Tidy-up

The recent avalanche of blog posts (from me) was preceded by a hiatus during which a backlog of half-written, partly thought-through observations accumulated (as they do.) Now is the time to resurrect some of them and stick a few more odds and ends on the end as well. I'll see how it goes.

Enough about me! Apart from just this one little bit:  having missed it when it first appeared on TCW, I belatedly found one of the best articles I’ve ever read on that topic; or even the best article on TCW evah! (Karen Harradine asks) Why has Boris Johnson turned on Israel? 

(Pardon the unflattering illustration)

Everyone should read it because 1) it ‘refreshes the parts the BBC doesn’t reach’ (not that that’s anything new) and, 2) it recognises this government’s unfortunate transition from *Centre Right*(?) to *Labour-lite*.

Below the line - a little speculation over whether Boris’s unfortunate quaver has anything to do with Carrie. Oh, dear. It was heartening to find that the responses were largely supportive of Israel, which is another sign that people are waking up. (Even the woke might wake up eventually) Nevertheless, vestiges of right-wing antisemitism occasionally lurk below the line on that site, which is another reason I initially gave it a miss. 

One never stops wondering if the current government is aware of Israel’s position, legal and historical, or whether they’ve all been educated by the BBC.

Melanie Phillips:

“…the never-abrogated Mandate for Palestine gave the British a duty to settle the Jews throughout what is now Israel and the disputed territories. Nor, as the Israeli intelligence expert Yossi Kuperwasser points out in a pained open letter to Boris Johnson in Fathom, that the Mandate also stated that “no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of, any foreign power, namely other than the Jewish people”.

A plethora of videos featuring Melanie Phillips.......

 

.......made me wonder if she’s kind of rehabilitated now and has been tacitly un-cancelled by the mainstream media. In fact, she’s all over the place. I even saw her on Sky the other day with Adam Boulton reviewing the papers. (I haven’t included all the videos I referred to as the 'plethora', obviously. Just a sample.)

The next topic has already come up on the Open Thread, but this highly recommended article "Why police shouldn't stop using the term "Islamist terrorism" by Liam Duffy appeared in yesterday’s Spectator .  In it, Duffy discusses the announcement that counter-terror police officers have been considering dropping the term ‘Islamism’ when reporting terrorist attacks by the aforementioned unmentionable terrorists. He examines that head-in-the-sand theory that there’s the ‘real’ Islam (a peaceful religion) and the ‘inauthentic’ one with the ‘ism’ on the end, and the not-at-all benign political ideology that we’re permitted to criticise as long as we stick to the rules.

“Islamism is the particular name for a political ideology which seeks to establish an Islamic state. Its adherents range from those working within democracy to those willing to murder civilians to achieve this aim.

According to critics of the word, 'Islamism' should be dropped because it conflates religious belief with terror. But the term ‘Islamism,’ rather than ‘Islamic’ is intended to draw a distinction between the political ideology and the religious beliefs of more than two million Brits. It is important though to understand how religion informs the political ideology. Which it does, significantly.

This is mad and dangerous. We don’t talk about “Christianist” terror because there’s no such Christian movement. Islamism is real, it acts in the name of Islam, and inspires terrorism and violence. Denying that makes us less safe. https://t.co/zRtZ8sRyxO

— Nick Timothy (@NJ_Timothy) July 20, 2020

If the police are really that gullible, I’d almost support defunding them myself.  The backlog still stands  - whether any more life can be breathed into it remains to be seen.