Harry's Place

When Ismail Patel and his Friends of al-Aqsa group organise a conference on Palestine, one can be confident that the speakers will be suitable for the cause. Namely, hating Israel and loving Hamas. This is Mr Patel’s lifelong mission.

Sure enough, the prominent South African preacher Ebrahim Bham is on the bill for Mr Patel’s Palestine Expo, which will be held next weekend at the QE II Centre in Westminster.

Mr Bham’s preaching record shows that he is a perfect match for Mr Patel.

The Israeli People? Nazis!
In a sermon on Israel, Bham knows exactly where to turn. Tell people the Israelis are like the Nazis. First he quotes Goebbels:

“People tell me that Jews are human beings. Yes, I know they are human beings. Just as fleas are also animals. Just as fleas are also animals, they are also part of human beings like that.”

Those words, he then says, explain Israelis today:

Using that example, the psyche of the whole people seems to be to mete out the very same treatment to others the way was meted out toward them. And that seems to be the psyche. That they don’t regard Palestinians as human beings.

Note the slur on the entire Israeli people rather than a politician, a party, or the IDF.

Rightly, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) includes “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” as one example of antisemitism in its working definition.

Our government has formally adopted the IHRA working definition.

Furthermore, Bham says, it is the “nature” of the Israelis that makes a two state solution impossible:

The reason they will not agree to it, it bounds them to a certain boundary and they are by nature expansionists who do not want to be bounded by a certain boundary. Because when they have a boundary, they can’t expand, they have to accept it.

Rejecting Jews and Christians
Bham doesn’t have it in for Israelis alone. Oh no. All Jews and Christians are agents of Satan, he says in another sermon:

For us to expect otherwise, or to try and appease the Americans or the Western world is naïve in the extreme. The Qur’an tells us “the Yahood [Jews] and the Nasara [Christians] will never be pleased with you.” You can never appease them until you follow their religion, their way of life, and we are not prepared to do that. We will never be able to do that. It is naïve to expect otherwise.

Then secondly, the aims, the objectives, the goals of Islam are completely opposed to what they believe, are completely opposed to their dreams, objectives and goals. So they are fulfilling their evil urges. They are fulfilling their evil urges, acting as agents of Shaytaan [Satan] in employing instruments, methods and plots against Islam and the Muslims.

Bham repeatedly uses the disparaging term kuffar for disbelievers in this sermon and concludes with a call to “instil fear in the hearts of your enemies and the enemies of Islam and the Muslims”.

Proud Support For Harsh Sharia Punishments
As for Muslims, they need to be kept in line by way of brutality. In another sermon, Bham tells Muslims they must stand up for the harshest sharia punishments and see opponents of sharia as nothing but haters to be rejected:

We need to be careful because there are attempts made to win over your heart and mind. So thus, through the means of very slick propaganda and very slick slogans, sometimes when it comes with regard to the hudud, the laws of almighty Allah, the penal law, cut the hand of the thief, stone the adulterer and the adulterers who are married, we should make no apology with regard to it.

We should never allow someone to say that “no, this is wrong because it deprives, it’s deprivation of human rights”. Never! Maybe it not practised for whatever reason, but we believe it is a command of Allah, it is full of wisdom. Don’t let them ever tell you, make you say, that this is barbaric. If you have said that, then they have won over your heart and mind also. Don’t ever let that happen. Don’t give them your mind. Because they cannot take it until you give it to them.
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You know it is not unexpected for them do what they are doing, because Allah has told us they are going to do it. Hatred emanates from their mouths. What is in their hearts is even more worse than what emanates from their mouths.

Got that? Opposing punishments that are indeed barbaric is simply “slick propaganda” of “haters”.

Standing Up For Jihad and A Caliphate
Let’s talk about jihad and the caliphate. Mr Bham is quite keen on both topics.

Bham does say he opposes Islamic State. However, his message is part of the problem: he insists that Muslims must stand up for the concept of jihad. In a 2015 sermon against Islamic State, he says:

Now, jihad is a tower in the castle of Islam. We can never, ever deny the aspect of jihad. Jihad is something that is part and parcel of Islamic teachings. For the sake of being politically correct, we can say “no, we don’t believe in jihad”. But then you will be doing an injustice to your religion. And our religion has clearly made mention with regard to the fact that jihad is part and parcel.
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Islam makes no hypocritical apology that there is sometimes a need to go for war.
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Allah has given you permission to fight because you have been oppressed.

