Tel Aviv first, then Manchester? (Israel is to blame for simply *everything*

Last month, I warned of developments within British Islam. "We need to be scared," I wrote on these pages. "The end of the war in Iraq might even usher in the beginning of our own intifada." Among the many responses was one from 10 Downing Street. I was told that my piece was "uncharacteristically alarmist" and I did feel temporarily defensive. But, sadly, I was right. I am not surprised by news of Britain's first suicide bombers; what, however, I find astonishing is that it took place in Tel Aviv, not Manchester.

The descent into extremism of parts of the British Muslim community has been a long process, though "community" leaders remain in a state of denial over the mess.

The combined forces of racial discrimination and Islamophobia have been awesome in the marginalisation and alienation of the community. As a result few, particularly young people, feel they have any viable stake in society. To add to all this is the chaos and confusion that is all-pervasive throughout the Muslim world - traumatised by colonialism, raped by "independence". If we are to understand what is going on we need to scrape away the layers of rhetoric and euphemism, put to one side events of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, and come to the running sore of Palestine. The western conscience, troubled by anti-semitism, is reluctant to look too critically at Israeli behaviour towards a colonised Muslim population. But unless the Palestinian voice, and the Muslim voice that echoes its pain, is listened to, there will be no understanding of what happened to Asif Muhammad Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif. Instead, we will be subjected to more banal rhetoric about "evil" Islam and the motiveless nature of fundamentalist terror.

The reality is that Muslims - including the majority of those in Britain - are enraged about Palestine. Angry about the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements on confiscated Arab land. Furious about decades of military rule on behalf of Jewish conquerors over resentful Christian and Muslim populations. Furious about the perpetuation of colonial-era racism and apartheid-style zoning laws. Furious about the plight of Palestinian refugees. Furious about the conquerer's control of the third holiest place in Islam.

Our scriptures counsel endless patience. Were it not for Islam, the anti-western rhetoric and violence would be out of control. Yet, some of us have been tipped over the edge. The message carried in the deeds of these angry young people is that, yes, Islam forbids suicide and killing civilians, but they are now so angry about Palestine that they are going to set these principles aside. The result has been a perversion of faith.

In the 36 years since the fall of Jerusalem, the Muslim voice has been deeply radicalised. You find this everywhere - from the scholarly pulpits of Al-Azhar to the mosques of Birmingham and Derby, where young people speak only of Palestine. It is the great religious transformation of our age. And if you talk to these new zealots, you will find that anger over Palestine has been the catalyst which radicalised them.

Perhaps this has been the most far-reaching consequence of Zionism: the radicalisation of the Muslim world. Like most Muslims, I can't stand it. I lament the passing of a culture focused on God more than on community. I miss the smiles, tolerance and wisdom of the older sort of Muslim. And like most Muslims, I know that the war on terrorism and the Iraq war is not part of a solution, but merely the acceleration of incomprehension and revenge.

Since September 11 and the invasion of Iraq, Israel's grip on Palestinian majority areas has become tighter. The frustration at America (and Britain) has never been more intense. And the likelihood of further attacks on western targets has never been greater.

America and Britain must decide whether they want the Muslim world to become their own West Bank, the source of an unbreakable cycle of military punishments and suicide bombings. Israel has not succeeded in stopping Palestinian violence even in a small area; and therefore America and Britain will never suppress terrorism in Islam itself.

If they want peace, they should abandon the belief that more aircraft carriers and bombs will do the job, and try to work out how to be less hated. A decent settlement for the Palestinians, with the restoration of the Muslim holy places to Muslim control, cannot be postponed until the war against terrorism is won. And neither can the return of Iraq and its oil wells to the Iraqi people. Otherwise, we should brace ourselves for the forthcoming intifada in the streets of Birmingham and Detroit.

The British Muslim Fuad Nahdi argues that the British suicide bombers who attacked a cafe in Tel Aviv were fundamentally motivated by outrage over Palestine. In an article in the Guardian, Nahdi says that, despite the restraint of Islam, "young people speak only of Palestine. It is the great religious transformation of our age. And if you talk to these new zealots, you will find that anger over Palestine has been the catalyst which radicalised them."

