Douglas Murray

A lot of people dream of having what is known as ‘screw you’ money. In my observation, this is not simply in order to be able to live in a castle or own Ferraris or Van Dycks, or whatever is your wont. It is in order to be able to say those fine, demotic words to whomever you like. It should be noted that most people dream of saying the words to someone who is perceived to be above them: someone to whom they might once have been subservient in some way. A boss, for instance. Yet one of the strangest things about the mega-rich is that they do not actually say ‘screw you’ when they ought to.

Some people may have noticed the happy new guidance released between Christmas and New Year by the National Police Chief’s Council. This guidance to police in England and Wales was that police officers ought to try to go to properties that have been burgled. Even better, they should try to do so within an hour of the burglary being reported. This seems to me to be an eminently sensible piece of advice. After all, if you get to the scene of a robbery within an hour, you might be able to track down the stolen goods, log evidence while the crime scene is fresh, or even – imagine – find a burglar. You might wonder why this guidance needed to be given in the first case. After all, there are more than 1,000 break-ins every day in this country.

There’s an old joke about the United Nations having a football team. ‘But who would they play?’ it goes. ‘Why, Israel of course.’ There may not be much humour in it, but there’s plenty of truth. Despite Israel being set up by UN vote, it has been the world’s premier forum for Israel-bashing, particularly since the country won wars of self-defence in 1967 and 1973. Perhaps the most notorious moment was the ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution in 1975, when the foundations of the Jewish state were suddenly under assault. On that occasion the late great Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan gave one of the best counter-blast speeches ever given on the floor of the UN. As did Chaim Herzog, the father of Israel’s current president.

Does anyone remember ‘Free Tibet’? Way back when, in the olden days of about the 1990s, if you knew nothing much about the world or politics but wanted to show you generally had the right outlook on things it was normal that you might have a sticker or a poster, or even go on a protest saying ‘Free Tibet’. It didn’t do any good, of course. Tibet remains doggedly unfree. For it turns out that the Chinese Communist party is not especially interested in the opinions of a few Devon-based sandal-wearers. The CCP occupies Tibet still, and continues to torture, repress and kill anyone there who stands against its brutal occupation.

There is a stage direction in The Glass Menagerie in which Tennessee Williams describes a tune that will recur through the play. Like a piece of delicately spun glass, he says, it should summon the thought of ‘How beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken’. The cleverer young people want to live lives of hope, not demanding solutions, but finding them I think of that line often. Not least this week when two young protestors from Just Stop Oil took their hammers to the ‘Rokeby Venus’ of Velázquez at the National Gallery. Last year their cohorts threw soup over Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’. Others glued themselves to the frame of another Van Gogh and others still to the frame of Constable’s ‘The Hay Wain’.

Ever since the atrocities in Israel more than two weeks ago, I have had one main thought. Yes, Israel has its problems. But we also have ours. Subsequent weeks have borne that instinct out. For years I have noticed that in all the wars and exchanges involving Israel – no matter the actual size or scale of the conflict – the reaction at home grows worse each time, not least in our institutions. Last weekend there were massive demonstrations against Israel in London, as in cities across the West. And I say ‘against Israel’ with care. These protests have not been dedicated to finding a compromise between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Few acknowledged Hamas’s massacre. Still the crowds just turn up, as they are expected to again this Saturday.

There are times when you wonder how history happened. And other times when you realise how it did. The past two weeks have been one such time. The inconsistencies, naturally, have been legion. People who label everything as aggression, including microaggressions, who believe that speech is violence and that misgendering a trans person is ‘literal genocide’ are the same people who have spent the past fortnight with nothing to say, or have adopted an ‘it’s complicated’ stance, when Jews are slaughtered in their hundreds. All those people who filled the streets when a Minnesotan cop killed George Floyd seemed to have no solidarity left when Hamas came for the Jews.

What follows may suggest that I require an ‘intervention’. Readers might even interpret this column as a cry for help. Please let me assure you that it is not. But I have just learned of a new addiction, and it is possible that I suffer from it. It is not an addiction to crack cocaine. Nor is it an addiction to alcohol, though I like to think I do my bit. No – it is an addiction I have just learned about thanks to Idris Elba: ‘Work addiction.’ The actor, who you doubtless know from The Wire, Luther and other dramas, gave an interview this week in which he said he has been in therapy for the past year because he is a ‘workaholic’. After seeing a therapist he has realised his addiction to work is ‘unhealthy’.

Long-time readers may recall that I take a special interest in the art of corruption. And this week America has thrown up a delicious example. Democrat Senator Robert Menendez was indicted last week on bribery charges. This follows a raid on the New Jersey Senator’s home in which federal agents found more than $480,000 hidden in clothing and piled up in his closets. The agents also found 13 gold bars. You have to go back to the 1990s for the last time that parliament was seriously accused of being ‘up for sale’ Menendez denies the charges and said on Monday that it has simply been his habit, for some years, to take thousands of dollars in cash from his personal savings account and store it around the house.