OPINION: How Britain’s moral drift fed Hamas and hatred at home

So, a web designer company wasn’t “comfortable” working with a Jewish newspaper, eh?

Its boss told this newspaper’s editor that his staff would do the work, but in all honesty their “hearts wouldn’t be in it” so probably best not to bother.

What kind of hearts are they, one wonders.

Still, the boss – whoever he is – gets full marks for candour.

Shameless candour.

Oblivious to the offence, he’d caused, indifferent to the hurt. Then again, who cares what a “Jewish newspaper” thinks anyway? Because, that’s right… Jews don’t count.

Talking of candour where Jews are concerned, the story reminds me of the time in 2006 when an Israel delegation of Shin Bet, the Mossad and government lawyers met with their British counterparts in London.

They came in force after years of pleading – in vain – with British governments to stop a London-based Palestinian charity sending tens of millions to Hamas-affiliated charities in Gaza and the West Bank.

At the time, the government’s official position was that whilst Hamas’s welfare network was part of the movement’s political wing, there was sufficient distance from the military wing (Al-Qassam Brigades) for the political wing to be treated as a separate organisation.

This hadn’t been the US government’s view for almost a decade, nor of several EU governments.

They’d taken Hamas’s founder Sheik’s Ahmed Yassin at his word when he proudly explained in 1998: “We cannot separate the wing(s) from the body. If we do so, the body cannot fly. Hamas is one body.”

Likewise, the Sheik’s co-founder Dr Ibrahim al-Yazuri: “Social work is carried out in support of ..the liberation of all Palestine, from the sea to the river…north to the south…and.. is considered to be part of the Hamas movement’s strategy.”

Even HM Treasury’s Asset Freezing Working Group acknowledged that Hamas-affiliated organisations to which funds from the UK had been remitted had helped “provide a broad civilian foundation for Hamas that provides critical support to the organisations’ political and paramilitary activity.”

The London-based charity categorically denied funding Hamas and there is no evidence of the charity having funded anything other than humanitarian aid.

It is the impact of that funding that was at issue.

As a senior member of Hamas, Dr Mahmoud Ramahi, admitted to me, Hamas’s extensive social welfare network whose beneficiaries were receptive to Hamas ideology, had the “main responsibility” for Hamas being voted into power in Gaza the first place.

Still, successive Foreign Office administrations thought they knew better – until 2021 when finally they acknowledged that “the approach of distinguishing between the various parts of Hamas is artificial. Hamas is a complex but single terrorist organisation.”

No kidding.

Which is precisely what the Israel delegation had been trying to explain to their colleagues in London 15 years earlier.

As the meeting wore on, there was a rare moment of candour from a Home Office official.

It wasn’t just a matter of whether a legal challenge to the Palestinian charity would succeed, he explained. “HMG has to take account of the impact proscription might have on community relations.”

The Israelis thanked the British for their candour and the meeting came to a close.

And so, the millions continued to flow from Britain – mostly from well-intentioned Muslims here – while their generosity helped build up Hamas into the genocidal organisation it became.

None of this is to ignore the radicalising impact from Israel’s permanent occupation of the West Bank, or the current Israeli government’s determination to prevent any prospect, however remote, of a viable Palestinian state; nor the unimaginably harsh conditions in Gaza from so much unrelenting destruction and death.

It is, though, a reminder of how – for all this, and previous governments’ -genuine abhorrence of antisemitism, a too permissive climate has helped pave the way to Manchester.

It doesn’t take much to germinate the spores of antisemitism lurking in the subsoil for millennia. The Gaza war has done just that.

There are also a number of well-established organisations and individuals here in Britain who for years have used this country as a base from which to promote Hamas’s agenda.

Like the Arabic language TV station, Al Hiwar, which has operated out of Acton in West London for years with audiences of millions in the UK, the Middle East and North Africa.

An analysis published today by CST of 120 broadcasts since 7 October finds Al Hiwar has “repeatedly broadcast content that is at least sympathetic to, and at times appears to be supportive of, Hamas.”

This has included “expressions of support for armed ‘resistance’ and for the 7 October terrorist atrocity, which the channel refers to using Hamas’s name for the attack: ‘The Al-Aqsa Flood’. These views are usually broadcast without challenge or balance.”

Other broadcasts, says CST, have included “antisemitic views and expressions of hostility towards Jews, especially by viewers via phone-in shows, not always challenged by the host.”

Licensed by the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, the station’s founder is Azzam Tamimi, who has insisted Hamas did not massacre 364 music festival goers on 7 October. “Hamas did not target a single (Israeli) civilian” he said.

Another regular guest is Mohamed Sawalha, a former commander of Hamas military operations on the West Bank who’s lived in Colindale, north London for years after fleeing here. Since then, he’s travelled abroad on Hamas business, including as a representative of Hamas’s politburo.

Ever since the second intifada, there’s been a developing covenant between Hamas-supporting activists who’ve taken up residence here and the left’s battalions of menacing useful idiots.

Since 7 October, the result has been display after display of repugnant mob mentality in contrast to some of the more dignified protests against the war.

We know – or most of us do – what heart-rending things have gone on in Gaza.

It is time the government got these neo-Brownshirts out of our faces – especially the faces of this country’s tiny and beleaguered Jewish community.

Quite literally.

A kippa-wearing relative of my wife was recently hounded by a bunch of Muslim lads on a street in Oxford. ”Do you support genocide?”  came the demand. “Of course, not” he replied. ”Good man bruvver. If it was ovverwise, then it would be a different story. If you was opposite then I would have dragged you round the corner. But because you don’t – simple. I ain’t got a problem.”

How kind of him. Just like the web boss who told this newspaper’s editor it was in his best interest not to hire his firm to design the paper’s new website because his staff’s “hearts wouldn’t be in it” on account of it being a Jewish newspaper.

Had he even read the paper and the breadth of its opinions? As the man said, racism makes you stupid.

There is a serious and continuing decline in social cohesion in this country, and we ignore this at our peril.

Mosques and Islamic institutions are also at risk of attack – with an arson attack on a mosque in Sussex this weekend.

It’s time this government got on with developing a coherent counter-extremism strategy.

The last four Conservative governments abandoned the search for one after David Cameron – to his credit – made a serious, if sometimes flawed, attempt to craft a strategy. This is not easy stuff.

The result is that we’re now in the “midst of an accelerating extremism landscape”, warns the former counter-extremism commissioner Dame Sara Khan.

Reversing that trend requires, first and foremost political leadership, confident about promoting values and fearless about confronting those who undermine them.

The problem is that the quality of political leadership capable of delivering this has been missing now for about a decade.