Londonistan

by Melanie Phillips

  The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is treated as a basic text and sold throughout the Muslim world along with Hitler’s Mein Kampf.19 In 2003, Egypt TV aired a 41-part series, syndicated to more than twenty other Arab TV stations, updating the Protocols. Muslim children throughout the Arab world are taught to hate the Jews and regard them as sinister and diabolical. Syrian school textbooks portray the Jews as the enemies of Islam, of mankind and of God himself.20 In Egypt, a booklet for children tells them that the Jews “persistently attempted to spread hate among the Muslims” and that “the only way to eliminate the Jews is through holy war (jihad) for the sake of Allah because they are the most villainous among Allah’s creatures.”21 Another book says: “No other nation in ancient and modern times has carried the banner of fraud, evil and treachery as has the Jewish nation.” It accuses them of behaving throughout history in a “cruel and corrupt manner,” and of using “conspiracy and deceit” to carry out their plans for “establishing their rule over the world.”22

  As for the Palestinian Authority—believed by the British public to be a legitimate, non-extremist organization trying to secure statehood and rights for the Palestinians—it is an unstoppable geyser of rabid anti-Jewish prejudice. Through PA-controlled media including television sermons, radio and newspapers, it labels the Jews as the enemies of God and humanity whose annihilation is thus presented as a legitimate self-defense and service to the world. In a sermon on PA TV, Dr. Muhammad Mustafa Najem, a lecturer in Koranic interpretation at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University, preached that Allah described the Jews as “characterized by conceit, pride, arrogance, savagery, disloyalty and treachery . . . [and] deceit and cunning.” Dr. Khader Abas, a lecturer in psychology at Gaza’s Al-Aksa University, taught the origins of Jewish evil: “From the moment the [Jewish] child is born, he nurses hatred against others, nurses seclusion, nurses superiority.”23

  In 1999, a cartoon in the official PA daily Al-Hayat al-Jadida depicted a Jew as a subhuman dwarf with the caption: “The disease of the century .” An opinion piece in the same paper said of the Jewish festival of Passover (an obsessive focus also for medieval Christian antisemitism): “This holiday has various meanings. . . . Murdering foreigners is a godly virtue that should be emulated. . . . There is nothing in history more horrible than the theft, the greatest crime in history, that the Jews carried out the night of their Exodus [from Egypt]. . . . In other words, robbing others is not only permitted, it is considered holy. Especially since this thievery was done under the direct command of God, [that is,] the God of the Jews.”24

  The PA’s most popular imam, Ibrahim Mudayris, who has described the Jews as “a cancer,” stated in May 2005 on PA TV:Read the history. . . . You’ll find that Jews are behind every conflict on earth. The suffering of nations? The Jews are behind it! Ask Britain! What did it do to the Jews at the beginning of the sixth century? Chased them down, made them suffer, and prevented them from entering for more than three hundred years. . . . Ask France what it did to the Jews! They made them suffer, chased them down, and burned their Talmud, for the conflicts that they [Jews] tried to ignite in France. . . . Ask Portugal what it did to the Jews! Ask Czarist Russia—which hosted the Jews, and they plotted to murder the Czar! And they were massacred again and again. Don’t ask Germany what it did to the Jews, since the Jews are the ones who provoked the Nazis so the world would go to war against it.25

  This unending avalanche of hatred against the Jews is why, of all the iconic grievances for the Islamic world, Israel is the most important. Israel represents not a regional dispute but a metaphysical struggle between good and evil. That is why the cause of Palestine is key to the Islamists’ demands. As Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi has written: “. . . the Movement has never forgotten and will never forget the Palestinian cause, because Palestine is the first and foremost Islamic cause, and its liberation is the first and foremost duty . . . to adopt the Palestinian cause as part of a worldwide Islamic plan, with the policy plan and by means of jihad, since it acts as the keystone of the renaissance of the Arab world today.”26

  And this is why the attitude towards suicide bombings in Israel is the litmus test of a moral response to terrorism. Many people in Britain believe that there is no contradiction between having some sympathy with or even supporting suicide-bomb terrorism in Israel and opposing it in Britain. That is because they think that what caused the Middle East conflict is completely different from what lies behind Islamist terrorism. Not only is this attitude morally wrong, since opposition to terrorism must be indivisible or it is not opposition at all. It also means that the British cannot understand the enemy that threatens them; they are oblivious to the danger that Islamism poses to the entire Jewish people, and unaware that this danger to the Jews stands proxy for the threat to the West and to all free peoples.

