So farewell, then, Anjem Choudary. For two and half years at least. On September 6, the radical cleric was sentenced by a British judge to five and a half years in prison for encouraging people to join the Islamic State. If he behaves himself in prison he could be out in half that time, although whenever he emerges, it is unlikely that it will be as a reformed character. But the law has taken its course and in a rule-bound society has responded in the way that a rule-bound society ought to behave — by the following due process. So it is useful to compare the experience of Anjem Choudary and the way in which the state has responded to him with the way in which it has responded to another person.

It is now seven years ago that a young British man from Luton going by the name of Tommy Robinson formed the English Defence League (EDL). He did so after he and other residents of the town of Luton were appalled by a group of radical Muslims who protested a home-coming parade for British troops. There is some interesting symmetry here in that the Islamists present in Luton that day were members of Anjem Choudary’s group, al-Muhajiroun. Robinson and other residents of Luton were not only taken aback by the behaviour of the radicals but by the behaviour of the police who protected the radicals from the increasingly angry local residents.

Whatever its legitimate grievances when it began, the EDL did undoubtedly cause trouble. Protests often descended into thuggery, partly because of some bad people attracted to it and partly because “anti-fascist” counter-demonstrators often ensured that EDL protests became violent by starting fights with them. But through most of the time that Robinson led the EDL, there did appear to be — confirmed by third-party observers including independent journalists — a sincere and concerted effort to keep genuinely problematic elements out of the organisation. To those who said that Robinson and his friends had no right to organise protests, there are two responses. The first is that they had as much right to be there as anyone else. And second, that the problems they were objecting to (hate-preachers, grooming-gangs and so on) are real issues, which the state has increasingly realised are such in the years that followed.

In 2013 Robinson left the group he started, and in the years since, has engaged in a range of activities, including authoring a book. The book chronicles, among other things, a campaign by the state of harassment, which began from the moment Robinson formed the EDL. His own house and those of his nearest relatives were repeatedly raided by police, and computers and other materials taken away for examination. Any fair reading of the book — whose details have again been broadly confirmed by the few journalists who have been interested in the case — suggests that there was a very clear and concerted effort to find something — anything — on Robinson to get him locked up.

In the end the police did find something — a mortgage fraud matter — for which Robinson was eventually tried and found guilty. In 2014, he was imprisoned for eighteen months. Even after his release, the effort to find something on Robinson continued. His movements were restricted. His ability to speak and congregate was restricted. He was repeatedly threatened with a return to prison for alleged breaches of bail conditions. On one occasion, the nature of the charge was a brawl Robinson had been involved with in prison, with a Muslim prisoner who was allegedly in the act of attacking Robinson — who had repeatedly been placed in prison wings where there were large numbers of Muslim inmates.

Since his release, as before, Robinson has been repeatedly assaulted in the streets, including by Luton Muslims who have faced no subsequent charges for their attacks, even when caught on camera. In February of this year, he was hospitalised after being assaulted upon leaving a nightclub in Essex.

Then, this August, as he and his family were attending a football game in Cambridge, they were once again the subject of police harassment. While sitting in a pub with his wife and young children, they were ejected from the pub by Cambridgeshire police. The police did this despite the volunteered insistence of the management of the pub that the family had been doing nothing wrong and were causing no trouble. Police escorted Robinson and his family from the premises, and on the video footage of the incident you can easily hear the sound of Robinson’s young children crying.

Unlike Anjem Choudary (left), who was at the heart of a nexus of terrorists and terrorist-supporters, Tommy Robinson (right) is a white working-class man who can not only be harassed by police and other authorities with impunity, but can find few if any defenders of his rights among the vast panoply of people in our societies who are only too keen to defend the rights of Islamists.

There will be those who think that such harassment of Robinson is correct — that in order to keep the peace it is necessary to keep an eye on anybody who may have any effect to the contrary. But if that is true, it is curious that such measures were not routinely used on Anjem Choudary in all his years living freely in the community. It would be interesting to know if there are any records of Choudary and his family being harassed by police or removed from establishments while the hate-preacher was on whatever down-time he used to have. Or whether the British police ever routinely raid and search the houses of radical Islamists in the hope of finding errors in their VAT returns and the like.

