends at such a time?

The 'progressive' ideas of the green movement are truly a wonder to behold. Consider this article on BBC OnLine by Professor Chris Rapley, Director of the British Antarctic Survey. Prof Rapley is very worried by the collective 'footprint' of humankind on our planet's life support systems. The world’s population, he says, which currently stands at about 6.5 billion people, is heading towards eight billion or so by mid-century. The optimum number for sustainable life on the planet, he goes on, is 'perhaps 2-3 billion':

With that number and a timescale as targets, a path to reach ‘Utopia’ from where we are now is, in principle, a straightforward matter of identifying options, choosing the approach and then planning and navigating the route from source to destination.

The only way to reduce the world’s population from 8 billion to 2-3 billion would appear to be by genocide, nuclear holocaust, famine or plague. Just which of these options might the Director of the British Antarctic Survey be recommending to navigate us to utopia? I think we should be told.

Terrifying, sobering and essential article in The Business points out that Ariel Sharon’s illness could not have occurred at a more dangerous time for a world that is in denial over Iran:

Iran’s intensification of its nuclear programme – last week it announced it was ending its freeze on nuclear fuel research – comes as a confluence of forces increases the risk of an explosive clash in the region: an erratic and imperialistic Russia under President Putin has taken sides with Iran, further undermining any Western leverage with Iran; the same is true of China, whose reflexive and outdated anti-Americanism includes signing energy deals with Iran; and the collapse of the Bush administration as a force for stability and progress in the Middle East after the Iraqi debacle and a series of domestic scandals. The EU has long cosied up to dangerous dictators in exchange for commercial contracts. It is now also in the grip of a debilitating pacifism, which it will not abandon, even though its diplomatic efforts to bring Iran to the bargaining table have been a complete failure. That should surprise nobody; but add to EU impotence the complicity of Beijing and Moscow plus the power vacuum in Washington and you are left with a stark conclusion: there is nobody left to tame Iran.

Indeed, the opposite is true: Iran can count on some powerful allies, above all Mr Putin, whose impact in the Middle East is baleful. Consider the following: on Christmas Eve, Russia’s military commanders were engaged on a mission almost entirely ignored by the Western media – the deployment of the newest version of a deadly nuclear missile, the Topol M. It is fired almost into space, then descends on its target like a bullet. It is designed to penetrate America’s missile shield, paraded by the US navy two months ago when it destroyed a test missile some 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean. The arms race did not die with the end of the Cold War; now it is back on with a vengeance. In 2004 Russia conducted 15 ballistic missile test launches, more than any year since the Soviet era. Last year 28 tests were carried out. The Christmas Eve deployment of the Topol M along the Volga River shows Mr Putin is serious.

The significance of this for Iran? Simple: this renewed (albeit barely reported) renaissance in US-Russian rivalry threatens to spill over in the Middle East, thanks to Iran. Russia has confirmed a deal to sell TOR-M1 surface-to-air missiles to Iran. The most advanced system available, it uses mobile launchers to shoot down multiple targets such as missiles or planes. Also on Christmas Eve, the Kremlin offered to process uranium for Tehran, a deal which has since been rejected by Iran, preferring to do it itself. Moscow has also refused to condemn Tehran’s nuclear programme, arguing that it should be handled by the toothless IAEA rather than the UN Security Council…
On 14 December, President Ahmadinejad denied the reality of the Holocaust in a speech broadcast on Iranian TV: 'They have created a myth in the name of the Holocaust', he said. Last October, Mr Ahmadinejad chaired a 'World Without Zionism' conference, complete with banners demanding Israel be 'wiped off the map'. Given the views of their president, few of the viewers of Jaam-e Jam 2 Iranian TV on 20 December will have been surprised to hear two analysts denying the existence of crematoria at Auschwitz, refusing to believe that there could possibly have been 6m Jews in Europe during the Second World War and claiming that it had long been proved that Jews had murdered hundreds of British and French children in the 19th century and drunk their blood before the Passover holidays.

With re-heated Nazi propaganda rife on Iranian TV, an official policy of Holocaust denial and presidential calls to wipe Israel off the map, it beggars belief that Western bien pensants can still think that Iran poses no threat to world peace. The chattering-class line is that Iran’s rabid anti-Semitism is just the meanderings of a few hotheads. The same sort of people said much the same about Hitler in the 1930s. When a powerful country’s leaders spout and encourage fascist drivel it is as well for the democracies to take it at face value and act accordingly, until there is good reason not to. That is the lesson of history, which too many in the West seem determined to forget.

Read it all.

When you read the news from Gaza, bear this in mind:

Several Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have received death threats from various armed groups over the past few days because of their coverage of the state of lawlessness and anarchy in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas… A journalist who asked not to be named told The Jerusalem Post that groups affiliated with Hamas and Fatah were behind the threats. 'We are taking these threats very seriously,' he said. 'Many of the journalists are afraid'...

A source in the PA Information Ministry said that among those who received death threats are journalists working for Agence France Press, Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV and the independent Palestinian news agency Ramattan... PA security officials confirmed that several Palestinian journalists were being subjected to a 'vicious' campaign of intimidation. 'Some factions and armed groups are responsible for the campaign of intimidation and terror against local and foreign journalists,' said one official. 'They want the journalists to serve as their mouthpieces and are trying to prevent them from reporting the truth.'

Where is the outrage over this? Where are the solidarity protests by British and European journalists? Where are the Israel boycotters of academe?

Not for the first time, Amir Taheri gets it:

For a war to be won it is not enough for one side to claim victory, although that is essential. It is also necessary for one side to admit defeat. The problem in the case of the Arab-Israeli wars, however, was that the side that had won every time was not allowed to claim victory while the side that had lost was prevented from admitting defeat. This was a novel situation in history, throughout which the victor and the vanquished had always acknowledged their respective positions and moved beyond it in accordance with a peace imposed by the victor. In the Israeli-Arab case this had not been done because each time the UN had intervened to put the victor and the vanquished on an equal basis and lock them into a problematic situation in the name of a mythical quest for an impossible peace. In this novel situation, bizarre new concepts were invented to prevent the normal mechanisms of war and peace from functioning. These include such concepts as land for peace and peace with justice.

There is, however, not a single instance in history in which the winner of a war has given the loser any land in exchange for peace. Nor is there a single instance in which justice and peace have gone together as Siamese twins. In every case the winner wins the land and gives the loser peace. In every case the peace that is imposed is unjust to the loser and just to the winner. Without going far back into history, it is sufficient to glance at some of the dozens of wars in Europe, Asia and Africa in recent decades to see that they all ended with a peace designed, if not dictated, by the winner. Thus for more than 50 years Israel and the Arabs have been asked to achieve what no other warring parties have ever achieved.

Israel-Palestine became the only conflict to defy a resolution. Successive Israeli governments preferred to wait until there was a Palestinian partner that would accept the kind of peace Israel could offer. This was mirrored by the Palestinians, who were asked by their Arab brothers and others in the UN to wait until Israel offered a peace they would like. Sharon understood that if such a formula remained in force there would never be peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It was necessary for the victor to claim victory, regardless of what anyone else said. It was also necessary for the victor to take unilateral action by imposing the peace it could live with.

