The Threat to a British Liberty

Fraser Nelson 9:54pm . March 18th

http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6796298/the-threat-to-a-british-liberty.thtml

British understatement is a wonderful thing. Here is how Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator, introduced a posting on the magazine’s website (see link above) last weekend: “It’s a funny old world,” he said, “I have now been contacted by two journalists informing me that Bedfordshire Police are investigating The Spectator”. The reason? Because a group called, wait for it, “Muslims4UK” took exception to a piece by Melanie Phillips on her Spectator blog in which she referred to the Arabs who had murdered five members of a Jewish family in Itamar the week before as “savages”.

The story was reported in the media, but if you’d blinked you’d have missed it, and the slant of the reporting was that Israel was at least as much to blame for the killings — due to settlement policy — as the killers themselves. Melanie’s column was a typically robust effort to point out the moral depravity of news outlets such as the Guardian, the New York Times, CNN and the BBC who, if the situation had been reversed — if five Arabs including a three month old baby had been knifed to death in their beds in a lethal racist attack by Jewish “settlers”, for example — would have given it saturation coverage.

So not so much a “funny old world” as a “brave new world”: a prominent British columnist does what prominent British columnists are supposed to do — she attempts to shift the terms of the debate back on to a more rational and principled footing — and the net result is that the police have been called in, with the Guardian newspaper cheerleading on the sidelines, because she has offended Muslim sensitivities.

As Nelson summed it up, the train of events went like this:
“1) Inayat Bunglawala, chair of Muslims4UK, gets angry about what he reads on Melanie’s blog.2) Complains to the PCC [The Press Complaints Commission].3) Complains to the police.4) Phones up The Guardian and says “The PCC are investigating The Spectator!! Story!! Police too!!5) The Guardian duly writes it all up, on its website.6) The Independent follows up The Guardian.7) An inverted pyramid of piffle is thus constructed.”

It isn’t yet clear on what grounds the investigation is being conducted, but you can bet your boots that it is the following paragraph from Melanie’s piece that they are salivating over:

“So to the New York Times, it’s not the Arab massacre of a Jewish family which has jeopardised ‘peace prospects’ — because the Israelis will quite rightly never trust any agreement with such savages — but instead Israeli policy on building more homes, on land to which it is legally and morally entitled, which is responsible instead for making peace elusive. Twisted, and sick”.

An “Arab massacre”? What all of them? “such savages”? So all Arabs are “savages”? Oh, come off it. It is quite clear that she is referring to the “savages” who slaughtered a family in their beds, and it is “such savages” and those who incite them with whom peace cannot be made. It is also clear that in this instance the thrust of the argument is against the New York Times, itself being used as a proxy for the liberal left media in the West, and not the killers as such.
And it is precisely because the multi-culturalist assumptions underpinning the western liberal left media lead consistently to a downplaying or sanitisation of crimes, however appalling, committed by non-white, third-world perpetrators designated as “victims” that Melanie Phillips employs such strong language to jolt western readers out of their dogmatic slumbers. Again, that’s what columnists are supposed to do, and in any other situation this affair would have passed off without notice.

But, as Nelson makes clear, changes are afoot in modern Britain that threaten to rip apart the fabric of one of the world’s most developed free societies: “Freedom of expression is under attack in Britain, from our notorious libel laws to this new phenomenon of police forces being asked to investigate what people put on their blogs,” he said.

And as we know from cases involving Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and others across the continent, all of this is starting to look like a depressingly common feature of the new European politics. To those who value freedom, merely sitting on one’s hands is no longer an option. We all hang together, or we all hang separately, as Benjamin Franklin is said to have averred at the siging of the American Declaration of Independence.

So write to Fraser Nelson in the comments column at the end of the article http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6796298/the-threat-to-a-british-liberty.thtml and tell them you support their right to be heard. Surely, that’s the least you can do.

Israel Should Ban All 26 Former EU Leaders

Robin Shepherd – December 11th

http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/israel-should-ban-all-26-former-european-leaders-calling-for-sanctions-against-israel-un-imposition-of-palestinian-state-by-april/

European extremism against Israel reached a new low this week with a letter from 26 former top officials to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton calling for sanctions against Israel and the abandonment of a negotiated solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict in favour of a UN-imposed solution if Israel does not stop settlement building by April 2011. Ashton is signalling that there will be no change to current policy for the moment, but the tide in Europe is clearly now turning and the risk is that change along such lines is only a matter of time.

Former EU foreign policy supremo Javier Solana, best known on matters Jewish for suppressing a 2003 (EUMC) report outlining the growing problem of Muslim anti-Semitism in Europe, was among the signatories of the letter which was sponsored by former French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine and former EU commissioner from Britain Chris Patten. Other notable signatories include Italy’s Romano Prodi and Giuliano Amato, Richard von Weizsaecker and Helmut Schmidt of Germany, Ireland’s Mary Robinson, Spain’s Felipe Gonzalez and Norway’s Thorvald Stoltenberg.

So, what to say about this? Mainly, Israel should stop pussy-footing around — ban each and every one of these people from entering the state of Israel or having any contact with Israeli embassy staff in their countries or anyone else’s. This is important for a number of reasons:

First, the 26 have launched an all out assault on Israel and Israel needs to respond. What European leaders fear more than anything is that they will be made irrelevant. By making this bunch persona non grata and isolating them, Israel will be sending a message that should the EU change tack along the lines the 26 are recommending, it will become as irrelevant to peace making in the Middle East as they are.

Second, Israel needs to make a very public statement against what amounts to a piece of unbridled bigotry. Let us restate the facts: it is the Palestinian side that refuses to negotiate, not Israel. It is the Palestinian side that has rejected two-state peace agreements since 1947 while Israel has accepted them. It is the Arab and Muslim states that refuse to recognise Israel, and not the other way around. The 26 signatories have thrown basic historical realities out of the window in order to sustain and support a bigoted anti-Israeli narrative.

Third, Europe has a long and sordid history of hostility to the Jews and this letter shows that the lessons simply haven’t been learned. The fact that two prominent Germans — former President Richard von Weizsaecker and former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt — are among the signatories is shameful. They should become the first two German leaders since the Second World War to be banned from Israel for hostility to the Jewish people.

Fourth, doing nothing will simply allow the problem to fester and grow. These people have the wind in their sails. Israel needs to take it out of them.

Of course, the State of Israel can and must choose its own policies. But the boycott movement is gathering strength and now has some very prominent allies. Surely a tougher line from Jerusalem is now in order.