But of course the very comparison is unfair and in many ways lazy, because Tommy Robinson has not been — as Choudary was — at the heart of a nexus of terrorists and terrorist-supporters going back years. He has not been on friendly terms with numerous people who have beheaded civilians and carried out suicide bombings. There are not any occasions, of which the author is aware, on which Robinson has called for violence or the breaking of the law in the name of his political views. But in the eyes of the law, much of the media and a certain number of people in the country Robinson is in an exceptionally unfortunate position. He is not a radical Islamist and nor is he from any discernible minority. He is a white working-class man who, it appears, can thus not only be harassed by certain authorities with impunity, but can find few if any defenders of his rights among the vast panoply of people in our societies who are only too keen to defend the rights of Islamists.

Civil liberties groups such as “Liberty'” which are so stringent in protecting the rights of Islamist groups such as “Cage,” are silent on the case of Tommy Robinson. To consider why this is so is to see to the heart of a problem that Britain has been going through in recent years and which seems destined to continue for many years to come.

Douglas Murray, British author, commentator and public affairs analyst, is based in London, England.

Here we are again. According to the analysis of the newly elected Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, the Manchester suicide bomber “was a terrorist, not a Muslim” — despite all evidence to the contrary. After yet another mass casualty terrorist attack, elected leaders seems unable to attribute any of these attacks to the supremacist ideology that caused it: radical Islam.

At what point does an individual cease to be a Muslim and start to become a terrorist? Is there a definitive moment? Why can an individual not be a Muslim and a terrorist. Especially if that individual says he is?

Or is this just a racism of lowered expectations?

Refusing to name the problem also takes power away from Muslim reformers who are seeking to remove violence and bigotry from Islam, as well as other religious demands under which they would prefer not live — such as the lack of free speech, lack of separation of powers, subjugation of women and death penalty for apostasy.

Also, how come no one makes a distinction between religion and violence with any other faith? During the Inquisition, no one would ever claim that Torquemada was not a Christian. Why should this distinction apply only to radical Islam?

Perhaps it is just easier to put short-term political futures ahead of national security, and short term political gains ahead of addressing harsh political truths. That attitude only imperils the rights and Judeo-Christian values we may prefer to keep.

No one wants to blame the entire Islamic community for the actions of a few of its members — just as all Germans were not Nazis — but why can one not call Islamic terrorism exactly that and still emphasize that not all Muslims are terrorists?

Many would have it that in the wake of massive bombings and other terrorist attacks — from America’s 9/11, to London’s 7/7, multiple attacks in Paris, Nice, Toulouse, Berlin, Westminster, Copenhagen, Brussels, Orlando, Manchester, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and so on — that the major crime is “Islamophobia” and not the attacks themselves. Worse, the silence of so many Muslims in the wake of those attacks does not help to dispel an impression of indifference. “Qui tacet consentit“: He who is silent consents.

Britain’s leader of the Labour Party opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, stated the attacks were the fault of the West:

“Many experts… have pointed to the connections between wars our government has supported or fought in other countries and terrorism here at home. An informed understanding of the causes of terrorism is an essential part of an effective response that will protect the security of our people, that fights rather than fuels terrorism.”

So, the conquests of Persia, the Byzantine Empire, the Middle East, North Africa, Greece, northern Cyprus, Spain and most of Eastern Europe do not count? Only our wars count? Who is doing the counting?

What “foreign intervention” prompted the fatwa of a multi-million dollar bounty on the head of Salman Rushdie for writing a novel? What “foreign intervention” provoked bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania before 9/11? What “foreign policy” prompted the bombing of a Yemeni hotel in 1992? What prompts Islamists to kill thousands of fellow Muslims and Yazidis — what offence did their foreign policy commit?

While Corbyn seems to be saying that Britain’s foreign policy is the reason the United Kingdom is being targeted by Islamists, this view seems to be at odds with what the Islamists themselves have said. The Islamic State’s propaganda magazine, Dabiq explained, perfectly clearly:

“The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam.”