That is why unilateral withdrawal is not ‘concessions in exchange for nothing’. It is a settlement of the dispute on the victor’s terms. The alternative is for Israel to watch its successive military victories be transformed into terminal defeat.

The incoming executive director of the think-tank Jewish Policy Research, Tony Lerman, believes that the Chief Rabbi’s observation that there is a ‘tsunami’ of antisemitism currently engulfing the world is an exaggeration. Expanding on his views on BBC Radio Four’s Sunday programme this morning in a discussion with myself, (approx 07.45; click here and follow the link) he further claimed that there was ‘no tidal wave’ of antisemitism from the Middle East. After I pointed out a few facts — that there was indeed an unstoppable outpouring of antisemitism from the Arab and Muslim world featuring Nazi demonology and blood libels such as the claim that Jews were killing children and baking their blood in Passover unleavened bread; that Egypt TV had broadcast a 41-part series serialising the classic antisemitic tract the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which posits a world Jewish conspiracy; that the Protocols plus Hitler’s Mein Kampf were on sale not just in the Middle East but in Islamic bookshops throughout Britain and Europe; that Muslims were labelling the Jews as the enemies of God and humanity whose annihilation was therefore presented as a service to the world; and that the Jews were routinely presented as pigs and monkeys — Lerman then claimed that Muslim antisemitism was merely a response to the Middle East crisis.

This is totally untrue and demonstrates a quite lamentable ignorance of history. The Middle East crisis is not the cause but the result of Muslim antisemitism. As I said on the programme — albeit through the constraints of the programme only, alas, very briefly — this anti-Jewish hatred well predated the establishment of the State of Israel, and led to the alliance between the Arabs of Palestine and the Nazis during the 1930s and 1940s, when the Arabs seized upon the genocidal prejudice against the Jews and made it their own in order to drive them once more from the historic Jewish homeland.

Jews had only ever been tolerated under Islamic rule as dhimmi, or second-class citizens. The rise of Islamism from the 1920s onwards, under such thinkers as Hassan al Banna, Sayed Abu’l Ala al Maududi and Sayed Qutb and the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood, brought to the fore an obsession -- rooted in religious texts -- with the archetype of a universal Jew, treacherous by nature, whose perfidy threatened not only Islam but all humanity. This fitted their Manichean mindset of a cosmic struggle between good and evil which was central to their goal of purifying society of un-Islamic teachings and practices and returning to Islam’s original pure sources and the establishment of an ideal Islamic state. Sayed Qutb, for example, the philosopher behind the Muslim Brotherhood — of which Hamas is the contemporary armed wing — held that Jews were inherently evil because throughout the ages they had rebelled against God.

It is only in this context that the Middle East tragedy can properly be understood. Yes, certainly the current dispute has exacerbated this murderous prejudice — and also, horrifyingly, extended it to non-Muslims throughout Britain and Europe. But that is because of the monstrous way in which the Jews of Israel, the eponymous targets of this genocidal hatred, have been demonised and delegitimised as the instigators of aggression and oppression, merely because they have had the temerity to seek to defend themselves from being wiped out.

The Arabs have tried three strategies for wiping out the Jews of Israel. The first was their alliance with the Nazis. The second was through war declared by Arab states in 1948, 1967 and 1973. The third was through war by terrorism, allied to a mind-bending propaganda campaign to persuade the west that the victims of their hatred were actually aggressors and that the quarrel was over the Palestinian Arabs' desire for their own homeland which was being thwarted by Israel. This, of course, is one of the most egregious Big Lies of history; and appallingly, the last bit has worked surely beyond their wildest dreams. But the reason for the Middle East impasse remains as it ever was — the Arabs’ unceasing attempt to remove from the map the State of Israel which they perceive as evidence of the demonic Jewish conspiracy to attack Islam and take over the world, and the obdurate refusal of the Jews of Israel in response to lie down and die.

It is astounding that someone who is apparently so ignorant of these fundamental historical truths can have been appointed to run a purportedly objective and authoritative Jewish think-tank. Lerman’s appointment provoked the immediate resignation of three JPR trustees in protest at his extreme views. The rest of the Jewish community in Britain must now ask itself whether, with so many British Jews feeling themselves to be under siege from the irrational hatred of Israel and the anti-Jewish prejudice which has swept the country, it should continue to fund an organisation which now threatens from within further to undermine the Jews at a time of peril.

You can catch me in discussion about the Cameron Conservatives today on BBC Radio 4 Talking Politics at 11 am; or listen again here.

As was to be expected, the New Libertine Party (aka the Conservatives) is now no longer supporting the re-reclassification of cannabis back up to a category B drug. The Times reports that the Tories’ volte-face takes the heat off the Home Secretary:

Pressure on Charles Clarke to change cannabis back to a Class B drug eased significantly yesterday when the Conservatives abandoned their campaign for reclassification. The Home Secretary was also urged by experts to stick with the new Class C status to avoid further confusion. David Cameron, the new Tory leader, made it clear yesterday that he would not put Mr Clarke under any pressure to reclassify the drug. At the general election, the Tories said they would reverse Labour’s decision on cannabis and change it back to class B.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, also called for reclassification during the Conservative leadership campaign, but he issued a statement yesterday welcoming Mr Clarke’s decision to voice concern over the impact of the drug on mental health and looked forward to further debate. ‘We welcome the Home Secretary’s recognition that there is new evidence about the dangers of cannabis, particularly with regard to mental health,’ Mr Davis said. ‘We look forward to the publication of the advisory council’s report and appropriate action from the Government, in particular to protect young people.’

My interpretation of this situation is different from that of the Times. The Tories’ shift on drugs was written the day David Cameron was elected leader. As I have written before (see October 17 post) Cameron has shown that he has uncritically swallowed all the garbage produced by the legalisation lobby.

In a diary for the Guardian Unlimited website in 2001, he wrote:

I am an instinctive libertarian who abhors state prohibitions and tends to be sceptical of most government action, whether targeted against drug use or anything else...Hounding hundreds of thousands - indeed millions - of young people with harsh criminal penalties is no longer practicable or desirable.

It remains to be seen whether the Home Secretary actually has the bottle to go against the received wisdom in the drug culture-addled Home Office (not forgetting the same lunacy within the higher echelons of the police) and restore some belated sanity to the law on cannabis. Of course this would be embarrassing as is any U-turn. But there is also surely an opportunity here for some canny cross-positioning. With the Cameroons now pitching for the über-left vote and with millions of socially responsible voters therefore left totally disenfranchised, the obvious ploy for Tony Blair would be to pitch the message to those abandoned souls that only Labour stands for social responsibility against the anarchic irresponsibility of social libertinism. Cannabis re-reclassification would be an excellent place to start.

Clarke should sack the ACMD and reclassify cannabis — to class A, where this most dangerous drug properly belongs.

