Brendan O’Neill

I have a question for Sally Rooney. Why are you perfectly happy to engage with cultural institutions in the UK, despite the various mad wars us Brits have waged in recent years, but you dodge like the plague cultural institutions in Israel because Israel is fighting a war in Gaza? Rooney, the celebrated Irish author of chick lit for people with PhDs, has reportedly put her name to a letter calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions that are ‘complicit in genocide’. Hundreds of other writers with virtue to advertise have apparently signed too. Arundhati Roy, Percival Everett, Rachel Kushner and others all say they will forswear Israeli ‘publishers, festivals, literary agents and publications’ that are ‘complicit in violating Palestinian rights’.

It is one year since the Jews suffered the worst act of anti-Semitic violence since the Nazi era, and what is the British left doing? Raging against the Jewish state. Hitting the streets in their thousands to fume against the nation that was the victim of that carnival of racist killing. They’re protesting not against the pogromists of Hamas who unleashed such horrors on 7 October 2023, but against the country and the people they did it to. It’s a new low It’s a new low. As Jews in Britain and around the world ready themselves for the painful commemoration of the slaughter of more than a thousand of their people, demonstrators have poured on to the streets of London and other cities to damn Israel as a ‘genocidal’ entity. You couldn’t wait?

Is Robert Jenrick plotting to surrender our sovereignty to the Israelis? Is the Tory leadership frontrunner engaged in some nefarious scheme to plaster our ports with the flag of the Jewish State? You could be forgiven for thinking so following the swirling hysteria that greeted his comments about having the Star of David at Britain’s entry points. ‘He wants to make us an outpost of Israel!’, every time-rich radical with the Palestine flag in his social-media bio wailed online. It’s poppycock, of course. The Jenrick-bashers essentially told on themselves Jenrick made his remarks at a gathering of the Conservative Friends of Israel at the Tory conference in Birmingham.

There is a Christian preacher, a woman, who has suffered the most heinous persecutions. She has been chased by mobs, arrested, unlawfully jailed and even stabbed. Where did this hellish hounding of a follower of Christ occur? Afghanistan, perhaps? Somalia maybe? Actually it was right here, in Britain. An angry mob formed around her Her name is Hatun Tash. She is an ex-Muslim originally from Turkey. She’s now a Christian convert and colourful street preacher. She regularly gave impromptu sermons at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, where she’s been known to hold up a desecrated copy of the Koran while spreading the word of Christ. Her style is not to everyone’s taste, but so what?

When you describe what happened, you realise how ridiculous it was. A woman was dragged to court for holding up a placard that featured a drawing of a palm tree with coconuts falling from it. Superimposed on two of the coconuts were the faces of Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak, who was Prime Minister at the time. And that was it. Hauled before magistrates for carrying a daft illustration through the streets. Anyone who doubted that our liberty to speak is in peril has surely been shaken awake now. So, yes, I believe it is hateful. But should it be illegal? No This is the case of Marieha Hussain, a 37-year-old Londoner and secondary-school teacher. Well, until she held aloft the infamous placard, which caused her to lose her job.

Forget two-tier policing – we need to talk about two-tier healthcare. Jess Phillips, Labour MP and Home Office minister, has reportedly said she was whizzed through an overcrowded A&E unit on account of her pro-Gaza campaigning. If this is true, it raises some truly troubling questions about the NHS.  ‘The doctor who saw me was Palestinian’, and ‘he was sort of like, “I like you. You voted for a ceasefire.”’ It was at an event at the Kiln Theatre in North London that Phillips implied that she received preferential treatment in a publicly funded hospital because of her position on the Palestine question. According to the Daily Mail, she told the audience about a distressing medical episode where her lips turned blue and she couldn’t breathe properly.

Why is there not more disquiet over Yvette Cooper’s promise to crack down on ‘harmful’ beliefs? To my mind it ranks as one of the most chilling political pledges of the modern era. The thought of a Labour government, or any government, imperiously decreeing which ideas are ‘harmful’ and which are benign leaves me cold. It’s a first step to tyranny and it needs to be walked back. A war on ‘harmful’ beliefs would give the government a blank cheque to demonise views that are old-fashioned, possibly unpopular or just not very PC The Home Secretary has commissioned a rapid review of ‘extremist ideologies’ as part of a new government counter-extremism strategy. She has vowed to come down hard on people who push ‘harmful or hateful beliefs’.

A flyer calling for the expulsion of an ethnic group from parts of London was widely shared online yesterday. There were also reports of menacing chants being made outside a place of worship. Were the far-right thugs of riotous Britain up to no good again? Actually, this time the bigotry was coming from the other side, from the self-styled anti-fascists of the radical left. I thought these protests were about riotous bigotry here at home, not conflicts in the Middle East? Yes, it seems yesterday’s anti-racist gatherings may not have been entirely anti-racist. A group called Finchley Against Fascism shared a virtual leaflet inviting people to gather in Finchley in north London to show their opposition to the bigotry and chaos of recent days.

A Sky News reporter having his microphone grabbed and dropped to the ground might seem like a trifling story right now, given everything that’s happening in the country. But when the mic-grabber is none other than Sir Mark Rowley, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, it’s a different matter. A very different matter. In a democracy, cops don’t treat journalists in such a dismissive, degrading fashion. It was outside the Cabinet Office that Sir Mark outrageously interfered with the property of a reporter. The man from Sky News asked him if he was going to ‘end two-tier policing’. And instead of answering – or not answering, if he wants to be a big baby about it – Sir Mark yanked Sky’s mic and seemed to push it to the ground.

Will Southport’s suffering never end? First, the Merseyside town was rocked by the barbarism of a frenzied knife attack that left three girls dead and others critically injured. Then it was beset by unrest. Just hours after yesterday’s vigil for the slain girls, thugs clashed with cops. They set a police van on fire and threw bricks at a mosque. It was a grim orgy of destruction that insulted the quiet dignity the good people of Southport have shown since evil visited their town on Monday. Double standards have crept into the discussion of Southport’s disorder Everyone of good conscience will condemn yesterday’s riotous events. Thirty-nine officers were injured, eight seriously. As to the disorder at a mosque: that was an act of bristling bigotry, plain and simple.