That is pretty succinct. Who might know better what Islamists think, Corbyn or Islamists? Our foreign policy is not the problem; our values are. We are seen, it seems, as degenerate, gender-unsegregated, music-loving, idolators. Western nations and their citizens refuse to become Muslim, accept Allah and bow to the demands of Islamic law, sharia. End of story.

As long as Western nations remain man-made democracies and not divinely-made Islamic States, these nations will be the major target for Islamists.

There seem to be two choices: either become more like Islamists, adopt sharia, and continue not to address the coercion out of fear that we might be further attacked — we will be anyway — or to confront the threat, now, before it becomes larger and costlier to contain, in lives and treasure.

Heavily-armed police patrol in Manchester, England, on May 27, 2017. (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

The entire aim of terrorism is to achieve political change by using violence to intimidate. Do we really want to change our way of life just to appease terrorists, allowing them to win?

Corbyn presents a choice of fighting against Islamism and thereby making ourselves into targets, or failing to do so in order to appease Islamists and thereby surrendering to a religious autocracy. As Islamists highlight that, regardless of our policies, they will attack us unless we embrace Islam, defending what we value would seem the better choice. It is time for Europe’s leaders to face up to the reality.

Robbie Travers, a political commentator and consultant, is Executive Director of Agora, former media manager at the Human Security Centre, and a law student at the University of Edinburgh.

Every time anyone thinks Britain’s Labour party has reached a new low of anti-Semitism, entirely new depths seems to open. In September, I wrote here about how the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour party constituted a “mainstreaming” of racism in the UK. Although Mr. Corbyn claims he does not have any tolerance for any hatred of anyone, he is a man who has spent his political life cosying up to anti-Semites and terrorist groups that express genocidal intent against the Jewish people. He has worked closely with Holocaust deniers, praised anti-Semitic extremists and described Hamas and Hezbollah as his friends.

During his leadership so far, it is clear that the lead he is given is being followed farther down the party hierarchy. In March, I described how the party appeared to be rotting from the head down, with the discovery that the Labour Club at Oxford University had become an entity rife with anti-Semitic insults. Yet anyone who thought that the party could fall no farther had not imagined its turns of the past week.

In 2009, Jeremy Corbyn (left, posing before a Hezbollah flag) said: “It will be my pleasure and my honour to host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking. I also invited friends from Hamas to come and speak as well.” Pictured in the middle is Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Pictured at right is Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

At the start of the week, the MP for Bradford West, Naz Shah, was found to have posted on Facebook threads such ideas as the deportation of all the Jews from Israel over to America; the caption read, “problem solved.” Elsewhere she wrote on a discussion thread, “The Jews are rallying.” Ms. Shah happens to be a Muslim and represents a constituency which, until the last election, was represented by George Galloway. Other luminaries of the area include the former Liberal Democrat MP and David Ward.

So it is fair to say that among her peers, what Ms. Shah said was not unusual. The posts are from 2014, a year before she became an MP, and during the latest of Israel’s engagements in Gaza. In her apology, once she was found out, Ms. Shah talked of the fact that it was period in which “feelings were running high.” Of course, not everyone during a period of heightened feelings calls for the destruction of a UN member state, but Ms. Shah did, and within a day of the exposé of these messages, and an appropriate political outcry, she was suspended from the Labour party, pending a full investigation.

Labour’s week had barely begun. Within hours, another Labour MP, Rupa Huq, tried to come to Ms. Shah’s rescue. In a BBC interview, Ms. Huq tried to compare calls to eradicate the State of Israel with any other “amusing” thing one might find on Twitter. After a swift U-turn, Ms. Huq managed to restrain herself and remained in the party.

