Tag Archives: United Kingdom

The UK’s Troubling Misunderstanding of the Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate, and the Middle East Today

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In a recent speech at the United Nations, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy declared his country was “determined to protect the viability of the two-state solution.” At first glance, this appears to be a standard diplomatic statement. But in elaborating on Britain’s historical role in the region, Lammy offered a revisionist take on the Balfour Declaration that reveals a deep and dangerous misunderstanding of Middle Eastern history—and raises questions about the UK’s current policy stance toward Israel and the Jewish people.

Lammy said the Balfour Declaration came with the “solemn promise that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the Palestinian people.” This phrasing might sound accurate to the uninformed, but in fact, it fundamentally distorts the language and intent of the original 1917 Declaration. The actual text stated that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” That is a significant difference—not a matter of semantics, but of historical and political accuracy.

UK Foreign Minister David Lammy brings up the Balfour Declaration which he doesn’t comprehend

1. The Myth of a “Palestinian People” in 1917

In 1917, there was no recognized Palestinian national identity. The population of the region known as “Palestine” was a mix of Jews, Arabs, Druze, Bedouins, and others. They lived across a geographic region that included modern-day Israel, Jordan, Gaza, and what is now termed the West Bank. The idea of a distinct Palestinian Arab national identity only began to emerge decades later, especially in reaction to the creation of the State of Israel.

By 1948, the demographics had shifted dramatically, in part due to waves of Arab migration into the British Mandate territories from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. Lammy’s reference to “the Palestinian people” as the subject of the Balfour Declaration imposes a modern nationalist narrative on a time when none existed. Balfour’s “existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” would exclude millions of Arabs who moved into Palestine after the 1917 declaration, whom Lammy probably considers “Palestinian people” today.

Balfour Declaration

2. A Jewish State That Did Not Prejudice Others

When Israel declared independence in 1948, it offered full citizenship to the roughly 160,000 non-Jews residing in its territory. Today, over 20% of Israel’s citizens are Arab, enjoying rights and protections that are absent in many neighboring states. Far from violating the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities, Israel has ensured freedom of worship, speech, and assembly for all its citizens.

So when Lammy said, “this has not been upheld and it is a historical injustice which continues to unfold,” he is lying. Completely. Israeli Arabs today enjoy far greater civil liberties than Arabs in Syria, Egypt, Jordan, or in Palestinian Authority- and Hamas-ruled territories. The “historical injustice” is not Israel’s creation, it exists beyond Israel’s internationally recognized borders.

3. Britain’s Role in Enabling Discrimination—Against Jews

Ironically, it was the UK itself—through the Mandate for Palestine—that laid the legal foundation for a Jewish homeland. And for ongoing antisemitism.

Britain unilaterally partitioned off nearly 80% of that territory in 1921 to create Transjordan (now Jordan), and stood by as the Hashemite Kingdom banned Jews from citizenship and ownership of land. When Jordan illegally seized the area later known as the “West Bank” in 1948, Britain was the only three countries (Pakistan and Iraq, which was also a British mandate) to formally recognize that annexation—a striking contradiction to the Balfour Declaration’s supposed promise of equal rights.

The Hashemite Kingdom, with Britain’s backing, quickly turned its part of Palestine into a Jewish-free zone, passing a citizenship law in 1954 that specifically excluded Jews. This glaring double standard—permitting discrimination against Jews while demanding protections for Arabs—is a historical stain that remains unacknowledged in Lammy’s telling.

Worse, it continues.

4. Britain’s Ongoing Endorsement of a Jew-Free Palestine

In 2016, the UK voted in favor of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which declared Israeli presence in the West Bank—including Jewish neighborhoods in the Old City of Jerusalem—to be illegal under international law. Then, in a joint statement with France and Canada last week, the UK reiterated this view, calling for Israel to “halt [Jewish] settlements,” and warning of potential sanctions.

In effect, the UK is advocating for a future Palestinian state that is entirely Jew-free—while curiously condemning Israel for allowing non-Jews to live freely within its own borders. How is this consistent with the principle of equal civil and religious rights? How can Lammy demand protections for non-Jews – who have rights – while simultaneously supporting policies that trample the rights of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland?

5. A “Two-State” Solution That Isn’t Two Equal States

This leads to the inescapable conclusion that what the UK envisions is not a genuine two-state solution. It is one and a half states for Arabs, and half a state for Jews—because one of those two states is expected to be Judenrein.

The fact that millions of non-Jews can live in Israel while Jews are prohibited from living in the proposed Palestinian state is not a path to peace. It is the codification of apartheid, not its cure. Can any reasonable person believe that a state founded on the exclusion of Jews will live peacefully beside the world’s only Jewish state?

6. A Dangerous Historical Amnesia

Lammy’s casual misquote of the Balfour Declaration isn’t just historically inaccurate—it betrays a worldview that has forgotten the lessons of Britain’s own policy failures. Britain once promised the Jews a national home, but reneged repeatedly, prioritizing Arab appeasement and imperial interests. It didn’t vote for a Jewish State in the November 1947 UN resolution and walked away from Palestine in May 1948, leaving the warring parties to fight it out. At war’s end, it blessed Jordan’s illegal seizure and ethnic cleansing of Jews.

Today, that legacy lives on in the UK’s refusal to recognize Israel’s legitimate rights while whitewashing Palestinian maximalist demands—whether from the Palestinian Authority (Jew-free Gaza and West Bank) or Hamas (Jew-free “from the river to the sea.”)

The Foreign Secretary’s focus on providing the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) self-determination, has blinded him to history and the basic human rights of Jews. A vision of peace that requires the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Judea and Samaria and demanding that Israeli Arabs with full citizenship rights get somehow even more rights, is not a peace worth supporting.

