Islamists overplay their hand but London salons don't see it

In a column in last week's Spectator, Petronella Wyatt noted that "since September 11 anti-Semitism and its open expression has become respectable at London dinner tables."

This is an accurate observation and cannot be avoided by simply staying at home.

Recently, the ambassador of a major EU country politely told a gathering at my home that the current troubles in the world were all because of "that shitty little country Israel".

"Why," he asked, "should the world be in danger of World War Three because of those people?"

At a private lunch last month, the hostess - doyenne of London's political salon scene - made a remark to the effect that she couldn't stand Jews and everything happening to them was their own fault.

When this was greeted with a shocked silence, she chided her guests on what she assumed was their hypocrisy. "Oh come on," she said, "you all feel like that."

Once that remark would have cost her licence as a serious political hostess, but clearly she believes the zeitgeist is blowing her way.

The editor of a major British newspaper came to our home, and I can tell Petronella Wyatt that it can be just as awkward with good friends at lunch as it is with strangers at dinner.

The editor is a decent man but his paper habitually blames Israel's "opposition to peace" for the problems in the Middle East and lectures them to negotiate. "But, look," he was asked, "Arafat does not believe in the right of the Jewish people to a state. How can the Israelis negotiate in that situation?"

The editor replied with disarming honesty: "You have put your finger on the weak point in our argument."

All this is not as bad as it seems. True, these remarks are exceptionally painful for some British Jews who feel beleaguered aliens in their own land. For myself, it merits only a shrug.

One is irritated when, as last October, the community hall of a north London synagogue burnt down in what police labelled a racist arson attack and the matter barely rated a mention except in the Jewish press.

The Monday after the triple suicide bombings in Israel that killed 26 and injured around 200, the Evening Standard turned to Charles Glass, an old anti-Israel hand. Glass wrote: "Palestinians kill Israelis. Israelis kill Palestinians. Who killed first? No one remembers and it does not matter."

For the past 25 years, I've watched sad-faced Israeli activists trudge around Western capitals with heavy hearts beating under ill-fitting suits. They carry folders of transcripts and videotapes to document the misrepresentations in the press and the moral hypocrisy of the world towards Israel.

They want to win the war of ideas on its merits. Their attention to detail in translating the hate literature of the Middle East and the hate-filled speeches of its leaders is commendable.

It's enlightening to read, for example, their studies of Syrian and Palestinian Authority school textbooks that explain to young schoolchildren that the Jews are a people made up of rapists, murderers and thieves.

It is sad to learn that such PA textbooks are used by the UN in its schools for Palestinian refugees. But something new is "blowin' in the wind".

Today, after years in the media desert, Israel's experts and front-line activists are slowly finding some media doors opening to them. They may think it is their own perseverance. But I think it is the daisy cutter effect.

For years, I said that Jews were out of fashion and I understood why. The world was sick of the Middle East problem: why should it be inconvenienced by the cost and the ripple effect of terrorism?

The West defeated the Third Reich and we Jews were no longer in need of a lifeboat: indeed, today we would probably be safer just about anywhere rather than the Middle East. But events in the past year or so changed the equation and our rehabilitation has begun. The Arab/ Muslim world overplayed its hand.

Their first wrong move was the rejection of prime minister Ehud Barak's offer in 2000. Even if you looked at that proposal from an Arab point of view and believed that a Palestinian state comprising 95 per cent of the West Bank and a shared Jerusalem was not sufficient, you couldn't possibly argue that such a deal should be rejected out of hand.

The second mistake was launching the Al-Aqsa intifada after rejecting that deal. Eventually, the world saw that it was not Ariel Sharon's walk on the Temple Mount that caused the new intifada (a walk pre-cleared with the Muslim authorities) but Arafat's decision to escalate violence for tactical reasons.

The greatest error of all was when bin Laden, acting in the name of the Arab/Muslim world, decided - with a total incomprehension of what this would entail - to blow up Lower Manhattan and blow it up at a time when the American administration was in the hands of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld and not Clinton and Gore.

The Arab street remained silent at best or cheered the WTC bombing even as some of their leaders made ritual condemnations of it. Almost overnight, a blindfold fell off America's eyes. Appeasement didn't work.

The problem was not Israel's intransigence, nor even the conflict that comes from Israel's existence: the problem is Islamism.

Islam itself is split between Islam as a religion that can be essentially peaceful - endorsing the qualities of charity and mercy - and militant Islam (Islamism), which is intolerant and expansionist. Islam periodically goes into this expansionary phase and is now in one.

That is why in the past few years some mosques in the West have seen violent incidents, including murders, as radical mullahs fight moderates for supremacy. Militant Islam wants to be the dominant force in the world.

Its crusade has Muslims fighting Christians in Indonesia, Sudan and Pakistan. Christians in Lebanon have largely fled. Muslim fights Muslim in Algeria. Islamism has been on the move all right, but it hasn't a chance now, because it finally woke up America.

It took the blowing up of three planes on an airstrip outside Jordan by Palestinian terrorists in 1970 to turn the world's attention to the Palestinian question. One regrets to say that it has taken a lot more violence to get the world to focus on the true nature of Islamism.

Powerful as the truth may be, it needs a nudge from 16,000lb daisy cutter bombs once in a while. The Arab/Muslim world's intransigence comes into sharper focus when we see the Americans liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban in six weeks and a cornered Arafat unable to go to the bathroom without the risk of being blown into the next world.