Next, from stage far-left, the former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, currently on Labour’s National Executive Committee, made his intervention. Mr. Livingstone has been in the Labour party for almost five decades and in the same trenches as the party’s current leader all of his political life. They have marched together for many a terrible cause and stood shoulder-to-shoulder on many a forsaken platform. But as Ken Livingstone went on several BBC programs, he probably did not expect that within hours, his own Labour party membership would be suspended, as was Ms. Shah’s. Livingstone had used his media opportunities to start talking about Hitler — specifically to claim, that Zionism was an early policy of Hitler’s. Perhaps sensing that he had got himself onto unfortunate ground, Livingstone then stressed that this was all before Hitler “went mad” and killed six million Jews.

So within a week, the Labour party leadership was forced to suspend one of its newest MPs and one of its oldest grandees — and both for the same reason. Presently, Jeremy Corbyn and his spinners are desperately trying to pretend that they have cut out the problem and are dealing with it appropriately. But there are reasons why they cannot do this with the problem that the Labour party — and the wider left in Europe and America — now has when it comes to Jews and the State of Israel.

Both Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone say that they condemn anti-Semitism. They always tend to add that they also condemn “Islamophobia and all other forms of racism,” a disclaimer that always seems a deliberate attempt to hide a hatred of Jews under the skirts of any and all criticism of Islam. But doubtless on one level they believe it. What is most fascinating is that all the while they are saying this, they stoke the very thing they claim to condemn.

There was much outcry to one answer Ken Livingstone gave this week when he tried to excuse Naz Shah’s original comments by saying that they were “over the top and rude.” But it was what he said earlier and has so far gone uncommented upon that was far more revealing and points to the left’s central problem here. In an earlier interview that morning with BBC London, Livingstone had said:

“The simple fact in all of this is that Naz made these comments at a time when there was another brutal Israeli attack on the Palestinians.

“And there’s one stark fact that virtually no one in the British media ever reports, in almost all these conflicts the death toll is usually between 60 and 100 Palestinians killed for every Israeli. Now, any other country doing that would be accused of war crimes but it’s like we have a double standard about the policies of the Israeli government.”

That right there is what is at the centre of Labour’s anti-Semitism problem. It pretends that the Jewish state does such things for no reason. There is no mention of the thousands of rockets that Hamas and other Islamist groups rain down on Israel from the Gaza Strip. The comment turns a highly-targeted set of retaliatory strikes by Israel against Hamas in the Gaza Strip into a “brutal” attack “on the Palestinians” as a whole. While mentioning those death-tolls, Livingstone has no interest in explaining that the State of Israel builds bunkers for its citizens to shelter in, while Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields and useful dead bodies for the television cameras, to help Hamas appear as an aggrieved “victim.”

In pretending that a state, Israel, in protecting itself from a rain of rockets, stabbings and car-rammings in the best way it possibly can, is, instead, committing war-crimes, not only is there a perpetuation of one lie; there is the subtle placing of a kernel of a thought. Why, a naïf might wonder, do these double-standards exist only in regard to Israel, and not to, say, Iran, China, Sudan, North Korea or Russia? Might it be because some people just hate Jews?

Such a comment is also the reason why even if the party pretends to “root it out,” it no longer can. What Livingstone said there passed without comment because it is the sort of thing which many MPs in the party and countless members of the party believe. Yet every time they say it, they are propagating a lie. Excusing Naz Shah’s comments by saying that they came “at a time when there was another brutal Israeli attack on the Palestinians” parcels a whole pack of lies into one.

That is the problem. It is the narrative of the “left” on Israel that is causing the resurgence of anti-Semitism. It is not coming from nowhere. It is coming from them. If the left wants to deal with it, they first have to deal with themselves.

Douglas Murray is a current events analyst and commentator based in London.

The naming of Boris Johnson as Britain’s Foreign Minister set off in his home country a storm of name-calling and hand-wringing that approximates the Democrat reaction to Donald Trump. Without wading into British politics, there is one specific incident that the Daily Mail called an impolitic “gaffe” that should be assessed at greater length — and from a different angle:

Last November local [Palestinian] officials called off a visit to Palestine on safety grounds after the then-London mayor told an audience in Tel Aviv that a trade boycott of Israeli goods was “completely crazy” and supported by “corduroy- jacketed, snaggletoothed, lefty academics in the UK.”