From the Times, yesterday:

The public was misled about the dangers of taking cannabis when the Government unwittingly decided to downgrade the drug less than a year ago, the Home Secretary admits today. In a damning assessment of the decision taken by his predecessor, David Blunkett, Charles Clarke said he is 'very worried' about recent evidence suggesting a strong link between cannabis and mental illness. His remarks, made in an interview with The Times, come just weeks before he must decide whether or not to execute an embarrassing about-turn and restore the drug’s Class B status.

Mind-bender: unwittingly
Truth: idiotically

Interpretation: there was already a significant body of evidence that cannabis either caused or provoked mental illness when the government reclassified the drug to a category of lesser harm. It refused to listen, choosing instead to take the word of open and covert drug legalisers among its advisers. The harm it has done to the lives of both the users and their victims has been incalculable.

A herogram for Leo McKinstry. In the Daily Express he has written, a propos the illness of Ariel Sharon, that Israel has been outrageously demonised by being wrongly portrayed as the oppressor in the Middle East impasse — and he goes on to talk about the anti-Jewish hatred which has been unleashed in Britain as a result. It is rare indeed to see a piece like this in the mainstream press in Britain. Since it appears to be subscription only, here’s a sizeable chunk of his column:

In a remarkable inversion of reality, Israel has become a pariah state because of its determination to defend itself. A grotesque double standard now operates, where murderous Arab terrorists are hailed as ‘freedom fighters’ yet Israeli security forces are treated as fascistic thugs. No nation has been more demonised than Israel. One recent survey across Europe revealed that Israel is now regarded as ‘the greatest threat’ to world peace, an utter absurdity given that Israel is actually the only democratic, free society in the Middle East. But such a finding reflects the strength of the hysterical anti-Israeli propaganda that fills the airwaves of Europe. No matter how much this anti Israeli feeling is dressed up as support for Palestine, it is in fact profoundly anti-Semitic. Questioning the right of the Jewish people to their own homeland, muttering about the influence of the ‘Zionist lobby’ on US foreign policy or cheering on the vicious terror group Hamas amounts to racial prejudice against Jews.

The tragedy is that antisemitism masquerading as ‘anti-Zionism’ is poisoning the civic culture of Britain and Europe. Earlier this week, the Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks spoke of ‘a tsunami of hate’ sweeping through the continent, with synagogues attacked and Jewish schools burnt to the ground. In Britain alone, the number of antisemitic attacks recorded by the police in 2004 rose to 532, compared to 260 in 1999. Because of the obsession with the supposed iniquities of Israel, casual antisemitism is tolerated in British public life in a way that would apply to no other ethnic minority.
So, in the field of education, university professors organise a boycott of Israeli academics. BBC cultural critic Tom Paulin publicly calls for American Jewish settlers on the West Bank to be shot dead yet is allowed to carry on working at the corporation, while former presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk loses his programme for making far less inflammatory comments about Arabs.

Traditionally, antisemitism in Britain was a feature of the far-Right, most notoriously in the British Union of Fascists. But because of the modern hatred of Israel, it is now driven by an unholy alliance of leftwingers and Muslims. The Left may make a fetish of antiracism in Africa but abandons all such concerns where the Jewish state is involved. Even more disturbing has been the malign influence of Islamic extremism and the ingrained Arab hatred of Israel that has been imported into Britain through mass immigration. Disgracefully, so-called Muslim moderates have refused to join in Holocaust Day ceremonies because they say they find the event "offensive" since it only recognises Jewish victims of Nazi oppression.

Our political system has also been tainted by this obscene kind of racism. In the 2005 general election, the bullying leftwinger George Galloway won Bethnal Green from the black Labour MP Oona King, who was attacked by many local Muslim residents not only for her support for the Iraq war but also her Jewish parentage. Similarly, in Rochdale, the sitting Labour MP Lorna Fitzsimmons was thrown out after a local Muslim group circulated a leaflet that stated, wrongly, that she was ‘Jewish’. Her defeat represented a shameful triumph for naked sectarianism. Muslims have undoubtedly been behind the rise in violent attacks on Jews yet because of political correctness this has remained hidden. In 2003 the EU suppressed a German report which showed that Arab gangs across Europe were largely responsible for the surge in antisemitic violence. That finding did not fit with the EU's political agenda, which pretends that only whites are capable of racial prejudice.

The great irony is that the governments of Europe have this problem because of our obsession with so-called racial tolerance. As a consequence of the institutional fixation with race, inspired by the terror of any repeat of Nazism in Europe, there has been a reluctance to challenge Muslim mass immigration. So, in the name of antiracism, we now have in our midst a vast Islamic culture which possesses an instinctive hostility to Judaism. We cannot go on denying this because that road will only lead to more suffering and oppression.

But Britain is indeed denying precisely this.

The Telegraph reports:

The Muslim Council of Britain is to boycott the National Holocaust Day for the second year running, the organisation said last night. A spokesman said it would not participate in the event on Jan 26 because it was not sufficiently inclusive. ‘The MCB would be honoured to participate in a national memorial day providing that it clearly affirmed that the lives of all people, regardless of race or religion, are to be valued equally,’ he said. ‘This is why the Muslim Council has consistently called for a genocide memorial day.’

Mind-bender: inclusive
Truth: Jew-hating

Interpretation: This is where, for the second year running, the MCB reveals its true agenda of Holocaust denial and hatred of the Jews that lies behind its hatred of Israel. How long is Britain going to treat this organisation as mainstream? And, as long as it does,what does this say about the British mainstream?

A rare moment of candour from a Gaza Arab, reported by the BBC:

Hafiz Barghouti, the editor of the newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeed, has written: ‘It appears we are neither prepared to change, nor admit that we have failed in running our own affairs. Everyone is busy calculating how to make the biggest possible gains at the homeland's expense. While most Palestinians find it easy to blame the occupation for all our ills, it is a fact that the occupation was not as bad as the lawlessness and corruption that we are now facing.’

Excellent pieces by David Green in the Telegraph and Stephen Pollard in the Times about David Cameron’s decision to stick with the failed NHS. As Pollard points out, Cameron has missed a crucial opportunity. The NHS is beyond repair and most people now know it. Yet purely for reasons of political positioning, he has chosen not only to support a failed institution but to foreclose debate about alternatives:

David Cameron’s response to the disappearance of billions of pounds into the NHS black hole is to argue for improved management and more fiddling with structures, but to run a mile from questioning the system itself. The Conservative solution is: we’d do it better than they would.

But he is walking away from real reform at the moment when its need is at last becoming understood by voters. In a poll for the think tank Reform in February 2004, 69 per cent agreed that: “The NHS was the right idea when it was introduced in the 1940s, but Britain has changed and we need a different healthcare system now.” Only 40 per cent agreed that: “The Government is right to rule out alternatives to the taxpayer-funded NHS.” In nailing his colours so firmly to an exclusively tax-funded NHS mast, Mr Cameron is making a huge mistake, both politically and for the good of the country. Labour’s policy of spending as much money as possible and fiddling with the system is a form of controlled experiment to discover if that is indeed all that is needed. The answer is now becoming clear: it isn’t.