Bham does go on to stress that there are many rules for jihad, including a prohibition of killing non-combatants. Nonetheless, backing any divine sanction for jihad is perilous in these times.

Moreover, his “traditional” interpretation does underpin widespread religious support for Palestinian terrorist groups and al-Qaeda jihadis who have attacked Western troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Islamic State is not the only issue here.

In addition, Bham speaks up for the idea of a caliphate later in the sermon:

There was a time when the caliphate was a central leadership. Who doesn’t aspire to be under a central leadership where people are not carved out by the way the Sykes-Picot had carved out people in unnatural borders, but carved out on the basis of the commonality of your faith? Who wouldn’t want that? That you come together on the basis of the Kalima La Ilaha Illa Allah [the words there is no God but God] and you choose a person who is the most worthy to lead you. Who wouldn’t want that particular situation, the centrality of leadership of believers? It is something that each and every one will aspire to.

Islamic State’s mistake is essentially “procedural”, you see:

But let us look at situations. There is an aspect with regard to a procedure with regard to it. And sometimes the procedure is not met, it will not be able to be there. Sometimes a concept is good, but if the conditions are not there to be able to implement that concept, it doesn’t mean you are against the concept.

Allah says that the thief who steals, according to Islam, his hands must be cut. If we don’t implement it here, it doesn’t mean we deny the commands of almighty Allah. We do not believe that this is the place for us to implement it.

An obvious answer to this argument from an impatient and angry young man is “well, why not here and now, if all of this is so glorious?”. Preachers like Bham can say they oppose Islamic State as much as they like. The truth is that they help to open the ideological roads which have brought the recruits streaming in.

Jamiatul Ulama South Africa Statements
Bham is the Secretary General of Jamiatul Ulema South Africa (the Council of Muslim Theologians).

The council has openly supported Hamas. When Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal visited South Africa in 2015, the council was pleased:

The Jamiatul Ulama South Africa commends the ruling African National Congress (ANC) for welcoming the delegation of the Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine aka Hamas.
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The visit of the Hamas delegation to South Africa is timely in the strengthening of ties and efforts in the fight for the liberation of Palestine.
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It is about time that the world asserted the rights of the Palestinian people to resist the occupation with a total rejection of the notion that Israel is a benevolent entity, fighting terror in an existential survival.
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The ANC, government and all the people of goodwill should reject the bully tactics of trying to isolate Hamas, a movement that enjoys grassroots support from the people of Palestine as one of their popular resistance fronts.

Another statement in 2014 included a ludicrous and hateful genocide accusation and supported Hamas:

The on-going attacks on Gaza have for the umpteenth time demonstrated Zionists’ genocidal intentions of annihilating the Palestinians in general and people of Gaza, in particular.
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Yet, Hamas, a movement that is very much part of the Palestinian society and in the forefront of the resistance to the occupation and brutal attacks from the Zionists, is expected to agree to any kind of humiliating terms of a settlement as if Palestinian rights are abridgeable.
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Going forward, both al Sisi and Netanyahu will have to recognise Hamas as a popular representative voice of Palestinians. Any settlement without Hamas is incomplete and the continued massacre of innocent civilians under the pretext of degrading Hamas’ capabilities for armed resistance will only count as war crimes for Tel Aviv.

In 2016, the council strongly criticised the local terror attack warnings of Western embassies in South Africa, including the UK embassy. Its statement, attributed to Bham, is remarkably obnoxious:

We call upon the foreign missions concerned to balance what they consider to be their responsibility towards their nationals’ safety with what is at stake for the host nation.

Foreign missions do South Africa a disservice by their pronouncements that without veracity, instil a sense of insecurity among people living in the country as well as those intending to visit.

The ailing South African economy does not need any more baseless scare-mongering, as it stands to lose from a drop in revenue through shocks in the tourism sector.

Furthermore, the issuing of the advisory that has coincided with the start of Ramadan, takes away the focus on the month-long spiritual devotion of Muslims in South Africa.