Palestinian officials accused him of adopting a “misinformed and disrespectful” pro-Israel stance and said he risked creating protests if he visited the West Bank.

Johnson was right on the merits: The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is largely a function of university campuses and has little to do with Israel-UK trade, which is robust and growing. But the incident should be understood as a window into Palestinian strategy, and as such should not be overlooked.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas did not use the opportunity presented by Mr. Johnson’s visit to offer his view, to explain why Johnson was wrong, to promote UK-Palestinian trade, or even to argue for BDS. He reflexively threatened a prominent European guest with violence. It surely would have erupted on schedule if Johnson had continued his visit. The Palestinians are no longer interested in discussing their interests/demands/wishes. They have entered a period of ultimatum: one-hundred percent or nothing; my way or violence even with their friends.

It was in the atmosphere of “no criticism/no negotiation” that Abbas went to a European Parliament meeting in Brussels in June, following an inconclusive French-sponsored “peace process” meeting that included neither Israelis nor Palestinians — a mechanism Abbas assumed would result in French demands on Israel. It did not — putting Abbas in a foul mood for the European Parliament meeting that was prelude to the release of the Middle East Quartet report on prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Again, Abbas expected to hear only criticism of Israel.

Then, European Parliament President Martin Shulz tried to arrange a meeting between Abbas and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. Rivlin agreed, Abbas declined — and it was later revealed that Abbas even changed hotels when he discovered he and Rivlin were sharing a roof. It was in Brussels where Abbas claimed that some Israeli rabbis were calling for Israel to poison Palestinian water — an echo of Suha Arafat’s claim in 1999 that Israelis were poisoning Palestinian air and water. Abbas received a standing ovation at the end of his remarks; Suha received a kiss from then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas receives a standing ovation at the European Parliament in Brussels, after falsely claiming in his speech that Israeli rabbis were calling to poison Palestinian water. Abbas later recanted and admitted that his claim had been false. (Image source: European Parliament)

Under pressure from people who recognized a centuries-old debunked piece of anti-Semitism, Abbas recanted and admitted that his claim had been false. But such was the desire of the European parliamentarians to protect him that his blood libel was erased from all official documents. Which makes his next move even less understandable.

After much wrangling, the Middle East Quartet report on the future of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and the “two state solution” was released on 1 July. Before the release, leaks to the press strongly suggested that

“The focus on Israel will be its most contentious aspect.” [Ha’aretz] quoted a senior Israeli government official as stating: “The main question is how harsh criticism of the settlements will be. All the members of the Quartet can rally around this issue without a problem.”

Calling it an “eagerly awaited report,” Reuters said it would demand that “Israel should stop building settlements, denying Palestinian development and designating land for exclusive Israeli use that Palestinians seek for a future state.”

And it did, as reported here, here, here, and even here. The Quartet said that Israeli building policies raise

“legitimate questions about Israel’s long-term intentions, which are compounded by the statements of some Israeli ministers that there should never be a Palestinian state… Israel should cease the policy of settlement construction and expansion…”

But that wasn’t enough for Abbas, because even Quartet members found it impossible to ignore the seven-month-long so-called “stabbing intifada” and the drumbeat of incitement from the Palestinian Authority that encourages and honors the murderers of Israeli civilians. Nor could members ignore definitive evidence of Hamas rebuilding the Gaza tunnel infrastructure to attack Israel. In a relatively mild section, the Quartet criticized Palestinian leaders for “not consistently and clearly” condemning terrorist attacks and, for the first time, said the arms buildup and military activities in Gaza must stop.

Nabil Abu Rudainah, spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, was furious, saying:

“Any report that does not include the full withdrawal to the 1967 borders, including occupied Jerusalem, and does not include a recognition of the illegality of settlement will not lead to real and lasting peace and will lead to more tension and more instability in the region.”

In other words, more Palestinian-incited violence.

The fit of pique continued as Abbas announced that the PA would boycott the Quartet — its best friends in Europe plus Russia and the U.S. — and attempt to block consideration of the report in the UN.