From Lee Rigby to The I.D.F.: UK’s Conversion To Jihadism

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On May 22, 2013, the streets of London ran red with the blood of a British soldier. Lee Rigby, a young drummer and veteran of Afghanistan, was savagely killed and hacked in broad daylight by two men shouting “Allahu Akbar.” The killers were converts to Islam, driven by jihadist ideology, determined to murder a British soldier as vengeance for the United Kingdom’s involvement in the War on Terror.

Lee Rigby (1987-2013) didn’t die while a soldier fighting in Afghanistan, but while walking on the streets of London

The attackers didn’t flee the scene. They stood there, hands dripping with blood, speaking calmly to a bystander’s camera, stating their religious motivation and intent. Rigby was targeted not for who he was as a person, but because of the uniform he wore — because he was part of a democratic nation that dared to fight radical Islamism abroad.

Flash forward to UK’s Glastonbury Festival in June 2025.

A crowd of thousands cheered and danced as the band Bob Vylan stood on stage and led them in a chant: “Death, death to the IDF.” Cheers. Applause. Raised fists. The UK’s biggest music festival turned into a public bloodlust rally, reminiscent not of peace and love but of Tehran rallies and Hamas parades in Gaza.

The same United Kingdom that once mourned Lee Rigby now hosts musical mobs screaming for Israeli soldiers — who are, like Rigby, young conscripts — to be hunted down and murdered. The shift is not just disturbing; it’s revelatory. The British public has not simply forgotten Rigby. It has been slowly conditioned to join the other side.

Bob Vylan celebrated by thousands at British music festival after calling for the murder of Israeli soldiers

What changed? The two Nigerian-born converts who killed Rigby were once on the fringes, denounced by the press and public as monsters. But the ideology that drove them — jihadism blended with anti-Western, anti-Semitic venom — is no longer beyond the pale in western cities. It’s broadcast on stages, shouted from union podiums, printed on placards at “Free Palestine” marches, and justified in classrooms as “decolonization.”

From the beheading of a soldier in Woolwich to mobs calling for the deaths of Jews in Glastonbury, Britain has not gone soft; it has gone sick.

Islamist terror was once the enemy of the nation. Now, it’s being mainstreamed and rebranded as some twisted form of “justice.”

The chants at Glastonbury weren’t about military critique or foreign policy. They were blood chants. Calls to murder the soldiers of the world’s only Jewish state. Just like Rigby, IDF soldiers are conscripts. They are fighting a defensive war on radical Islam — Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Islamic Republic of Iran — just as Rigby once fought al Qaeda and the Taliban. Their enemies are the same; their battlefields different.

But instead of solidarity, Jewish soldiers are demonized. Instead of mourning victims of jihad, Brits chant in chorus with the same ideology that murdered their own.

This is not coincidence. It is the result of years of ideological infiltration. Islamism, wrapped in the cloth of anti-imperialism, has become fashionable among youth and elites. Hamas propaganda has found its way into British classrooms, British parliaments, British airwaves — and now British music festivals, not dissimilar to the Nova Festival in Israel in which thousands of Gazans mowed down and raped concert goers.

Consider that the UK banned Hamas as a terror group in 2021, yet its slogans are alive and well in 2025. “Globalize the Intifada” has more sway than Democratic law.

The murderers of Lee Rigby told the British public they were coming for them. “You people will never be safe,” they said. Over the next twelve years, Brits have responded: We won’t only abandon the war on radical Islamism, we’ll join the jihad.

News report from 2013 by the jihadists who murdered Lee Rigby on the streets of the UK

The jihadist dream was never just about bombs and blood. It was about conquest — ideological, demographic and territorial. That process has been in motion across Europe, but the UK is perhaps its most advanced test case.

From Rigby to Glastonbury, Britain has undergone a chilling conversion. Not to Islam, but to jihadism — masked as progressive, broadcast as pop culture, and absorbed by a population eager to cheer with the mob.

A country that once mourned for its murdered soldier now cries for the death of others. That is not a battle lost but a societal surrender.

Related:

For The Love Of Jihad (June 2025)

End the War: Ban Hamas, Permanently (June 2025)

Sick Societies Awash In Antisemitism (November 2024)

Israel And Jews Everywhere Must Be Protected As An Ethnic, Religious And Linguistic Minority (September 2022)

The New Salman Abedi High School for Boys in England and the Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel Soccer Tournament in France (May 2017)

My Terrorism (January 2015)

Eyal Gilad Naftali Klinghoffer. The new Blood Libel. (June 2014)

End the War: Ban Hamas, Permanently

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As the war from Gaza continues to take its devastating toll on everyone involved, the road to peace remains blocked by a singular, stubborn obstacle: Hamas. The group’s leadership refuses to accept ceasefires not out of strength, but from the conviction that they can endure, rearm, and fight again. The violence will not end as long as Hamas is allowed to believe it has a future.

It is time for the international community – particularly Western democracies – to take an unambiguous stand. Hamas must be permanently banned—not just its military wing, but its entire structure. There can be no meaningful peace, no rebuilding of Gaza, and no credible peaceful future while Hamas continues to hold power and wield influence.

Despite the mounting civilian cost, Hamas has shown no intention of disarming. The group openly positions itself as a perpetual “resistance force” rather than a governing body accountable to and respecting the people of Gaza. Its survival strategy is predicated on suffering—banking on civilian casualties to inflame global opinion while preserving its own arsenal in tunnels and bunkers. This is not governance. This is terrorism dressed in political clothing.

