Warning: Readers may find some content distressing.
IT’S RARE that events converge in a way which offers complete clarity on a matter. Last Tuesday, however, the planets must have aligned, as that’s exactly what happened.
‘Why should the King take in the Palestinian people? He’s made clear he doesn’t want to.’
The question from the press corps at the White House got straight to the point. Perched on armchairs in front of a roaring fire were President Trump and Jordan’s King Abdullah. Trump shifted a little in his seat.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘He may have something to say because we discussed briefly . . . I think maybe . . . you want to say it now?’ Trump asked, addressing the King, who blinked furiously in response.
‘Well, um, I think, um, we have to keep in mind,’ the King prevaricated. Egypt needs to be asked. The Saudis are hosting talks. ‘How do we make this work in a way that’s good for everybody?’
How indeed. The Jordanians are taking in 2,000 sick children. Trump is pleased.
Mere hours later the news broke that here in Britain our activist judges are significantly less cautious on the matter. ‘Court gives Gazans right to settle in UK’ was the headline in the Telegraph. A family of six Gazans had been granted the right to live in the UK, despite applying under the Ukraine Family Scheme set up specifically for Ukrainian nationals. That their application didn’t meet the terms of the scheme didn’t matter; their human right to a family life outweighed the rights of the public to an immigration system that stays within the rules, the judge had decided.
Within minutes the news spread like wildfire across X, eliciting cries of horror.
‘NO NO NO,’ fumed Richard Tice on X.
‘Utter bloody madness,’ raged Ben Habib. ‘We are destroying the UK.’
It is madness. And then, as if to hammer home the point, the third convergent event: among X posts condemning the judge’s decision to open the floodgates to Gazans, a video emerged of two migrant nurses in Australia openly bragging to an Israeli vlogger that they had murdered Israelis in their care.
‘It’s Palestine’s country, not your country, you piece of sh*t,’ a female nurse leans into the camera. ‘One day your time will come and you will die in the most horrible [censored]. […] you will die the most disgusting death.’
The vlogger asks what would happen if an Israeli came to their hospital to be treated, and her colleague chimes in: ‘You have no idea how many Israelis have already come to this hospital and [mimics slitting throat] I send them to gihanim [hell].’
‘The truth is, their views are mainstream in Western Sydney, let’s not kid ourselves,’ commented Rebel News reporter Avi Yemeni.
Astonishingly – or perhaps not so much in today’s environment – the authorities’ first response was not to arrest the pair and comb through hospital records to rule out any such murders, as it would be if we lived in a sane society. Rebel News had to launch a petition to force the police to investigate, and to demand that the health authorities strip the pair of their medical licences. Israeli politicians added to the pressure. It was only once public outcry reached fever pitch that the authorities finally began to take note.
Like the judge’s ruling, these are not the actions of a society that prioritises the safety of its own citizens.
I was living in Jerusalem on October 7, 2023. I thought the loud bangs that shook me awake that morning were an earthquake, but soon the sirens started. I turned on X, and now infamous footage began to flicker across my screen: Naama Levy being pulled from the boot of a jeep, her hands tied behind her back, the seat of her trousers dirty with blood; Shani Louk’s naked body paraded dead through the streets of Gaza, her legs broken, men with guns riding victoriously with her in the truck; Shiri Bibas, terrified, clutching her two young children as militants surrounded them, ushering them into Gaza, into darkness.
My fiancé and I lived right on the old green line in a neighbourhood that was half Jewish, half Arab. Often in the evenings our TV viewing was set against the backdrop of machine-gun fire from the valley below, to which I always nervously remarked that ‘the Arabs must be celebrating a wedding again’. We spent most of that weekend wondering whether we were next, checking and double-checking that the lock on the garden gate was as secure as we hoped.
Yet the truth is that I feel sorry for the Palestinians. They are raised from birth to be murderers, taught that they have no value other than as cannon fodder for their leaders. As a result they are pariahs whom nobody, not even their brethren in Egypt and Jordan, wants living among them.
I understand the compassion felt by Westerners when they see the pictures of Gaza reduced to rubble. But compassion, though laudable, should not blind us to reality.
