And now, what she actually said...

Here is the text of the speech that Baroness Warsi actually delivered. Lots of gracious references to Christians and Jews -- but also note the disreputable suggestion that certain Old Testament passages provide excuses for stoning people to death for adultery and the like.

The fact is, however, that unlike Islam Judaism has always mediated such passages through rabbinic interpretation, with the result that such activities have not been tolerated. Jews pose no threat to anyone -- other than those who try to wipe them out. The sly insinuation that Islam is inherently no more dangerous to life, liberty and human rights than is Judaism is quite wickedly false -- and all too telling.

This is also why the equation of 'Islamophobia' with Jew-hatred is so odious. That's why some of those supporting Baroness Warsi today...

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Just whose side is Baroness Warsi on?

Where to start with Baroness Warsi? According to an advance report in the Daily Telegraph of a speech she is making this evening at Leicester University, the Tory party's co-chairman will say that

Islamophobia has ‘passed the dinner-table test’ and is seen by many as normal and uncontroversial.

Oh really? Prejudice is a hostile view which is unsupported by evidence. Clearly there are people who are indeed prejudiced against Muslims, usually on the grounds of their colour or some more general distaste for foreigners of any kind and their religion or customs. But such people certainly have passed no ‘dinner-table test’ of respectability.

No, what Warsi is calling ‘prejudice’ is talk about Muslim extremism or Muslim terrorism. Because look at what she reportedly goes on to say:

The notion that all followers of Islam can be

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The Iraq war witch-hunt (ctd)

The media hanging jury has seized upon the latest evidence by the former UK Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith to the Iraq War Inquiry as the all-but final nail in Tony Blair’s coffin as the man who took the UK into an illegal war. Everyone has seized on the following exchange to prove the case beyond any doubt by showing that Blair ignored the Attorney's advice that war would be illegal:

Do you consider that the Prime Minister’s words were compatible with the advice you had given him?

No...I was uncomfortable about them...my concern was that we should not box ourselves in by the public statements that were made, and create a situation which might then have to be unravelled.

But a careful reading of Lord Goldsmith’s admittedly tortuous reasoning reveals that this is a deeply misleading interpretation. For...

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The left's sleep of reason

As ever, Robin Shepherd sees the wider picture. Writing of the attack by the ultra-leftist Ha’aretz journalist Gideon Levy upon the decision by the Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak to leave Labour and found a new party, Atzmaut (Independence), Shepherd writes:

The reason for the collapse of the Israeli left is that the multi-culturalist, third-worldist assumptions that sustained it have taken a 10 year beating from which they were never going to recover. Ever since Barak’s peace offers, brokered by Bill Clinton in 2000 and 2001, were flatly rejected by the ‘moderate’ Palestinian leadership in favour of violence and rejectionism the core argument of the Israeli left that the Palestinian cause was based on legitimate grievances that could be addressed via the ‘land for peace’ formula simply lacked credibility inside the Israeli electorate. And given that social

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Cracks in the Wall of Western Bigotry?

Is the hitherto impregnable Wall of Western Bigotry beginning to show some hairline cracks?

In France, the Jewish umbrella organization CRIF reports the annulment of a pro-‘BDS’ (boycott divestment and sanctions) ‘debate’ this week at the prestigious École Normale Superieure in Paris. This event, which appears to have been organised by the far left, was to have featured such exemplars of truth and enlightenment as Leila Shahid, the PLO/PA spokesperson in Paris (who also happens to be a descendant of the 1930s Nazi henchman Mufti Amin al Husseini) along with an Arab member of Israel’s Knesset who belongs to the radically anti-Israel Arab Balad party (yes, you read that last bit right, all those who believe Israel is an ‘apartheid’ state – what a sick joke, eh).

Amongst those who had protested at this ‘debate’ were philosophers Bernard-Henri Levi and...

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Cultural and moral illiteracy

Here are two must-reads by Barry Rubin, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs. The first is about the misuse of the alleged misuse of the term ‘blood libel’, and the second is about Hillary Clinton’s morally illiterate comparison between the deranged Arizona gunman and the jihadists who committed the 9/11 atrocities. Here’s a sample of the latter:

She is doing Western-speak and particularly American-speak. This includes the concept of building agreement and defusing conflict by persuading your interlocutor that you have a lot in common.

You've got terrorism!
We've got terrorism!
Let's get together and fight terrorism!

That sounds very effective...to somebody who doesn't know anything. They might expect those Arab students to rise from their seats and say, ‘Hey, those Americans aren't bad at all!’ In fact, if they don't get

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