The advisory promotes an Islamophobic sentiment that is likely to lead to social discord and suspicion, instead of highlighting the virtues Islam promotes through the observance of fasting, acts of charity and spiritual reflection as the hallmarks of Ramadan.

The council provided no evidence for its claims that the warnings were based on a “discredited source”, “baseless”, and “without veracity”.

Finally, the council has endorsed a statement against Islamic State that included conspiracy talk (emphasis added):

Despite the ‘Islamic’ appellation, the ideology of the Islamic State is starkly unrelated to Islam and critically misguided. The IS has not only weakened the resistance against state sponsored terrorism in Syria, it serves as a whirlpool engineered to attract aspiring ‘jihadists’ from every nook and cranny of the globe to one single location and to pre-occupy them with sectarian conflict so that the imperialists can continue unhindered in their business of entrenching global hegemony.

”Difficult Conversations”
I would really like to have a “difficult conversation” with Sajid Javid. He had suggested he would deny the QE II venue to Palestine Expo. Then he relented and the event is scheduled to go ahead in the heart of Westminster, with Mr Bham in attendance.

I guess enough is never enough.

Recently I posted about the disgraceful treatment of Jewish marchers at a Gay Pride event in Chicago.  In Toronto it was gay Muslims who fell foul of the regressive left. You can read more about the background here, and also watch a brief clip of the protestors being challenged.

The demonstrators were told they were emboldening Islamophobes by their actions.  If a Muslim is not allowed to speak out about the treatment of gays in Iran and other Islamic countries – then who is?

Vice recently posted a fine piece that affirms what I have seen while teaching in the Bay Area over the last few years: a growing level of anti-Semitic incidents carried out by students against other classmates.  Max Cherney writes:

During the first quarter of 2017, compared with the first quarter of 2016, there has been an 86 percent spike in anti-Semitic incidents nationwide, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Among those 541 preliminarily identified incidents were 380 cases of harassment and 155 reports of vandalism—as well as the wave of 161 bomb threats against Jewish institutions.

…

I decided to take a closer look at what’s happening at Bay Area public schools, requesting records of reported anti-Semitic activity from approximately 40 districts in the region. Those records showed a spike in incidents at schools in nearly every county, from Marin to the Peninsula to the East Bay and beyond.

So far this year, 29 anti-Semitic incidents have been reported by more than 25 schools—compared with 25 incidents reported by more than 16 schools in all of 2016. Some schools have experienced multiple incidents, while others faced ongoing problems in the classroom. Many of the incidents have not been reported in the news media, and some parents of the affected students have complained about slow or lackluster responses from administrators and school districts.

Unfortunately, I believe that last statement from Max is more common than one would expect. There is a general unwillingness for schools to report when these incidents occur. Even at a good public school like the one I work at, the general tendency is to try and deal with these issues discretely and not draw attention from community activists.

My school experienced a number of anti-Semitic incidents this year. To the administrator’s credit, public events were held and speakers were brought in to speak with students about said occurrences. Having some experience in this realm, I sat down with the students who had used anti-Semitic language or mocked Jewish students.

In each case, the students were a bit perplexed that their actions were being treated so seriously. The language they used was abundantly common in the digital realms they congregated; the meme culture and anonymity of the Internet has allowed for a proliferation of casual anti-Semitism among young people. While recognizing that they had done something wrong, as these slurs were ubiquitous online, the students felt they were no different than any other schoolyard insult.

It is a troubling trend, and clearly not one portions of the left have any interest in addressing.

Last night JW3 hosted a screening of Whitewashed, a film about antisemitism in the Labour Party; this was followed by a fascinating discussion between David Hirsh and Howard Jacobson.

The film, produced by Judith Ornstein, presented by David Hirsh, and made by J-TV, was prompted by the many failings of the Chakrabarti report.  It draws on submissions to the report, submissions which contributors felt had been brushed aside.

One point emphasised in Whitewashed, particularly by Eve Garrard, was the way in which policies relating to Zionism have more impact at home than in Israel, with Jews sometimes feeling they have to denounce Israel in order to be accepted.

Another strand was the way in which people fail to deal with antisemitism not, or not only, because of a lack of understanding, but because of an unwillingness to understand.

