Such is the level of rot in our public institutions, and so accustomed have we become to daily stories of inexplicable and indeed unforgivable asylum decisions, that it takes a lot nowadays for a story to come along that is genuinely jaw-dropping.
The Refugee Convention, the general right of asylum and our entire approach have been proven to be utterly broken
But a story in this week’s Sunday Times is just that, and should be a genuine line-in-the-sand moment. The UK granted asylum protection, and then British citizenship, to a former bodyguard of a leader of Hamas. At the point at which he was awarded refugee status, it was public knowledge that he had worked for the Hamas chief, was the son of another senior Hamas official, and had been arrested in Egypt, allegedly for operating a tunnel used to smuggle firearms into Gaza. He subsequently allegedly went about plotting to murder Jews in Europe to mark the second anniversary of October 7th.
If this disgusting sequence of events were not enough, the man was granted an extraordinary 100-year anonymity order by our justice system. The Sunday Times has successfully challenged that order so that he can be named in this country once criminal proceedings against him have concluded.
The facts of the case speak for themselves, but there are a few things worth noting. First, this story comes just a few weeks after that Home Office whistleblower said that just one in a hundred asylum claims were genuine and revealed the deep dysfunction within the asylum decision-making process.
Every critic of the Home Office, everyone who has been concerned about how the suicidal empathy of our system risks admitting into our country people who pose a national security threat, has been vindicated. Indeed, this story suggests they were probably understating the case. It’s even worse than feared. The entire system, our very processes of government, stand ruthlessly exposed as not just shambolic but deeply perverse. It is worth remembering that while the state grants refuge to Hamas terrorists, it found the wherewithal last year to arrest blogger Pete North at his home late at night over a meme beginning ‘Fuck Hamas’, which went on to criticise Palestine and Islam. What does this say about our wayward priorities? What does it do for our confidence in the state?
Yet we should not be surprised. Our capital earned the moniker ‘Londonistan’ in the 90s. We let in Abu Hamza, Abu Qatada and Omar Bakri. Hamza (whose wife, it was revealed this week, is living alone in a £1.7 million five-bedroom council house in West London and about to get a taxpayer-funded refurbishment) was granted British citizenship in 1986; Bakri was granted ILR in 1993 and Qatada was granted refugee status in 1994. In 2023, a Hamas chief, Mumammad Qassem Sawalha, was alleged to have been living since 2003 in a London council house ‘whilst masterminding plots’ (he has not faced any charges in the UK).
And not only do we live with the consequences of our past insanities, we continue in this manner, storing up greater perils for the future.
For are we not granting visas to Gazan university students? Indeed we are paying to bring them over to the UK (and, in the case of the Chevening scholars, paying for their whole tuition). The government thinks this an act of charity, compassion and humanity. But can we really say with confidence, having learnt now unequivocally of the scale of our state incompetence, that these students might not grow up to harbour an ideology that puts our Jewish population, or indeed any Britons, in danger?
It gives me no pleasure to say that. These are young people who have undoubtedly had a rough start in life, growing up in a war zone. But we must be honest. It would be a far greater moral failing, as Gad Saad puts it, for us to care more about exhibiting infinite tolerance and empathy that invoking our survival instinct.
Friends in Israel have already sent me messages about the Hamas bodyguard. It is playing out in the press there too. If the photographs of our Foreign Secretary shaking hands with the foreign minister of Iran in New York were not enough to convince Israelis that we have lost our way, this certainly will.
We should also remember that it was Mossad (and their German counterparts) that learnt of and disrupted the alleged terrorist attack planned for last October. We forget the importance of the UK’s security relationship with Mossad at our peril. Stationed in Tel Aviv at the time of our recognition of Palestine I tried to convince the Israelis that, although the political context was difficult, Britain could still be relied upon and that the UK, for all its problems, wasn’t as far gone as they believed. Faced with the news today that we apparently grant refuge in our country to Jew-hating terrorists, I am not sure I would know where to start in making those arguments now.
This scandal must be a turning point. The Refugee Convention, the general right of asylum and our entire approach have been proven to be utterly broken. We should scrap it and start again. We must take a wrecking ball to the entire perverse immigration legal system that makes a mockery not only of the British public’s wishes, but of our basic safety. Even now, the Sunday Times story does not make clear whether this Hamas guard has been stripped of his citizenship. It is an insult to every Brit to allow this man to call himself one of us, to allow him to call himself British.
We know that Burnham won’t do what’s ultimately required on asylum. But perhaps there is something he could do. His government could initiate a proper investigation into the workings of the Home Office and what is going wrong. Importantly, our current asylum system should be suspended for national security reasons until the review is concluded. Politicians too must face up to their role in all of this, including the Tories. Theresa May was Home Secretary when this Hamas bodyguard claimed asylum and was granted indefinite leave to remain.
There will be no serious self-reflection without such an investigation. In response to this story the Home Office stated simply ‘we take all steps necessary at all times to protect the nation’s security’. In 2018 we commissioned a major independent review for Windrush, which looked at policy, legislation, operations, decision-making and the culture of the Home Office. If we thought it important enough for Windrush, is it not important enough now?
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