You can’t stop extremism until you stop hate washing extremists

This hate washing has been a problem in Britain for a long time, and it is getting worse.

Adolf Hitler was helped for years by British politicians convinced he didn’t want war and didn’t mean everything he said about the Jews. This, despite his 700 page book written as early as 1925, which explained his ideas in detail. He repeated his threats in all his major speeches for years. Then his regime murdered millions of people, including 6 million Jews.

When antisemites and extremists speak about their violent intent, we should take them at their word and act accordingly.

Consider the example of Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond after a visit to Iran in 2015. Asked about the Iranian supreme leader’s repeated calls to destroy the Zionist entity (Israel) and praising chants of ‘death to Israel’, he said: “We’ve got to distinguish between revolutionary sloganising and what Iran actually does in the conduct of its foreign policy.”

Oddly enough, Iran spent the next ten years spending billions of dollars arming and supporting terrorist organisations, including Hamas, that sought to destroy Israel.

Fast forward to repeated protests in central London, where thousands of people shout chants of 'intifada revolution' and 'Zionists to go home', which are then sanitised as pro-Palestinian marches that are calling for an end to the Gaza conflict.

When Sami Hamdi was detained this week by US immigration officers, he was sanitised as a UK journalist and commentator who had criticised Israel.

His exact words after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel: "Celebrate the victory ... how many of you felt the euphoria? Allahu akhbar’’ were not reported in the many UK news articles describing his arrest.

Is this where we are as a society? With antisemitism and extremism at record levels, far from acknowledging the seriousness of what is being said and what it means, it is softened and sanitised until it looks like wholesome activism.

When hordes of masked men dressed in black gathered in Tower Hamlets last weekend chanting ‘Zionist scum off our streets’ that was sanitised too. Stand up to Racism’s Sabby Dhalu, who organised the wider demonstration, told LBC's Tom Swarbrick that she didn’t think the chants were racist, didn’t know who it was referring to, but believed it was ‘a reference to the Israeli state.’

Speaking to LBC, London Mayor Sadiq Khan was asked if the chants were antisemitic and said: “The police will look at any law breaking, but also I'm quite clear, let's show some compassion and sympathy for our neighbours, our friends and colleagues who are feeling scared.”

You would think the mayor of London would condemn obvious antisemitism. Most Jews are Zionists, and most Zionists are Jews. Attacking Zionists as a cover for attacking Jews has been around ever since the antisemitic book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was published in 1903.

To call Zionists scum and tell them to get off our streets is horrifying. You would think the mayor of London would say this hate speech has no place on the streets of London, that it should never be repeated. He said neither. Instead, he just said the Jews are scared, which they increasingly are.

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James Sorene is a commentator and writer.

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