You can watch the film here, and here’s just one brief example of the problem, in case you need a reminder; it’s taken from Richard Gold’s submission:

Jeremy Corbyn
After his brother tweeted “#Zionists can’t cope with anyone supporting rights for #Palestine”, (with regard to Louise Elman’s comments about antisemitism in the Labour Party) Jeremy Corbyn when asked if he thought his brother’s tweet was wrong went on to agree with his brother saying: “No my brother isn’t wrong. My brother has his point of view, I have mine. We actually fundamentally agree – we are a family that has been fighting racism from the day we were born. My mother was at Cable Street.”

The lively debate which followed the screening highlighted the difficulties experienced by many traditional Labour voters in the current climate.  Some in the audience had felt that it was worth supporting a Labour moderate, as Corbyn couldn’t possibly become PM, and the moderate would continue to fight Corbyn.

That reasoning was treated with some wryness, particularly by Howard Jacobson who compared some former anti-Corbyn figures in Labour to dogs rolling over to concede abject defeat.

However Joan Ryan, Louise Ellman and Jeremy Newmark received a warm response – and John Mann brought the house down with his impassioned speech urging Labour supporters to stay on and fight rather than give up.

Although there seemed a strong consensus in the audience that there was a problem, opinion was divided as to its precise nature and extent. Some saw the antisemitism issue as an active attraction for some – perhaps many –  Labour supporters. Others emphasised the many positive reasons people might have for voting Labour.

I agreed with David Hirsh when he asserted that people can be antisemitic, or articulate/approve antisemitic sentiments, while sincerely believing they oppose antisemitism.  If they look inside themselves and don’t see a problem – that, for them, is the end of the discussion. They can’t be at fault.  In conceding the good faith of many of his opponents Hirsh is more generous than those who wield the Livingstone formulation, accusing those who raise concerns about antisemitism of duplicitous motives.

One theme running through the conversation was the sense that antisemitism is the only acceptable form of racism.  Recent events in Chicago would seem to support that contention.   At a ‘Dyke March’, one element in the city’s Gay Pride festivities, Jewish marchers bore a rainbow flag superimposed with a Star of David.

By analogy, Imaan supporters also choose to highlight their double identity as gay Muslims.

Sometimes a Star of David is just a Star of David – but apparently for some it represents a monstrous threat. Here’s the organiser’s attempt to excuse the antisemitic exclusion of Jewish symbols.

“Yesterday during the rally we saw three individuals carrying Israeli flags super imposed on rainbow flags. Some folks say they are Jewish Pride flags. But as a Collective we are very much pro-Palestine, and when we see these flags we know a lot of folks who are under attack by Israel see the visuals of the flag as a threat, so we don’t want anything in the [Dyke March] space that can inadvertently or advertently express Zionism,” she said. “So we asked the folks to please leave. We told them people in the space were feeling threatened.”

Last night at JW3 we heard how antisemites always assume Jews are ‘up to something’. This is exactly the dynamic of the Chicago debacle:

If you’re a Jew, and you’re open about it, the presumption is you must be an agent of Israeli hasbara unless you engage in public self-flagellation demonstrating the contrary. A Star of David suffices to show you’re in on the plot. A Star of David with a rainbow is enough to infer your true objectives. What else could you possibly be doing at a gay pride parade other than serving as an agent of a foreign power?

For some further analysis of this shameful incident, here’s Jamie Kirchick’s article in The Tablet.

The JW3 discussion was recorded so do watch out for when it becomes available – it was an excellent event.

Fathom 17 is a special issue to mark the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.

We have three essays on the genesis of the Declaration.

Efraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad, offers a fascinating study of the World War One Jewish spy network in Palestine, NILI – an acronym for the biblical Hebrew phrase, Netzakh Yisrael Lo Yeshaker, meaning ‘The Eternal One of Israel will not Lie’. He argues that both the victory of the British Army led by General Allenby and the Balfour Declaration itself were in good measure the result of this first successful foray of the Jewish people into modern international intelligence-gathering and espionage.

The British Prime Minister David Lloyd George believed that Chaim Weizmann would be become ‘the one name that will be remembered in Jewish history a thousand years from now’. Hyperbole, for sure, but Azriel Bermant’s recent researches in the Guardian Archive at the University of Manchester have revealed that Weizmann was indeed central to the discussions that led to the Balfour Declaration.