Hamas official boasts of sacrificing his own civilian population to slaughter Jewish civilians, shortly after the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel (source: MEMRI)

Yet in Europe, the designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization remains inconsistent. Some countries distinguish between its so-called “military” and “political” wings, an artificial and dangerous separation. This division gives cover to operatives, fundraising networks, and propaganda arms that prolong the conflict and contribute to ongoing suffering.

Now, there is growing concern in the United Kingdom, where a legal effort is underway to challenge Hamas’s terrorist designation. This must not be allowed to succeed. On the contrary, the UK should lead Europe in reaffirming that Hamas is a terrorist entity in its entirety. Such a stance must be echoed by Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the rest of the EU. It must happen in Canada and Australia and throughout the Global North.

UK lawyers are fighting to get Hamas removed from the list of terrorist groups

Riverway Law submitted a 106-page filing in the UK which argued that Hamas is a local “resistance movement… which has won the only free and fair election in the occupied Palestinian territories” and it “poses no threat to the UK people.” The submission argued that “the legitimacy of the struggle of the Palestinian people for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and alien domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle, is moral [and] legitimate.”

Lost in this filing is that the legal definition of terrorism is about targeting civilians for political aims. That is the core mission of Hamas. Its stated purpose and actions on, before and after October 7, 2023 is to attack Jewish civilians inside Israel and around the world.

To wit, in April 2022, Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who would later spearhead the October 2023 massacre in Israel said “Whoever makes the decision to repeat this desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque will be making a decision to desecrate thousands of synagogues and Jewish temples all over the world,” explicitly saying that actions done by the Israeli government would be reason to take actions against Jews around the world, including in the UK.

The invective is a grisly echo of the 1988 foundational Hamas Charter which explicitly cites the antisemitic forgery Protocols of the Elder of Zion about the supposed vile nature of Jews everywhere. It claims that Jews conspire to control the world and “Islamic groupings all over the Arab world should… fight with the warmongering Jews (Article 32).” The Hamas charter uses the word “world” twenty-five times. “Globe” is used twice. “Jew” – not “Zionist” – is used twelve times, including stating “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people, (Article 28)” targeting Jews everywhere and the religion itself as a permanent offense to 1.9 billion Muslims.

It was with this antisemitic genocidal charter that Palestinians voted Hamas to the majority of parliament in 2006. That this vile party won elections – like the Nazi party in Germany – is not a defense of its legitimacy but a condemnation of the “deformity in Palestinian culture,” to quote James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute comment at the United Nations Security Council on June 27, 2023.

Banning Hamas is not only a matter of principle, but of practical necessity. No group that openly glorifies violence and opposes basic coexistence can have any legitimate role in governance.

Ghazi Hamad of the Hamas political bureau said in an October 24, 2023 show on LBC TV (Lebanon) that Hamas is prepared to repeat the October 7 “Al-Aqsa Flood” Operation time and again until Israel is annihilated. (source: MEMRI)

A political party that glorifies the death of its own population with public declarations “we are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs,” shows no value for the lives of its own civilians, let alone of others. The Global North must lead with moral clarity and urge the Arab League to follow suit.

When people on the streets and campuses in the Global North yell “Free Palestine,” they are doing so under the banner of Hamas in a call to eradicate the only Jewish State and to attack Jews globally. If people want to make the argument that the statement is for coexistence, then fight to end Hamas, argue for a Free Israel and to Create Palestine, and condemn the heinous attacks on Jews happening all over the world.

Holocaust memorial and two synagogues in Paris, France painted Hamas green on May 30, 2025 (photo credit: SCREENSHOT/X, SECTION 27A COPYRIGHT ACT)

To end this war, we must end Hamas. Ban them—politically, financially, and globally. Only then can people talk about “the day after,” and the longer future.

ACTION ITEMS

Contact members of the British parliament to keep Hamas on the list of terrorist groups.

Contact the French office of foreign affairs to explicitly push to ban Hamas’s existence.

Related articles:

A Reminder That The UN Security Council Protects Hamas (April 2025)

United Nations Still Will Not Call For Hamas To Face Justice (October 2024)

Stop Genocide. Destroy Hamas (May 2024)

The Only Way The Conflict Can End (November 2023)

Say Its Name: ‘Hamas’ (October 2023)

Hamas And Harvard Proudly Declare Their Anti-Semitism And Anti-Zionism (May 2022)

Hamas’s Willing Executioners (July 2021)

The West Definitively Concludes Hamas is a Terrorist Group (June 2021)

A Proper UN Security Council Resolution on Israel and HAMAS (May 2021)

Considering Nazis and Radical Islam on the 75th Anniversary of D-Day (June 2019)

A Note To The British Foreign Minister

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The British Foreign Minister David Lammy and the UK Ambassador to Israel Simon Walters took aim at the Jewish State for launching fresh attacks against Hamas in Gaza. Despite the political-terrorist group still controlling the region and continuing to hold dozens of Israeli hostages, Walters said “at some point the fighting has to stop and the diplomacy begin. That point is now.”

It is worth reminding the British about June 6, 1944, known as D-Day. The British declared war on Nazi Germany in September 1939 after Germany invaded Poland, even though Germany hadn’t killed a single Brit. Five years of war later, the British decided that it needed to take the war to Germany and invaded Europe. The British lost 350 soldiers on that day and about twice that number were wounded. The British would continue to battle the Nazis for almost another year, including firebombing campaigns on Dresden and Hamburg. It is estimated that 25,000 German civilians died in Dresden alone, a subset of over 2 million German civilians who were killed during the war.

Eventually, the Nazis surrendered and agreements with Great Britain were struck.

