Martin Jay: the link between Israel’s conflict and UK riots

Martin Jay: the link between Israel’s conflict and UK riots
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Rioting in the UK has taken up a great deal of media bandwidth for at least a week, following the fatal stabbing of three little girls in an unremarkable town called Southport. Within a very short space of time before the news spread on social media a number of cities in the north of England were under siege by rioting, white, poor disenfranchised people. The speed of this was interesting as was the motive. Without any doubt, the former came about from one Twitter account which claimed that the killer was Muslim. This was untrue. But as the saying goes, a lie moves like grease lightening while the truth is still getting its shoes on. Or something like that.

Racism was the spark which fuelled the riots and in particular a fortuitous hatred for Muslims. A further motivation of course, once the riots provided opportunity, was for looting, which is inevitable when people this poor are in control of the heated situation rather than the police.

But to give the riots context, what we should understand is that the overriding root cause is poverty. In these northern towns, which have concentrated numbers of poor, uneducated Brits, there was hope in 2016 when these voters chose Brexit in a referendum. The signal to the political elite in London was that something has to be done about immigration – legal or illegal – as these poor white communities were beginning to feel that as immigrants arrive and soak up public facilities and take cash out of the system, that they were being sidelined. The Brexit vote from these towns was very clear and these communities have certainly been patient. But the more recent vote to kick the Tories out was a second signal. You’ve failed us on immigration.

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After just four weeks in office, Kier Starmer has done nothing at all about boat crossings from France. In practical terms nothing at all. And so the fake asylum seekers – as that is what nearly all of them are, looking for a life of free handouts in the UK – are still coming, as people have seen on social media. The stabbing was the breaking point for these communities but interestingly it was also a tipping point for far-right groups who exploited it quite handsomely.

Migrants who have paid in excess of 10,000 pounds just to cross the channel – a sum of money that none of these rioters will ever see in their lives in cash – are flowing, arriving in huge numbers. But it is the Muslims among them from Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Syria which are the issue.

At the core of the rioting is how social media peddled a lie about the identity of the killer, who, in reality was not a Muslim but from Rwanda. His parents came to Britain as part of a multicultural spasm that Tony Blair had in office of reaching out to diverse cultures even beyond Britain’s pink coloured areas of the map of the world. But it’s the fact that he was believed to be Muslim which should be a message to Kier Starmer that anti-Muslim hatred now in many of these cities is at a peak and he can’t just cast it off, mumbling something paternal about Islamophobia. Are we to assume that Starmer is not going to tackle the root cause of this? Or worse, use it as a tool to hit the far right while eroding even more civil liberties?

It was Christopher Hitchens who, when speaking to an audience in America warned them that “Islamophobia” is going to be a word, which when used against someone, will be to silence them in the UK. It’s already up and running and probably about to get a boost from Starmer or his utterly useless home secretary Yvette Cooper.

But shouldn’t we also look closer at how this Muslim hatred is being stirred? Where does it come from? While all this drama was making the news hours on Sky and BBC news, a second story barely made it at all. The self-imposed exile of Tommy Robinson in Cyprus. The far-right icon is trying to run from the UK law, which wants to jail him over a defamation issue, so he skipped the court summons and made a B line for Heathrow airport. Sunning himself while checking his social media posts, sleuths amateur or otherwise might ask what role does his own Twitter feed have in fanning the flames of Muslim hatred in the UK. The answer is quite considerable. And yet the same could be said for Nigel Farage whose social media activity is impressive. Of course, the difference between these two is not just that Robinson, not being a mainstream politician is under no obligation to declare where most of his funding comes from – Israel – whereas Farage would have to declare that income in his declaration as an MP. Both serve Israel’s bigger, longer aims to disrupt European societies by spreading fear and hatred not merely at immigrants but specifically at Muslims. And even Muslims who are British subjects.

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One can say with absolute certainty that Farage is not on the payroll of Israel, masked by an opaque network of offshore shell accounts, right? Perish the thought! And that Starmer will do all he can to appear to deal with the problem while actually doing nothing? Such Muslim-baiting though can end in those paying the bill weeping the most. As Iran prepares to retaliate against Israel and Netanyahu looks for the cunning way the UK and the U.S. can be dragged into a war in the Middle East, one has to look deeper and longer at Israel and its nefarious schemes to undermine European culture and its political landscape using Muslim hatred and disinformation with glee.

The author is an award winning journalist based in Morocco, working for a number of international titles while also the editor in chief of Maghrebi.org. He can be followed on twitter at @MartinRJay This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation.


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