Hamas pressed the start button on every war. Fully proscribing it is right
The Israel Britain Alliance, its partners and supporters in every part of the United Kingdom campaigned hard for the full proscription of the Iranian backed terror group Hamas, and our efforts have been rewarded with the announcement by Home Secretary, Priti Patel, that Hamas will be banned in our country.
Hamas is an organisation that seeks the destruction of Israel, it seeks to turn the war cry, from the river to sea Palestine will be free, into reality.
But that is not the only reason we threw the kitchen sink at this campaign, including an extensive advertisement campaign in the Jewish News in July and August this year.
We did so because Hamas is the root cause of the heartbreak, hopelessness and depression that lies across the whole Israel/Palestinian conflict.
Hamas brutally oppresses the people it purports to represent.
It is misogynistic, homophobic and genocidal.
So, many may ask, with justification, why did it take the government so long to act?
But as anyone with a working knowledge of the UK civil service will know, it is the obstacles created by civil servants who govern, without election, that are sometimes the toughest to navigate.
I have no doubt that Priti Patel will have raised this matter many times with her officials before they conceded the territory.
So, I salute her for delivering a long overdue decision, it will not have been easy.
One presumes that the next step will be a draft order laid in parliament that will proscribe Hamas in its entirety, and this is where it will get interesting.
Readers may recall that during Jeremy Corbyn’s time as Labour leader the government fully proscribed Hezbollah.
At that time Nick Thomas-Symonds, shadow home office minister, did not oppose the proscription in parliament but neither did he support it.
I see virtually every MP’s response to the campaign letters that our supporters send.
On the subject of banning Hamas, many Conservative MPs have unequivocally supported our campaign and have expressed that view to the government, others have stuck with the official line that the government does not discuss security matters.
But what about Labour, Liberal Democrat and SNP MP’s, how did they respond?
Would it surprise you to learn that none of them stated that the non-proscription of Hamas was wrong, and that nearly all of them attributed blame to Israel for exercising its right to defend its borders?
Since its rise to ascendancy in 2006 Hamas has pressed the start button on every conflict with Israel with this bloody cycle: it fires Iranian supplied rockets from civilian areas in Gaza into civilian areas in Israel, Israel is forced to retaliate, the worlds press then leads with Israel’s defensive actions, which culminates with the charge that Israel acts in a disproportionate manner, and in parliaments like our own, opposition parties call for debates, not to chastise Hamas but to chastise Israel.
Hans Christian Anderson wrote the Emperor’s New Clothes in 1837.
It has become an idiom about logical fallacies.
But even he, if he were alive today, would be gobsmacked about this farce.
The reasons why politicians and political parties willingly absorb the deceitful, violent and deadly Hamas narrative cannot be diagnosed as collective stupidity.
Be assured there are sinister, dark and dangerous political calculations taking place.
And if light and transparency are the disinfectant, the Home Secretary’s decision to fully proscribe Hamas will serve at least three purposes.
It will rightly categorise Hamas as a terror organisation, without caveat.
It will force UK media outlets to properly record its designation as a terror organisation when it starts the next conflict, and it will.
But most significantly it delayers the argument that our politicians use to pull their punches on Hamas’ activities, justify its actions and unjustly criticise the noble State of Israel.
I will raise a glass tonight to our success.
L’Chaim.