Tweet dreams

The BBC is making such a meal of the latest Trump offence that the whole thing is beginning to look utterly ridiculous. Can’t they see how absurd it all is? For one thing, the way announcers and newsreaders are forced utter the word ‘Tweet’ with straight-faced, end-of-the-world solemnity.  As if that wasn’t daft enough, they have to wade through tittle-tattle that sounds as though it’s being relayed straight from the playground.  

As matters escalate from molehill to mountain, we are at the stage where campaigners against Islamophobia - the Islamophobia-phobes - are vigorously pushing for the government to disinvite The Donald from the pencilled-in state visit. 

Trump’s Tweet to Theresa May has been officially interpreted by the BBC as a “rebuke”, as has Theresa May’s response. Although on yesterday’s Daily Politics James Rubin refuted this while unsuccessfully trying to bring matters back down to earth. 

“It was not a rebuke,” said Rubin, “it’s just The Donald being The Donald, It’s what people from New York are like!” (as in: ‘He’s from Barcelona’ )

According to Rubin, no-one in the Trump administration takes “our lot’ seriously, and no wonder. Amber Rudd and co appear to be entirely in thrall to the media. If she was in a stronger position Theresa May should have risen above it. Maybe she, and ‘our lot’ would have, if only the media and the crazies in the Labour Party had allowed them to. 

Or maybe not. Conservatives everywhere are melting away. The paper formerly known as the Torygraph has gone soft left, and the Times, with over-promoted lefty columnists like Caitlin Moran,  appears to be following suit.    

“Donald Trump gave us boost in supporters, says far‑right group Britain First” screams the header on the front page of today’s Times (£)  “MPs criticise president for anti‑Muslim retweets” says the strap line.

Inside the headline goes further: “Halt ‘fascist’ Trump’s visit to UK next year demand MPs” and, sad to say, that is indeed what MPs actually said in a specially convened debate. Imagine that. A specially convened parliamentary debate about a Tweet on Twitter.

On p 35, the leading article titled ”Bitter Tweet”  the Times’s editorial concludes that “to disinvite the president would be counterproductive” qualified by a whole lot of other pointedly restrained outrage at Trump’s latest misjudgment.  

Aren’t we used to Trump’s misjudgments by now? Why get so apoplectic at this one? Because, Muslims.

By the way, I can sympathise with Sajid Javid when he said (about Britain First)

So POTUS has endorsed the views of a vile, hate-filled racist organisation that hates me and people like me. He is wrong and I refuse to let it go and say nothing.

“They hate me” is exactly how I feel when I see Jeremy Corbyn and his sycophants and flunkies being treated with respect and given credibility by the media.  You can’t help taking this as a personal slight, even when you are an atypical representative of the intended recipient of such a slight.

Last night’s Question Time spent the bulk of the programme discussing “Hate”, and if there’s anything in Roald Dahl’s theory that ‘hate’ manifests in the ugly countenance of the hater, there were a lot of haters present. (I can’t stand Dahl by the way. As well as being an antisemite,  his repressed childhood is behind all his literature)

"I have become antisemitic"

If you’ve seen Pat Condell’s video about hate crime (H/T Daphne Anson) you’ll be aware that we are blindly stumbling into a an Orwellian / Kafkaesque nightmare. I await the knock on the door with a loaded phial of whatever Slobodan Praljak took. (if only I could get hold of the recipe.)

Is the BBC a lost cause?

As regular readers might know (or guess) I am a big fan of Harry’s Place. I only lurk, because I made it a rule not to acquire an online presence by commenting here, there and everywhere. I might do that when I give up this blog. Also, I’m too much of a wimp to create a load of sock-puppets and creative IDs and pretend they’re not me.

What I particularly like about H.P. is the palpable sense of ‘family’ below the line, which I think is pretty unique in the blogosphere. I’m not  saying I approve of the the vitriol, which can spring up all of a sudden for no obvious reason. It’s colourful I suppose, but that's the internet for you.

Lurkers like myself would probably have the impression that the general consensus on Harry’s Place is that the BBC is a bit of a lost cause. 

"Come on! Harry’s Place is a lefty blog," I hear you say. Well, it kind of isn’t these days, especially now, what with the rise of Corbynism. And, of course it’s a Zionist blog, and the commentariat are not just any old commentariat, they’re the M & S variety. 

