The Spectator.co.uk Melanie Phillips Blog

From enlightenment into darkness at Oxford and Cambridge

2010-02-09T20:24:00+00:00

From the blog of the Community Security Trust – the self-defence organisation of the British Jewish community:

Last night Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, spoke at the Oxford Union. A meeting that was frequently disrupted by members of the audience reached its low point when one person shouted “Kill the Jews” in Arabic, before being thrown out of the meeting.

... There is a detailed account of the meeting on The edge of where? blog, which has this revealing vignette about the attitude of at least one person in the audience:

Outside the debating chamber, all the while, protestors were shouting ‘free free Palestine from the river to the sea’. When Ayalon argued that this chant amounted to a call for Israel’s destruction, and asked where Israeli Jews would have to go for Palestine to be free ‘from the river to the sea’, the woman sitting next to me said ‘back to where they came from!’ I couldn’t resist and had to ask her where exactly it was that she expected Jews to go ‘back to’, to which she replied, ‘well you’re in England,

Travelling

2010-02-08T18:39:31+00:00

I am travelling over the next couple of days, and will post when I can.

American tea-party dishes hopey-changey thing

2010-02-08T13:34:41+00:00

As all sentient people on the planet are now aware, Sarah Palin is a figure of extreme derision. She has been mocked for her ignorance of the world beyond Wasilla, Alaska, her total absence of education let alone sophistication, her wince-worthy wordplay, her homespun hicksville homiletics, her God-bothering gabbiness, her chavvy dysfunctional family (is she the grandmother of her son?? is she the mother of her grandson???), her hair, her glasses, her hockeyness, her beyond caricaturableness...has there ever been such a total idiot and embarrassment in political life?

How is it then that such an all-time airhead who, we were reliably informed, was ‘toast’ when she bowed out of Alaskan politics, has now put herself at the head of the most significant grassroots movement in America, the ‘Tea-Party’ populist revolt? The ‘Tea-Party’ movement started as a set of word-of mouth spontaneous protests against big government in general and Obama’s policies in particular; it caught fire and has now grown into a force big enough seriously to discomfit the Obamatons (and also the Republicans). As with all movements which reflect the passionately held views of ordinary people that they are not being listened

Dying for new roads?

2010-02-08T14:50:42+00:00

Hours after the Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth warned of likely UK casualties in the new major offensive against the Taleban in Afghanistan, two British soldiers were blown up by a roadside bomb. This brings the total of British military dead to 255 – the same number that were killed in the Falklands war in 1982.

The BBC reported of this fresh surge in Afghanistan:

4,000 UK service personnel were expected to take part in the offensive - with 15,000 coalition forces in total due to be involved in the operation. If the numbers are correct, it would dwarf the largest British military operation so far in Afghanistan - Operation Panther’s Claw, which left 10 UK soldiers dead and many others seriously wounded.

Mr Ainsworth said: ‘Of course casualties are something we have to come to expect when we’re involved in these operations and people have had that brought home to them. This is not a safe environment and it doesn't matter how much kit and equipment we provide for them, we cannot entirely make these operations risk-free.’

The reason Ainsworth is warning so heavily about likely

The phosphorus cloud over Ha'aretz

2010-02-03T16:31:33+00:00

Two days ago, the BBC ran with a story that the Israel Defence Force had disciplined two senior officers for firing white phosphorus shells at a UN compound in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, endangering the lives of civilians. Given the enormous traction that had been given to claims that Israel had used phosphorus shells illegally in Gaza, with accusations that it had thereby recklessly endangered civilians and injured them through burns, the story was damaging. Even though it appeared that this had been a one-off breach of the international rules – which permit the use of white phosphorus in warfare to create either smoke or illumination but not to endanger civilians – rather than the wholesale unlawful practice which had been claimed, even one such incident was clearly a political setback. Accordingly the Times in particular – which had long been running a campaign that Israel had made unlawful use of white phosphorus and tried to cover it up – ran a news story headlined

Israeli officers get ‘slap on wrist’ for white phosphorus use in Gaza

while a (balanced) leading article opined:

A

Not waving but drowning

2010-02-02T17:49:40+00:00

The climate change zealots continue their free fall into utter ridicule. Yesterday, the government’s former Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, told the Independent that the

highly sophisticated hacking operation that led to the leaking of hundreds of emails from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia was probably carried out by a foreign intelligence agency.

