Spencer and Geller Banned from Britain for Supporting Israel

Posted By Robert Spencer On December 4, 2013 @ 12:56 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 5 Comments

New revelations about why I was banned from entering Great Britain reveal how deeply compromised the British government is to hard-Leftists and Islamic supremacists – including the most virulent haters of Israel.

As faithful FrontPage readers may recall, last June I was banned from Britain because, as a letter from the U.K. Home Office told me, “your presence here is not conducive to the public good.” Why not? Because I said (quite factually) that Islam “is a religion and is a belief system that mandates warfare against unbelievers for the purpose for establishing a societal model that is absolutely incompatible with Western society.” And also because, the letter said, “you are the founder of the blog Jihad Watch (a site widely criticized for being Islamophobic),” and “you co-founded the Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America, both of which have been described as anti-Muslim hate groups.”

Note the passive voice: the Freedom Defense Initiative (actually the American Freedom Defense Initiative, AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America “have been described as anti-Muslim hate groups” by whom? The letter didn’t say. And Jihad Watch has been “widely criticized for being Islamophobic” by whom? The letter gives no hint, instead attempting to establish these charges as the judicious assessment of neutral observers.

Now, however, newly released documents relating to our case, as Pamela Geller discussed in a recent Daily Caller article, reveal that the Home Office’s decision was guided by far-Left agitation groups with a deep animus against Israel.

Of course, this was already obvious from the Home Office’s repetition of the charge that Jihad Watch is “Islamophobic” in its letter to me. “Islamophobia” is a manipulative and propagandistic neologism designed to intimidate non-Muslims into thinking that there is something “bigoted” and “racist” about resisting jihad terror and opposing Sharia oppression of women, non-Muslims, gays and others. The only people who use it at all are Islamic supremacists who want to clear away all obstacles to the advance of jihad, their Leftist allies, and those whom they have bamboozled into thinking it is a legitimate term of discourse – such as the British Home Office.

So it was obvious already who was whispering into the Home Office’s ear, but now it is confirmed. As Pamela Geller noted, in the newly revealed documents “all reference to the identities of those who asked that we be banned have been blacked out.” However, “their black marker missed one reference, revealing that one of the groups complaining about us was Faith Matters. Faith Matters was founded by a Muslim named Fiyaz Mughal, who also heads up Tell Mama, a group dedicated to tracking ‘Islamophobia.’ Tell Mama lost government funding in June after making false claims of waves of attacks ‘Islamophobic incidents.’”

So around the same time that Tell Mama was being stripped of its government funding for lying about the prevalence of “anti-Muslim hate crimes,” that same government was accepting its advice and counsel in favor of banning Pamela Geller and me from the country. Was the Home Office unaware that Tell Mama was wildly exaggerating “Islamophobia” in Britain, and was thus an untrustworthy source for any information related to it, or did it simply not care?

As the Home Office makes its case against us, it also cites as authorities two pro-jihad smear sites, Loonwatch and Islamophobia Today – both of which have published numerous false charges, distortions, and outright lies about me, my public stands on various issues, my activities, and my associations. Both are devoted to completely discrediting anyone who dares to criticize jihad and Islamic supremacism, and to portraying those who oppose jihad terror as just terrible, terrible people. Generally they do this in the context of lurid ridicule of and furious hatred and contempt for their targets, larded with risible pseudo-scholarly “refutations” of their works recalling nothing so much as Der Stürmer. And true to their Nazi prototype, both are relentlessly anti-Israel, retailing Palestinian jihad propaganda with the same clownish fury and disregard for the facts that marks their analyses as a whole.

That anyone regards such sites seriously, with their gleeful flouting of accuracy and genuine analysis, and willingness to retail any smear to discredit their targets, is strange enough. That the British Home Office would be among those who do is a telling indication of just how thoroughly David Cameron’s Conservative government has been compromised, and how abjectly it has capitulated to a far-Left agenda.

The prime confirmation of this comes from one email from the Home Office’s massive team investigating Geller and me. The author (name redacted, of course) notes that the subject profiles that were prepared on us cite our “pro-Israeli views,” and argues that this material be removed, lest the wicked Zionists Geller and Spencer “argue publically that their exclusion is on the basis of their support for Israel.”

Well, that let the cat out of the bag. So here goes: I am hereby arguing publically that my exclusion was on the basis of my support for Israel, along with my “Islamophobia.” In banning me from the country, the British government capitulated to far-Left and Islamic supremacist pressure groups that are both virulently anti-Israel and enraged about the trumped-up phenomenon of “Islamophobia,” while making excuses for or ignoring altogether the reality of Islamic jihad and the numerous human rights abuses perpetrated daily in its name.

Were this a Labour government, this capitulation might be understandable – after all the Leftist/Islamic supremacist alliance has been noted in numerous quarters for years, and people nowadays more or less expect liberals and Leftists to be anti-Israel and anti-counterjihad, if not outright pro-jihad. But the Tories?

The Conservative government of David Cameron has failed the British people as thoroughly and resoundingly as the Republican Party has failed the American people. Both could have and should have constituted themselves as a loyal opposition, departing from the Leftist line. Instead, they have parroted it in innumerable ways, and disenfranchised millions of their constituents by offering no alternative to the dominant paradigm.

Whether or not I ever get into Britain again, the Conservative collapse revealed in the Home Office documents relating to my ban reveal a ruling party, and a society, that is profoundly confused, deeply compromised, and facing far greater crises to come.

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