So why am I saying all this? I nearly forgot. It’s about the BBC. However well informed, highly qualified, educated, literate and eloquent the btl H.P. family may be, they’re not all geeky about the BBC like we are. We seem to know all the presenters by name and can remember things they said years ago. (By the way, I see Jon Donnison is back reporting on hurricane Irma, as is Alan “I’m telling your story” Johnston.)  

So when Sarah AB wrote about Radio 5’s breakfast show, which tackled the BBC’s flavour of the month news item, namely the news concerning some members of the British Army belonging to the banned neo-Nazi organisation National Action, the discussion inevitably turned to Nicky Campbell. 

I know Nicky Campbell is, or used to be one of the pet hates of contributors to the Biased BBC blog.  If you search the site for ‘Nicky Campbell’ about 200 posts pop up, mostly concerning The Big Questions or Radio 5 Breakfast.

I myself wrote at least two of them, way back in 2011 or thereabouts.

"So nothing changes," I hear you say. "You’ve wasted about eight years of your life blogging about BBC bias, and had precisely zero effect." Well, that’s as may be, but in fact things do change. Have changed. For one thing The Big Questions has improved. I quite miss it when it’s off air. Is it that I myself have become more tolerant, or is it that the BBC has tried a little harder to get better quality guests? I don’t know, but when Douglas Murray agrees to appear on the show, it can’t be that bad. 

And Nicky Campbell is a good presenter. He handles the volatility much more competently than many a hardened BBC professional.  As to how much serious understanding of Islam-proper he has, who knows? He’s no scholar, nor does he claim to be, but let’s say he’s matured. Nowadays he seems less credulous when it comes to being taken in by the likes of Mo Ansar.

Here is another confession. I don’t listen to radio 5. I don’t even know how to tune in, should I suddenly decide I want to. I did follow the link on H.P. though, and I have to say the very tone of it wasn’t to my taste. I don’t want to be rude. Actually I do. It sounded dull, childish and irritating and I don’t think I’ll be visiting again. 

Many people on ‘right wing” blogs (you do realise that anyone right of Jeremy Corbyn is now considered right-wing) have mentioned the BBC’s disproportionate interest in the news about four or five members of the British armed services being investigated for belonging to a “proscribed anti-Semitic and homophobic group”. That’s it. That’s how the group is being described, as if the BBC believes that hearing about that particular duo of hatreds is all we need to know to ensure we are horrified at the very idea. Well, we are. But when identical dual prejudices are associated with Islam, as they famously are, it’s somehow deemed insignificant. I don’t get it. 

Incidentally, while we’re on the subject of BBC presenters, someone brought up Emma Barnett. She seems to be a BBC favourite at the moment, (you know how the BBC over-exposes its pet presenters till we’re sick of the sight of them) Grilling is Emma’s forte. One minute she’s demolishing Jeremy Corbyn’s  credibility, next she’s humiliating the gymnast Louis Smith for mucking about in a manner offensive to the Muslims. 

It’s indiscriminate grilling that grates. Yet we call for impartiality, and you can’t get more impartial than indiscriminately dishing out your grillings. Or can you? It may be technically impartial, but it seems unintelligent. Choose your victims wisely, is all I can say. 

Here’s Pat Condell. (H/T Daphne Anson)

I don’t think that would be popular on Harry’s Place, but it’s a damn sight more sincere than the feigned 'game' - ‘find the extremist’.

   

Arise, Sir Andy?

People are castigating various BBC journalists for giving Anjem Choudary a platform. I’m with Pat. Give him as much platform as you can, and let it all hang out.

Oh wait. He'll be behind bars for a while.

Divided we fall

...But we can’t insulate ourselves from the outside world.  Someone posted this excerpt from Question Time on Facebook, with the comment:

“Ian Hislop says those who voted remain can still have their say, despite the UK voting to leave the EU.”

Many ‘shares’ and comments appear below the video, including:

“It is a ridiculous fuck-up. General election now - Corbyn for PM.”

 “We might end up with a socialist government out of this, Oh how I hope for that.”

“Or just ignore the results of the referendum”

“It wasn’t a mandate.”

Outside world?

Let me just say (forgive the repetition) I do not have a Facebook account. This was posted by adults on someone’s timeline. (That someone wisely chooses not to engage in political discussions on Facebook.)

There have been avalanches of posts of a similar nature (citing both Corbyn and Bernie Sanders) on Facebook for months. 

