Melanie Philips has an excellent article today "Lies, Bigotry and Silence" talking about the recent wave of antisemitic and anti-Israel bigotry coming from UK politicians and media - and the indifference to it. Of course the primary reason for both the political antisemitism and the indifference to it is that the UK is now firmly in the grip of an obsessive media/political accommodation of Islam. This means that even voices like Melanie's (on this subject at least) are increasingly marginalised - note this she no longer writes her column for the Daily Mail and even when she was it was rarely on this topic.
The accommodation with Islam leads not just to an increase in antisemitism but to a decrease into authoritative challenges to Islam (which in turn leads to a viscous spiral of yet more antisemitism etc). The natural conclusion is to ban any criticism of Islam as hate speech, and hence to physically ban authoritative scholars who are critical of Islam like Robert Spencer and anti-Jihad freedom fighters like Pamela Geller (as I have reported before). Today Geller reports that a British court has upheld the ban against her and Spencer from entering the UK, hence ensuring not just that Brits cannot hear their concerns about Islam but also the end of free speech in the UK.
The indifference to the political antisemitism that Melanie Philips highlights would at least be partly addressed if people like her focused on the catastrophic implications to free speech that the banning of Spence and Geller represents for the UK.
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