The Gazans granted leave to remain in Britain have been described as a family of six: two parents and their four children. Who would not want to help a young family? Yet two of the ‘children’ are aged 18 and 17, so children only in the sense that they are their parents’ offspring. Shamima Begum was only 15 when she joined ISIS. Certainly they are easily old enough to carry out an attack. Were they screened on their beliefs? Have any checks been carried out at all?
The youngest is seven, roughly of comparable age to a Gazan boy who appeared in a propaganda video on Facebook last year, telling his interviewer: ‘We missed the school year in the Gaza Strip, the 2023-2024 year, [but] we benefited from the highest levels of resolve, force, defiance, and perseverance. We achieved the honour of defending the homeland and the honour of the Muslim nation.’
Children took part in the October 7 attack on Israel. Though not widely reported, there is evidence that the militants who rampaged through Israel on that day were flanked by young boys running alongside them, cheering them on.
Eran Smilansky, a 28-year-old farmer who survived the massacre by defending his home for over six hours, told the Washington Free Beacon that he witnessed groups of boys going from house to house.
‘They were like young, young kids,’ said Smilansky. ‘They were going in front of the terrorists, laughing with their friends and looking very calm. I remember thinking, What the f*ck?’
Another survivor, Eyal Barad, watched events unfold on a CCTV camera he had set up outside his house. He told the WFP that he witnessed uniformed and heavily armed Hamas Commandos, casually dressed gunmen, and ordinary looking men, women and children, some as young as ten, passing by his house. The civilians vastly outnumber the Hamas operatives; he saw upwards of a dozen children and at least 30 women.
‘I can say with 100 per cent certainty that [the women and children] were not just innocent bystanders or looters,’ he said. ‘They were part of the massacre. They were part of the horrors that we endured that day.
‘How can a parent send a kid to do that?’ added Barad, who has three young children. ‘I want to shelter my kids as much as I can. I want to try to prevent them from seeing and meeting the horrible things that this world can do. And they send their kids into the most horrible situation in the world to go and steal stuff?’
The Ukrainian Family Scheme was set up specifically to help Ukrainians. Ukrainians share a Christian culture, a European work ethic, a Western mindset. It should go without saying, but apparently we must say it nonetheless: Ukrainians are not Gazans, and Gazans are not Ukrainians. Contrary to popular left-wing belief, the peoples of the world are not interchangeable. Yes, we are all human, but humans, blessed with creativity and ingenuity, have created a very wide range of cultures which rest upon vastly different sets of values. To anyone with a cursory acquaintance with the world and a middling intellect, this is perfectly obvious.
And yet Judge Hugo Norton-Taylor has placed the human rights of people saturated in a culture of death, in which it’s perfectly acceptable for women and children to assist in the massacre of Jews, above those of the British people who believe no such thing. Why?
While I agree that not all Gazans support Hamas, it’s undeniable that, thanks to a lifetime of brainwashing, most do. Polling by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research in September found that just 40 per cent of Gazans thought Hamas were correct to launch the October 7 offensive, but that number was down from 71 per cent in March 2024, and is therefore likely to reflect nothing more than the fact that Israel has clearly won the war.
The point is, we simply don’t know what the views of these Gazans are, nor the many who will come after them now that the judge has set this precedent. And make no mistake – more will come. Sir Keir Starmer was keen to make political hay out of embarrassing Kemi Badenoch by claiming that he will close the loophole that Judge Norton-Taylor has opened, yet he has a strong track record of saying one politically expedient thing then doing another.
According to commentator Connor Tomlinson, Labour, along with the Lib Dems, Greens, and the SNP, advocated for a Palestinian refugee programme here in the UK before the last election. In a debate held to discuss the idea, then shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock confirmed that Labour already had one planned. Who should we believe now: Starmer or Kinnock?
This government, and the activist judges who think they make the law, seem to labour under a misapprehension that they are beyond the normal order of the world, that they can shape reality to be whatever they deem it to be. They clearly believe that they can transmute a Gazan into a Ukrainian with no consequences. They are wrong.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, it is we who will pay the price of their vast folly.