Does it make you wonder why so many people appear to be completely confident that continually sharing their opinions on Facebook is acceptable? 

Also, why do they assume that the extreme political left is the norm?

As they say on t’interweb, am I missing something?

The cultural enrichment of Sweden

“Sweden – long proud of its humanitarian reputation and for providing asylum to refugees – has applied to the European Commission to relocate some of the migrants it has received to other EU countries. Speaking on the programme is Ylva Johansson, Swedish Employment Minister.”

So it says on the BBC Today Programme’s running order. (8:30)

Ylva sounded ever so nice. She was concerned that Sweden couldn’t cope, short-term, with mass immigration. There just aren’t enough houses and resources to accommodate them. In the long term, however, she saw immigration as one hundred percent beneficial. (For the diversity and cultural enrichment of Sweden) She seemed convinced that Swedes agree with her. One hundred percent.

I wonder if Pat Condell knows something she doesn’t?

Craig (invading Sue's post): Justin Webb's interview with Ylva Johansson was a very peculiar one. 

He stuck to asking her about whether her long term vision of the "100%" positives from mass immigration would eventually outweigh the short term difficulties over housing; whether there was any "push-back" in Sweden to the idea of mass immigration (as if he'd never looked into the matter or even heard of the surging Sweden Democrats); and whether she wanted to send a message to the UK government about helping out more with the migrant tide.

I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing.

Religious Education

There has been a low profile media debate these last few days about a scheduled visit to Exeter Mosque as part of a compulsory religious education programme for children at a Lostwithiel primary school. Ten sets of parents objected, (or ten percent of parents according to whichever report is correct) stating that their children will not be attending.

The headmistress then allegedly singled out the children at school and questioned them. 

The issues are: 

1. Lostwithiel, in east Cornwall, is 68 miles from the cathedral city of Exeter. Exeter University has a Saudi-funded Arab and Islamic studies department and a politically partisan history faculty. Several notoriously anti-Israel advocates are on the university payroll.  There is a considerable Muslim community in Exeter, including a diverse student population studying Arabic and other subjects.  There was one attempted terrorist attack there in 2008.

2. At present there are very few Muslims in Cornwall. It’s diverse, Jim, but not as you know it. 

3. The parents cited ‘safety concerns’ as the reason for their objection to the mosque visit, but it has been suggested that openly repeating the real reasons might expose them to the risk of committing aggravated Islamophobia. 

I see the BBC website has solicited a quote from the M.C.B.

Why it is necessary to drag children 68 miles in order to prematurely introduce them to an alien religion that, with luck, they might never need to rub noses with? 

Why does the headmistress deem it necessary to compulsorily indoctrinate primary school children with propaganda and perhaps proselyting, supposedly to persuade them of the peaceful, unISIS-like nature of Islam, when everyone, including many Muslims, know it’s not quite so simple. It’s a funny old world, and these are strange times. 

The proposed criminalisation of Islamophobia is something that is impossible to get ones head round.

What is Islamophobia? How do you commit it? There are already laws covering violence, so a special law would presumably have to be directed towards ‘words‘ and / or refusing to serve burkas in your cafe or admit bushy beards to your Christian or secular B & B. But since there are people proudly and openly advocating BDS, which is a similarly prejudice-based practice, I don’t see how one could be enforced without criminalising the other. No doubt someone would find a way.

I don’t think Ed really means it, or maybe he hasn’t thought it through. This election is full of promises and proposals that haven’t been thought through, so it must just be one of those.

Talking of YouTube videos, as Craig said, most of the BBC Bias-themed ones clunk. 

Away from the election for a minute, there is a series of videos that some of us are fond of because of their straightforward no holds-barred pro-Israel or anti-Islam content. 

I have posted one or two of them on this site, but I wouldn’t want to go overboard and frighten the horses. However, over on EoZ there is one particularly forthright Pat Condell, which is reinforced by a particularly apposite Memri video of two Egyptian ‘Clerics’ discussing their hatred of Jews, and the Israel Palestine conflict which they define as ‘religion-based’ rather than territorial or political. Tell it like it is boys. (But not in front of the children)

The set was a lurid green, and there was a darkly menacing background. I was particularly intrigued by the get-up of the one dressed in a slanket with a tablecloth draped over his head - think nativity play. His compatriot’s trainers were strangely incongruous as accessories to the full-length maxi dress, shawl and the rest of the ensemble.

Today

6th August.

