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Britain 

The pie in the anti-democratic sky

Melanie

There are many things that could be said about Tony Blair’s suggestion that the UK should toughen its immigration policy to reduce the numbers coming in from Europe. He claims this can be done “by measures within our own law or by negotiation with Europe”. Hey presto! – the British will then suddenly come to their senses, demand a second referendum and vote to stay in the EU after all. I don’t know which is the most startling here – the fantastic magical thinking, the fathomless hypocrisy or the deep…

Loony Lefty Libels 4

Melanie

There’s been a predictable fuss in the US over the Trump administration’s decision to rescind DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. This Obama administrative order exempted young adult illegal immigrants from deportation. Announcing the move, the Attorney-General Jeff Sessions said that since its introduction in 2012 it it had provided legal status, for a renewable two-year term, to some 800,000 “mostly adult illegal aliens”. “The executive branch”, he said, “had deliberately sought to achieve what the legislative branch [Congress] had refused to authorise on multiple occasions. Such an open-ended…

Loony Lefty Libels 3

Melanie

A story in today’s Times (£) furnishes the third in my occasional series of Loony Lefty Libels. These are statements which fly in the face of reason, are presented nevertheless as rational and true by mainstream commentators and are likely to promote irrational hatred, prejudice or even violence. The victim in today’s example is an Edinburgh university law student, Robbie Travers. He is being accused of committing a “hate crime” by posting on social media, after the US Air Force dropped a “massive ordnance air bomb” on an Isis stronghold…

conversation Israel 

“Has truth lost all meaning”? For Israel-haters, yes

Melanie

Thomas Suarez is an Israel-hater. He is about to embark on a tour of America. He recently concluded a tour of Scotland. He has spoken at universities in the United Kingdom. A book he wrote, published last year, which vilifies and defames the state of Israel and which references and has been endorsed by other Israel-haters, was honoured with a launch inside a meeting room in the House of Lords. Two indefatigable fighters against anti-Jewish bigotry, David Collier and Jonathan Hoffman, have written a detailed analysis of this book’s methodology…

Global conflict 

The Iranian symptom of the west’s auto-immune disease

Melanie

People are understandably preoccupied with the threat from North Korea and what to do about it. But with the polyvalent perversity that characterises our modern age – afflicted as it is by the political equivalent of auto-immune disease in which it seeks to destroy its allies while embracing its mortal enemies – many in the west continue to downplay or ignore the far greater threat to the world from North Korea’s partner in crime, the Islamic Republic of Iran. It’s not just that, as with North Korea today so with…

Britain 

How Britain is committing suicide (again)

Melanie

The Times (£) reports today that a white Christian child was taken from her family and forced to live with a niqab-wearing foster carer in a home where she was allegedly encouraged to learn Arabic. The story says that child was placed in not one but two Muslim foster homes, against the wishes of her family, by the London borough of Tower Hamlets. “In confidential local authority reports seen by The Times, a social services supervisor describes the child sobbing and begging not to be returned to the foster carer’s home…

Europe 

The perverse consequences of western antisemitism denial

Melanie

A new study of antisemitism in Europe has found that the country with the lowest rate of antisemitism, despite having a relatively large Jewish population, is… Russia. The study, by the Oslo-based Center for Studies of the Holocaust and the University of Oslo, looked at France, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Russia. The author, Johannes Due Enstad, observed that Russia does not treat Muslims’ transgressions with near impunity as Western Europe does. The relatively few antisemitic acts that do occur in Russia are committed mainly by the far right.…

conversation Global conflict 

The eclipse of reason in the west

Melanie

Historical statues are being toppled in America; snarling, violent anti-fascists mirror the behaviour they are supposedly against; Britain’s Conservative Government is to enforce hate-speech guidelines which are as contestable as they are subjective. As we watch western societies buckling under the bizarre combination of an apparently extreme concern to protect other people’s feelings with an extreme attempt to suppress other people’s opinions, many of us feel utter bewilderment. How can so many people who are ostensibly devoted to reason and freedom be behaving so irrationally and oppressively? Having tracked the…

Israel USA 

Jews misread America’s cultural civil war

Melanie

The cultural civil war that has now exploded in America is an immensely dangerous moment for the west. It is also perilous for the State of Israel and the Jewish people. Yet in both Israel and the diaspora, too many Jews just don’t get it. They are parroting instead the double-dealing and hypocritical pieties of their mortal enemies. After Charlottesville, Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin wrote a letter expressing “support and solidarity” with the American Jewish community “at this difficult time”. Jewish students in America run a permanent gauntlet of left-wing…

USA 

Verdict first, evidence to follow?

Melanie

Alan Dershowitz is a prominent legal scholar and former Harvard professor of law renowned for his notable defence of both the State of Israel and OJ Simpson. He is also a long-standing supporter of the Democratic party. His views have been firmly situated on the liberal side of politics. Now that side has turned viciously upon him. As he explains here, he had expressed grave reservations about the decision by Special Counsel Robert Mueller to empanel a 23-strong grand jury in the District of Columbia in his probe into possible…