An Anniversary Britain has Already Forgotten

Below you'll find a piece dedicated to the "forgotten anniversary" of the 7/7 London bombings, written at a time when the same events are the subject of intense commemorations, including much debate and soul-searching and plenty emotional interviews with the bereaved. Perhaps I'm missing the intended irony or sarcasm; perhaps no such slant was intended.

What follows is a piece that is highly contentious, prejudiced, self-contradictory, at times factually incorrect, at times bordering on slander and broadly speaking, very sloppily written. Find the entire rambling text over at Israel Rules: Truth Thru Superior Firepower including internal and external links.

Today, is July 7th, 7/7, the one year anniversary since London experienced its very own version of the suicide bomber. Muslim suicide bombers blew themselves in the Underground and on a bus, shocking the British world as they saw that terrorism has hit the UK. Now, I've dogged on Europe, especially France and Great Britain in the past (You can read those past articles here, and here. But, it's only because it's the right thing to do. At a time when British citizens and civil human beings should be standing up and denouncing Muslim Extremism and not cowering to the pressure of threatened violence, they are doing exactly the opposite, and because of their appeasement, anti-British and anti-Western sentiments are growing abound in the British and greater European world. The liberal Brits believe that only more understanding and more compassion and more hugging will lead to the decrease and eventual dissapearance [sic] of hatred in the world. "Hey, they say, it's not the Muslims' fault for hating us and our ways. It's our colonialist imperialism and evil Western ideals that have turned these other-wise peace loving people against us. If only we were better, and we took the time to understand their grievances, all our problems with them would be solved." Has this attitude worked? Well, on a day when the death of the innocent should be commemorated, a new poll shows that a staggering 13% of British Muslims believe that the homicide bombers responsible for the 7/7 attacks should be referred to as "martyrs". Why is this number so staggering, you may ask? I mean, it's ONLY 13%. Well, 13% of British Muslims comprises over 200,000 people. That aint [sic] a minority in my book. That's a hell of a lot of people to be having that kind of an opinion. Between 7-16% of British Muslims believe that suicide bombing can be justified. 16% said that they would be indifferent if a family member joined Al-Queda [sic] while, luckily, only 2% said that they would be happy about it. Now, I'm not a big believer in polls. I believe that they're used too much in vaccuum [sic] and don't really say anything unless one looks at the surrounding events to see if they coincide with the results. In this case, they do. Actions speak louder than polls, and the actions of the past year should be incredible alarming to the British people. Anti-semitism in Great Britain is on the rise, and anti-semitism in Europe is at its highest level that it's been at since before WWII.

Polls aren't just created used in a vacuum, the answers they produce tend strongly to lie within the questions posed, which is one of the reasons many Governments are reluctant to use referenda as a basis for policy-making.

13% (let that be 200,000) is indeed a minority, the author got that right at least at first. I wonder what kind of results would be obtained with a survey amongst Israelis regarding thorny issues like "Arab transfer"? And what would it prove? Nothing of course. Some anti-Zionists would pick up their sharp quill and make a big deal of it and that's about it.

For the assertion that anti-Semitism "in Great Britain is on the rise, and anti-Semitism in Europe is at its highest level that it's been at since before WWII", not the slightest shred of evidence is presented. It's most likely the author confounds, possibly deliberately, criticism of some aspects of Israeli policy with anti-Semitism, thereby effectively downgrading a serious form of xenophobia: genuine anti-Semitism. Not in Jewish interests in my book...

The British have placed themselves in a position of dhimmitude. They are now constantly caving in to Muslim pressures in their effort to attone [sic] for their sins and live in a happily every after contstructed [sic] PC world. It started with created an official Muslim Council attache [sic] to the Prime Minister's office. What were some of their first actions? Well, they wanted the annual Holocaust Memorial Day abolished, because they said it was offensive to Muslims. They also wanted the pink bunny removed from Easter, because, some-how, it was offensive to Muslims. A known terrorist was allowed to enter Britain and speak. What about now? Well, the Church of England is considering abolishing Saint George from being the official Patron Saint of England, because they're afraid that the image might be too offensive to Muslims. Saint George has been a major figure in British lore since 1098. But, I guess if you're afraid that it might be too "warlike" for a group's liking, you have to aboloish [sic] almost 1,000 years of tradition.

The Muslim Council of Britain did not call for the abolition of Holocaust Memorial Day, they called for a general Holocaust Memorial Day, to include a number of other genocides around the world. Per se that is not such a bad idea (and has nothing to do with what the author makes out) but the time isn't right. The idea was rejected outright, rightly so in my view and the MCB now boycotts Holocaust Memorial Day, a wrong decision. But the MCB isn't the only body representative of British Muslims.

