I stand with Israel

I had a brief exchange of messages with a British Muslim bloke on social media who had asked me, very politely, why I had posted a picture of the Star of David with the words ‘I Stand With Israel’ underneath. A good question, really – I more usually think this kind of keyboard-warrior grandstanding embarrassing and self-promoting, all that light-a-candle-we-are-the-world- Je-Suis-Charlie cant. I succumbed this time because there was nothing much else I could do to express my horror at Saturday’s savagery and barbarism, other than maybe join the Israel Defense Forces.

Anyway, the online conversation lasted for precisely two exchanges before this courteous and apparently educated man informed me that the Jews controlled the world’s media. There had been no mention on his part, at any point, that the Hamas incursion and resultant bloody and gleeful murder of innocent citizens might have been taking things – y’know – a bit far. He would not condemn them. And then, very quickly, out came the usual rancid anti-Semitism.

Whatever you think of the state of Israel, what kind of human being are you that you might not merely excuse but even revel in the act of shooting a child in the head and abducting a grandmother? But then I found a statement put out by the Muslim Council of Britain, its only statement on the crisis, the beginning of which read: ‘The Muslim Council of Britain calls for an end to the violence in and around Gaza. The targeting of innocent civilians can never be excused or justified. In the coming days we may see a significant escalation which risks to only further perpetuate this cycle.’

The violence in Gaza? Um, aren’t you missing something? In that press release of 202 words of pious, purblind hypocrisy, there was not a single mention of the word ‘Hamas’ nor even a reference to the carnage of Saturday morning.