The British casualties from D-Day are in contrast to the toll of dead Israelis on October 7, who were mostly civilians. Gazans murdered 3.4 times the number of people in Israel than the Germans killed British soldiers on D-Day. The number of injured Israelis on that terrible day was over four times the number of British soldiers during their massive invasion of Europe.

When Lammy said “Diplomacy, not more bloodshed, is how we get security for Israelis and Palestinians,” he has seemingly forgotten that diplomacy will only come about once the genocidal jihadists are defeated and moderate leadership has assumed control, to ultimately forge a viable and sustainable relationship with Israel.

Lammy made that comment after he told the British House of Commons that Israel’s blockade on Gaza violates international law, even though a 2011 report stated that the Gaza blockade is “legal” and complies “with the requirements of international law.”

The current reality is that Hamas has said that they will not surrender and release the hostages. They continue to gather new recruits – all educated by UNRWA to despise Jews and that their future is in Israel – to attempt to repeat their barbarism in Israel again-and-again.

Israel has a genocidal war machine ON ITS BORDER which INITIATED A BARBARIC ATTACK and which refuses to surrender. It is quite a different dynamic than the British opting to fight the Nazis 80 years ago.

But time and place afford the British foreign minister to play armchair warrior and judge, neither one well.

As penned on these pages a decade ago after the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket terrorism in Paris, “Today’s war on terrorism will continue to be waged when nations see their interests being threatened. The outpouring of emotion will also be rooted in selfish preservation.” Some of the leaders in Britain see their interests and self preservation advanced by throwing Israel under the bus, hoping to keep the jihadists in their midst at bay, sitting out the war on terror 3,600km away.

The British foreign minister would do well to remember that defeat is often a precondition for diplomacy and a path towards enduring security.

Related articles:

Sharansky on Churchill’s “We Shall Fight Them On The Beaches” Speech For Jews Today (December 2023)

Hamas Is The Very Definition Of A Genocidal Group (November 2023)

BBC Welcomes Release of British Muslim Accused of Beheading Daniel Pearl (April 2020)

Extreme and Mainstream. Germany 1933; West Bank & Gaza Today (October 2014)

Global Jewry Is Losing Australia, Canada, France, Germany and UK

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The United Nations General Assembly passed one of the most anti-Israel resolutions in its history on December 3, 2024. Titled “Peaceful settlement of the Question of Palestine,” drafted on November 25, it demands that Israel surrender to every Palestinian Arab demand, including giving up every inch of land that Israel recaptured in its defensive June 1967 war, removing all Jews from those lands to recreate the ethnically-cleansed situation advanced by the Jordanian army in the 1948/9 war, and to settle millions of Palestinian Arabs who never lived in Israel, into Israel.

The resolution passed with 157 states in favor, eight against (Argentina, Hungary, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and the U.S.) and seven abstentions (Cameroon, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Georgia, Paraguay, Ukraine and Uruguay).

Where was Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom in rejecting this horribly biased resolution? Even though votes at the General Assembly hold no legal weight, the antisemitic vote amidst the global wave of antisemitism is both revolting and frightening.

And the resolution IS ANTI-JEWISH.

Section 7 demands that Israel “evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian territory” and stop “modifying the demographic composition of any parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.” That’s a direct call to remove Jews – and only Jews – from all lands east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL) including Judaism’s holiest location of the Old City of Jerusalem.

“Settlers” means Jews – and only Jews – at the UN.

“Demographic composition” means the presence of Jews – and only Jews – at the UN.

The paltry number of Jews in the world are concentrated in a handful of countries today. Israel and the United States account for roughly 85% of global Jewry, but significant numbers live in France (453,000), Canada (391,000), UK (290,000), Germany (116,000) and Australia (113,000). These countries are seeing a toxic tsunami of Jew hatred run through the streets over the past year, and the governments are now blessing the idea that Jews should be banned from certain lands and stripped of basic human rights, even in their holy land.

The UN has moved passed the “Zionism is racism” resolution of the 1970s and sanctioned Jew hatred. If Jews can be confined to certain locations and banned from others in the Jewish holy land, it stands to reason that they can easily be placed into ghettoes and denied rights everywhere else.

Israel may be winning the regional war militarily, but global Jewry is losing basic human rights in the process.

Palestinian Chutzpah: Asking For Recognition As State After October 7 Massacre

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While people are still trying to identify the incinerated and butchered Israeli bodies from the grisly Palestinian Arab October 7 terrorist attack, the Palestinian Authority thought it an appropriate time to ask the United Kingdom to recognize Palestine as a country.

On November 24, 2023, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron met Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the PA headquarters in Ramallah. Abbas lectured the visiting British diplomat, as though Palestinian Arabs had not recently conducted the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the presidential headquarters in Ramallah, November 24, 2023

As reported by WAFA, the Palestinian official news agency, after lecturing Cameron about Israel’s actions, Abbas “urged the British Foreign Secretary to recognize the State of Palestine and help it gain full membership in the United Nations.”

Not wanting the message to slip through the cracks, PA Prime Mohammed Shtayyeh followed, and similarly “called on the British Foreign Secretary to support the Palestinian bid for full membership in the United Nations.”

The ruling Palestinian Authority is very unpopular and viewed as deeply corrupt by Palestinian Arabs. Abbas’s four-year term as president expired in 2009 and he has refused to conduct elections as he knows that he will be trounced by Hamas.

As it currently stands, the political-terrorist party Hamas controls Gaza and controls 58% of the Palestinian parliament. After Hamas’s heinous October 7 massacre, the group’s popularity has skyrocketed, with 75% of Palestinians supporting the attack, and a similar percentage looking to destroy Israel and replace it with an Arab state.