The author conveniently forgets or doesn't understand that many British Muslims are second or third generation Muslims with full British citizenship and therefore enjoy completely equal rights to any other British citizen, whether they be white, black, Jewish or green with purple polka dots, including the right to participate in democratic debate. That lies at the heart of a modern parliamentary democracy. The author unwittingly shows ignorance of what that means and what British society stands for. Or perhaps Arab Israeli citizens do not enjoy the same rights as their Jewish counterparts?

British Muslims come from all walks of life and include doctors, nurses, teachers, policemen, business people etc etc and make a valuable contribution to British society in just about every way. They, incidentally also, make very good friends...

Recently, British Muslim leaders accused the British government of not doing enough to appease the Muslim community, and one British Muslim parliament member actually accused the government for being at fault for the extremism that lays in their midst. At least in words, Tony Blair countered back with harsh criticism, saying that the Muslim community, as a whole, must denounce extremism and heal it from the inside-out. He says that the incredibly false grievences [sic] against the West must also be addressed. I say, in words, because in practice, Britain is doing everything it can to show its Muslim community how much its willing to citicize [sic], change, and abhore [sic] its own Western ideals. If you want to see how off the deep end to the left or liberal a society has become or is going, check out its media. The British media is ripe with liberal and Muslim terrorist sympathizers. The BBC refuses to use words like terrorist to describe Al-Queda [sic] "insurgents". They don't regard Palestinian terrorists as such, they refuse (on principle of course) to call Cpl Shalit's kidnapping a "kidnapping, and they even barely used the word terrorist after the Londong [sic] bombings last year. The BBC has even refused recommendations to use the word "terror" and "terrorist" where it is obviously warranted.

The issue of terrorism on British soil is a matter for the British State to solve, not for moderate Muslims. The latter may wish, voluntarily to contribute to the debate about radical Islam, but Mr Blair's "idea" basically boils down to pitting one part of our community against another part. Mr Blair has shown in the past to show an astonishing disregard for the principles of Civil Liberties, principles which took centuries of struggle to establish and for which Britain remains rather a shining light in the world (to paraphrase that famous phrase).

And it's a fact that certain of Britain's actions, in particular joining the Coalition of the Willing in the war against Iraq, has somewhat contributed to radicalisation of certain parts of the British Muslim community.

What about the newspapers? Well, I already printed a typical headline from The Independent. How about The Guardian? Well, they still refuse, even with all the contradictary [sic] evidence, to correct their headline in which Israel was blamed for the Gaza beach killings from a few weeks ago. The British media has become the podium for appeasement, both in its own society and around the world. They bash America, the war in Iraq, and they are constantly, even more so than the New York Times, attempting to make HAMAS look like a moderate Boy Scouts operation just waiting for the evil Israeli occupiers to turn off their evil Western tanks and sit down at the peace table with them. I receive appeasement comments from British bloggers all the time here. What's so sad that even after terror in their own back-yard [London is our own "back-yard? My intervention], British liberals are still willing to freely point the finger back at themselves, at the entire Western world, and, yes, at Israel as the cause of the terrorist attacks. This is why Britain will soon become Britainstan, and the entire European world will willingly submit to becoming the second class citizens that they view themselves to be.

As regards the British media, the author lives in a fantasy land. The Guardian for example is entirely correct in refusing to correct its headline. Narratives of the Gaza beach deaths are now so contradictory on both sides of the divide, that it is safe to say that those who don't have eyes and ears on the ground (that's the majority of us) are in no position to judge what actually happened that day. Only a truly independent inquiry may still shed light on the matter. The Guardian is therefore no more or less guilty than any other newspaper for sticking to its guns.

As regards the use of the word "kidnapping", "abduction", "captured" or "POW", this is nothing but semantics and doesn't in essence change the story except to those highly biased minds who are always the first to accuse anybody else of... bias.

It is no different to levelling the term "appeasement" to those who are capable and willing to judge arguments for what they're worth, without constantly wanting to take sides, over every syllable that's being uttered on a given issue.

It's also useful to remember that the Israelis have compared the BBC to the worst Nazi propaganda. Steady, boys...

In short, in this rambling rant, the author shows an amazing degree of ignorance about the impact of 7/7 on British society, the role of democracy, the role of British Muslims in our society and the extreme richness, from the very best to the very tackiest, of the British media. Regarding the latter, the author's viewpoint really comes down to: "no dissent please, we're from the far right..."