Unable to countenance even mild criticism, and unwilling or unable to engage in serious conversation even with European interlocutors, much less with Israel, Abbas may finally have made the Palestinian cause too difficult for the Europeans, bring the circle back around to Boris Johnson. Not only did he criticize BDS (in which he clearly criticized British academics more than Palestinians), he continued, “I cannot think of anything more foolish” than to boycott “a country that when all is said and done is the only democracy in the region, the only place that has in my view, a pluralist, open society.”

If there was a gaffe, it wasn’t by Johnson.

Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May meets with US President Donald Trump at the White House, January 27, 2017. (Image source: UK Prime Minister’s Office)

House of Commons Speaker John Bercow declared that he would not invite Trump to make a speech before Parliament due to the president’s alleged “sexism” and “racism,” and the British Parliament’s opposition to those stances, as well as, further, due to Trump’s temporary restrictions on immigration until better procedures for vetting applicants can be put in place .

Bercow, however, never adhered to due process: he should first have consulted the Speaker of the House of Lords or the Lord Chamberlain.

If Bercow thought that a ban from addressing Parliament would stop Trump from addressing the British people, he seems to have been wrong. Press reports suggest that Trump is planning massive stadium events. Perhaps that is the repeated failure of Trump’s opposition: to see his appeal to the masses.

Furthermore, where was Bercow when Emir of Kuwait visited? Kuwait has a poor record on women’s rights, and refuses entry to those with Israeli passports. Kuwait Airways and even dropped its flights between New York and London not to “break the law” by possibly carrying Israeli passengers.

How come, then, that Bercow did not think it advisable to oppose the Emir of Kuwait’s visit due to its “sexism” and “immigration ban”? No, Bercow granted the Emir a speech in the Queen’s Robing Room.

Bercow also granted a speech in Westminster Hall to the President of Indonesia — a country that canes women for “standing too close to their boyfriends”; that has applied sharia law and that has put the homosexual community under “unprecedented attack”.

In addition to these seeming slip-ups, Bercow also received a representative of the North Korean regime for afternoon tea in Parliament, and received representatives from the Communist single-party state of Vietnam.

So, it is evidently acceptable to be a representative of some of the world’s most repressive dictatorships, with policies far worse than Trump’s, and yet visit Parliament, but a democratically elected leader in the free world and a key ally, who may hold some views with which Bercow disagrees, makes him unacceptable.

Some MPs have rightly raised concerns that the Speaker is “using the Speaker’s chair to pontificate on international affairs.” The Speaker in Britain’s Parliament is supposed to be impartial; some MPs have alleged that Bercow has “broken his employment contract with members of parliament,” in which he is bound to remain impartial.

Others open to allegations of hypocrisy include Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, who demanded that Donald Trump not to be allowed a state visit or even to enter the UK for his incorrectly-named “Muslim ban” — actually, only a temporary ban on people from seven countries, designated by former President Barack Obama, and over which Congress gave the president the power to restrict people who might be security risks.

On the same day in which Sadiq Khan made these comments, he then hosted a party to which he invited the ambassadors of Bangladesh, Brunei, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen – all of which ban Israelis, and some of which even ban peopled holding passports stamped by Israel. Where was the outrage then, the mass protests, the marches against Khan for welcoming them?

Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, also made it clear that he would not welcome Trump addressing Parliament and that he opposed a state visit. How ironic from someone who has welcomed former members of the IRA to Parliament, shortly after the IRA bombed the Conservative Party conference. He also welcomed Hezbollah and Hamas, and called them his “friends”. Hamas is a genocidal organisation that remains dedicated to killing Jews and destroying Israel, and Hezbollah is dedicated to the obliteration of Israel.

It seems that there is a double standard here: Trump may have previously made tasteless remarks, but are his policies really worse than those of the Iran or North Korea?

As the British author George Orwell is alleged to have said, “Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

What is it that the people trying to keep Trump from speaking are afraid others might hear?

Robbie Travers, a political commentator and consultant, is Executive Director of Agora, former media manager at the Human Security Centre, and a law student at the University of Edinburgh.