  That is why, despite claims by some in the British establishment that Qaradawi is a “moderate” because he opposes al-Qaeda terrorism in Britain, it is monstrous to regard him as such since he encourages human-bomb attacks in Israel and Iraq. His sermons often call for Jews to be killed on the basis that there is hardly any difference between Judaism and Zionism. He supports such assertions with libelous accusations and imputations of collective wrongdoing against the Jewish faith and its people. Thus he asserts that the Torah permits Jews to spill the blood of others and to seize their money and land, and that, “with the exception of a few honourable ones, the majority of Jews support Israel’s policies.”27

  Qaradawi’s virulent hatred of the Jews is unfortunately not uncommon among British Muslims. Indeed, the Muslim Council of Britain has said that he speaks for the majority of Muslims. But the MCB itself, despite being considered a mainstream representative organization, not only refuses unequivocally to condemn suicide bombings in Israel but has also associated itself with Holocaust denial and accused Jews of being Nazis.28

  As a result of the relentless propaganda, lies, libels, paranoid delusions and diabolical images about both Jews and Israel that have suffused the Muslim world for decades, British Muslims subscribe in large measure to these attitudes. Walk down the Edgware Road, in the heart of London’s Arab district, and you will find on open display in bookshop after bookshop copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf, books devoted to Holocaust denial and vilification of Israel, cartoons depicting George W. Bush wearing a skullcap with the Star of David on it, and countless other texts and images defaming both Israel and the Jewish people. Many British Muslims assume that the Jews are a malignant force in the world, driving America and global politics in their own self-interest and trampling down everything in their path. Wherever they may be, the Jews are assumed to comprise a sinister conspiracy not merely to maintain the State of Israel, but to eradicate Islam and take over the world. As a result, many Muslims ascribe virtually every misfortune in the world to the secret machinations of the Jews. They are pictured as the secret force behind the Asian tsunami on Boxing Day 2004, behind the 9/11 attacks—any and all calamities.

  What makes such developments in Britain so chilling is the wider silence in which they occur. It is repeatedly said that the vast majority of British Muslims are moderate. But only a tiny handful denounce this hate-fest against Israel and the Jews—a statistically negligible number, well below the public radar. British Muslims often say their representative institutions do not reflect the views of the community. But nowhere is that community protesting in public that the Islamic world is consumed by hatred towards the Jews and towards Israel, and that this has got to stop. On the contrary, on February 2006, a poll of Muslims commissioned by a coalition of Jewish groups revealed that nearly two-fifths believed that the Jewish community in Britain was a legitimate target “as part of the ongoing struggle for justice in the Middle East,” more than half believed that British Jews had “too much influence over the direction of UK foreign policy,” and no fewer than 46 percent thought the Jewish community was “in league with Freemasons to control the media and politics.”29 And t
he wider, non-Muslim community is equally silent. The murderous rage against Israel, expressed by one Muslim organization after another, is greeted with indifference. Despite the plethora of antisemitic materials on sale in the bookshops, there are virtually no prosecutions because the prosecuting authorities believe these would not be “in the public interest”—in other words, they are afraid of a Muslim backlash.