Ronnie Fraser tells the little-known story of the British Labour movement’s War Aims Memorandum, which expressed support for Zionism three months before the Balfour Declaration. ‘The British Labour Movement,’ declared the Labour leaders, ‘expresses the opinion that Palestine should be set free from the harsh and op­pressive government of the Turk, in order that the country may form a Free State, under inter­national guarantee, to which such of the Jewish People as desired to do so may return, and may work out their salvation’. The Balfour Declaration itself was welcomed by several Labour leaders including Arthur Henderson, George Lansbury and Ramsay MacDonald, while the left wing magazine The New Statesman welcomed the Balfour Declaration as ‘one of the best pieces of statesmanship’ adding ‘It is hard to conceive how anybody with the true instinct for nationality and the desire to see small nations emancipated can fail to be warmed by the prospect of emancipating this most ancient of oppressed nationalities.’

We have two perspectives on how the Declaration should be marked today.

Striking a balanced tone so often missing from current debates, Fathomcontributing editor Toby Greene argues that Britain should use the spotlight to promote a positive vision for the future for both peoples, using a vocabulary that is sensitive to the conflicting emotions on both sides of the dispute, and ‘it’s best endeavours’ to improve the chances of the pragmatists who recognise that two national homes is the only way to reconcile the demands of two nations, and end a century of conflict.

Elias Zananiri, vice-chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Committee for Interaction with Israeli Society, argues that the British government bears a moral responsibility for the impact of the Balfour Declaration on the Palestinian people and should now make recompense by recognising the State of Palestine and by demanding that Israel stop closing the window on the two-state solution.

And we have two essays exploring Palestine in the years following the Declaration.

Historian Donna Robinson Divine examines the often traumatic experience of the nameless immigrants who deferred their own happiness to advance the Zionist cause in the years after the Balfour Declaration. While Zionism promised that a Jewish state would disrupt the grim pattern of Jewish history and provide Jews with a new way to perceive themselves, Zionist history, very much like Jewish prayer, was written in the first person plural. Only in the last generation or so have Israelis begun to fully assess what it took for those individuals – the founders of Israel – to sacrifice personal desire for the sake of the new homeland.

Despite issuing the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and subsequently obtaining the Mandate for Palestine from the League of Nations, the British Government never clearly defined the concept of a Jewish National Home or proposed a concrete policy plan to implement it. In an essay focusing on the years following the Declaration, BICOM CEO James Sorene argues that this absence of British policy left both Jewish and Arab communities confused and frustrated and ultimately had tragic consequences.

In addition we have two review essays.

The biographer of Benjamin Netanyahu, Neill Lochery praises Itamar Rabinovich’s Yitzhak Rabin: Solider, Leader, Statesman as a ‘masterly’ biography that is ‘likely to remain the definitive book on Rabin’s life and career for some years to come’.

Cary Nelson critically reviews Kingdom of Olives And Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation, edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. This 400-page book, released by Harper Perennial in conjunction with the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence, gathers 26 essays by an international group of writers who recount their 2016 and earlier visits to the West Bank or, in one case, to Gaza.  Nelson, a prominent leader of the anti-BDS movement in the USA, argues that the book is flawed but is nonetheless ‘a wakeup call’ which lays down a challenge: ‘to move beyond condemnation, to end the occupation, eliminate its corrosive impact on Israeli society, and restore the fundamentals of Israeli democracy.’

Note from the editors. While we will continue to produce a journal four times a year in the traditional style, Fathom will also continue to release new content during the intervening months. So watch out in July, August and September for the following pieces:

An interview with Joint List leader Ayman Odeh.

An interview with Yossi Kupperwasser.

Gerald Steinberg on Israeli government policy towards NGOs.

Two views on B’Tselem and Israeli Democracy: Hagai El-Ad and Gadi Taub.

Dahlia Scheindlin on Women in Israel: a revolution halted?

Jamie Palmer on the relationship between the Left and Israel.

Martin Jander on Terrorism in the 1970s from Entebbe to Mogadishu: History, Memory and Legacy.