For years, those of us who have argued that it is the very notion of an entirely tax-funded system that is the real problem were dismissed as ideologues and lunatics. Now, with the evidence showing that the NHS cannot deliver even with massive funding, real reform has at last entered the realms of acceptable debate. That is a huge transformation in the political landscape. Yet just at this moment, Mr Cameron has chosen to cut off all such talk, neutering his attacks on Labour with his “me too” policy, and destroying any prospect of the reforms that might actually give us a system to deliver the best healthcare.

Cameron was right to ditch the last Tory health policy – which he helped create – which was to subsidise private health care. But he remains stuck in the old paradigm, that the only alternative to a US-style private insurance system is Britain’s Stalinist command-and-control NHS. He has ruled out the third and most attractive option, a European-style system of social insurance, which combines personal leverage for potential patients with responsibility for the poor.

Cameron appears to be resting his claim to radical change on proposals, yet to be unveiled, to give hospitals and doctors ‘independence’ within the NHS system. This sounds horribly like a re-run of the health policies of the last Tory government which promised ‘independence’ for hospital trusts in an ‘internal market’, a policy which brought the NHS to its knees and caused chaos and suffering for countless patients. Independence for professionals cannot be spatchcocked onto a public service funded by the Treasury. Such funding requires national politicians to be accountable for that money, which inescapably creates political control which, over an issue so politically explosive as health care, inevitably means the kind of micro-interference which destroys the service.

This is a major decision to have got wrong so early in Cameron’s leadership. It not only cements British health care into a guaranteed spiral of decline and crisis, but knocks a big hole in his claim to be launching a new politics based on ‘trusting the people’ and ‘sharing responsibility’ with them. The way to trust people and make them responsible for health care or education is to give them financial leverage over those services. That is the only way to make these services accountable to the public rather than to Whitehall. As David Green, an apostle of social health insurance, observes:

There are two main Tory traditions: patricians, who see society as made up of leaders and followers, and themselves as a kindly elite destined to rule, and radicals, who inherited the mantle of J S Mill's liberalism when the old Liberal Party collapsed in the 20th century. They picture society as a self-governing community reliant on the qualities of its individual members.

David Cameron, it now seems, is a patrician Tory. Although some have likened him to Tony Blair, in truth his emerging policies reveal a person more like Gordon Brown, who combines disdain for the masses with a belief that they need most things done for them by a kindly state, run by people of superior insight.

Tony Blair has fought to liberalise Labour. His early slogan ‘education, education, education’ reflected the importance attached by radicals - in all parties - to the strengths of individual men and women, that can be nurtured and deepened through good schools. Mr Blair has failed to win over his party to support anything like the necessary changes, but he tried. By ruling out education vouchers, social health insurance, and radical welfare reform, Mr Cameron has revealed himself as a paternalist. His wish to help the poor is no doubt sincere, but it is the assistance of Lady Bountiful, not the help of an equal partner acting in a spirit of reciprocity.

Brutal, but true.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

As Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees and Fatah's Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades announced an end to their self-declared truce of January 2005, under which they pledged to refrain from attacking Israeli targets, an annual summary of terror activities for 2005 released by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) on Sunday revealed that a total of 2,990 attacks were launched against Israeli targets. The attacks occurred after the truce was announced the report stated.

Mind-bender: truce
Truth: mass murder

Interpretation: The Arab war of extermination against Israel has continued unabated. So has the refusal of the rest of the world to acknowledge this fact or do anything about it except pursue the appeasement of terror.

So history is remade again by events. Israel was poised to break the mould of its own politics and follow the iron logic of external reality by calling the Arabs’ bluff and unilaterally imposing a state upon them. Ariel Sharon’s Kadima party was said to have had the support of Israel’s mainstream and to be heading for an election victory. Now, with Sharon almost certainly out of the political game altogether even if he survives his brain haemorrhage, the political centre finds itself robbed of the leader who created it out of a political vacuum. The political obituary is thus being written not just for Sharon but for what the BBC erroneously calls the ‘peace process’ (you can’t have a peace process without a partner in that process) but which is actually merely the most intelligent strategy for Israel’s long-term survival. It is therefore said to be back to Israeli political business as usual: the old choice between the parties of the intellectually and strategically bankrupt left and the parties of the morally and strategically bankrupt right. A tragedy, in other words, for Israel.

Maybe this is so. Maybe the best chance in 50 years that this terrible impasse with the Arabs might now be resolved has indeed now been destroyed. Maybe all the Jewish people can do is shake their fist at a fate which seems determined to rob them of the peace and security they crave. But maybe this is not necessarily the case. There is, after all, a huge constituency in Israel for this centre ground. Where is it now going to go? Politicians are created by the people, not the other way round. It is of course possible that, in despair, centrist Israeli voters will drift over to either Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud, on the grounds that at least they know him, or (less likely) the untried Amir Peretz leading the Labour party. But to assume that this is inevitable is to ignore two facts.

First, there is now an alternative, a centrist party, Kadima, representing the strategy that they support. Yes, it was Sharon’s creation; yes, it was Sharon who attracted to it politicians of the left and right; yes, without Sharon it might therefore lose all credibility. But second, there is the co-architect of that strategy, the now caretaker prime minister Ehud Olmert, who despite his absence of charisma is not to be underestimated. What Olmert crucially lacks is a record as a war hero which the Israelis have always required of their prime ministers as reassurance that their security will be safeguarded -- the issue that drives all before it. Olmert might, however, overcome that handicap if he can prominently attach to himself a war hero, such as defence minister Mofaz, to underwrite his military credibility. Or possibly Mofaz himself might emerge as the party's new leader.

All this remains necessarily speculation. Israel’s political future, and the story of the Middle East, is suddenly a terrifyingly blank page. The danger is that the Arabs will now exploit this crisis by stepping up the atrocities against Israelis to spook them into voting for hard man Netanyahu — who the Arabs might think is their best hope of permanent war. So it’s no surprise to see this ominous prospect turned on its head and Israel blamed in advance for its own presumed reaction by that well-known Arab moderate, Saeeb Erekat:

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told the BBC's The World at One programme he is concerned about the possible effect Mr Sharon's absence would have on the peace process. ‘I'm really worried that the competition to replace Mr Sharon will be marred with more escalation against the Palestinians whether in the form of assassinations, arrests, incursions of settlements and that worries me a lot,’ he said.

It’s certainly business as usual among the Arabs. Scroll down here for the pictorial evidence.

The Telegraph reports:

Pc Zahid Malik, 39, from the Nottinghamshire force, said the use of the word black was 'questionable' and damaged race relations.The former community police officer of the year has written to the Home Office's new magazine for front-line officers, The Sharp End.

His letter said: 'In a piece on the Met's Crime Museum you use the term "Black Museum" for this "notorious police museum" and "the man in black" to accompany a picture of the curator. I question the negative use of the word "black" in these contexts. We all should be working towards improving recruitment, retention and progression of black and minority ethnic staff within the police service. I feel that this does not help the hard work of many colleagues within the service who seek to establish good relations and promote a positive image of a police service which values diversity.'

