The sight of MPs tying themselves in knots to deflect accusations that they undermined the democratic process to advance the interests of their Zionist paymasters would be amusing if it didn’t carry real everyday consequences for Muslims.
When it became clear that the initial explanation for last Wednesday’s extraordinary departure from parliamentary protocol wasn’t going to fly, MPs and the Speaker quickly pivoted to “protecting MPs” from the threat of Islamist (read Muslim) mob.
Needless to say, the usual suspects all joined the pile-on. If you read the mainstream press you’d be forgiven for thinking that everyone who campaigns for Palestine is an extremist, a terrorist sympathiser and now also a clear and present danger to British democracy.
With our political discourse deeply toxified – the political class has already successfully cast the public image of pro-Palestine campaigners as a “hate mob”, anti-Semites and unpatriotic – it’s all too easy for them to sling mud and make it stick.
But there are real world consequences of this anti-Muslim demonisation. It normalises and encourages violence and discrimination. Just this week, the hate crime monitoring organisation Tell Mama reported a 335% increase in Islamophobic incidents reported since October 7.
Reporting statistics, whether from Tell Mama or other organisations provide tip of the iceberg figures. Most people do not report Islamophophic incidents either to the police or community organisations. In a 2015 survey of over 1200 Muslims, 18% of respondents reported experiencing Islamophobic violence, meaning quite possibly 500,000 such attacks could have taken place.
Of course, we shouldn’t be shocked to see people who cheer a genocide also scapegoating an already marginalised minority. However, it is worrying that their views are being so widely reproduced and dominating the national conversation.
We’ve been here before. When Muslims took to the streets in 1989 to protest the Satanic Verses, we were vilified as extremists, barbarians and illiterates, leading one commentator to say, “The next time we see gas chambers in Europe, it will be no surprise to find Muslims in them”.
Just three years later, Muslims were being rounded up, herded into concentration camps and butchered in Bosnia. It’s no exaggeration to say this is the dark path down which we are again being led by a class that seeks to exploit racial/religious prejudice to hide its own venality and servility to foreign interests.
Between 30-40% of Labour and Tory MPs are members of the Friends of Israel groups in their respective parties. The bulk of Labour’s funding since Starmer seized power has come from Zionist lobbyists. Zionist funding of the Conservatives is even greater and well-documented. And as we know, money buys influence.
There was a time in British politics when accepting money to serve a foreign state would see your treasonous head perched on a spike in the Tower of London. However, these days, support for Israel has almost become a sine qua non of Britishness and the key to positions of power.
Unfortunately, increased Islamophobia is a direct consequence of the Zionisation of our politics. Zionists need Islamophobia to burnish their image as perennial victims and the targets of malevolent Muslim hordes. As the genocide on Gaza peels back the mask on their nefarious activities, the Islamophobia will only get worse as they try to deflect global attention away from their crimes.
Hiding behind a smokescreen of victimhood, they will continue to scapegoat decent law-abiding people in order to protect their ill-gotten and murderous Zionist state.
