A very stupid and dangerous mistake
Unbelievably, Israel -- of all countries -- has made the crisis for Britain’s Jews even worse
As if the situation for British Jews isn’t desperate enough, Israeli ministers have now unbelievably pulled the rug from under the feet of Israel’s defenders and handed an unexpected weapon to the enemies of Israel and the Jewish people in Britain.
Astoundingly, Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, has said he is proud to host “British patriot” Tommy Robinson in Israel this month. Chikli has written on X:
Tommy is a courageous leader on the front line against radical Islam. At a time when Jews across Europe face rising antisemitism, it is vital to strengthen bonds with allies who refuse to be silent. He has proven himself a true friend of Israel and the Jewish people unafraid to speak the truth and confront hate…Together with friends like Tommy Robinson, we will build stronger bridges of solidarity, fight terror and defend western civilisation and our shared values.
The Speaker of the Knesset, Amir Ohana, has similarly posted on X:
Looking forward to hosting you at the Knesset mate! You’re doing a great service to your country but more than that…Western civilisation is under attack — and it’s our duty to stand firmly together — and win. See you in Jerusalem!
This is utterly appalling.
Robinson is not a British patriot. He is a former member of the neo-Nazi British National Party. He is also a former football hooligan; his real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, and he adopted “Tommy Robinson” as his nom-de-guerre in homage to a football hooligan of that name. While it’s possible for people with even such a history to eventually see the light and reform themselves, Robinson’s personal history displays recurrent violence, intimidation, incitement and contempt for the rule of law.
He has numerous criminal convictions, including one for assault. In 2021, he was handed a five-year stalking ban after he turned up at the home of a journalist — who was writing about his alleged misuse of donations from supporters — falsely branded her partner a paedophile and threatened to return to her home. The magistrate said Robinson had sought to “coerce and control” the journalist to “stop her going about her lawful business” and that he “clearly poses and continues to pose a risk to the complainant’s physical and psychological wellbeing”.
Robinson is not “on the front line against radical Islam”. He incites hatred of all Muslims. His inflammatory rhetoric and frequent false allegations have reportedly helped incite dysfunctional people to commit acts of violence against them indiscriminately.
After Darren Osborne rammed a van into a crowd of worshippers leaving London’s Finsbury Park mosque in 2017, killing a grandfather and injuring several others, Sir Mark Rowley, the current head of London’s Metropolitan Police, said there was “no doubt” that material posted online by people including Robinson drove Osborne to target Muslims for attack. In response, Robinson said, “I’m gonna find Mark Rowley.” This remark has never been explained, but we can all draw our own conclusions.
The shared values of western civilisation do not include inciting unprovoked violence against Muslims, stalking a female journalist or threatening to “find” a police officer who has said something disobliging.
In 2018, Robinson was jailed after defying a court order and live-streaming comments that threatened to derail the linked criminal trials of Muslim grooming-gang members — behaviour that under English judicial procedure risked causing the collapse of the trials. It was moreover the second time he had behaved like this, having defied a court ruling after the first occasion not to do it again. Yet these defendants were the very Muslim grooming-gang members that Robinson falsely claimed to be the lone voice in publicly calling out and condemning the authorities for not dealing with them. And yet as a result of his behaviour — twice — they might all have walked free.
Britain’s shared values do not include showing contempt for justice and the rule of law.
In 2021, Robinson lost a defamation case brought against him by a 15 year-old Syrian refugee who had been attacked on his school playing-field. A video showed him being dragged to the ground by his neck and then water being forced down his mouth, simulating “waterboarding”.
Robinson published two videos accusing the boy of violently assaulting and injuring a young girl and threatening to stab a second child. The boy sued for libel. The judge at the libel hearing categorically rejected all Robinson’s claims as wholly unreliable or dishonest, and served him with an injunction not to repeat them. In 2023, Robinson repeated them and was jailed for breaching the injunction.