The editor replied: 'There was no intention to offend.'

The Met's collection at Scotland Yard, which is not open to the public, has been nicknamed the Black Museum since 1877 and features gory exhibits from famous cases. These include death masks, casts of necks disfigured by rope burns and a collection of nooses hanging from a gallows. The phrase Black Museum has traditionally referred to its funereal and evil nature. Other forces have followed the Met's lead in opening black museums.

Mind-bender: racism
Truth: metaphor

Interpretation: No, this is not a joke. This is how some of Britain’s politically corrected police officers now think. Unable to distinguish between racial prejudice and an English metaphor, they are attempting to police the language — and the reaction to such sheer intellectual idiocy is merely a meek attempt to placate it.

The British academic Jacqueline Rose has made a name for herself in recent months as one of the grievously misguided and damaging ranks of anti-Israel Jews. A correspondent on Harry’s Place furnishes a revealing little cameo:

Jacqueline Rose spoke last week on her book the Question of Zion, where she takes a Freudian approach. She prescribes a process of recognition by Jews and Israelis of the pain they have caused the Palestinians, (fair enough- and already many do) which she knows will be painful as they have suppressed this knowledge all along, but really it will be very therapeutic. Sure enough, she referred anon to the Palestinian Other. She also made the point that the hostility to the Jews who came to establish the Jewish state was not against them as Jews, but was hostility to Europeans coming to create a European colony. I commented that her whole analysis was Eurocentric and ignored a huge component of this Arab Jew psychic drama she had described- ie the effect on both players of 1000 years of dhimmitude. She had not recognised the Arab objection not just to a European state, or a Jewish state, but to the fact that it was a dhimmi state. The audience applauded and she looked blank and slightly panicked, asking ‘a what state?’ from which I deduced that this term, the big Other, the dhimmi, had no resonance for her at all.

I had said that this suppressed history needed recognising, even more so than that of the Palestinians- meaning that there was already some recognition by Jews of the suffering of the Palestinians (whatever the contention over causality) whereas there was still almost total flat denial of the history and true nature of the dhimmi regime among Arab historians. She misunderstood and began berating me heatedly for valuing Jewish suffering above that of Palestinians, and calling shame on the audience for applauding my points. I approached her after the session ended to explain my point about the suppression of dhimmi history. If that were the case, she said (indicating thereby this was not something she knew about) then it should be spoken of, but not, she emphasised vehemently, at the expense of the Palestinians. Which means again she has not understood why it is important for her to understand the whole history and dynamic for a proper context, before pontificating on the remedy for healing this great guilt trauma on the Jewish psyche, let alone writing a book on Zionism.

We have previously clashed on the pages of the LRB [London Review of Books] when I pointed out, and she conceded, that she had repeated without checking, a factually inaccurate account of a particular incident in mandate Palestine which traduced Jewish attitudes during the struggle.

Posted by ami at January 2, 2006 06:23 PM

Staggering ignorance indeed; terrifying; and absolutely par for the course. The history of Islam, Muslim relations with the Jews and the Middle East impasse simply cannot be understood without grasping the centrality to Islamic thinking of dhimmi status, whereby those infidels who are not slaughtered are allowed to live under Islamic jurisdiction only as second class citizens — taxed as such, demarcated as such and variously humiliated and otherwise oppressed as such. That is why those -- like Rose herself -- who have wanted to see, rather than a Jewish state, a binational state composed of Arabs and Jews sharing power equally have only ever been Jews, not Muslims -- for whom such an arrangement would be unthinkable.

A small but telling current example. As Sandro Magister writes in Chiesa, Hamas intends to impose the special tax called the jeziya — which through Islamic history was applied to dhimmi peoples — upon all non-Muslim residents in the Palestinian territories. In an interview with Karby Legget, published in the December 23-26 edition of ‘The Wall Street Journal,’ Masalmeh, the leader of the Hamas contingent at the municipal council of Bethlehem, confirmed: ‘We in Hamas intend to implement this tax someday. We say it openly – we welcome everyone to Palestine but only if they agree to live under our rules.’

Those who have been trying for years to point out the harsh truths of dhimmitude have been reviled and traduced as ‘Islamophobes’. As a result, it is not just the useful idiots of the western intelligentsia who are lethally ignorant of the true nature of the Middle East impasse but the populations over whom they exercise such irresponsible but profound influence.

If you want to see Islamist anti-Jewish incitement, including the statement from a correspondent about ‘evil Zionists’ in Britain that

We must be rid of them once and for all!

(a direct threat which includes as a target the Jewish self-defence organisation the Community Security Trust which has nothing to do with Zionism) go to the MPACUK website and read the ranting attack on British Jews for daring to complain to the Metropolitan Police for its disgraceful sponsorship of the hate-fest against Israel and America sponsored by the Islam Channel last month -- the so-called Global Peace and Unity Conference, at which Muslims were incited to ‘get ready for rioting in every street in Britain’. (See my post on December 7 below).

Since MPACUK has a habit of removing the most egregiously racist and inflammatory remarks from its website after they have been noticed, I reproduce the item and its responses here in full.

A Zionist group has made complaints to the Met Police against the Met's sponsorship of The Global Peace and Unity Conference organised by Islam Channel. Don't be silent...thank the Met NOW!

It seems they will do anything to stop Muslims creating links with anyone with power in Britain. That is their greatest fear. No surprise then that when Islam Channels Unity conference was sponsored by the Police, the zionists moved in to attack. Whilst the Mosques and the majority of Muslims in the UK were fast asleep, a Zionist complaint was made to the Metropolitan Police in which the Community Security Trust (CST) has criticised the Metropolitan Police’s sponsorship of The Global Peace and Unity Conference, held earlier this month at the Excel Centre, which they claim featured...
"Anti-Israel rhetoric and, allegedly, calling for rioting on the streets of Britain."
Speakers included the former Pakistan cricketer Imran Khan and the Respect MP George Galloway, who was reported to have pledged his support for the Intifada and told the crowd of more than 20,000 that
"If any more of our cities, Damascus, Iran or anywhere else is attacked, we will not only protest in Parliament but we will riot on the streets of Britain."
When they can't find anything real to complain about - they lie. Even the person they claimed made the comments said it was rubbish. Galloway was their target along with Imran Khan. Both said they never made any statement about rioting in the streets.
But a CST (note: a Zionist group) spokesman said that the event had raised concerns saying: "Events such as this, however, also include pitfalls when they have such a diverse range of opinions, some of which seem contrary to the police’s perspective. It’s a very delicate situation for all concerned.
No doubt they will have met with the Police to demand action and place pressure upon the commissioner to take action, and withdraw his support for the next event.
It is important that we all thank the Met for their sponsorship of such a peaceful event. Recently the trust in the Police has dropped dramatically within the Muslim community especially after witnessing the increase in the use of anti terror laws and therefore it is absolutely vital that the Police make an effort to engage into the Muslim community positively by making such efforts. Building a positive partnership with the Police is essential to the fight against Islamaphobia within the force. Therefore such engagements and efforts should be encouraged and appreciated.

