Sunday, November 07, 2010

UK is going mad

The way the media has handled the case of Labour MP Phil Woolas being kicked out as an MP for 'lying during the election campaign' confirms that there is now complete self-censorship when it comes to stories with an Islamist angle. From the news reports I first saw and read I actually had no idea that the case had anything to do with Islam. But it turns out it centred on Woolas accusing his LibDem opponent of pandering to Islamic fundamentalists. From what I have read since, Woolas's claim seems pretty reasonable - let's face it a LibDem candidate pandering to Islamists seem pretty much like a tautology - and in this case there is plenty of circumstantial evidence to back it up. But even if it was completely false, that would still make him no more guilty than 99% of all other MPs when you consider the lies they tell during an election campaign. Yet here we have the incredible step of the courts intervening and throwing an MP out of Parliament. With any criticism of Islam now deemed a 'hate crime' we are moving to a situation where the media is simply censoring any mention of Islam or Muslims if that casts them in a negative light. This presumably explains why the entire UK media was almost completely silent last week on:


It also explains why the media continues to downplay the role of Islamism in so many other stories. For example, it was only because of the guilty verdict and the words of the defendant herself that the British public were allowed to find out that Islamism was the reason why Roshonara Choudhry tried to kill her MP.

What is especially worrying for British Jews - apart from the rapidly escalating hatred being whipped up against Israel from every angle now - is that its own newpapers have increasingly bought into the same main stream "Islam is the Religion of Peace" and "Israel is the root of all problems" narrative. I've reported many times on the Jewish Chronicle's disgraceful decline in this respect, but now even the Jewish News appears to have succumbed. So this week's single Opinion piece titled "The unravelling of Rabin's legacy" places the entire blame for lack of Middle East Peace on "right wing settlers", while its Letters page leads with a full column letter titled "Israel has earned apartheid analogy" which contains such gems as "Israel seems determined to avoid having foreign journalists and courts examine its war efforts in detail, including many illustrated crimes such as phosphorous bombs, physical violence, internal sanctions and blockades". The Jewish Chronicle is now a complete joke; this week its bizarre leading story headlined "Hague offers Israel hand of friendship" (about William Hague's visit to Israel) tried to spin a viewpoint that is contradicted by every other source (see, e.g here and here). The JC actually avoids telling readers that a) Hague made a point of visiting - and expressing support for - the violent anti-Israel demonstrators who protest weekly against Israel's security barrier; and b) Hague made it pretty clear that he is not going to do anything to change the law on use of universal jurisdiction (and hence Israeli politicians will continue to be stopped from coming to the UK). But - wait a minute - didn't Hague and many other Tories promise during the election campaign that they would change this law as soon as they got into power? So why aren't they - like Phil Woolas being thrown out of Parliament?

And finally, here is a frightening story from Jerusalem of how our Arab friends would routinely kill every Jew they find if given the opportunity. Bet this story won't make it into next week's JC.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Read my own personal account from Kabul- puts this post in perspective
http://maxinkabul.blogspot.com

recogt said...

I was raised a Christian. At about age 14 I began to question. I read extensively and now at age 68 I know this. Religion is an aberration of the human mind.
Nothing supernatural exists.
Most Western religions have their roots in the mid-east.
Judaism, Christianity, Islam and all the satellite beliefs are causally linked to human suffering.
The most evil (forgive the term)of all these is Islam.
I am a atheist by choice and reason.
Gareth.