Is Robert Jenrick plotting to surrender our sovereignty to the Israelis? Is the Tory leadership frontrunner engaged in some nefarious scheme to plaster our ports with the flag of the Jewish State? You could be forgiven for thinking so following the swirling hysteria that greeted his comments about having the Star of David at Britain’s entry points. ‘He wants to make us an outpost of Israel!’, every time-rich radical with the Palestine flag in his social-media bio wailed online. It’s poppycock, of course.
The Jenrick-bashers essentially told on themselves
Jenrick made his remarks at a gathering of the Conservative Friends of Israel at the Tory conference in Birmingham. Sporting a sweatshirt emblazoned with the words ‘Hamas are Terrorists’ – cue meltdown among the left’s Hamasniks – he proposed displaying a Star of David at ‘every airport and point of entry to our great country’ to show ‘we stand with Israel’. Before you knew it, fuming tweeters were conjuring up a hellish vision of Britain smothered in a foreign flag like some tragic colonial stooge.
They need to calm down. Jenrick’s comments were not brilliantly delivered, sure. But it is pretty clear he was only talking about having the Star of David symbol at e-gates, not fluttering from every pole in every port. He was recounting how, during his stint as immigration minister, he pushed for citizens of Israel to be able to enter Britain through our e-gates. Which would entail the Star of David being displayed at those gates. That’s it. A small, practical symbol to let visiting Israelis know which queue they should join, not the bending of Britain’s mighty knee to a distant state.
A source close to Jenrick clarified his comments when the storm blew up. It was a ‘rhetorical flourish’, he said, relating only to the use of e-gates. What was truly disturbing was not Jenrick’s proposal to grant ease of entry to our friends from the Jewish nation – a good idea, if you ask me – but the hopping-mad response to it. It is a testament to the activist set’s outsized dread of Israel that they were so swiftly consumed by visions of Britain bowing down to that beastly nation. It revealed more than they realise about their own biases.
The Jenrick-bashers essentially told on themselves. They exposed their own fear of Israeli power. Across social media, the frantic cry went up: our political class is loyal to a foreign entity! In the deeper recesses of virtual blather, there was talk of Britain’s treacherous leaders selling the country off to those highest of bidders – the Jews. That all this heated babble was provoked by a modest proposal to add a symbol to our e-gates is so telling. To some people everything involving Israel is by definition dodgy, if not dangerous.
Some now fear there might be an ‘Israel Test’ at Britain’s borders if the Tories get back into power. Alongside Jenrick’s e-gates suggestion, Kemi Badenoch has raised concerns about ‘the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel’. ‘That sentiment has no place here’, she said. Perhaps arrivals to our once great nation will not only be required to show their passports but also to negotiate their way through vast formations of Israeli flags while chanting ‘I love Israel’.
Again, let’s calm down. Badenoch is quite right to draw attention to the problem of migrants coming to Britain who ‘buy into Islamist ideology’ and thus ‘do not like Israel’. As she points out, this is ‘not all Muslim immigrants’. But it is some. And as a sovereign nation that is surely keen to know who is moving here, and whether they hold extremist views, that is something we should talk about, no? It is not racist to wish to protect Britain’s Jews from the harms of the Islamist ideology. Quite the opposite.
Here’s my question: might a so-called ‘Israel Test’ actually be a good idea? Of course it would have to be carefully deployed. Tourists and short-term visitors should not be asked what they think about Israel – it’s not our business. But people who want to make a home here – would it be so bad to inquire into their views on Israel? Visceral hatred for Israel is often a marker for a broader reactionary worldview. For anti-Jewish animus, even anti-Western animus. A free state is surely within its rights to ask aspiring migrants: ‘Do you hate us?’
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