What is needed now, he says, is a "decent settlement for the Palestinians, with the restoration of the Muslim holy places to Muslim control". Otherwise, "we should brace ourselves for the forthcoming intifada in the streets of Birmingham and Detroit."

One hundred years ago, the shoe was exactly on the other foot. What Europe feared most was the International Jewish Conspiracy. They had invented that abomination, Marxism: they were behind anarchism. They were everywhere.

In order to appreciate just how commonly held this belief was, one need look no further than John Buchan's 39 Steps. Written in the days before the Great War, and a perennial best-seller to this day, the doomed journalist Scudder confides his fatal secret to Richard Hannay. War was coming he said, so that:

The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than hell.
'Do you wonder?' he cried. 'For three hundred years they have been persecuted, and this is the return match for the pogroms. The Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the backstairs to find him. Take any big Teutonic business concern. If you have dealings with it the first man you meet is Prince von und Zu Something, an elegant young man who talks Eton-and-Harrow English. But he cuts no ice. If your business is big, you get behind him and find a prognathous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the manners of a hog. He is the German business man that gives your English papers the shakes. But if you're on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake. Yes, Sir, he is the man who is ruling the world just now, and he has his knife in the Empire of the Tzar, because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one-horse location on the Volga.'

In what must be the cruelest joke in history, the British laid the foundations for the State of Israel because they feared that the International Jewish Conspiracy was going to turn the Ottoman Empire against them. Yes, you read that right: the British Foreign Office determined that the Jews were going to unleash the Moslems on them. Seriously. Sir Gerald Lowther, who was the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, was convinced that the Young Turk movement, which had just seized the reins of power in 1908, was a creation of the Jews. In David Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace, Lowther and his linguist FitzMaurice concluded that the Young Turks had met in:

"... Salonika, about half of whose 130,000 inhabitants were either Jews or Dunmehs (members of a Jewish sect that had converted to Islam in the seventeenth century). Salonika was also a city in which there were Freemason lodges ... (where) ... a Jewish lawyer ... allowed the (Young Turks) to meet."

And since "the Oriental Jew is adept at manipulating occult forces ..." it had taken control of the Ottoman Empire. A few years later, the British Foreign Office had come to the conclusion that victory in the First World War would be greatly assisted by buying off the Jews by assisting in the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which it did in 1917. Thus was Israel born.

And now Nadhi wants Britain to buy off the International Muslim Conspiracy by supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state in the Jewish homeland which was used to buy off the International Jewish Conspiracy which was threatening to control the Ottoman Empire. Otherwise, there will be an intifada in the streets of Birmingham or Detroit. The French should have saying: the more things stay the same the more they are different.

"In what must be the cruelest joke in history, the British laid the foundations for the State of Israel because they feared that the International Jewish Conspiracy was going to turn the Ottoman Empire against them."

This, I understand, is the correct version (see below). Perhaps they are both right. Strange what it says about Lloyd George though as he was a really great fan of Hitler. Perhaps he was a "Zionist" because he saw it as a way not to help Jews but to get rid of them. Anyhow, here's the relevant explanation from:

The Role of Christian Zionists in the Establishment of Modern-day Israel

Of course, all of these discussions and arrangements were restrained by the fact of the Ottoman Empire's continued control of Palestine. This changed in World War I. The Ottoman Turks sided with Germany. Germany and the Allied powers bogged down along the German/French borders. Millions perished. The British were in desperate need to enhance the power of their explosives in order to win the war. The person who discovered the chemical processes to do just that was the chemist, Chaim Weitzman. Near the end of the war the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George (another Christian Zionist), called for Weitzman to offer him an award for his assistance in the war effort. In a classic statement, Weitzman declared, "I want nothing for myself but rather a homeland for my people." As a result Lloyd George directed his Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, to issue what became known as the Balfour Declaration, proposing Palestine become a homeland for the Jewish people. A month later a British military force led by General Allenby overthrew Ottoman rule in Palestine, and Britain now became the ruling sovereign in the area."

http://www.leaderu.com/common/british.html

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