I wanted to write about something other than Islamic terrorism today. I awoke ready to take on the Israelis over Palestine, to look at Barack Obama's latest call for human rights in Cuba, or perhaps just to salute the President over his historic health care plan.
Subsequent events however, or at least my knowledge of them, overtook that idea. The morning then began to unfold with the grimly familiar spectacle played back on television screens of blood-speckled commuters staggering from the smoke-filled subterranean gloom of another underground train line, this time the Moscow Metro.
Most striking perhaps is the way in which the senseless violence of the cowardly and pious perpetrators, (for we can be in no doubt that the culprits will have been pious), is inflicted so indiscriminately. We've seen it on our streets. We see it every time a line of people queuing up to vote in Iraq are blown up, when schools in Afghanistan get burned down, or when, back in 2004, Islamo-fascists decided that the school children of Beslan were ripe for slaughter. After all, they were not Muslim; or at the very least, they were not sufficiently pious. No further justification is required.
What has now become more difficult to sustain is the echo chamber-like invective emanating from those countries who thought they could avoid the Islamist carnage by keeping out of "Muslim lands", only later to find out that the Islamo-fascists wished to impose a Caliphate on some corner of their countries as well. The "root cause" in this outburst of murderous piety appears to be an Islamist group that wishes to establish a Caliphate in the southern tip of Russia. Does anyone still believe that this theological barbarism is appeasable? Are there still those that think a special envoy from the UN development agency needs to be sent to the region to put a caring arm around the militants and "understand them"? Does anybody continue to believe that compromise can be made? That the way to deal with the communities who shelter such people is not a boot to the face so fierce that those responsible will never be able to hit back? Or, to quote Christopher Hitchens, are there those of you, 'the sort who, upon discovering a viper in the bed of their child, would place the first call to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals'?
If so, please keep it down will you. At least until the Russian comrades have buried their loved ones.
With another day comes another long-winded article by British member of parliament George Galloway in the communist press. This time the issue is the alleged similarity between the way Muslims are being treated in Britain today and the way Jews were treated at the turn of the 20th century.
As a side note, it must be said that this is by no means new. Another version of this comparison is sometimes thrown around by members of Unite Against Fascism, a front organisation of the Socialist Workers Party - the more respectable guise under which they can sign up members - several of whom, on a recent protest in Nottingham, I overheard conceitedly comparing their own scuffles with the English Defence League to that of Londoners with Oswald Mosley's fascist Blackshirts in the 1930s. The fact that they were now protesting against a protest against Islamo-fascism is not relevant apparently, for the threat posed by radical Islam is dwarfed in comparison by that of drunken football hooligans. To view the situation any other way would be to make excuses for the 'hegemon'. Or so I'm told.
On attempting to mention this apparent contradiction at the heart of the UAF's self-proclaimed 'anti-fascism' on their Facebook page, I was immediately cornered with probing questions as to whether I was a 'Zionist', a 'Jew', or a 'neo-con crusader'.
In his article Galloway goes on to claim, 'It is no exaggeration to say that you can pore over parliamentary debates, politicians' speeches and media exposes a century ago in London’s East End and, by substituting Muslim for Jew, find exact parallels with today's prejudiced ravings.'
What he does not mention is that it would be easier still to look at a sample of modern-day leftist material and swap-out the word 'Zionist' and replace it with 'Jew' and see such parallels. A past example of this phenomenon has been provided by an article in the Jewish Social Studies Journal, which examines the anti-Semitic campaign waged by British left-wing activists who were protesting against the Anglo-Boer War in 1900.
Below is accompanying commentary taken from Harry's Place.
'As you read the...excerpt, substitute “Anglo-Boer War” with “Iraq War”; substitute “Jewish capitalists” and “Jewish financiers” with “Zionists,” “neocons,” and the “Israel Lobby”; substitute “Boers” and “Zulus” with “Arabs” and “Muslims.” The result is a narrative that is dishearteningly familiar:'
George goes on:
'There are affinities between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.'
Indeed there are. Some may have noticed an affinity between the anti-Semitic bile emanating from Islamic clerics who themselves are the first to cry 'Islamophobia' when somebody says that playing a game entitle 'spot the fag' is not kosher.
The distinct lack of affinity between groups such as Unite Again Fascism's reaction to 'Islamophobia' as opposed to anti-Semitism and homophobia is revealing to say the least. It was widely expected and understandable that protest would ensue when the British National Party leader Nick Griffin was invited onto Question Time; and while the UAF attempted to stop Mr Griffin from even entering the BBC studios, they have thus far done nothing to condemn figures such as George Galloway, who regularly pledge support for anti-Semites and holocaust deniers comparable to any that Griffin courts.
Here is George with the leader of Hamas:
The Hamas charter states that 'Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.' and 'After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.'
The 'Zionists' and the Freemasons and others are blamed for what Hamas and radical Islamists see as the major calamities of the world, especially the French Revolution. Note the use of the ludicrous anti-Semitic forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Cue George again: 'Still others might have claimed that it was not Jews per se they were against, but the participation of Jewish community organisations, such as the Bund, in British political parties. Anyone who’s followed the recent smears against the Muslim community in east London will get the picture.'
This is in response to a documentary by Andrew Gilligen, which featured, amongst other things, this video taken from the East London mosque featured in Gilligen's episode of Dispatches.
George:
'They also have an international dimension and are the product of a world view. Nearly a century ago Jews were held to be responsible for a Judaeo-Bolshevik conspiracy which, preposterously, was supposedly pulling the strings of the socialist movement and the international banking system...Today, Muslims practising their culture and religion are held to be part of a global continuum stretching over to Osama bin Laden, a breeding ground for a fundamentalism which threatens our very way of life...every candidate in this election should be challenged over this question.''
Today, if Hamas are to be believed, the Jews are a part of a world 'Zionist' movement or 'Israel lobby' that controls American foreign policy. Or, as their charter puts it, 'After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates...embodied in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion'
Indeed, as Gorgeous George states, every candidate in this election should be challenged, challenged as to why this man is still taken seriously; challenged as to why he is repeatedly selected to appear on programs such as Question Time; and challenged as to how and why it is acceptable for supposed 'anti-racists' to remain entirely silent about somebody who openly courts the anti-Semitic fascists of Hamas when he appears on television.
Here is George's original article in Morning Star:
