Since the Manchester atrocities changed everything, I’ve started to think in terms of targets. Not just where’s next—Jews have been worrying about that for a long time—but the things our enemies are trying to take down.
As ever, the Jews are at the heart of the bullseye. But it is undeniable that the ring around that bullseye is Britain and the outer ring is the West. That is what is at stake. They are coming for us all.
Ask any Gaza protester on the streets of London, or Edinburgh, or Manchester, for their views of Britain and the West and listen to the reply. Ask them for the particulars of the conflict in the Middle East—what river? What sea?—and you’ll find that it was never about the Palestinians at all.
They don’t raise a placard when Palestinians are killed by other Palestinians, Muslims are killed by other Muslims, or anybody is killed by anybody unless it involves the Jews. Tomorrow, October 7th, they are going to be marching again.
Antisemitism? Of course. But it is also an expression of deep antipathy towards our own culture, heritage and society, the very things that gave the world the most vibrant flourishing it has ever known.
This is the idea at the heart of my new book, Never Again? How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself, which came out on the day of the Manchester attack and has since become a bestseller. The betrayal has been profound. It will be our undoing.
Truly, our enemies have won their recruits. Ask yourself this important question:
What does Hamas want us to think? On October 7, 2023, most people understood that jihadism was the problem.
After two years of relentless disinformation, however, we have been brainwashed to believe that the problem is Israel, and Hamas arose simply as “resistance” to “oppression”.
It’s a question of carts and horses. The fact that it defies reality—there hasn’t been an “occupation” of Gaza since 2005, when Israel unilaterally withdrew and received only Hamastan as thanks—doesn’t seem to matter. We are thinking what Hamas wants us to think.
Why has this happened?
Because Israel targets children. Of course, that is untrue; like any democratic army, the IDF does its utmost to avoid harming civilians, especially children. It is only the jihadis who do that. But this is the narrative pushed by Hamas, the UN and the media.
Tragically, children lose their lives in every conflict, even without an enemy that uses human shields. In this one, however, those awful casualties have been elevated to eclipse everything else: the context, the morality, the laws and norms of war. Why? Because that’s what pulls on our heartstrings the hardest. That’s what convinces us Israel is the problem.
It was no surprise, therefore, that when he launched his assault on the Heaton Park synagogue, Jihad al-Shamie reportedly shouted, “this is what you get for killing our children”. There you have it. The blood libel, vintage 1144. How many more lives will it claim?
It’s a question of propaganda. Ask yourself this: When’s the last time you saw a picture of a dead or wounded Hamas terrorist on television? The answer will likely be “never”. No, you are only ever exposed to suffering civilians, especially suffering children. Why?
The most obvious questions are the ones we never ask. What is going on here? What are they trying to get us to think? Edit out one group of combatants in a war and what you are left with is a “genocide”.
The truth is as contemptible as it is clear. In this struggle of the West against jihadism, our elites are siding with the enemy. That is why Keir Starmer’s recognition of a Palestinian state, offered without demanding the release of the hostages or the surrender of Hamas, was such an insult. It gave Number Ten’s seal of approval to the belief that Israel, not Hamas, is the true evil.
For its part, Hamas celebrated and congratulated our Prime Minister. And they had assumed that only Jeremy Corbyn was their “friend”! A couple of weeks later, they were celebrating once again, this time after the murders in Manchester, while Sir Keir mouthed his empty platitudes.
Let’s not beat around the bush: Britain now believes bullshit. The real problem, people think, is not the gang of jihadi butchers that started this war with an orgy of depravity and perpetuates it by refusing to free the captives. The problem is the democracy—the flawed democracy, of course, as this is the only variety ever available—that is fighting for its people. Fighting for us.
Fighting for us? Yes, fighting for us. Consider it this way. Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, all jihadi groups, from Islamic State to Al Qaeda, can be traced back to that pernicious, global group.
As I explain in Never Again?, in 2015, the government commissioned the late Sir Charles Farr, former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and Sir John Jenkins, His Majesty’s former ambassador to Riyadh, to produce a detailed report about the Brotherhood.
The Jenkins-Farr report exposed how it is deeply embedded in Britain, which became one of its main headquarters after it was banned from many Arab countries. It holds jihadi violence as a last resort, preferring to proceed in increments over several generations to bring a society under the control of Sharia. Over the decade since, the problem has only got worse.
A recent study found that British Muslims were more likely to have a positive than a negative view of Hamas; only one in four British Muslims believed that Hamas committed murder and rape in Israel on October 7; and almost half of British Muslims believed that Jews had too much power over government policy.
Many of them, in fact, agree with Faraj al-Shamie, the father of Jihad, whose filthy Facebook page has been under the spotlight recently. This all speaks of the influence of the Brotherhood in Britain.
The conclusion of the Jenkins-Farr report could not have been clearer. “Aspects of Muslim Brotherhood ideology and tactics, in this country and overseas, are contrary to our values and have been contrary to our national interests and our national security.” That was a decade ago. Yet the organisation operates freely in this country today.
Nigel Farage, who called my book “a compelling and timely call to fight for our Western values”, has recently vowed to ban the Brotherhood were he to become prime minister. More power to his elbow. But why has it not been done already?
Truly, we are beckoning our own demise. While Israel is locked in an existential struggle with the Brotherhood’s militant wing, and while it is booted out of Egypt, Jordan, UAE and elsewhere, we have given it a safe haven in Britain. But diversity, amirite?
The clock stands at two minutes to midnight. Not only are we thinking what our enemies want us to think, we are doing what they want us to do. As the second anniversary of October 7 dawns tomorrow, we must stand up before it is too late – for all of us, not just the Jews.
Never Again? How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself, by Jake Wallis Simons, is out now. You can buy your copy here.
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