Being “unafraid to speak the truth” does not involve spreading untruths about an individual. “Shared western values” do not involve doing the same thing again in direct contravention of the ruling of a court.
Yet, aided by a series of self-serving videos with credulous interviewers who failed to challenge him, Robinson has positioned himself preposterously as the nation’s champion of its core values and, posing as a martyr for free speech, claimed falsely that he is the only person to stand up against the Islamisation of Britain.
He has been duly showered with money by ignorant Americans who, alarmed by Muslim antisemitism and the movement to Islamise Britain, have told themselves that Robinson is a working-class hero disdained by a snobbish establishment. When he was jailed, Elon Musk described him ludicrously as a “political prisoner”.
Wrapping himself in the Israeli flag, Robinson has loudly championed Israel and denounced antisemitism. Maybe he is a sincere convert from the views he supported in his neo-Nazi days. Or maybe he is cynically using antisemitism as a way of transforming his reputation from a violent bigot into a righteous defender of the victims of bigotry.
Either way, the support of such a man is toxifying the defence of the Jewish people.The assumption that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” may not be true. Sometimes my enemy’s enemy is also my enemy.
In my 2006 book Londonistan, I was the first writer to sound the alarm about the authorities’ capitulation to the Islamisation of Britain. I have issued similar warnings ever since as this threat has become palpably worse and, as we can see, is increasing every day.
Robinson has now said the only Jews who are upset by his invitation to Israel are the “woke liberal elitist” Jews like the community’s representative body, the Board of Deputies, who want mass immigration and open borders — “the ones who have created the most hostile environment for ordinary Jews”. What?
I have little time for the Board of Deputies, nor the liberal Jews both on it and beyond who in my view subscribe to attitudes that are lethal to Jews, Britain and the West. However, I was under the impression that it was not elitist Jews but successive governments that had created mass immigration and open borders, and that it’s the current Labour government that’s been inciting and facilitating the most hostile environment for British Jews in living memory.
Moreover, I am extremely upset at this invitation and I am most definitely not a “woke liberal” Jew.
On the contrary, I know from first-hand experience what it is to be falsely smeared as “far right” simply for standing up against mass immigration and Islamisation, for upholding truth against lies and defending western civilisation against its destroyers. Tommy Robinson is not being, as some claim, falsely smeared as “far-right”. I know the true “far right” when I see it. Its adherents do not defend truth and civilisation. Along with both the Islamists and the far left, they are its nemesis.
While the cause of defending the nation’s integrity against Islamisation is a vital one, Robinson himself stands for extremism, thuggery and contempt for the rule of law. That’s not someone who is defending core British and western values: it’s someone who tramples all over those values.
How can the cause of Israel and the Jewish people, the most righteous cause on earth, possibly be said to be defended by a thug who shows such contempt for justice, order and the rule of law?
For Israeli ministers — Israeli ministers! — to link the defence of Jews, Britain and the west to a man who has a record of neo-Nazi extremism, thuggery, violence, incitement, intimidation and contempt for the rule of law is utterly shocking. It’s hard to exaggerate these Israeli ministers’ fathomless stupidity and ignorance.
Israel’s “Minister for Combating Antisemitism” and the Knesset Speaker have now made life even more dangerous for British Jews by giving wholly unnecessary ammunition to their mortal enemies — the Islamists and their fellow travellers — who are now able gloatingly to paint British Jews, Israel’s defenders and Zionism itself as being embraced by a man who people should more properly shun as a menace to decency and the rule of law.
As the appalling scenes in Britain have shown following the murderous terror attack on the Manchester synagogue, with mobs flying Palestinian terrorist flags running amok on London’s streets and with government ministers who have fuelled this incitement refusing to stop this near-pogrom behaviour while making stomach-churning statements of sympathy with the Jewish community, Britain is descending into a moral and civilisational sewer over Israel and the Jewish people.
It could scarcely have been imagined that Israel, of all countries, could have made this crisis for Britain’s Jews even worse. But that’s exactly what it’s now done.