As Palestinian Arabs demonstrate to the world that they are capable and desirous of slaughtering Jews and launching a war on the only Jewish State, they are asking the western world for its blessings, to recognize the State of Palestine and usher it into the United Nations.

And rather than storm out the door, Britain announced it would send £30 million additional aid funding to Gaza.

Palestinians have a demonic but selfish motivation for slaughtering Israelis as they invade the first world country next door but what is motivating the United Kingdom to support such barbarity?

ACTION ITEM

Contact David Cameron “The Palestinian Arabs have shown that they support the butchering of Jews and desire to destroy the Jewish State. The British government must make clear that it firmly rejects the so-called “right of return” of Palestinian Arabs into Israel, and that any future settlement of the conflict will require a demilitarized Arab state to which the descendant of refugees and internally-displaced people may settle. Further, until Hamas is removed from power, there will be no aid sent to the Palestinian Authority.”

Related articles:

The Scale And Barbarity Of The Hamas Massacre

Palestinian Authority “Martyrs Fund” May Soon Fund Killing Jews in the US and UK

Excerpt of Hamas Charter to Share with Your Elected Officials

“Two States For Two People” And An Arab “Right Of Return” Are Mutually Exclusive

United Kingdom’s Home Grown Terrorism, Abroad

Lessons for Israel From Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine

Gazans Have Always Wanted To Kill Jews Inside Of Israel

My Terrorism

United Kingdom’s Home Grown Terrorism, Abroad

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One of the sessions at the United Nations Conference on Counter-Terrorism in June 2023 was called “Building Effective and Resilient Member States’ Institutions in the Evolving Global Terrorism Landscape.” One of the speakers, Colin Smith from the United Kingdom, spoke (44:35) of the changing landscape of terrorism over the past twenty years and covered:

  • a focus on al Qaeda 20 years ago versus local terrorist groups today
  • a secretive counter-terrorism community vs. an open forum where countries share information and resources
  • immature counter-terrorism agencies vs. more sophisticated organizations
  • centers of terrorism vs. geographically diffuse operations now

Smith said “Since 2018, there’ve been nine successful terrorist attacks in the UK and one failed attack but none of them were directed from overseas. They were all self-initiated terrorists. So an individual or perhaps a small group getting together being radicalized by what they saw online or what they heard and turning to a terrorist attack in perhaps a very short of time, perhaps radicalizing in weeks, and not in months or years; perhaps days or weeks. Very low sophistication attacks using knives and cars. So since 2018, there have nine such attacks killing six people and injuring 23 in the UK but we’ve had no externally-directed attacks. In fact, the last time there was an externally successful attack in the UK was back in 2005.”

It begs the question as to the nature of home-grown terrorism in the UK since 2005.

Colin Smith of the United Kingdom talking at the United Nations counter-terrorism conference in June 2023

A quick review of some of the attacks:

Quite a heavy toll between 2005 and 2018, and certainly more violent than only “using knives and cars.”

Smith’s UN comments were seemingly dismissive of the news when he said that the attackers were “radicalized by what they saw online or what they heard,” making it sound like the attackers were being fed disinformation and preyed upon. However, it was a well known and reported fact that the United Kingdom participated in fighting Al Qaeda and ISIL. The British Muslims who committed the terrorist attacks simply showed a greater love for co-religionists than for their fellow citizens whom they saw as co-conspirators killing Muslims.

Smith highlighted that the UK published a counter-terrorism document called CONTEST in 2018. Importantly for the UN conference, he spoke of the broad coordination happening amongst different agencies and the public sector to combat terrorism holistically, as called for in the report.

Yet he avoided discussing that between 2013 and the 2018 counterterrorism report, British police “foiled 25 Islamist plots since June 2013, and four extreme right wing terror plots in the past year alone…. The war in Syria, which was in its infancy when the last Strategy was published, has created both a haven and a training ground for British and foreign terrorists. UK citizens have been targeted in attacks overseas, for example in Sousse in 2015,” when 30 British tourists were killed in Tunisia.

The CONTEST publication was explicit about the serious threats facing the UK: “Daesh’s ability to direct, enable and inspire attacks still represents the most significant global terrorist threat, including to the UK and our people and interests overseas. Daesh’s methods are already being copied by new and established terror groups. Using pernicious, divisive messaging and amplifying perceived grievances, Daesh and Al Qa’ida exploit the internet to promote warped alternative narratives, urging extremists within our own communities to subvert our way of life through simple, brutal violence.”

In the setting of the United Nations panel, Smith avoided mentioning Islamic extremism, despite being the root cause of the British developing its comprehensive counterterrorism strategy. He alluded to disinformation, rather than point out that terrorists had grievances about actual facts. He did not discuss the end of British troops fighting in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan (or at least the media covering such events) as cause for the pause in jihadists killing British citizens in recent years.

Significantly, Smith also did not talk about the United Kingdom’s refusal to repatriate perhaps as many as 400 British citizens back to its shores after fighting alongside terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq.

CONTEST was explicit, writing “Daesh’s initial state-building narrative persuaded thousands of people, including women and families, to travel to Syria from around the world, including from Europe and North Africa. This includes around 900 people of national security concern from the UK. Of these, approximately 20% have been killed while overseas, and around 40% have returned to the UK. The majority of those who have returned did so in the earlier stages of the conflict, and were investigated on their return. Only a very small number of travellers have returned in the last two years, and most of those have been women with young children.” That leaves 40% of the 900, or about 350 Britons still abroad as of 2018.