Nothing succeeds like powerful bombs, as bin Laden explained in his latest video release. "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse," he said.

"Some of the media said that in Holland, in one of the centres, the number of people who accepted Islam during the days that followed the operations [attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon] were more than the people who accepted Islam in the past 11 years."

Bin Laden understands the power of a successful show of force all right, though he seems slow to grasp that America's horses are stronger than his.

Don't worry, Petronella. It is both sad and true that the consequences of super-liberalism led to suicide bombers and intifadas in Israel and to the attacks in America. But the US has shown it is no paper tiger.

All those people bad-mouthing the Jews and Israel will quieten down. You are looking at the tail end of the train but the engine has already turned a corner and is going in the opposite direction.

Nothing succeeds like success. America is driving this train and the world will get on board - though the last carriage may be those London dinner parties.

Recently, the ambassador of a major EU country politely told a gathering at my home that the current troubles in the world were all because of "that shitty little country Israel".

I have no doubt that this is the opinion of many in Eurotrash land and in polite Britain. Just look at the U.N. votes of these imbeciles - overwhelmingly against Israel.

The West London Left is composed of the most irritating, snide, condescending, annoying, and just plain contrary English speaking folks that I have ever met in my life. Let me add, however, that it is as representative of the UK as Hollywood is of the USA. The trouble is that all the money in the country drains into London, and these mallet-heads have infested the nerve centers of most policy-making organizations. And a jug-eared, pencil-necked, ghastly-toothed grinning bunch they are.They have turned London into a pit. Anyone travelling to the British Isles needs to get out of London as fast as is humanly possible.

I'd like to be as optimistic as this author ... but I can't. I believe that anti-semitism is the spiritual canary in this mine shaft of a world. I believe this because I believe there is a hidden powerful leader of evil in this world. Not an author of evil ... just a powerful leader. When I see anti-semitism thriving in any strata of society above the very lowest, skinheaded/sociopath/pervert level ... I start looking for the 'Dark Lord' and his minions to make a move. An earth shattering history uheaving sort of move.

I don't think the darkness personofied in readilly apparent world wide anti-semetism such as we have begun to see (right here on this forum) will go away because OBL blew up the WTC and killed a few thousand Americans. The sort of reformation this author believes in might slow the progress of what is to come. But it won't stop it. A few hundred million islamists are going to do everything they can to kill all the Jews and the citizens of any country who try and stand with the Jews. Do you really think any nation other than the US will attemp to resist such a flood? Will America truly stand with Israel when things get truly threatening?

re : V/ interesting piece here! Glad I live USA and not Euro who are just scared materialist slobs.

And I love you too another whining article about how its not fair and no one likes the Jews.

re : For the past 25 years, I've watched sad-faced Israeli activists trudge around Western capitals with heavy hearts beating under ill-fitting suits.

What bollox the Israelis I met are fit types who dress very well, I am fed up with so called middle class soft whining types whining about my country if they don’t like it sod of, and that goes for Muslims as well as Jews. And Yanks as well.

I know that to a certain type of American patriotism is not how much you love your own country but how much you hate other countries .

You would almost think we were at war with each other the anti Brit crap that gets posted on this site.

Yes there are people who don’t like Jews there are also people who don’t like Muslims, Irish, Scots, other Europeans, blacks, Chinese, there are some who think its all Israels fault some who thinks it all the Arabs thought.

When America controls all its population so that you all think the right thoughts and support the right movement then maybe we follow you and you all be happy.

Tony

re : Not much to love about the Argentines, but I was rooting for them against the British.

Do you always root for the losing side, of course if they had fought better maybe I would of been killed when out there , and then we would never of met.

As for Britain and Jewish right to Israel there has been no calls for Israel to be disbanded in Parliament, we have diplomatic representation and there is a lot of cross cultural exchange.

Lack of Blanket support does not mean blanket condemnation.

Tony

If you are to hold all British opinion to those who hold an opinion you do not like, what about American rightwing opinion, those who talk of the Great Hoax or as they put it holohoax or talk about ZOG or even the new JCG, Jewish Conspiracy Government.

Stones and glass houses.

Cheers Gentlemen always a pleasure to debate with you.

Tony

An Islamic and liberal free city, extraordinary.

Oh, no, hardly free of islamic or liberals! (In fact Montreal is the center of Canada's jihadist and islamicist cells.)

However, it has a large, established Jewish community, and is now considered North America's center of Yiddish (and Judaic) culture. Montreal's Jewish community is thoroughly and profoundly pro-American, completely assimilated into (North) American culture and an important element of Canada's Establishment. This does not mean that Canada's Jews are lock-step liberals, because they aren't. In fact, Canadian Jews are somewhat more conservative than US Jews and all these factors combine to form a useful bulwark against the encroachment of islamist influences in Canada.

Barbara Amiel spent many years in Canada, (prior to marrying Conrad Black, and moving back to London), and was a well known-voice for conservatism here.

During the '80's, Canadian Jews became quite impressed with Ronald Reagan, and developed an appreciation for him, far beyond their co-religionists in the US. The comments I'm hearing now about GW Bush, from Candadian Jews mirrors the experience with Reagan. Canadian Jews think he's got it right, and is doing a great job, in fact a far better job than our own leader Johhnie Cretin (Da Moron), who most Canadian Jews consider to be a "shlemiel", a putz and a "farshluffener" .

Shlemiel: a hapless, unlucky fool
Farshluffener: a sleepy-head, asleep at the wheel.

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