  One consequence has been a rise in physical attacks on British Jews. In 2004 the Community Security Trust, a Jewish defense organization, recorded 532 antisemitic incidents in Britain, up by 42 percent from the previous year and the highest number ever. These included assaults and threats, attacks on synagogues and desecration of cemeteries, abuse and hate mail.30 In 2005 the number of antisemitic incidents was lower, but at 455 it was still the second highest on record and followed a warning by the chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, that a “tsunami of antisemitism” was sweeping Europe.31

  Towards all this, the British are generally indifferent. Indeed, such is the popular hostility towards Israel that when the British are presented with evidence of attacks on Jews in their own country, they often react with suspicion on the basis that such figures are exaggerated and a form of special pleading to camouflage Israel’s misdeeds. The same people, however, are quick to claim “Islamophobia” when anything disobliging is said about Muslims, including any discussion about Islamist terrorism. Such is the moral and intellectual fallout of Londonistan, where, to a dismaying extent, the indigenous British have signed up to the false narrative of those who are laying siege to their society.

  And at the very heart of that narrative of falsehood is the issue of Israel, the litmus test of morality, moderation—and the capacity of the West to secure its own survival.

  · CHAPTER SEVEN·

  THE RED-BLACK ALLIANCE

  When the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced in October 2005 that he intended to “wipe Israel off the map,” Britain, along with the rest of the civilized world, expressed shock and revulsion. Yet, two days later, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of London to demand that Israel meet precisely such a fate.

  While shocked demonstrators in Italy, Hungary, Austria and France waved around placards asking “Israel today, Europe tomorrow?”, London resounded instead to shouts for Israel’s destruction. Thousands of demonstrators marched through the city to mark “Al-Quds day”—when Muslims express solidarity with the Palestinian Arabs—on what was effectively a British march for genocide. The crowd chanted: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” “Zionism, terrorism” and “We are all Hezbollah”; and no one turned a hair. All those who had expressed revulsion, shock and outrage two days previously at the outburst from Iran suddenly fell silent when confronted not merely by calls for Israel’s annihilation but the spectacle of supporters of Iran’s terrorist army on the streets of London calling for the destruction of a lawfully constituted, democratic country. “[The response] was great,” said the event organizer Massoud Shadjareh, director of the Islamic Human Rights Commission. “It helped us gauge the reaction from the public, which was quite positive.”1

  One might have imagined that, in the wake of not just 9/11 but the London bombings of 2005, Britain would have recoiled in horror at any such threat by Islamists and wished to express solidarity with the fellow democracy that was being thus threatened. One might have thought that, with Nazi-style demonization of the Jews pouring out of the Muslim world, the political left in particular would be springing to defend this beleaguered and tiny minority against the threat from clerical fascism. Doesn’t the left, after all, make the most vigorous cause possible against racism and prejudice in all its forms?

  On the contrary. Far from being seen as the mortal enemy of the causes that progressive opinion holds so dear, such as sexual freedom or equal rights for women and homosexuals, the Islamic jihad has turned into the armed wing of the British left. As soon as the issue of Israel enters the picture, the British reaction to terror becomes “quite positive.” Far from springing to Israel’s defense as a fellow target, the British become passive, mute and even sympathetic to the murderous sentiments being screamed by the marching jihadists.

  For Israel is not viewed in Britain as it is in America, as the only democracy in the Middle East and one which has been under annihilatory attack by brutal tyrannies since its inception. It has instead become a pariah, viewed by “progressives” in the same way that they formerly viewed South Africa under apartheid. Many in Britain think it was a mistake that the Jewish state was ever created and would rather like it to vanish—not that they would condone any large-scale loss of life, you understand, but if it could be done without any nasty violence they would welcome its disappearance.

  The argument that it has done nothing to deserve such a fate except fight for its existence is scorned. The argument that the Jews are as entitled to a state of their own as any other people, and that there are no similar calls to destroy any other nation-state, is received with hostile incomprehension. The argument that, uniquely among the peoples of the world, the Jews need a place of refuge is dismissed with contempt. After all, comes the riposte, have not the Jews now turned into the new Nazis in their treatment of the Palestinians? Thus the campaign to dehumanize, demonize and delegitimize Israel has done its dirty work. The big lie that has been rammed home about Israel has lodged deep in the British psyche. A key salient of the West’s defense —British public opinion—has thus been captured by the jihad.