In regards to children still overseas, as of April 2023, as many as “60 British children are believed to be detained in al-Hol and Roj, two sprawling detention camps in northeast Syria primarily holding family members of Islamic State (ISIS) suspects” according to Human Rights Watch. Those children are among 37,000 foreign nationals held in the camps who are being refused re-entry into their home countries, many of whom have been stripped of their citizenship.

The UK published its goals of reintegrating returnees from the conflict in CONTEST, noting that its Desistance and Disengagement Programme (DDP) was “to reduce the risk from terrorism through rehabilitation and reintegration… will aim to more than double its current capacity to accommodate up to 230 individuals…. Through the DDP, we provide a range of
intensive tailored interventions and practical support, designed to tackle the drivers of radicalisation around universal needs for identity, self-esteem, meaning and purpose; as well as to address personal grievances that the extremist narrative has exacerbated.” It was unclear whether addressing the terrorist’s grievances meant discussing why the UK fought ISIL or changing policy and having the UK abandon the fight.

Further, if there were still as many as 60 British children held in detention camps in Syria as of April 2023, it stands to reason that the UK has left almost all of the 350 adults in the camps as well, repatriating no one.

CONTEST also spoke of the government’s intention of pursuing would-be terrorists “including covert human intelligence sources, surveillance assets and the lawful intercept of communications. In addition to these capabilities, we also use a wide range of tools to constrain the ability of terrorists to act, for example working to proscribe organisations, freeze and seize their financial assets, and break up networks and associations in prison.” Even before the effort was launched, the report noted the government had contained “approximately 700 prisoners… who have been identified as engaged in terrorism or extremism, or about whom there are extremism concerns.”

Incarcerating would-be terrorists was also excluded from the panel discussion at the United Nations.

In summary, the UN forum was devoid of mentioning Islamic extremism, keeping terrorist in prisons at home and abroad, and blamed disinformation on the Internet for spawning attacks rather than actual grievances from a warped ideology.

It also did not mention acceding to terrorists’ demands which the United Kingdom may have already done, such as abandoning the fight on Islamic terror, whether ISIL, Taliban, al Shabab and Boko Haram, and resuscitating terrorist groups like Hamas.

The United Nations panelists on counter-terrorism did not speak openly, honestly or comprehensively about various approaches countries have implemented to tackle the global scourge and opted instead to parrot politically correct non-controversial narratives. Perhaps honest dialogues exist in private but the public spectacle of the UN is a ghostly version of reality.

Related articles:

The Global Intifada

The Current Intifada against Everyone

The Epicenters, Diameter and Echoes of 9/11

Trends in Anti-Muslim and Anti-Semitic Attacks Post-9/11

I See Dead People

I’m Offended, You’re Dead

The Insidious Jihad in America

The Banners of Jihad

Pick Your Jihad; Choose Your Infidel

Grading Evil and Evil Doers

The Scary Growth of Terrorist Propaganda

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In just a single week, two governments took long overdue steps to label all branches of terrorist groups as part of the same poisonous tree. It was not without reason.

On November 19, 2021, the United Kingdom announced that it would add the political wing of Hamas onto the list of terrorist groups, joining the military branch which already had the designation. On November 24th, the government of Australia announced that it was adding all branches of Hezbollah to its terrorist list. They joined many countries in recognizing that the entirety of these organizations mobilized forces of hatred and terror, and facilitated the actual attacks of its military wings.

The propaganda arms of the two groups – al Aqsa and al Manar – are no longer fringe sources of extremism. They have been growing in popularity and are now at parity with more mainstream Muslim Arab media.

Al Manar is the media arm of Hezbollah in Lebanon. It routinely puts out the statements of Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah demonizing the United States and Israel. The group defines itself as the official Islamic resistance of Lebanon to combat the atrocities and invasions of western powers.

Al Aqsa is the media arm of Hamas. It also defines itself as the official Islamic resistance of the Palestinian people against western and Jewish forces, advocating violence in its various programming.

Dateal Arabia & Al Jazeeraal Manar & Al Aqsa
Sept 200572.5%4.8%
Sept 201060.7%16.8%
Sept 201536.2%25.4%
Sept 202127.3%25.5%
Media viewership in Gaza over time. Gazans preferences for terrorist sources has grown according to Palestinian polls

As the table above shows, the preference for the programming of mainstream media like al Arabia from Dubai and al Jazeera from Qatar has dropped dramatically, even though those media outlets also demonize the west. The Gazans have become drawn to more radical calls for terrorism.

While the Gazans preference for violence against Israelis surpasses West Bankers, the trend lines for watching terrorist television is much the same in the Palestinian Authority-ruled areas.

Dateal arabia & al jazeeraal manar & al aqsa
Sept 200568.2%8.0%
Sept 201070.5%9.1%
Sept 201528.6%13.0%
Sept 202126.6%23.2%
Media viewership in the West Bank over time. West Bankers preferences for terrorist programming jumped significantly this year according to Palestinian polls

The spike in West Bankers watching Hamas media has a lot to do with Palestinians dislike of PA President Mahmoud Abbas from the rival Fatah party, his cancelling elections earlier this year and Hamas’s missile attacks against Israel in May, a war crime celebrated by West Bankers as a defense for Jerusalem. But the overall trends are much the same as in Gaza: Palestinians are now watching terrorist television at the same rates as mainstream Arabic media.

The United Nations long ago realized that terrorist propaganda fuels violence, but it primarily focused attention on ISIS and al Qaeda and their usage of social media. Hopefully the recent actions of Australia and the UK in labelling the political and media arms of Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations will help reduce the vile calls to violence.

