Is 'enough' enough?

A new Gatestone Institute article by Douglas Murray  popped into my inbox. It’s one of those pieces that immediately make you go ‘that’s just what I was thinking’.

UK Terrorism: ‘Enough’ is not ‘Enough’. 

When Theresa May said ”Enough is Enough” many of us were relieved. ‘Things are looking up!', we thought. But such optimism is apt to perish like a shrivelled balloon still tied to the gate long after the party. 

After the recent spate of terrorism, one might wonder, ‘where exactly is all this long awaited clamping down?’ Where is the action? 

Unless something stringent and punitive is being cooked up undercover, in the hidden world of Spy v Spy, it would appear to be non existent. 

Instead, the government presents us with more weak and feeble stuff about ‘perversion of Islam’ and the media reminds us that ‘extremism comes from the far right as well, you know.’

As Murray points out, two recent events that fly in the face of ‘Enough is Enough’ have recently gone ahead without let or hindrance. 

Despite calls for it to be stopped, the al-Quds Day march, which takes place annually in central London, went ahead again this year as usual.  The speeches in this year’s march were particularly inflammatory and antisemitic. Yet nothing was done.  'Does Mrs May regard this as ‘enough’?' asks Murray.

Evidently not. Another openly antisemitic event was held in the heart of Westminster. 

“On the weekend of July 8-9, the Queen Elizabeth II Centre (right opposite Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament) was host to a "Palestine Expo" event. This occasion was advertised as "the biggest social, cultural and entertainment event on Palestine to ever take place in Europe”.

There, similar speeches and anti-Israel rhetoric took place as several observers can attest.

Of course, the BBC wasn’t interested.  The BBC does not view Palestinians who murder Jewish families as terrorists. 

Before setting off to murder Israelis in their own home, 19-year- old Omar al Abed from the West Bank village of Khobar wrote what he presumed would be his final words on Facebook.

“I am writing my last testament and these are my last words,” wrote al Abed.
“I am young, not even twenty-years old, I had many dreams and many aspirations. But what life is this in which our women and our young are murdered without any justification? They are desecrating the al-Aksa mosque and we are sleeping, it’s an embarrassment that we are idly sitting by. 

“You, those who have a gun and who are worn out, you who only bring out your gun at weddings and celebrations, are you not ashamed of yourselves? Why are you not declaring war for God? Here they are closing the al-Aksa mosque and your gun is silent.
“All that I have is a sharpened knife, and it is answering the call of al-Aksa. Shame on you, you who preach hatred. God will take revenge on you and will make it count. All of us are the sons of Palestine and the sons of al-Aksa. You, sons of monkeys and pigs, if you do not open the gates of al-Aksa, I am sure that men will follow me and will hit you with an iron fist, I am warning you.”

On this occasion the particular grievance was the imaginary threat to the al-Aqsa mosque that Palestinians and their leaders dreamt up to ignite and excuse another of their customary waves of ‘rage’. 

This religious rant is fairly typical of 'Allahu Akbar' style religious fanaticism, and no different from the religiously-motivated terrorism that continually erupts from East to West with ever-increasing visibility. 

Yet the BBC refuses to connect terrorist violence perpetrated by a Palestinian with the same thing when carried out by your common or garden jihadi. Thus, BBC has decreed that the use of the emotive word ‘terrorist’ applies to the latter but not the former. This, says the BBC, is because it contains a value judgement.  

What message can be taken away from this puzzling inconsistency?  Either they see Israelis as so ‘other’ that the news that some of them have been slaughtered in their beds is, to them, neither here nor there.  Worse, it could be that they actually feel that the murder of Jews is all in a good cause.

It puts one in mind of the case in 2010 where activists who broke into a Brighton weapons factory and caused £200,000 of damage were found ‘not guilty of conspiracy to commit criminal damage’. Why not? Oh, because they were acting with “lawful excuse”.

Could it be that the general level of understanding of the Israeli / Palestinian conflict at the BBC, from the highest level to the lowest, is so poor that they seriously believe that Palestinian murderers are acting with ‘lawful excuse?’

Perhaps they apply the same principle  to al-Quds and Palestine Expo, too, but they’re skating on thin ice if they half-believe British victims of terror had it coming, and that our ‘foreign policy’ gives Islamic terrorists ‘lawful excuse’ to self-detonate outside a pop concert. 

In The Conservative Woman a post by Niall McCrae demonstrates where  our famous tolerance extends far beyond the call of duty. "British values' are being weaponised against Britons." 

“Last Friday’s front page of The Guardian featured a Muslim woman who is suing a school for its allegedly discriminatory dress code. After her daughter gained a place at the prestigious Holland Park comprehensive, Rachida Serroukh attended a talk by headteacher Colin Hall. Both she and her daughter were wearing full Islamic dress. A teacher asked Serroukh for a word in private, and advised her of school policy against masking of children’s faces. Serroukh told the Guardian reporter: ‘As the teacher was female I lifted my veil when we were talking’. How nice of her.

Holland Park is known as the ‘socialist Eton’. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds struggle to get in, but the culture of the school is emancipatory and secularist. Nurturing local Muslim girls’ potential would be regarded as central to the school’s mission. Yet this leftward institute is now threatened by Wahhibi entryism. In a completely one-sided report, The Guardian presents the school as a pariah, and Serroukh as a cause celebre.

Why was this case given such prominence, and such obvious support, by a ‘progressive’ newspaper? A large photograph of Serroukh on page 2 of The Guardian has her sitting on a sofa, shrouded in black except for her hands and eyes. The newspaper appears to be boosting its diversity credentials, but we must consider the powerful socio-political forces of globalised media and rapidly shifting Western demography. The Guardian is not only virtue-signalling, but also market-signalling.

Islam is Islam.  Enough is Enough.