You can include the following points in your email:
Thank the Met for sponsoring such an event
Remind the commissioner that the Zionists should not be allowed to harm Muslim - Police relations, and their racist and biased Islamaphobic attempts should be regected by the Police along with their complaints.
Tell the Police Commissioner that Muslims are fed up with Zionists trying to hijack our attempts at reaching out to official bodies and you would like a firm commitment that they will not harm Muslim - Police relations (see if your student Islamic society, Mosque can meet him to discuss, and establish links.)

You can send an email of thanks to the Met commissioner to the following address: commissioner@met.police.uk
Or send a letter of thanks to:
Sir Ian Blair, New Scotland Yard, Broadway, London, SW1H OBG.
Please try to write you email/letter of thanks in your own words even if your email/letter consists of a sentence or two. It will be much more effective. Also it is important to mention that you attended the Event, if you did, as your view will hold additional credibility.
And lastly, show your support to Islam Channel by contacting them and tuning in to their brilliant shows (shows can be seen on broadband as well as sky channel 836). Don't let the Zionists discredit or undermine their hard work for the Ummah.
Islam Channel details:
Tel: 0207 374 4516
Email: pr@islamchannel.tv

Comments: MPACUK do not endorse or represent any of the comments below. They are the views of the submitter alone.

cry woolf
Written by MrT on 2005-12-30 01:02:18

CST should be sued ! how can a publicly funded organisation go around making allegations ? Tell the organisers to get a lawyer and shut them up before they sling more mud.
MPAC-MET Collusion
Written by Mustafa? on 2005-12-30 20:56:31

while Ur thanking sir Ian, can u also ask him politely to stop profiling Muslims, stop raiding our homes and harassing our community, and for God's sake, end the shoot to kill policy.

The Islam Channel sponsorship was disgusting and as Yvonne Ridley said, "Islam channel has got blood money on its hands". A simple way to dupe the Muslim community into accepting the Islamophobic policies of the MET police. Once again, Muslims and MPAC are being naive and playing the role of the Uncle Tarik - show him a few pounds, give him a title and he will come with his praise and gratitude, even if it means the oppressors continue to humiliate and walk all over the rest of the community. Shame on you MPAC.
A Question
Written by ??? on 2005-12-30 11:46:32


If MPACUK claim to concern itself with affairs that affect Muslims in Britain, how come there has been no mention of the kidnapping of 3 British citizens in Gaza???

Shouldn't MPACUK be writing an article or issuing a statement? Surely MPAC isn't deliberately selective with what it reports...?

Please put a sock in it Mustafa
Written by Sister Aqsa on 2005-12-30 15:18:38

I'm kicking myself for not thanking the met prior to this alert from MPAC. Shame on us Muslims, we can't even thank those that supported/sponsored one of the biggest Muslim events in the UK. And lo and behold we only react after the enemy moves in for the attack, when will we ever be pro-active!

Thanks MPAC, and Mustafa plz shut up!
QUESTION FOR U
Written by MESSAGE FOR ??? on 2005-12-31 20:49:06

IF YOU ARE SO CONCERNED FOR THE 3 BRITISH THAT HAVE BEEN CAPTURED IN GAZA, WHAT EXACTLY HAVE U DONE FOR THEIR RELEASE? YOU ARE NOR FULLY AWARE OF MPAC'S DOINGS SO WHY DNT U GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT BEFORE U START SHOOTING YOUR MOUTH OFF?LETS SEE SOME EVIDENCE FROM YOU BEFORE U COMPLAIN OR POINT THE FINGER.
Typical zionists!
Written by Dragonslayer on 2006-01-01 00:21:00

Its so maddening to see once again the evil Zionists always interfering with the Muslims.

Even the BNP do not attack us as much as the Zionists do!

We must be rid of them once and for all!
Miss
Written by Cebee on 2006-01-01 02:00:26

Number one, dragonslayer, your comment is a clearthreat to all Jews in Britain and I am surprised the webmaster of this sits allowed it to be published as it is incitement.
Second, I attended the 4/12 rally at the Excel and sadly it was an aggressive verbal attack on our British and American Christian and Jewish friends. Yvonne Ridley even attacked the police, who were generous sponsors, and she called this great nation 'Jackboot Britain.' The organisers took the mike and publicly dissociated themselves from Imran's comments about 9/11, so it is not just Zionists being alarmed by the content of the rally. Galloway did make comments about rioting on every street in Britain. Get real, guys: this kind of event does not encourage interfaith dialogue.
By the way, the CST is not a Zionist-affiliated group.
you lot are sick
Written by kahane was right on 2006-01-01 04:42:52

i was going to write a list of all the jews and other people around the world killed by muslims in the last year oh and i was going to name all the muslims killed by muslims an all i was going to write about the abuse of women and gays in islam or maybe the anti semetic abouse going on in britain but you know what i dont need to , this website does it all for me its the most anti jewish stuff ive ever read
simple rule
Written by Barodate on 2006-01-01 05:53:27

simple rule in the quran

surah maidah verse 51, you are NOT allowed to take the kaafir as your awliya. why would you want to thank the police? jus because they looked after islam channel event we should should start sendin milk and cookies? read the tafsir of Imam Ibn Kathir (rha) on this verse at:
http://tafsir.com/default.asp?sid=5&tid=14082

its completely idiotic to think that we should start calling up the police who arrest and beat muslims in prison to thank them.
out
Written by check on 2006-01-01 10:42:51

The zionist federations website & israeli newspapers for incitement against REAL Jews & Christians.
I Agree
Written by D on 2006-01-01 10:44:07

I strongly support Cebee. What I see going on is not people who want peace, but people who spout extreme right wing rhetoric on this web site. Just to prove this, not a word was mentioned on India's walling-off of its Bangladesh border, yet you have written pages on Israel's wall, both blocking off countries with extreme poverty. The fact that you have an unhealthy obsession with Zionists leads me to believe that your motives are not to secure a homeland for the Palestinians but to wipe a whole nation off the face of the earth.
Re Cebee's clear threat?
Written by DragonSlayer on 2006-01-01 12:06:59

If you think someone fighting the Zionists for trying to smear a Muslim event is a "clear threat to jews2..you really are as racist as ALL Zionists are.

2ndly - if you cant be trusted to tell the difference between a Jew and a Zionist Jew, how can we trust anything you say!

I suggest you leave this website - your not wanted you racist bigot!
Get sending.....
Written by attendee on 2006-01-01 16:17:29

i went to the conference and have just sent a letter to sir Ian Blair.
Get doing it people, its real simple!!
To Cebee
Written by Sumayya on 2006-01-01 21:14:46

I don't see where you are coming form here when you attack 'dragonslayer' for his/her comments as they are clearly anti-Zionist and NOT anti-Jewish.

I find it amazing how these Zionist, staunch pro-Israeli 'activists' can twist anything someone says into being 'anti-semtism' if it refuses to side with the racist state of Israel.

The Jewish people are people of the book and I feel sorry for them as these Zionists filth are hijacking their religion to hide under, so genuine peaceful people are called racist if they dare to criticise Israel/Zionists.