A picture taken on November 12, 2018, shows a ball of fire above the building housing the Hamas-run television station al-Aqsa TV in the Gaza Strip during an Israeli air strike after a barrage of rocket fire from the enclave. Israeli security group Shin Bet accused al Aqsa journalists of using codes and being agents in attacks on Israel (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS / AFP)

Related articles:

Hamas’s Willing Executioners

The West Definitively Concludes Hamas is a Terrorist Group

Excerpt of Hamas Charter to Share with Your Elected Officials

The New Salman Abedi High School for Boys in England and the Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel Soccer Tournament in France

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Summary: The western world will really have to worry about home-grown terrorism when the local community proudly honors the terrorists.

The Terrorists

On May 22, 2017, Salman Abedi detonated a bomb that killed 22 people attending an Ariana Grande concert in Machester England. The dead included children who went out for a fun evening to enjoy some live music.

On July 14, 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a truck through a crowd in Nice, France, killing 84 people. The dead included children and families out enjoying fireworks on Bastille Day.

On March 27, 2002, Abdel-Basset Odeh detonated a bomb in the middle of a Passover seder in Netanya, Israel, killing 30 people. The victims included Holocaust survivors enjoying a festive Passover dinner.

On March 11, 1978, Dalal Mughrabi shot and killed an American photographer taking nature pictures on a beach; then fired on a taxi killing all of the passengers; and then ultimately blew up a school bus full of kids on the way to school along a coastal road in Israel.

The Celebrants

The Islamic State claimed credit for the Manchester England bombing saying that “a soldier of the caliphate planted bombs in the middle of Crusaders gatherings.” ISIS made a clear reference to “Crusaders,” non-Muslims who came to the Middle East to block the establishment of a Muslim “caliphate.”

ISIS also claimed credit for the attack in Nice, stating that “one of the soldiers of the Islamic State,” carried out the attack.

The 2002 Passover seder massacre was celebrated by Palestinian Arabs broadly. “Everyone’s proud of him,” said his older brother, Issam Odeh. Palestinians later named a soccer tournament after him in his hometown of Tulkarem.

Dalal Mughrabi led a squad of Fatah fighters in her attack, the same political party as Yasser Arafat (fungus be upon him) and Mahmoud Abbas. She was celebrated at the time by Palestinian leadership and continues to be venerated by Palestinian Arab society today which names public squares and schools in her memory.

Palestinian students honoring Dalal Mughrabi
(Photo: Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times)

One would imagine that ISIS is naming public squares and buildings after Salman Abedi and Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel in Syria and Iraq in a similar fashion.

The Reaction to the Attacks and Backers

The Prime Minister of England, Theresa May said “the spirit of Britain is far mightier than the sick plots of terrorists — and that is why the terrorist will never prevail.” She is pushing NATO to join the fight against ISIS that backed the terrorist attack. The United Nations Security Council held a moment of silence for the victims of the attack.

The UN Security Council also held a moment of silence for the victims in France a year earlier.

Many countries are fighting against ISIS, the backers of global terrorism. It is quite a different story for the backers of terrorists against Israel.

The UN did not hold moments of silence for Israeli victims. The global community did not seek to isolate Fatah or condemn its celebration of terrorists. Quite to the contrary. The UN Secretary General said that it stood with the Palestinians and not with Israel.

In 2002, the UN launched an investigation into BOTH sides of the conflict. That’s quite a process considering it is an active protector of the Palestinians and therefore has inherent bias. Consider that the UN does not investigate how France and the UK fight against terrorists at all.

Foreign or Domestic

The UK, France and other western countries look at terrorism as a foreign transplant. It emerges from the Middle East as a distorted form of Islam that lands on their shores.

Investigators of attacks quickly delve into whether the terrorist was an immigrant or native. Something foreign may seem distant. The chance of another attack is remote. However, a locally born radical might portend a future full of terrorism.

It is an understandable fear, but one still in the distant future.

When the local Muslim community of Manchester creates the Salman Abedi High School for Boys, or the city of Marseille, France names a large public square or soccer tournament after Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the period of daily terrorism will be at hand. That is the present day in Israel that deals with an anti-Semitic Arab population that seeks a land free of Jews.

Will the UN and global community stand in solidarity with the innocent victims of terrorism then?

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Media Splits on Showing “Islamic Terrorism” and its Presence in Israel

The UN Fails on its Own Measures to address the Conditions Conducive to the Spread of Terrorism

Car Ramming from Islamic Terrorism Explodes as it Approaches its Second Anniversary

The US State Department Does Not Want Israel to Fight Terrorism

The Big, Bad Lone Wolves of Terrorism

Select Support in Fighting Terrorism from the US State Department

Double Standards: Assassinations

Eyal Gilad Naftali Klinghoffer. The new Blood Libel.

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The Countries that Acknowledge the Jewish Temple May Surprise You

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The United Nations has been a hotbed of anti-Israel sentiment for decades. Whether the issue was war, terrorism, blockades, the security barrier, peace talks, settlements, refugees, etc., the vast majority of countries have been very vocal and very critical of Israel.

The UN also has a long history of ignoring Jewish rights to their sacred sites, as described in “The United Nations and Holy Sites in the Holy Land.” The various countries in the UN had a chance to add their own voices to that history.

In the fall of 2015, Palestinian Arabs claimed that Jews were going to overrun the Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and proceeded to kill and attempted to kill dozens of Israelis. Those events made the countries at the UN focus on discussing the Temple Mount itself. Their comments  on October 22, 2015 were interesting.

DSC_0087
The Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount above the Kotel,
location of the First and Second Jewish Temples
(photo: FirstOneThrough)

A Muslim Holy Site

Not surprisingly, the Muslim countries referred to the Temple Mount as an exclusively Islamic holy spot.