Milton Shain on Contemporary South African Anti-Zionism.

Lyn Julius on the impact of the Suez crisis on the Jews living in the Arab lands.

John Strawson reviews Colonialism and the Jews, edited by Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff and Maud S. Mandel.

Lauren Mellinger reviews The Endless Quest for Israeli-Palestinian Peace. A Reflection from No Man’s Land by Robert Serry.

Philip Spencer reviews Enzo Traverso’s The End of Jewish Modernity.

Tariq Ramadan’s response to Imam Shaker Elsayed’s controversial pronouncements on FGM, circulated via a ten minute Facebook video, has already attracted considerable criticism. Here are just a few further thoughts on the issue.

The opening of the video is a little elliptical. I’ve put the relevant sections in bold:

“My position as a Muslim scholar, my position: it’s wrong that we should not promote this because I think that first, it’s not in the Koran and second, it’s part of the Sunnah that we have, and it’s something that is done in African countries, among the Christians and the Muslims and it’s not religious. Having said that, I cannot deny the fact that some scholars at the highest levels of their institutional position are supporting the fact that this is possible that you can go for excision, not to go up to the mutilation and infibulation as it is known in African countries, but we have this in our tradition and it’s part of the internal discussion that we need to have.

I don’t think this article, which offers a useful transcript of the video, is quite correct in saying Ramadan thinks FGM ‘is therefore worthy of being “promoted”’. The build up of clauses makes the first sentence difficult to parse, but it might be clarified by inserting a dash between ‘it’s wrong’ and ‘that we should not promote this’. In other words he does condemn the practice.The fact that the next sentence begins ‘Having said that’ implies a contrast, and backs up this interpretation.

However that doesn’t let Ramadan off the hook.

It’s quite unusual for someone on Ramadan’s place on the Islam spectrum to assert that FGM has some connection to Islam. This view is more normally aired by Haitham al Haddad types on the one hand, and those hostile to Islam on the other. Even the comparatively Islamosceptic may be happy enough to agree that FGM is a cultural problem, not an Islamic one. If Ramadan were unequivocally and without caveats condemning FGM then there would be no problem in him facing up to the fact some Islamic teachings/traditions condone the practice. However, as with stoning, he seems to feel that the issue needs to be dealt with by Muslims alone – ‘it’s part of the internal discussion that we need to have’, he opines blandly, as though he was talking about the most recondite theological point, not this vile practice.

Ramadan seems more exercised by the merest hint that Muslims might be deferring to non-Muslim concerns than by FGM itself.

So to please people who are attacking Islam by saying ‘Oh no, no, no, this is not Islamic. It’s illegal,’ it’s not even faithful to our tradition. We need to have an internal discussion.

He continues in the same vein, shooting the messenger rather than tackling the abuse. It’s interesting that Ramadan, so often presented as a voice of moderation, should demonstrate such disdain for any kind of weakening of the collective front of the Ummah. This, for him, is the real problem. Given that a great many Muslims really do think FGM unislamic, and want to combat it, it seems strange to hamper efforts to amplify this position – even though it seems likely both to help potential victims and promote a better understanding between communities.

These are Islamophobes, and you react to them by just exposing one of your leaders, a shaykh that has been serving the community for more than 30 years and you ask for him to be fired so quickly just to be on the safe side of the political discussion in the United States of America by saying ‘Oh, we have nothing to do with this’ while your tradition is there and it’s discussed within your tradition and whoever is attacking you at least you have to be cautious with the people who are using this and are putting you in a situation which is yes, problematic, but you have to stand for your rights to have opinions, and at least to have internal discussion and not to react so quickly to these issues…

There seems to be little space in Ramadan’s world for non-Muslims to be concerned about FGM but not be motivated by bigotry. It’s more important to guard against even a suspicion of bigotry, to protect other Muslims from criticism even if they hold despicable beliefs, than it is to oppose the mutilation of girls. Moreover this continuing emphasis on internal discussion cannot easily be squared with an absolute certainty as to the eventual, the correct, outcome of the debate.

It is for us to decide, not for Islamophobes, not for racists, not for people who have political agendas that are now deciding for us… The way you have to be dignified as a Muslim is to rely on him [points upward] to be consistent with yourself and to respect your brothers, not to expose them, not to expose your sisters, even though you disagree, even though you don’t agree.

