Israel in Oslo - Britain in Stockholm

As a Londoner I have the feeling that recent events have finally brought Britain and Israel closer together than they have ever been.

Last weekend Britain’s brand new Prime Minister Gordon Brown was laying a wreath in memory of the victims of the London bombings in July 2005 even as his police were still rounding up suspects in the new bombings of July 2007. At the same time, he issued an order forbidding his ministers to utter any linkage of Islam with the bombings and to expunge the phrase ‘war on terror’ from all his government’s communications. And with that policy firmly established, he felt able to reduce the national threat condition from ‘critical’ back down to ‘severe’. Brown’s new Jewish foreign secretary – the son of holocaust survivors – has been gushing with praise for Hamas and their critical assistance in the freeing of the BBC’s Gaza correspondent with his head still attached to his body. He feels that now is the time to ‘engage’ with Hamas and is likely to be at the forefront of moves to restore EU funding to the terrorist group regardless of their failure to renounce terror or recognise the existence of Israel.

With a UK general election not far off, you would have thought the opposition Conservative party might have a different approach. Some hopes! Its own new leader David Cameron seems more worried about global warming and his carbon footprint than anything else. His response to the latest act in the UK jihad is the parachuting of Sayeeda Warsi into no less than the chamber of the House of Lords as the first Muslim member of his shadow cabinet. The new Baroness, who supports ‘engaging with’ Hamas killers, will be responsible for our ‘community cohesion’. Cohesion is of course an area of specialist knowledge for jihadists who have experimented widely with unsuspecting civilians in crowded buses and restaurants.

What all this amounts to is the most blatant denial of the true message of 7/7 2005 and this month’s repeat performance which failed only by the merest fluke; or as I would prefer, by the grace of God. The speed of the British government’s capitulation in the face of a clear and present threat from the fifth column embedded in its health and other public services, makes even France look like a safer place for those who seek freedom and security.

Whilst all this was going on, the Israeli government was also denying reality. Still not cured of its Oslo delusions, Israel is again sending guns and writing out more hundred-million-dollar cheques payable to those sworn to its destruction. At the same time, Ehud Olmert draws up his latest list of terrorists to be freed in exchange for … nothing and no-one. It is unlikely that a single cabinet member doubts that the money will find its way to Hamas to fund more terrorism against Israel. Nor will anyone doubt that many of the freed terrorists will be back to murder more Jews. But still they send the guns, the money and the prisoners.

Oslo is a delusion of peace, a fantasy that by throwing more meat to the lions, they will become vegetarians. Usually the most effective cure for such mental illness is shock treatment. There is therefore hope that last year’s rocketing from Lebanon and the second round of war which seems likely to follow very soon on a more extended front, will ultimately silence the voices of Oslo.

Where Britain is concerned, it’s plain to see that the government’s reaction is rooted in fear. Like that BBC correspondent who now speaks so highly of Hamas, Britain had her blindfold taken off on 7/7 and found herself held hostage by a community of 2 million Muslims and the threat of civil disobedience if any of their sensibilities were offended. The rabid ‘cartoon demonstrations’ in European cities and the torching of cars and property in over 3 weeks of rioting in France were messages that a fearsome British government took to heart. It had two choices: Churchill or Chamberlain. It chose Chamberlain.

Hostages often suffer from a condition known as the Stockholm Syndrome. This is named after a failed bank robbery in the Swedish capital some 30 years ago. The bank staff developed a bond with their captors and did everything possible to protect them from the police surrounding the bank. This friendship extended long after the criminals were jailed when former hostages visited them and one was rumoured to have become engaged with her former captor.

Britain was that quiet Swedish bank which, one sunny day, saw evil walking through its doors. Two years ago, within days of the 7/7 carnage in London, government leaders were wringing their hands not over what the jihadists had done, but what Britain had done. Instead of demanding that Muslim leaders dissociate from and condemn the action, British parliamentarians went Mosque-hopping with reassurances ‘old chap’ that everything’s okay. Taken together with Gordon Brown’s performance in this latest round of terror, there can be no doubt that this is a classic case of Stockholm.

Whilst Israel’s prognosis now looks better, Britain appears to be beyond recall. There seems to be no limit to what may be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. Last month a judge walked out when a fully veiled defendant appeared in his courtroom accused of vandalising an apartment from which she was evicted. The judge now faces suspension.

Of course it is the case that whilst not all Muslims are terrorists, all terrorists these days seem to be Muslims. The vast majority are simply too silent, either out of fear or plain complicity. Some community leaders have condemned the killing as contrary to the teachings of the Koran and a blasphemy of the Prophet. But if that is the case, why is this blasphemy not being protested in Europe’s capitals with as much force and vitriol as the cartoons of Mohammed?

That is the question Gordon Brown should have put to Muslim community leaders. They need to become active partners in the fight against jihad terrorism. By ordering the denial of Islamist terror Prime Minister Brown spat on the victims of 7/7 and their long suffering families. It would have been more appropriate to see Muslim clerics laying wreaths in their memory, and to beg forgiveness for their misguided brothers.

[A slightly edited version of my above article appeared on Arutz Sheva]