Tuesday, September 15, 2009

English Defense League Thwarts Anti-Israel Demo In London

Can the British Lion be waking up at last?

The end of Ramadan usually sees a huge hate-filled anti-Semitic demonstration in the middle of Londonistan by adherents of the Religion of Peace called 'al-Kuds Day', during which the protestors demonize Israel and Jews in general. Members and sympathizers of charming groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, Hizb-al Tahrir and the Muslim Brotherhood usually participate. But things had to be scaled back this Ramadan:

The London commemoration had been scheduled to take place in Trafalgar Square in central London, but police, working with the Greater London Assembly, moved it to a smaller area in Waterloo Place, off Pall Mall.

The EDL had called on supporters to mount a counter-demonstration to the Iranian-sponsored, pro-Hizbullah event.

On its Web site, the far-right group, which claims to be "peacefully protesting against militant Islam," posted before the event: "The Home Office bent over backwards to ban us from Luton, yet Hizbullah, a Muslim terrorist organization's supporters, are due to march through London this coming Sunday. We urge everybody who can to come to London to oppose this."

Responding to the decision to move the rally, the group's spokesman, Reza Kazim, said: "At the last minute, after months of negotiation, the GLA [Greater London Assembly] told us two days ago we are not allowed to go ahead with the rally in Trafalgar Square. We are very annoyed. It seems they have bowed to the pressure from people like the English Defense League."

Last year, Kazim was caught filming participants at celebrations for Israel's 60th anniversary in Trafalgar Square and was led away by police. At an anti-Israel protest in London's Hyde Park during the 2006 Lebanon war, Kazim and IHRC chair Massoud Shadjareh both wore Hizbullah flags and chanted pro-Hizbullah slogans.

At any rate, the EDL went into action and mobilized 100 counter demonstrators to face off the wannabe jihadis at the downsized demonstration, something that took considerable courage on their part considering how reluctant Britain's police seem to be to confront Islamists today.

The EDL normally gets maligned by the Left as 'Nazis' and 'extremists', something that's comic in view of the sympathy these same people show for the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah. While I've heard mixed things about the EDL,the label of 'Nazi' is going to be pretty hard to stick on them in this instance...seeing as they stood up for Israel and against Islamist fascism as well as for themselves today, something I hope a few of Britain's besieged Jews will appreciate.

I know I do.

Here's a shout out Lads..you may just take your country back from the brink yet.

The Beeb of all places has a relatively balanced piece on the EDL that gives interested parties some background on whom they are. The EDL website with their side of the story is here.


hans meyer said...

You know, I am a regular reader of your blog and very often think that you are spot on. This here is one of the very few instances where I am in disagreement with you.

The EDL certainly has more than "a few dody members here and there" - is built around such people. By no means these are normal brits of the kind you would want to spend time together with.

The EDL in fact was founded exclusively by people with deep roots in the British football hooligan scene, that is: thugs.

People who's favourite pastime is beating up both police and fans of other football clubs. People who are under regular police surveillance because they frequently break the law and riot in the streets, for no other purpose than the adrinale rush it brings them.

One further thing one must know about these British "hooligan firms" is that not only there are regular links to violent white supremacist organisations such as Combat 18 ( see wikipedia here for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Headhunters )
but also to organised crime.

Such people use the fight against jihadism to further their real agenda with really isn't compatible with yours or mine. At the moment they may pretend otherwise, but in reality they have ZERO sympthies for Israel or jews. These people hide their anti-Semitism for the moment.

And cooperating with criminals, and that is what they are, damages the reputation of those who genuinely want to fight jihadism.

Freedom Fighter said...

Hello Hans,
Thanks for the heads up.

I found it interesting that the BBC never mentioned this. In view of their normal political stance, you'd think they would.

Nevertheless, I think the EDL has to be commended in this instance for standing up to the jihadis in London. Credit where credit is due.One can approve of a deed without approving of everything someone does.

Let me tell you a story..

When Israel was founded in 1948, they were immediately attacked by 7 Arab nations, had their backs against the wall and were desperate for funds to buy arms on the black market. Many countries including the US had an arms embargo on them, even though Britain was arming ( and in the case of Jordan, officering) the Arab armies who had jihad and the murder of every Jew in Israel as their avowed goal.

American Jews who stepped into the breach and contributed a great deal of money to keep the infant Jewish state alive and get them the arms they desperately needed included Lepke Buchalter, Bugsy Siegal,Abey Rellis and Mickey Cohen, all of them mobsters and gangsters of ill repute.

Whatever their associations and past deeds, these men were willing to help the Jews of Israel survive, and without the funds they and others provided to buy arms, there might very well have been a second Holocaust.

And as far as I'm concerned, they deserve to be commended for what they did for Israel, if not for some of their other unsavory activities.Life is seldom written in black and white.

It's a sad commentary on Britain that standing up to Islamist thugs is left to the EDL. But I refuse to condemn them for what they did in London this week.

Hopefully other elements of British society will follow.


Freedom Fighter said...

Oh, another example Hans...when the allies needed to invade Sicily in WWII, they went to none other than mafioso Lucky Luciano and his contacts to get the intelligence on the ground and the contacts they needed.

War sometimes makes strange bedfellows.


Hans Meyer said...

Yeah, sometimes you have to cooperate with some rather, uh, unpleasant people. Right. Churchill and Roosevelt made the right call to form a military alliance with Stalin as far as I am concerned.

But this here goes a bit too far for me. Would you want to cooperate with someone like this here? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/1672100.stm

That's the kind of people you meet in Hooligan Firms.

What's after all the point in fighting jihadism? For me it is that I hate anti-Semitism and bigotry. And now I should defend people who are just that, anti-Semitic and bigoted? Who name their violent groups after - of all people - Adolf Hitler, as Combat 18 does? Give these people even only a small finger and soon enough their mask will drop - and they WILL reveal themselves again as the anti-Semites they are.

Maybe it is an issue of being familiar with the uglier parts of a society. Not sure, to the best of my knowledge such a thing as football hooliganism doesn't exist in the US. The closest analogy in American society I could think of is the Hells Angels, who attract similar people, and are in a similar way involved with organised crime (at least in Europe they are - not sure about the US).

I'd say that pretty much anyone who isn't a lunatic and who's spent time in a European football stadion reacts viscerally to such people...

During the last years there was an attempt to built a mosque in my home town Berlin by a rather extremist muslim group. One of the main groups that organized protests against this was the NPD - the current nazi party over here. Obviously there were other people also organising protests - but the participation of the nazis made it all too easy to paint the entire protest as racially motivated, which it of course wasn't. The legitimate groups that protested against the mosque sure would have wished that the NPD stayed off this thing... It was the participation of the NPD that won the PR battle for the jihadis unfortunately. I think the same is likely to happen in the UK.

Freedom Fighter said...

Excellent points Hans. And I'll go a step further and say that there are likely some extremists in the EDL.

In this particular case, the EDL was the ONLY group mounting serious opposition to the al-Kuds day abomination, and they were successful.

One question I would have for you is an honest opinion on whether the protests against the mosque would have been successful if the NPD had not participated. You'd be in a better position to know than I would.

Unfortunately, because many of Europe's politicians have dropped the ball on the issue of rising Islamism you're going to see nativist groups with a quotient of hooligans and extremists filling the vacuum. The Danish biker gangs battling Islamism in that country are another example.

Perhaps this trend will change but it seems unlikely for now.

You may find this piece I wrote two years ago interesting if you haven't seen it already.Nothing I've seen since has made me change my opinion on this.

Thanks for an insightful post that added to the mix..you should comment more often!