We Muslims will NEVER succumb to your dirty tactics and will continue to fight for the freedom of Palestine, esp with groups like MPAC around!
Tut Tut, Cebee
Written by Shaylor on 2006-01-01 21:48:08

To Sumayay and Dragon Slayer. It's clear what Zionists like Cebee are doing here on the comments: saide tracking what MPAC are trying to educate Muslims and those who fight for justice and peace, Diverting the conversation, playing the old anti-semtism, anti-Jew card here so others who come on here be it, MPs, media folks or ordinary people get confused and go away with the idea that MPAC / Muslims are hateful, anti-semtic people.

We won't fall for it cebee so go crawl under your rock!
why take blood money?
Written by extremely worried on 2006-01-02 00:20:52

Is MPAC schizophrenic?One minute you are putting alerts about "we are all Babar Ahmad" and then you ask us to support the same police who kicked him in,put him in sajda and asked him "where is your God now?"The same police who murdered Jean Charles de Menezes and also wanted to lock up Muslims for 90 days without trial!!
Muslims are too easily bought and need to think before they act.Remember the Met and New Labour needed to be at the Unity conference more than we needed them and no amount of whingeing by the CST would have changed that.Ian Blair will be laughing his head off when he gets thank u notes from gullible Muslims.
GET Writing!
Written by Ron on 2006-01-02 01:32:48

Don't let the Zionists side track you with their comments - that's what they want!

Get writing to the Police and demand they don't listen to these Zionist bigots!

Wasting time with the Zionists comments is pointless - that's what they want!
To 'extremely worried'
Written by Leila on 2006-01-02 10:57:05

If it isn't racist, sly Zionists trying to divert the topic (like Ron says) then it's idiot (poss?) Muslims like 'extremely worried' who don't want Muslims to network and build relationships with forces like the Police.

How dumb ! Instead of being so extremely worried, plz get out more...and oh yeah, read more of MPAC stuff!
By all means
Written by D on 2006-01-02 11:47:27

By all means make networks with the police, but don't blame every adversity you face on the 'Zionist Lobby'. These people do not hold the power in this country, no matter how you try to skew events so that they look like they're in Israel's favour.

I think if everyone tried to network with everyone else, instead of blamed them for the problems in each community, the world would be a much better place.
Re : by all means
Written by Jackal on 2006-01-02 14:43:39

Dear D

Are you a Zionist in disguise or just plain dumb. Which part of the CST made the complain don't you understand?

The CST are part of the Zionist Lobby - get a grip! They didn't make i up - its a fact!
There may well be riots
Written by Bilal Patel on 2006-01-02 23:30:11

The speakers were stating a simple truth. If there are suicide bombers in Britain after Iraq is attacked, Allah knows what the reaction will be if another country is invaded. The authorities should take this on board and thank the speakers for telling them a few home truths.

So the CST should be thanking Muslims, not complaining against them.
ceebee
Written by sister m on 2006-01-03 00:55:40

is actually Carol Gould an American neo-con Islamophobe who sympathises with BNP taxi drivers, she couldnt establish a real career so has moved to England to incite violence and hatred against Muslims here and she monitors mpac feverishly...you guys must be doing a lot of things right!!!

No doubt Sir Ian Blair will be gratified by such support. The rest of us might feel that, in any sane universe, such inflammatory incitement would be prosecuted.

Great piece by Mark Steyn in New Criterion makes the crucial point that it’s not war that threatens the west so much as cultural suicide:

We know it’s not really a ‘war on terror.’Nor is it, at heart, a war against Islam, or even ‘radical Islam.’ The Muslim faith, whatever its merits for the believers, is a problematic business for the rest of us. There are many trouble spots around the world, but as a general rule, it’s easy to make an educated guess at one of the participants: Muslims vs. Jews in “Palestine,” Muslims vs. Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims vs. Christians in Africa, Muslims vs. Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs. Russians in the Caucasus, Muslims vs. backpacking tourists in Bali. Like the environmentalists, these guys think globally but act locally.

Yet while Islamism is the enemy, it’s not what this thing’s about. Radical Islam is an opportunist infection, like AIDS: it’s not the HIV that kills you, it’s the pneumonia you get when your body’s too weak to fight it off. When the jihadists engage with the U.S. military, they lose—as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this were like World War I with those fellows in one trench and us in ours facing them over some boggy piece of terrain, it would be over very quickly. Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there’s an excellent chance they can drag things out until western civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default.

That’s what the war’s about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: 'Civilizations die from suicide, not murder'—as can be seen throughout much of 'the western world' right now. The progressive agenda —lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism—is collectively the real suicide bomb.

Read it all.

The Times reports:

The Voluntary Euthanasia Society, an advocacy group, will change its name to Dignity in Dying from January 23. Deborah Annetts, the director, said that the present name was outdated and did not reflect the group’s range of activities.

Mind-bender: dying
Truth: killing

Translation: As the push to legalise intentional killing intensifies, the language is being censored. The group lobbying for euthanasia is excising the word from its name because the word tells the truth that what is being proposed is intentional killing. Instead the word ‘dying’ is to be used which conceals the deliberate intention to kill; and the emotive word ‘dignity’ is thrown in for good measure to cloak this deceit in moral virtue. Sickening.

Jamie Whyte writes in the Times:

In 1990, 15 men who had voluntarily cut each others genitals for the sake of sexual gratification were convicted of assault. Why did their consent not stop this from being assault? If it did not, then why is rugby not assault? In the failed 1992 appeal, Lord Lane explained. Consent is a defence only if the physical damage is sustained for a worthwhile purpose. Rugby is a worthwhile purpose; sexual pleasure is not. I suspect that something similar makes legislators systematically discount the benefits of drugs. It is not enough that people value something. To count it as a benefit, our betters in Westminster must deem it worthwhile. And, as with kinky sexual gratification, they do not consider getting high to be worthwhile. It is not concern for our welfare that explains the illegality of drug use. It is bigotry.

Mind-bender: bigotry
Truth: social protection

Translation: Whyte falsely presents drugs as a potential problem only for the user. This of course is not why drugs are illegal. It is because of the profound harm they do to others and to society from users who in varying degrees lose their minds and behave cruelly, criminally, violently or otherwise antisocially as a result. Presenting drug laws as a prejudice against individual pleasure conceals the fact that they damage other people and thus grossly misrepresents the reason for anti-drug laws, that they are essential for social order.

Anthony Browne, the Europe correspondent for the Times, has written a tremendously important pamphlet about political correctness, called The Retreat of Reason,* which explains just why Britain has apparently lost its senses. Browne is one of the few who very clearly understands that ‘political correctness’ is not some ludicrous absurdity that can be laughed away, as it is so often depicted. It is instead a terrifying, totalitarian and in Britain wholly successful putsch against truth itself, the weapon of subversion of a moral, political and social order. It is an attempt to destroy the very notion of truth as a means of transferring power to those who designate themselves as ‘victims’, who can then hold the rest of society and truth itself to ransom; and they can never be challenged because, in the crazy pc moral universe, anyone who is ‘weak’ is incapable of doing wrong while anyone who is ‘strong’ is incapable of being a victim.