Our “BBC is biased” community is to get some competition. From the Respect party. (H/T Deegee) 

The first half of their statement reads like something we might have said ourselves, here at “Is”:

“George Galloway has announced that he will establish his own public enquiry into the BBC’s role in reporting the events of the past few weeks in Gaza.    The Bradford West MP had previously announced that he is refusing to pay his licence fee until the BBC demonstrated a more impartial standard of broadcasting on the conflict. Galloway has been openly critical of the its editorial standpoint on the conflict, arguing that the BBC has a duty, as a publicly funded organisation, to adopt an unbiased approach to such major stories.”

We even agreed with him about the BBC’s abysmal failure to report the demonstration outside the BBC’s premises, but for slightly different reasons.

    “Many in the country were outraged when the BBC failed to report on the July 19th national demonstration which had been attended by tens of thousands of demonstrators. It belatedly addressed this with a hastily-arranged piece on its website, for which it had to borrow an image from a rival broadcaster. It has also been commented that since the outcry, the BBC’s reporting had apparently become more balanced.”

“This was in part down to the reporting of Middle East correspondent Jeremy Bowen from the front-line in Gaza. Strangely – indeed, inexplicably – Bowen is absent from the reporting this week as he is, according to Twitter, ‘on holiday’.”

Here’s where we diverge. I really don’t think the BBC would dare ‘sequester’ Jeremy Bowen - what about the all-powerful Zionist Lobby that they claim to be so terrified of? I do love the sagacious use of scare-quotes though. 

“ The BBC has been dogged by scandals in the past year and has faced questioning on its integrity, from the child abuse scandal to questions about executive pay-offs, with licence fee payers increasingly turning their backs on the institution in favour of other media outlets.    We will keep you up to date with the developments on the public enquiry. If you can help in any way with the enquiry, please email gallowayg@parliament.uk

A glimmer of light peeped through the fog last night when Douglas Murray was given a little bit of the BBC’s precious Israel-bashing time to debate with Ming Campbell.

First we saw Baroness W. stating her case. " Morally indefensible. On a point of principle. Norrin our interest. Resign.” 

Bye then.

Why did David Cameron take such an uncritical approach to Israel during the last few weeks, risking Warsi’s  fury? wondered Mark Urban.

Because he was clinging on to the last vestiges of reason before she made it well nigh impossible to do so? (Not that a PM with a backbone would have caved in) 

Clegg was shown calling for  Israel’s capitulation. “Vince agrees. Disproportionate. War crimes.”

“Disproportionate” screeched Ming over and over again. “Stop helping Israel defend itself” he pleaded. “International criminal court!”

Why doesn’t a senior Lib Dem resign? wondered  Kirsty Wark, wearing an alarmingly distracting jumper. (acid green, with  flounced and scalloped black lace cut-outs, since you ask) 

She allowed Douglas a few minutes to dispense the common sense for which he’s well known and deservedly respected. 

Suddenly Kirsty decided to cut him off in that rude, disrespectful manner they reserve for people who criticise Hamas, for that is exactly what he started to do. At which point Kirsty’s face clouded and he was toast. 

ON the bright side, wharrabout that  HardTalk with Zeinab Badawi and John Kerry? Badawi seemed uncharacteristically mellow. For once she  appeared over awed.   

Kerry was unequivocally supportive of Israel. Over to you Pat.

After the psychiatrist’s chair

Kill or cure remedy for Craig’s phobia about The Big Questions.

The prescription is a half hour dose of Channel Five.. you know, the weird channel that never feels quite right. In particular, the debate on immigration, because it made Nicky Campbell look like a colossus, which might cure your TBQ nightmares, and also, by the process of diverting you from one pain by giving you another. For example, distracting you from, say toothache, by pushing you into a bush of thorns.

“The Big British Immigration Row” 

Please catch it if you like a nice shambles. It was awful but I laiked it as Dick Emery would say.

Anne Diamond and Nick Ferrari were the “compères” but they were so incompetent at compèring that it was obvious that casting them was a ploy designed to bring about a dramatic melt-down, live on National Humiliationvision. The sadistic producer was surely overjoyed that so many  ‘now’ people had come along for a barney. Everyone was in the audience, or on the panel, and / or both.

A certain amount of pre-production preparation had been done. A few tricksy snippets of film had been cobbled together and transplanted into the debate at various inconvenient moments. Pleading the case for the rainbow nation, vox-pops of cuddly immigrants were inserted, with the subtlety of a clog, alongside disparaging innuendos about monocultural societies.  

