Readers of this website can be in no doubt that I stand 100% with Israel and I make no apology for saying that I am hopeful that it kills every single member of Hamas in Gaza. That is a proportionate response to October 7 such was the horror of that day. Regular readers should also know that I think that Gary Lineker is a twit and worse, a man who made £5 million from promoting the Ingenie/Quindell fraud which I exposed. But a broken clock is right twice a day. The crisp salesman says that the weekly Hamas victory parade should go ahead on November 11 and I agree with him.
On November 11 vast numbers of folks want to have their weekly protest for Palestine in London. Naturally as this is remembrance day I, like most of us, find this truly distasteful. I shall be remembering my great Uncle Francis Cochrane killed in Egypt. I shall think of my great great uncle Douglas Winnifrith, a chaplain in World War One and all the men he had to bury. I shall think of all those brave men on both sides who made the ultimate sacrifice. I will think about this quietly. I shall talk to my kids about it. That is how we do things in this country and it is one of the very good things about this country. I am not a super patriot, heck I sort of identify as Irish, I’m a republican but on November 11 the way we remember makes me proud to be British.
But another reason to be proud is that we believe, or used to believe, in free speech. That is the mark of a civilized society like Britain or, say, Israel. It marks us apart from places like Russia or Gaza or Iran where if you challenge the State run narrative you often suffer a grizzly fate. And if you believe in free speech that means defending folks whose views you find reprehensible as well as those with whom you agree. Folks like Owen Jones or the woke campus warriors who try to shut down conservative voices don’t believe in free speech. But if you do you must support the right even of Hamas loving filth to protest or of Owen Jones to spout hateful rubbish.
There is of course a caveat.
In “On Liberty”, John Stuart Mill defends free speech but says there must be limits where rhetoric can imperil others. He gives the example of folks claiming that corn merchants are ripping off the poor. Folks can say that but perhaps not at the Corn Exchange where the merchants gather.
The Metropolitan Police belatedly seems to be waking up to the effect that chanting “from the river to the sea” a call for the eradication of the state of Israel and by implication 8 million Jews is not appropriate. Nor are chants in favour of Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organization. Nor, in the current climate where anti-semitic hate crimes are up by 1353% are calls for Jihad appropriate and the phrase “Jihad from Gaza to London” is downright wrong.
The Police should have been making arrests from day 1, it should have been arresting anyone defacing or tearing down posters of abducted Israeli kids. Folks without British citizenship or who are claiming asylum doing these things should be put on a plane at once. Brits acting in this way should be prosecuted and dealt with harshly by the Courts, even if it means that Jocasta from Islington will miss seminars in her course in Gender Studies at a Russell Group University. The Police should make it clear that anyone offending next week will be dealt with on the spot.
I have another reason for supporting the right of the middle class young “useful idiots” and those rooting for Hamas on the basis of faith to march on November 11. The spectacle of them doing so will, I am sure, revolt the overwhelming majority of the general population. And perhaps that revulsion will cause them to reflect on just what the marchers actually want. They do not want the hostages released. They, like Lineker, did not ever protest against the October 7 pogrom, after all it was only Jews who were raped, beheaded, baked in ovens and slaughtered. They don’t want a two-state solution. They want a final solution in which Israel, the one place in the Middle East, where there is free speech and where Jews and Arabs live together, serving together in the army or the Knesset, to be dismantled, leaving nowhere for the Jews to go.
Let the Jew haters and the useful idiots march next week. Let the Police act with an iron fist on anyone breaking the law. That way we show we are better, we do support freedom but also the rule of law And let all of us be revolted by the marchers and what they want for if folks like Hamas triumph and deal with the Saturday people, next up will be the Sunday people, that is to say you and me.