In emphasising the divide between Muslims and non-Muslims, flattening the sharp differences between Muslims, Ramadan ironically aligns himself with anti-Muslim bigots.  Other people prefer to draw the line between secularists (both Muslim and non-Muslim) and the rest.

Among the New Left of the 1960s, there was a phenomenon called anti-anti-Communism.

That is, many leftists of the era has no particular illusions about the “progressive” nature of the Soviet Union or the eastern European satellite nations (although some still romanticized Mao’s China and Castro’s Cuba). But they were more critical of those on the Left who denounced Communist regimes than they were of the repressive and undemocratic regimes themselves.

Writing last month in The New York Times, Charles Sykes– a conservative former radio talk-show host in Wisconsin–identified a similar phenomenon among those on the Right: anti-anti-Trumpism.

As Sykes notes, many conservatives freely concede that in a lot of respects, President Donald Trump is not one of them. So:

Rather than defend President Trump’s specific actions, his conservative champions change the subject to (1) the biased “fake news” media, (2) over-the-top liberals, (3) hypocrites on the left, (4) anyone else victimizing Mr. Trump or his supporters and (5) whataboutism, as in “What about Obama?” “What about Clinton?”

For the anti-anti-Trump pundit, whatever the allegation against Mr. Trump, whatever his blunders or foibles, the other side is always worse.

But the real heart of anti-anti-Trumpism is the delight in the frustration and anger of his opponents. Mr. Trump’s base is unlikely to hold him either to promises or tangible achievements, because conservative politics is now less about ideas or accomplishments than it is about making the right enemies cry out in anguish.

This perhaps explains why so much of the nominal support for Trump consists of baiting liberals.

For many in the conservative movement, this sort of anti-anti-Trumpism is the solution to the painful conundrum posed by the Trump presidency. With a vast majority of conservative voters and listeners solidly behind Mr. Trump, conservative critics of the president find themselves isolated and under siege. But, as Damon Linker noted, anti-anti-Trumpism “allows the right to indulge its hatred of liberals and liberalism while sidestepping the need for a reckoning with the disaster of the Trump administration itself.”
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Not surprisingly, the vast majority of airtime on conservative media is not taken up by issues or explanations of conservative approaches to markets or need to balance liberty with order. Why bother with such stuff, when there were personalities to be mocked and left-wing moonbats to be ridiculed?

Of course there’s always another leftwing moonbat to ridicule or condemn. That’s much more satisfying than trying to explain why, for example, the Senate Republicans’ version of Obamacare “repeal and replace” will do anything other than deprive millions of Americans of health insurance while providing a tax-cut bonanza to the very rich.

As Sykes writes:

In many ways anti-anti-Trumpism mirrors Donald Trump himself, because at its core there are no fixed values, no respect for constitutional government or ideas of personal character, only a free-floating nihilism cloaked in insult, mockery and bombast.

Needless to say, this is not a form of conservatism that Edmund Burke, or even Barry Goldwater, would have recognized.

And, like many other short-term political tactics, this will work (to an extent) until it doesn’t.

This is a guest post by James Mendelsohn

No decent person could fail to be appalled by last Sunday’s “Al Quds Day” march through the streets of London. The prospect of Hezbollah flags being paraded through the capital, so soon after the recent terror attacks, was always horrifying.

In these circumstances, it is entirely understandable that many called for the march to be banned; or, at least, for a ban on the parading of Hezbollah flags. (In the event, the flags seemed arguably mild in comparison with some of the chilling rhetoric from the front.)

It concerns me, however, that many have singled out Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, for failing to prevent the march from taking place, in spite of pleas for him to do so. As pointed out by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (“CAA”), and as acknowledged by Khan himself, the Mayor does not have the power to ban the march. Indeed, CAA explicitly notes that

“despite various calls from within the Jewish community for the Mayor of London to take action against this procession, he has no statutory power to do so and criticism of him for failing to exercise a power he does not possess is misplaced. Both the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime have been very helpful in facilitating contact with the right people within the Metropolitan Police Service, and we are grateful to them for their efforts.”