A pub landlord from Margate was booed for saying that Margate has been ruined by immigration. Vanessa Feltz put on her “their views, not mine” voice to announce that many people had phoned in to her programme to say that they were troubled by immigration, and, with shining-eyes, rapturously recounted a multicultural experience of the NHS. However it had little to do with the deliberate social engineering that people are phoning you about, Vanessa, because your shared happy outcome, (baby-maternity ward) albeit a multicultural one, was the antithesis of the monocultural ghettos people are phoning you to complain about. You know, pockets of isolated, hostile, demanding immigrants who loathe the host society even more than they loathe slightly different sects of their own communities, or the other way round or both. 

Anne Diamond had an incongruous, impish smirk on her face, the grin of desperation, which vanished the instant someone looked like saying something racist, and came back again the instant the danger was over.  She failed to assert any authority over Mohammad Shafiq and Lee Jasper, whose shouting had risen to a deafening cacophony; no matter how hard she shrieked nor how high the pitch she merely added more decibels to the racket.   “Sorry Anne” said Nick, intervening with faux chivalry, before also being drowned out till nothing made any sense at all.  

Nicky Campbell is a masterful compère. He’s suave and incisive. Are you feeling better yet?

What Nancy De Lolly-Oh! was doing there was a mystery. She’s a lawyer? “Could you imagine Britain withou’me?”   

Yes.

Mohammad Shafiq and Lee Jasper were satisfactorily belligerent, but the star attraction was Katie Hopkins whose combustive potential had been heavily trailed in advance, and she was a great catalyst. Tenacious, persistent and glamourous, but it was a shame that, having uttered “people have had enough” for the umpteenth time, she ran out of ideas. People had had enough of her saying “people have had enough”. 

However she did manage to draw attention to some of the things people had had enough of, namely not being able to get their children into schools, not being able to get an appointment with the GP for three weeks and having an interminable wait to see a doctor at a hospital. 

It was exasperating to watch her ploughing the same old furrowed, conspicuously non-racist ground to justify all negative talk about mass immigration in view of the specter of Islam that was hanging over the proceedings all the while, like a black cloud/shroud.

Suddenly they introduced the phenomenon of the  “no-go area” and things got slightly more interesting. They showed a clip of  Anjem Choudary the pantomime Islamist, whereupon Mo Shafiq, and Mo Ansar who had been patiently squatting in the audience with his stripy scarf and diaphanous black dress, began frantically disowning Choudary and saying he wasn’t representative of the Muslims.

It ended inconclusively, having failed to do anything more than make the Big Questions look like a civilised debate. 

So there. Are you cured?

I didn’t recount all this just for Craig’s well being. It was in response to the headlines about the “withheld” statistics about the effect of mass immigration upon British Jobs for British people. 

You know what? I don’t care so much about foreign daffodil pickers undermining our indigenous ones. Sorry, but what I do care about has nothing to do with EU immigration or migration or whatever the polite euphemism is.

My concerns are loosely in synch with Pat Condell’s. They’re very specific. I’m concerned with the powers-that-be, (media/ politicians) pandering  to the whims and fancies of antisemitic immigrants from the Islamic third world. So there Katy Hopkins, never mind keeping your kids away from Chardonnay and Jayden, I’d advise you to ignore that and stay away from the ones with spiky names with lots of zs and qs that look, on the page, like barbed wire. You know, the ones in the captions on those child-grooming lists.

  

That’ll wipe the smile off Anne Diamond. 

Cos we’re worth it

One reason being offered by huge numbers of people for condemning Israel and siding with the Palestinians during Operation Pillar of Defence was that “Israel started it” by breaking a “ceasefire”, or at any rate ending a lull in the ongoing hostilities, by:

i) the assassination of Jabari, who was supposed to be ‘in the middle of negotiating a plan for peace’. 

ii) assassinations of various Palestinians including one ‘mentally disabled’ Palestinian man and a 13 year old boy.

When it became clear to everyone except Owen Jones and other anti-Israel-activists that the operation was in retaliation for a largely unreported barrage of rockets from Gaza aimed at Israeli citizens, other theories took off and  ‘trended’. 

A common theory with BBC pundits was that the Israeli Prime Minister was deliberately posing as a hard and steadfast leader because of the Israeli elections.