  • “State of Palestine” called the location the “Haram al Sharif,” the Muslim name for the Temple Mount.
  • Angola discussed the “Al Aqsa Mosque,” which is Islam’s third holiest spot, located on the southern tip of the Temple Mount
  • Qatar mentioned the “Holy Shrine”

Some countries went further, and stressed that the Temple Mount compound was important only to Muslims.

  • Maldives stated “Haram al-Sharif must be restored.  Israel must stop altering the Islamic and Arabic character of the city”
  • Egypt noted that the “Holy Shrine was extremely important to more than one billion Muslims worldwide,” and said nothing about Jews
  • Iran called the site “Haram Al-Sharif, and called for respect for the rights of Muslim worshippers to pray at that site in peace.”

Others were more extreme in their calls against Israel:

  • Saudi Arabia said that “Israel had failed to protect Islamic holy sites, demolished the gates of Haram al-Sharif and turned it into a prayer place for Jews.  Israeli extremists had set fire to the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron”
  • Kuwait described “attacks on Al-Aqsa mosque were an unprecedented assault against the inalienable religious rights of Muslims all over the world.   The OIC reiterated the historic and present Hashemite custodianship of the Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, including Haram Al-Sharif/Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
  • Morocco was alarmed at the situation of “Islamic holy sites. Jerusalem was the very essence of the Palestinian question and there could be no peace without clarifying the status of Al-Quds as capital of a Palestinian State.  Any harm brought against the Al-Aqsa mosque would heighten tensions.”

The surprise in the singular call of the Islamic character of the site, was that a single western country also only mentioned the Arabic and Muslim name for the site: the United Kingdom.

Just Holy Sites

Some countries avoided the controversy, like Spain, Chad, Nigeria, Norway, Korea and France, just referring to generic “holy sites.” Such language was impartial and neutral. That was perhaps logical in a tense and violent environment.

The Holy See mentioned that the location was sacred to “Judaism, Christianity and Islam.” An ACTIVELY balanced approach, which pulled all of the monotheistic religions to Jerusalem.

Turkey’s approach was a mix. Like the Holy See, it noted that “Jerusalem, a city sacred to Islam, Judaism and Christianity, should be treated with the utmost respect.” But then went on to attack Israel’s practices at the site saying that Israel was “targeting holy sites and all other provocative activities undermining the status and sanctity of Haram al-Sharif must immediately stop.  The Jordanian role as custodian of the holy sites in Jerusalem was crucial for the preservation of Haram al-Sharif as an Islamic sanctuary.”  It would appear that Turkey was willing to acknowledge the centrality of Jerusalem to Jews, just not the Temple Mount.

Most countries like: New Zealand; Venezuela; China; Chile; the United States; Russia; Sweden; Lebanon; Malaysia; Guatemala; Brazil; Japan; India; Bangladesh; Costa Rica; Kazakhstan; Iceland; Botswana; Sri Lanka; Bahrain; Cuba; and Pakistan did not mention the holy site itself.

Yes, that many countries weighed in about the situation in Israel.

Three Countries Recognize Judaism at the Temple Mount

In the long list of world condemnation, there was a silver lining, and it came from the unlikeliest of countries. Three countries besides Israel, referred to the platform as the Temple Mount, recognizing the history of Jews at the location and the sanctity of the spot in Judaism.

  • Lithuania, a country not known for being a strong Israeli ally, said that the “Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount was a sacred place for both Muslims and Jews.”
  • Ukraine mentioned the Al Aqsa mosque, but then also said “It was important for both parties to find the courage to respect holy places in accordance with the principles specified in the fundamental international documents, particularly those of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the agreements that regulated the status of the Temple Mount complex.”
  • Zimbabwe also said that “Access to the Temple Mount and other holy sites must be preserved under the status quo arrangements.”

These are not remarkable statements by these three countries on their face. But to consider that dozens of countries – including Israel’s allies – would not recognize the centrality of the Temple Mount to Judaism, does make their statements noteworthy.

Ukraine has a long history of anti-Semitism, but it was among the few countries that referred to the site by its historic Jewish name.  The three countries did go on to chastise Israel for actions on the Temple Mount, but at least they had the decency to not ignore Jews and Judaism also.

Six months later, in April 2016 in Paris, UNESCO itself weighed in that there was no Jewish connection to the Temple Mount when it drafted 40 points of rebuke against Israel, that only referred to the Jerusalem site by Islamic and Arabic names 19 times.  This was very deliberate, as seen when UNESCO went through the courtesy of referring to the common names of other Jewish holy sites in discussing “The two Palestinian sites of Al-Ḥaram Al Ibrāhīmī/Tomb of the Patriarchs in AlKhalīl/Hebron and the Bilāl Ibn Rabāḥ Mosque/Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem.”

Decades ago, several countries would not acknowledge the Jewish State, and many Arab countries to this day still refer to Israel as the “Zionist Entity.”  Much of the world is still so backwards, that it cannot even recognize the history of the Jewish people and the holiest spot for Judaism.

Send a note to the governments of Lithuania (misija.jt@urm.lt), Ukraine (uno_us@mfa.gov.ua) and Zimbabwe (zimbabwe@un.int) and let them know that their statements, while seemingly insignificant, meant a lot to a small nation with a little country in the middle of a hostile neighborhood and United Nations.

Consider sending a note to your home country and the UK (fax 212 745 9316)  as well, relaying your disappointment.  You are welcome to attach this article.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Tolerance at the Temple Mount

Names and Narrative: CNN’s Temple Mount/ Al Aqsa Complex Inversion

Active and Reactive Provocations: Charlie Hebdo and the Temple Mount

Visitor Rights on the Temple Mount

The Arguments over Jerusalem

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