Opinion
As W. B. Yeats so aptly put it, “while the worst are full of passionate intensity”, the supposedly best is utterly bereft of all conviction. While mobs of vicious anti-Semites and their useful idiots edge ever closer to the edge of a Second Holocaust, police and politicians dither and prevaricate. Despite his mealy-mouthed promise to never let anti-Semitism gain a foothold in Australia, PM Anthony Albanese has sat on his hands while it gains, not just a foothold, but a stranglehold. Mostly, we can be forgiven for suspecting, because he desperately needs the votes of Muslim Western Sydney to cling to power.
Police in both Sydney and Melbourne responded to anti-Semitic violence from Muslims by arresting the Jewish targets of their attacks. Which runs a close second to Apartheid-era police arresting kaffirs for getting blood on their boots.
“Hold our halal-certified truncheons,” say British coppers.
Chants proclaiming that “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” at public protests is not a criminal offense, the London Metropolitan Police said on Thursday night in response to the projecting of the phrase on the Big Ben clock tower.
Which is about as subtle as blaring the Horst Wessel Lied from the PA at Nuremberg stadium.
On the other hand, British rozzers will bang you up in a heartbeat for: waving the British flag, bacon, calling a man in a dress “sir”, and not saying or doing anything near an abortion clinic.
The police had responded on X to Conservative commentator Chris Rose, who had objected to the projection of the phrase on Big Ben during a Wednesday pro-Palestinian protest during a controversial parliamentary vote on a motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Rose said that the police allowing this summed up “the pathetic state of the UK.”
“A genocide chant about Jewish people was projected onto Big Ben last night whilst we heard of reports of Labour MPs feeling intimidated and threatened by pro-Palestine mobs,” wrote Rose.
The House of Commons vote had descended into chaos on Wednesday when House Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, according to him in consideration of security issues, prioritized a Labour Party amendment over the original and more charged Scottish National Party motion.
It should surprise no one about the SNP, of course. They are, after all, a party who are both nationalist and socialist: National Socialists, in a word. Led by a Muslim. Quite the imperfect storm.
Let’s not forget, either, that UK Labour was convulsed by rampant anti-Semitism in its ranks, and its leadership, in the lead-up to the last UK election.
And as for the Tories? Well, they lack any conviction.
Conservative MP Andrew Percy said in a parliamentary session on Thursday that if the vote was revisited, MPs would not “vote with their hearts, because they are frightened and they are scared.”
“I actually felt safer in Israel than I do in this country at this moment in time,” said Percy, who had visited Israel the previous week, meeting survivors and victims.
Percy said that a threatening environment had been created in the UK streets because nothing had been done to address street protesters, who were calling for the death of Jews and demanding jihad and intifada, while police stood by. Percy referred to the projection onto Big Ben as a genocidal call that says “no Jew is welcome in the State of Israel or in that land.”
The chant calls for the establishment of a Palestinian polity between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, where Israel now resides, and many, such as UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, believe it a call to destroy the Jewish state.
It’s not a matter of “believing” anything: it’s exactly what it is. It’s the battle cry of Hamas, whose founding principle is Jewish genocide, as put into horrific effect on Oct. 7.
According to the Jewish News, Sunak had said in January that those chanting “from the river to the sea” are “either useful idiots who do not understand what they are saying, or worse, people who wish to wipe the Jewish state off the map.”
Jerusalem Post
Well, which is it, Chloe Swarbrick?