  How can this have happened? There are three issues that bind this unholy alliance together: America, Israel and the war in Iraq. At the very core of this troika is Israel—or to be more precise the Palestinians, who for the trendsetters among the British left have replaced the IRA as the terrorist fashion accessory du jour and have become the cause of choice for every heart that bleeds. For the left, Israel has filled the void created by the disappearance of the Latin American juntas, opposition to which once defined political virtue. When it is not marching against Israel or writing newspaper articles or making TV programs against it, the left is busy organizing academic and economic boycotts to bring it to its knees.

  Much of the reason for this lies in the end of the Cold War. With the collapse of communism and the end of the dream of workers’ control, the left alighted upon the Palestinians as the new proletariat whose cause could be championed as a weapon against Western society. Since the left demonizes America and Western capitalism, and lionizes the third world and all liberation movements, the Palestinian Arabs were a natural cause to be championed—victims of American imperialist power through the actions of its proxy, Israel.

  There was a further and crucial cultural factor. With the fall of communism, the left shifted its focus from economics to issues of race, ethnic identity and the nation-state. If the notion of a dominant culture was now racist, the idea of a Jewish state was anathema; and the stand that America was taking in defense not only of Israel but of the Western nation-state and its values made it even more of an enemy.

  Moreover, Jews were at the very heart of those Western values. Antonio Gramsci, the philosopher who became the iconic thinker of the 1960s, laid down the blueprint for precisely what has happened in Britain: the capture of all society’s institutions, such as schools, universities, churches, the media, the legal profession, the police and voluntary groups. This intellectual elite was persuaded to sing from the same subversive hymn-sheet so that the moral beliefs of the majority would be replaced by the values of those on the margins of society, the perfect ambience in which the Muslim grievance culture could be fanned into the flames of extremism.

  At the core of those Western majority values lay the Mosaic code, which first gave the world the concept of morality, self-discipline and laws regulating behavior. Who, then, could be surprised that the Jews found themselves in the left’s crosshairs? As it took aim at morality and self-restraint, it seized a golden opportunity to pulverize the very people who invented the rules in the first
place.

  Of course, the communist left had always embodied a profound hatred of the Jews, and of America as the fount of capitalism, which it saw as a Jewish conspiracy against the masses. And as Richard Wolin has persuasively argued, “progressive” intellectuals have a long if unacknowledged history of a “fascination with fascism.”2 The Holocaust pushed this prejudice underground, but now it has resurfaced and regrouped around the issue of “Zionism.” Far from being repelled by the Muslim view of America and Israel as the Great and the Little Satan, the left has enthusiastically embraced it.

  This is all the more remarkable considering that the Islamists stand for precisely the kind of obscurantist and socially repressive values that the secular left—with its obsessive promotion of sexual freedom and the rights of women and gays—most detests. Yet it says it can put aside its differences with the Islamists simply because they too are against the state. In a long essay on the subject, Chris Harman of the revolutionary Trotskyite group the Socialist Workers Party argued that while the left could not support the Islamists, neither could it pass up the opportunity to exploit them. Their revolutionary capacity “could be tapped for progressive purposes,” provided that socialists kept their distance. Where the Islamists were in opposition to the state, he wrote, the rule should be: “With the Islamists sometimes, with the state never.”3

  Despite their obvious differences, therefore, the far left and the Islamists have become a marriage made in hell. They have swallowed their profound differences to use each other to fight the West. Indeed, Marxism has had a considerable influence on Islamic radicals like Sayed Qutb, Sayed Maududi and Ali Shariati, the architect of the Iranian revolution who thought that Islam presented a better ideology and system than Marxism-Leninism for Muslims to topple the “imperialists.”4 And with the Iraq war, a cause arrived in Britain to give the Islamists and the far left a priceless opportunity to do just that.