When I invented the term ‘cry bully’ in this very magazine ten years ago, I had no idea how much bigger both theory and practice could get. It already seemed to have reached such a tipping point that surely ‘The Grown-ups in the Room’ of the time, or subsequently, would put a tin lid on such flagrant stupidity. I wrote, in part:
This is the age of the cry bully, a hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper. They are everywhere, these duplicit Pushmi-Pullyus of the personal and the political, from Celebrity Big Brother to the frontline of Islamism… Cry bullies do end up isolated, as their determination to be victim and victor eventually wears out the patience of the most forbearing friend. But they can also be found hanging around in gangs; then, cry bullies really come into their own and are not just irritating but dangerous. Islamism is the ultimate cry bully cause; on one hand stamping around murdering anyone who doesn’t agree with you, on the other hand yelling ‘ISLAMOPHOBIA’ in lieu of having a real adult debate about the merits of your case…The British-born Islamist recently sentenced to 12 years had no problem posing with severed heads (‘Heads, kaffirs, disgusting’) and asking friends back home to send him condoms which he planned to use raping women captured as ‘war booty’ but then claimed to be having nightmares and suffering from depression in order to escape jail.
But no, a decade on it’s become pretty much the default setting of our times. This can lead to funny faux pas, such as doofuses like Owen Jones – who was partly the inspiration for my savagely amusing creation – using the phrase about other people, unaware that he who dealt it, smelt it, to quote my unspeakably vulgar schoolmates on the subject of flatulence. On the other hand, it can lead to very serious developments such as aforementioned political Islamism seeking special protection via making Islamophobia illegal, delicate little blushing violet that it also somehow is.
In the wake of the Manchester synagogue attack, we might ask ourselves why the Jews in particular have attracted the ire of Islamic extremists
In the wake of the Manchester synagogue attack, we might ask ourselves why the Jews in particular have attracted the ire of Islamic extremists. Pretending that it’s about Gaza is the easy way out; I think it’s far more likely that the root of the trouble lies with the fact that Judaism was the first monotheistic (Abrahamic, if you like, which I do, as it further annoys Islamists) religion, around some 2,000 years before Islam. We know they’ve got a bee in their bonnets about being first; see the ridiculous idea that one does not ‘convert’ to Islam but rather ‘reverts’ to it, as we’re all born that way.
Let’s start with A for Archaeology. There’s always some humourless saddo who thinks that they’re pointing out for the first time that – ho ho ho – there are stamps saying ‘Palestine: Land of the Bible’ in the early part of the century. But – ha ha ha – that was merely what the British occupiers called Zion, when the fag-ends of the Ottoman Empire were being tied up. If we’re talking about history, earlier this year a silver coin dating from the 6th to 5th centuriesBC was found in what was then the Kingdom of Judah; on the other hand, the ‘Palestinian’ flag was adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, becoming the official flag of ‘Palestine’ in 1988. That means that Polaroid cameras (first one on sale in 1948) go back further than the official ‘State of Palestine flag’. Some history!
Being well aware what cry bullies the Islamists on their doorstep are, Israel has bent over backwards many times in order to prevent a boo-hoo that could turn into a suicide bombing. You only have to think of the Temple Mount, the holiest site for Jews, originating in the first century; on top of that, the Muslim conquerors of Jerusalem built the Dome of the Rock in the seventh century. A child could work out who should have ownership. Yet neither Jews nor Christians are allowed to pray in this place which is so precious to both of them.
You’ll often hear state-approved ‘comedians’ mocking Christianity on their tragic little panel shows, but the Koran is strictly off limits. Quiz them on this and you might hear some bluster about ‘punching up’ not ‘punching down’. (In a similar vein, those who refused to back the Charlie Hedbo journalists, like Laurie Penny, accused the magazine of ‘racist trolling’.) But this focus on Christianity once again seems a prime example of cry bullyism. Christianity is now the most persecuted religion in the world; Islam is the fastest growing, and the richest. Tell a migrant worker-slave in Qatar or a gay man in Dubai or a spirited woman in Iran that Islam is powerless. How come none of the fearless Radio 4 drolls dares to get a rise out of the bit in the Hadiths which tell us that:
‘The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews’
All those talking trees and flying horses; I suppose a Disney film’s out of the question?
Do Islamists hate Jews in particular because they’re so clever? We’re always being told that the Arab world invented everything from algebra to zebra crossings, but it’s odd then that Jews should have won 22 per cent of Nobel prizes – despite comprising less than 0.2 per cent of the world’s population. In everyday life, Jew-hating adherents of Islam seem remarkably thick; I don’t recall one Jewish medic or BBC reporter boasting openly on social media about how much he hated Muslims, but the reverse is woefully evident, the latest being the charming doctor father of the Manchester murderer, who is reported to have praised the October 7th terrorists as ‘Allah’s men on earth.’
I can’t stress enough that it’s not just the 1948 rebooting of the ancient land of Israel which makes Jew-haters of all stripes hate Jews. That’s just a handy excuse. Amos Oz famously wrote that ‘When my father was a young man in Vilnius, every wall in Europe said, “Jews go home to Palestine.” Fifty years later, when he went back to Europe on a visit, the walls all screamed, “Jews get out of Palestine.”’
Islamists generally see others than themselves as not quite human. Slavery is still a thing which we talk about white people doing to non-white people in the past; not only was Islamic slavery a huge thing, it’s still going on, whether those slaves be sexual (remember Isis behaviour towards the Yazidis) or otherwise. Contrast this with the egalitarian nature of the Jews, who were particularly active in the establishment of urban trades unions when they came here in large numbers at the end of the 19th century onwards. The Jews have always been grown-ups; they never expected to be babied – George Weidenfeld arrived in London from Vienna as a young refugee in 1938 with limited English and a postal order for 16 shillings and six pence. But the babying of Islamism in this country is beyond belief. At least Angela Rayner and her ‘Islamophobia’ law have been sent packing, with the new Muslim Home Secretary indicating that she believes such a preferential law might do more harm than good.
Why should we care, as Gentiles? Because we’re human. Because the Jews have added so much to our country. And if altruism doesn’t appeal to you, remember that ‘After Saturday comes Sunday’ – a phrase used by fundamentalists to intimidate Christians in the Middle East. Already across Africa the kidnappings, rapes and mass murders of Christians by Islamist extremists are common.
In short, Islamism, you need to stop being the world’s biggest cry bully.
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