The main justification for condemning Israel remained the same; the 'disproportionate' theory, namely that there were many more casualties in Gaza than in Israel.

Throughout the conflict, long-held myths (tropes) re-emerged as further justification for condemning Israel. Top of the list remains the number of children killed. Thereafter, in no particular order:

a) Stolen Land, 

b) Settlements, 

c) Arms supplied to Israel by America. 

d) Apartheid state.

e) Siege

f) Brutal occupation

g) Violations of International law, various.

h) Political racist motives

All these accusations have been leveled at Israel, in various BBC broadcasts, from a variety of people, in a variety of programmes. Occasionally, in Israel’s defence, we heard about:

a) Iran

b) Rockets coming into Israel

c) That the operation was retaliatory.

The most oft-quoted justification for condemning Israel was the number of Palestinian civilian and child victims. The figures, including the ratio of fighters to civilians given by Palestinians were taken, trustingly, at face value. The tactic of rocket-launching from sites amongst children and civilians was excused by quoting the easily (Google) verifiable falsehood that Gaza is the most heavily populated place on the planet, and the absence of shelters provided for Palestinian civilians was cited as an unfair disadvantage about which nothing could possibly be done; not by Hamas, not by Allah.

There is a generally accepted assumption that Israel must never harm a Palestinian child, whatever the provocation, coupled with resentment that Israelis do have the shelters that neither Allah nor the Palestinian government has provided for the poor Palestinians.

Some of the solutions I’ve heard offered: Equality should be established by curtailing Israel’s military superiority, reducing Israel’s bomb shelters and complying with the Palestinians’ demands for unrestricted access to and from Israel etc.

The theory seems to be that peace will be achieved by: Dismantling Jewish settlements, giving ‘stolen’ land and ‘stolen homes’ to several million Palestinian refugees and their descendants; in other words a  Jew-free Palestinian state alongside a Jewish minority Israel. 

They see no connection between the rise of Islamism in the Arab world, and Israel’s current difficulties with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran as well as those on the horizon from the newly Islamised Arab and African countries.

When it comes to Israel everyone seems to abandon reason. Showing pictures of dead or injured children is enough of an argument to silence people who dare to speak up for Israel. 

Unfortunately the go-to website Harry’s Place seems to be down at the moment, but before that happened I read an impressive guest post by the HP commenter ‘Mettaculture’.

Reading the comments below the article I misread “Write a comment” as “Write a compliment” which, given the merits of the piece, seemed, even in my confusion, an unnecessary demand.

He patiently unravelled the kind of  tangled up thoughts constantly buzzing around our brains.

Broaching Israel’s experimental withdrawal from Gaza, the author quoted Max Boot’s reasons for supporting this strategy, pre-withdrawal, and his subsequent, post-withdrawal analysis of the reasons for its failure. When weighing up the pros and cons he had questioned whether, in the overall scheme of things, it was ‘worth’ jeopardising the lives of Israeli soldiers, just for the sake of protecting the well-being of 8,000 Jews trying to exist amongst a million hostile Arabs in Gaza.

As it turned out, as far as securing any improvement in Arab/Israeli relations was concerned, the withdrawal was as futile as the jeopardising. At the present time, people who admit that nothing less than Israel’s elimination will satisfy Hamas are asking the same question about Israel’s very existence.

The worrying thing about the HP article is that it was written in response to an earlier pro-Palestinian piece by Peter Tatchell.  Thoughtful, eloquent and articulate as Mettaculture’s arguments were, in the overall scheme of things, who cares what nonsense Peter Tatchell  decides to believe? The real problem is that too many others, including a large number of our MPs  believe it too.

Is Israel’s continuing presence in the Middle East worth all this trouble and strife?

Extrapolate it and despair. Would dismantling the Jewish state, even in the unlikely event that  all the practicalities could be somehow resolved, appease the Islamists once and for all?  Or, to put it another way, is it worth jeopardising everyone in the western world by resisting what they see as the thin end of a future world-wide Islamic caliphate wedge? Why not just cave in? Lie down and die.

The failed experiment in Gaza demonstrated that moral superiority won’t bring about peace. Not only that, but as long as the blindness to Islamist  ideology continues to erode our ability to think, moral superiority wouldn’t even be recognised as moral superiority, but as weakness, 

Here is Pat Condell, saying what Mettaculture said, but in a slightly different way.