London’s 24 hours of hate

I went to the annual Al Quds Days march in central London last weekend to watch several hundred supporters of Hezbollah, the "Party of God."

Waved in the faces of a handful of Jewish counter-protesters were the "We are all Hizbullah" banners plus the Hezbollah flag with its stylised Kalashnikov grasped firmly by the first letter of the inscription "Allah".

So how's this for a bit of baiting?

A Hezbollah supporter sauntered up to the protesters as closely as he could, banging his drum as loudly as he could, eyeballing them with contempt. "Shame on you," said a protester.  "Allah Akbar" the cry went up.

Winding up the haters was a cheeky chappy with a mouth on him - as they say up North which is where he was from. The Bernard Manning of Islamism. Here's one of his rhyming gags:

"It goes like this. 'He lies, he kills, he stinks of dog poo, Netanyahooo, Netanyahoooo'."

Please welcome Nazim Ali, the Al Quds' Master of Ceremonies for the march, organised by the Khoeminist oxymoronically named Islamic Human Rights Commission

Here's another of Nazim's gags.

While presenting the IHRC's "Islamophobe of the Year" award shortly after the 2015 massacre by jihadists of 12 journalists and a policeman at the Paris-based satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine, he said: "No one from Charlie Hebdo could make it" (to the awards ceremony). 

Are you cracking up? No? How 's this then?

"We've always been a peaceful, family-friendly, humanitarian protest" Nazim shouted to the marchers. "That's what we're about."

And then pointing to the protestors, he said ""Do not react to these people... Do not react to the IDF."

Judging by the frenzy Nazim had worked himself into, my impression was that "react" was exactly what he hoped the Jewish protestors would do. "You've hit the nail," a police officer said.

"Bye, bye Zionists, bye bye bye" taunted Nazim, waving his hands as the march prepared to move off.

"Free, free Palestine" he chanted which got the ritual response: "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."

The IHRC appears to have a charitable arm, the Islamic Human Rights Trust, which enjoys charitable status. Both insist they are separate legal entities though a blind man would be pleased to see the difference. Both have identical names, addresses and logos. The Charity Commission are now investigating.  Even though the IHRC overtly supports Hezbollah, they say that’s not illegal because they say they support its political wing whilst Hezbollah itself doesn't appear to recognise the distinction. "Everyone is aware of the fact that Hezbollah is one body and one entity" Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been reported as saying. "Its military and political wings are unified."

In any case, the aspirant prime minister Jeremy Corbyn is fan of the IHRC. He says “I like the way it works, I like the sense of values surrounding it."

After the London Bridge cutthroats, the actual prime minister said " there is  - to be frank - far too much tolerance of extremism in our country."

Tackling extremism would "require some difficult and often embarrassing conversations" said Mrs May.

Seven hours after the Al Quds march ended there was a murderous act of hate: a man deliberately drove his hired van into Muslims after  leaving prayers in Finsbury Park, North London

Chairman of the Finsbury Park mosque is Mohammed Kozbar who is also the vice-president of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) which the IHRC listed as a supporter of this year's Al Quds hate march.

The Finsbury Park mosque does good works from time to time - like feeding the homeless, helped by a £20,000 grants from Islington Council.

  But it has also given platforms to speakers who, by reference to the government's definition of extremism, have made some venomously antisemitic remarks.

Kozbar himself has been photographed eagerly meeting members of Hamas. One of his fellow mosque trustees is also a fugitive Hamas commander, and Hamas, of course, is a child of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Kozbar has categorically denied he or his mosque have any links with the Brotherhood. However, a British government review of the Brotherhood found that it had "dominated MAB."  It concluded the Brotherhood's "ideology and tactics" were "contrary to our values and have been contrary to our national interests".

The government has a no platform policy with partners it considers holds views "contrary to our values".

However, following the attempted mass murder of mosque worshippers in the early hours of Monday morning, the Prime Minister met Mohammed Kozbar with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

And while Mrs May went to express her condolences, the Muslim Association of Britain took the opportunity to challenge her over the government’s anti-extremism Prevent strategy  which tackles both Far Right and Islamist extremism. A MAB representative said Prevent might be “working on far  Right extremism” but it wasn’t working for the “Muslim youth” because there had been a” blurring of lines between a strong religious Muslim identity and that of extremism.”  

However, I very much doubt the PM challenged Mr Kozbar and MAB – as sponsors of the Al Quds march – on their thoughts about such hateful and provocative comments  directed at Jews on the streets of London just a few hours earlier.

They will need to be challenged, though.

“Khaybar, Khaybar” rang out the cry from some Hezbollah marchers – the notorious war chant celebrating Mohammed’s defeat of the Jews in 628.

The march was nothing short of a three-hour public hate fest against Jews who regard themselves as Zionists – who are the vast majority of Jews. Nazim Ali repeatedly referred to the only "real Jews" being those marching with him, the tiny fringe from Neturei Karta. "Zionists are the imposters" he said ".Do not talk to them.they like to show themselves as 'victims': 'Oh, we're Zionists; we're victims; we've only killed 10 children today; we're victims - we didn't get a chance to kill 20'."

So much hate in just 24 hours both in Finsbury Park and central London. It shows just how difficult some of these "difficult and often embarrassing conversations" in countering extremism, are going to be.