The only person with the ultimate power to stop the march would have been the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd. This has not prevented some from blaming Khan for failing to exercise a power he does not possess; and, in some cases, specifically linking this to fact that he is a Muslim. Here are just a few examples (typos etc in the originals):

Appalling but not surprising. We have a Muslim mayor, so God help us.

Well fancy that! And as the London Mayor IS a Muslim – well surprise surprise!

Khan is Muslim And he is using his job as a hobby horse which there must be rules against folks should ask for him to be investigated to see if he is using his post to influence people to his religion . If so that should be a sackable offence Split illegencies he should only have illegence to the crown while in a Job like this leave Islam at the door

A number of other examples are documented here.

To my mind, such comments are virtually indistinguishable from the traditional antisemitic libel that diaspora Jews cannot be trusted because they supposedly owe greater allegiance to Israel/Judaism/the worldwide Zionist conspiracy than they do to the UK/US/wherever. This libel has been expressed or echoed by various individuals/publications in recent years, including Oliver Miles, Paul Flynn, the New Statesman and the Daily Mail.

If it is unacceptable to make such comments about British Jews, it should be equally unacceptable to make such comments about British Muslims. And no, I am not unaware of the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of Khan’s past relationship with Islamism; nor do I deny that his strong words on antisemitic hate crime will only be as meaningful as any actions that follow. One could say the same, however, about numerous other political leaders. To single out Khan for failing to exercise a power he does not have, and to link this to his Muslim faith, is as objectionable as (say) suggesting that “ardent Zionists” in public roles work against the interests of the UK or US.

Many who are (rightly) concerned about antisemitism fail to spot the similarities with some forms of anti-Muslim prejudice. This needs to stop.

PS these thoughts were originally expressed on Twitter, before the news of the horrific Finsbury Park terror attack. Following the attack, I tweeted some further thoughts here.

Einat Wilf is one of the most creative Israeli thinkers on the peace process. In this talk to a Fathom Forum in London on 15 June 2017 she argued that it is time to drop the dogma that ‘constructive ambiguity’ helps advance the peace process. In its place, Israelis and Palestinians need to adopt a new strategy of ‘constructive specificity’ regarding what is required from each side if the process is to result in a realistic peace. An edited transcript and video of Wilf’s speech can be found here.

The unbearable horror of Grenfell united all but the most callous in sympathy and distress.  However it’s also something of a Rorschach test, in that the precise nature and focus of individual responses have tended to reflect people’s prejudices and politics.  The context for the fire is complex and contested, taking in technical issues concerning building regulations and materials, as well as much broader debates about inequality. Although accusations of politicising the tragedy may be well founded, sometimes they too seem overly ‘political’.

Many have given practical help to the residents, either in money or time.  Here are just three initiatives (there are many more) which seem particularly welcome, in that they are offering free specialist advice to people dealing with serious practical problems (for example missing documents) as well as with the trauma of the fire.

The first is the Grenfell Rights Project; this brings together caseworkers and welfare rights advisers to help residents:

What help we can give: We can help anyone who needs it, on any issue you need help with, from problems with temporary housing, linking older people and people with disabilities with care at home, helping to replace documents, helping to access compensation, dealing with government and council departments, utilities companies and more.

Contact us: If you need help or know someone who does, please ask them to contact us at grenfellrp@gmail.com.

Venues: We are working on setting up advice services in the community over the next days and weeks. In the meantime, our caseworkers are very happy to visit you where you are.

The second is a law firm offering free housing advice

The third is the North Kensington Law Centre, an established charity based near the tower, which is now focusing its efforts on helping those affected by the disaster.

At this point, the Law Centre can help them understand their situation and their rights and help them plan ahead. It can then help them access support they are entitled to, like getting a new home, benefits support and social care if they are sick, disabled or injured.

The Law Centre will also be working with residents to address the bigger access to justice issues arising from the disaster.

The legal assistance is confidential and independent – Law Centres work for their clients and community, not the council. The Law Centre can also connect people to other support services (legal and non-legal) in a coordinated way.

It’s a measure of the complexity, as well as the horror, of this incident that there is considerable disagreement as to how best to secure answers – and justice.  Theresa May has proposed a public enquiry; some believe an inquest would be preferable.