Ah! Reds under the sea-bed! But by today King had retreated. The Guardian reported:

Sir David King admitted he possessed no inside information about the leaks of embarrassing emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, and had merely been speculating on material already in the public domain. His remarks to a journalist had been a ‘side-issue’, he said. But it emerged that he had been misinformed about key facts. One of his grounds for believing a high-powered team of professionals were behind the leak, he said, was that there had been a wide spread of emails going back decades ‘between very different people’. He told the Independent: ‘The emails date back to 1996, so someone

By the waters of denial they sit and weep...

2010-02-02T01:13:14+00:00

A few days ago, Analysis on BBC Radio Four featured a programme about environmentalism by Justin Rowlatt which concluded that the green movement was using climate change as a cover to smuggle in other agendas such as poverty or equality. No! You don’t say. It was a timid, tentative thesis; the fact is that from the start environmentalism has self-evidently been all about changing the nature of society rather than changing society’s views about nature. And of course Rowlatt’s concern was that these hidden agendas might only confirm people’s scepticism about the science of anthropogenic global warming, which as we all know is Settled and an Unchallengeable Consensus, amen.

Nevertheless when the BBC, no less, starts to allow an interviewee to start telling the truth like this:

I hate to say this – but there is a very strong –it’s very small – but there is a very strong green fascism in much of the environmental world. I’ve heard it said at meetings I’ve been at – that climate change is so important - democracy has to be sacrificed

something big is definitely happening. And that something

Censorship by intimidation

2010-01-30T18:55:05+00:00

A study by the University of Exeter’s European Muslim Research Centre claims that a rise in the number of hate crimes against Muslims in London is being encouraged by mainstream politicians and sections of the media. In the Guardian Vikram Dodd has written:

The study mentions no newspapers or writers by name, but alleges that the book Londonistan, by the Mail writer Melanie Phillips, played a part in triggering hate crimes.

The text of this study, Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime by Dr Jonathan Githens-Mazer and Dr Robert Lambert, does not in fact mention my book Londonistan (although it is cited in the bibliography). What it says is this:

Islamophobic, negative and unwarranted portrayals of Muslim London as Londonistan and Muslim Londoners as terrorists, terrorist sympathisers and subversives in sections of the media appear to provide the motivation for a significant number of anti-Muslim hate crimes.

For Dodd (and if they did mean my book, the authors of this study) to single me out in this way is a crude smear which bears no relation to the facts. In my book -- as in

A class act

2010-01-29T16:18:59+00:00

Tony Blair is still giving his evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, but here are some of my thoughts so far.

First, he struck me as remarkably nervous, especially in the first hour or so – he seemed to relax a bit after the first break – and even more strikingly, appeared to be positively bursting to get across the points he wanted to make. His agitation in that early session struck me as the reaction of someone who has been deeply wounded by the way he has been demonised – the particular anguish which comes from being vilified from telling the truth and seeing it twisted and distorted to such an extent that it become impossible to challenge what becomes mass hysteria.

Second, at time of writing Blair has more than held his own. So much for all the feverish comments by media commentators that all the former mandarins who had given evidence to Chilcot and who suddenly discovered their principled opposition to the war were stacking up killer evidence against Blair which would achieve the deeply desired objective of leaving him unable to deny that he took Britain into an

Goldsmith speaks at last -- but is anyone listening?

2010-01-27T21:56:51+00:00

In a sure-footed day-long appearance at the Chilcot inquiry today, the former Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith finally let us see how he came to change his initial opinion of the legality of going to war in Iraq without a second UN resolution. Tested repeatedly by the hostile questioning of the ex-Foreign Office mandarin Sir Roderic Lyne – who was clearly wearing on his sleeve the hearts of the Foreign Office legal advisers who gave evidence yesterday that in their view the war was illegal – Goldsmith resolutely held his ground and didn’t let Lyne get away with a single throwaway reference (and there were many) which Goldsmith held to mis-state the true meaning of the key Security Council Resolution 1441.

The encounter between Goldsmith and Lyne told us a very great deal – not least about Lyne’s spectacular tunnel vision. The argument between them turned, inevitably, on the core issue of whether 1441 did or did not require a further Security Council decision to furnish the legal authority for war. Initially Goldsmith, to whom Blair did not turn for advice on the matter until December 2002, thought this was probably the