As Browne so aptly describes it, this has produced a widespread conspiracy of denial, in which virtual reality becomes widely accepted as truth. Actual truth is often easily ascertainable in published material, but many have an emotional investment in disproving it. When those like Browne try to bring the truth to public attention, they encounter

...an almost universally intolerant and intellectually dishonest response by people who preferred political correctness over factual correctness.

What caused Browne to sit up and take notice was when he reported that African immigration had overtaken gay sex as the main source of new HIV cases in Britain. HIV doctors praised him but the reaction from everyone else was incredulity and worse. Ministers refused to discuss it because they thought it was ‘racist’.

As Browne says, this ideology has now completed its long march through Britain’s institutions and captured all of them, upheld by lobby groups from Liberty to Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth to Refugee Action and an array of domestic and international laws, charters and treaties. It has effectively stifled public debate, since anything that does not conform to its totalitarian tenets is by definition beyond the pale. Thus truth has been exiled from much of British public discourse altogether. Political correctness has promoted multiculturalism and fostered the creation of Muslim-only ghettoes; it promotes the rights of criminals over their victims; it promotes anarchy over teachers’ authority and promotes equality over excellence, thus degrading the standard of education. It is, as it has been previously described, ‘cultural Marxism’ — and it has achieved what Marxism never managed, the subversion of a society. It is Gramsci’s greatest posthumous triumph.

Its selective and mind-twisting definition of truth makes its arguments almost impossible to refute. The politically correct often believe their version of truth can be justified by a lie. When the Daily Mirror published photographs purporting to show UK soldiers torturing Iraqis, the paper’s supporters continued to justify them even after they were revealed to be fake pictures on the grounds that they illustrated a ‘greater truth’.

Browne gives some examples of the way debate has been twisted:

Issue: women’s pay less than men’s Politically correct truth: sex discrimination Factually correct truth: different work/life choices; childcare breaks

Issue: explosion in HIV
Politically correct truth: teenagers having unsafe sex
Factually correct truth: African immigration

Issue: rise in antisemitic attacks
Politically correct truth: white skinheads
Factually correct truth: Muslim youths

Issue: Africa getting poorer
Politically correct truth: West not giving enough aid
Factually correct truth: bad governance

The truth is that public discourse in Britain has become a nightmare straight out of Kafka. Read Browne’s pamphlet and discover why.

*The Retreat of Reason: Political Correctness and the Corruption of Public Debate in Modern Britain, by Anthony Browne; £9.50 from Civitas, 77 Great Peter Street, London SW1P 2EZ; tel: +44 20 7799 6677; email: books@civitas.org.uk

The British press carries reports today of the fury and exasperation of British officials who rescued Kate Burton and her parents from their Palestinian kidnappers only to find that she refused to co-operate with them and would not be debriefed, thus potentially putting other innocent people in danger from similar activities. The Mail reports that she astonished officials by refusing to answer questions.

A security source said: ‘We had huge problems with Kate…she had to be debriefed — it’s standard procedure and for the very simple reason that other lives might one day depend on it. We’ve been trying to impress on her that she was kidnapped and she wasn’t just having long chats with her Palestinian friends’...Her aunt, Wendy Hagenbuch, told the Mail last night: ‘Kate will be very forgiving of these men because she believes they wouldn’t do this sort of thing without good reason. She has a very sympathetic nature’.

Her attitude is not surprising. It has been suggested that she is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, the term used to describe the unaccountable sympathy felt by the victim of a kidnapping for the kidnappers. In this case, however, the kidnap victim’s unaccountable sympathy with manipulative violence predated the kidnapping. With their customary cirumlocution and moral obfuscation, the British media have described al Mezan, the organisation Burton worked for in Gaza, as a ‘human rights’ charity’. It would be more accurate to describe it as a ‘human wrongs’ charity.

Its website reveals that it promulgates the usual vile libels and distortions, presenting Israel — the victim of Palestinian violence — as the aggressor and oppressor in terms guaranteed to incite hatred and violence against it. Thus it accuses Israel of killing Palestinian children, making no mention of the use by Palestinians of their own children as human bombs or human shields, pushed into harm’s way to blackmail Israel into paralysis or, worse still, to milk any subsequent casualties to provoke the outrage of people like Burton. It makes no mention, of course, of the Palestinians’ incitement of their children to mass murder, the hate-filled textbooks which teach them to detest Jews, or the pride of their parents when they are turned into human bombs. The abuse by Palestinians of their own children is of course the real abuse of human rights going on in Gaza and the West Bank.

The al Mezan website also egregiously sanitises the Palestinian mass murder of Israeli innocents by describing this merely as ‘protests’; by contrast, it vilifies Israel’s attempt to defend its citizens as ‘collective punishment’, thus demonising Israel for having the temerity to try to prevent further atrocities. It describes this as ‘crimes against Palestinian civilians and their property’ ‘which it claims have ‘increased since the outbreak of the Al Aqsa Intifada.’ But of course these ‘crimes’, such as roadblocks, razing of orchards and so forth, only occurred because the Palestinians were systematically trying to wipe out Israelis — the process which has been continuing without interruption for the past half-century ever since Israel was created. This self-defence is called ‘outrageous’ and described as ‘violations of human rights’.

Having signed up to such mind-twisting moral inversion, it is not surprising that Burton appears unable to view her kidnappers as evil people. On the contrary, her family talks of the pleasant way they treated the Burtons in captivity, their charm and so forth.

From what has been published, the Burton family appears to furnish a perfect example of the truly shattering nature of Britain’s twisted mindset. For this is a nice family: decent, idealistic, given to Christian charitable good works. The Daily Telegraph reports:

Burton’s half-sister Seren Wildwood said: ‘As a family we have all been fairly politically active. I am a Quaker and get involved in Quaker campaigns. We have the same passion for human rights and the environment.’

Friends described the family as being ‘internationalist’. Mr Burton semi retired eight years ago. He now does voluntary work for the British Executive Service Overseas to help third world companies. His wife has worked for the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community, an umbrella group of Roman Catholic churches in Europe. Mrs Wildwood’s brother Jonathan works for the Water Aid charity in Nigeria.

And yet when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, this type of decent British person loses its moral compass altogether. The same people — or at least, Kate Burton — regard those practising genocidal terror as the vulnerable to be helped in the Middle East conflict, while viewing their actual victims as oppressors.

This is what is so distressing about what has happened to Britain. Nice people now turn out to have monstrous views. Decency itself has been kidnapped and brainwashed and turned into a diabolical mirror image of itself. The moment you meet one of these liberal, tolerant, well-educated, well-spoken, well-mannered, internationalist-minded folk for whom the third world is a synonym for global injustice, you know that they are going to despise or hate Israel and bestow their compassion on the promoters of genocide. One constantly meets such people who have compassion for the vulnerable and want to do good in the world: pillars of the community, admirable and delightful in every way — except that they side with people who happen to have a murderous hatred of Israel and the Jews.