The last day of silence

Churchill Parliament Square London. Photo by Sharon Klaff

250 people came together under the statue of Churchill on Parliament Square, London, to march to the women’s memorial outside Downing Street where the rally took place.

There is a rage gathering across the land as the security levels are raised to an all time high. The double whammy of fear of terror and fear of sanction, fear of being killed and fear of being vilified for naming the problem, pervades the atmosphere.

I was invited to speak at the rally and below is my speech:

My name is Sharon. I am an activist, and I stand for the freedom of our western Judeo-Christian democracy, hard fought for by our forefathers and mothers so that we could live our lives in safety and freedom based on human decency and human rights for all.

I was born in a police state. My identity was defined first as a white person then as a woman and then a Jew. Spread like a veil over this life was that age-old illogical hatred for the Jew many of you will know as anti-Semitism or as I call it Jew hatred.

Imagine my exhilaration when I arrived in the UK aged 21, for the first time feeling that sense of freedom to be who I am, think my own thoughts and express my own ideas in the knowledge that I would not be arrested.

Sadly, this is no more. We can no longer take freedom for granted.

We live in a time now when there are issues we cannot talk about in public.Thought police are back with a vengeance and silence is upon us yet again. Once more I feel that blinding sense that explodes my brain as I watch the inequities and horrors unfolding, wrapped in a chorus of silence.

We are being attacked by extremists who use our freedom and our democracy, our sense of charity and justice, to terrorise us into submission. I don’t need to remind you how a young woman watched as her sister’s throat was slit before her very eyes on London bridge, or tell you about Sarona market the week before it was blown apart with many killed and maimed, or describe the pain of the policeman as that knife was thrust into his body, letting his last breath escape across the river.

And I don’t need to explain why a woman who escaped a car bomb crosses the road each time she sees a look-alike terrorist – and she’s done that for 20 years.

And I don’t need to tell you that even now I am skirting around telling you anything about the perpetrators of these crimes.

I can say to you now that it’s time to join up the dots.

• 2017 marks 16 years since 9/11 2001 when America was attacked by Islamic extremists.
• 2017 also marks 334 years since 9/11 1683 that ended the Ottoman expansion into Europe, drawing a line between Buda and Pest, a divided Hungary, the king to the West, the Sultan to the East.

In 1683, wars typically involved foot soldiers literally marching up the hill with 10,000 men, bayonets at the ready, trumpets calling the shots. Then it took months for news to travel across the globe.

In 2017, wars typically involve science fiction type war games of precision missiles, mobile phone detonators, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram with foot-soldiers unashamedly delivering programmed indoctrinated propaganda. Now news travels across the globe in an instant.

Our world is also increasingly darkened as bucket bombs are detonated on the underground by remote control, children are murdered at pop concerts and revellers massacred in pubs and clubs across the globe, leaving devastation and havoc from beneath a smokescreen of the lone wolf, the mentally disturbed, and the unconnected.

Enough is enough is the response of our leaders who twist and turn away from reality.

But what is enough, and what is it enough of?

To understand why extremist fundamentalist terrorist activity has come to our western shores we need to understand something of the turmoil across the Middle East.

Many of you will know something of the conflict and many will be secular and perhaps not grasp the importance of the religious roots involved. So, I’ll take a moment to explain:

There is a battle taking place for the soul of Jerusalem. It is essential to understand that this is not a land grab, it is not about geography, but about supremacy.

At the root lies the enmity of an ideology that sees itself as the third and final incarnation of Judeo-Christian monotheism to correct and finally supersede the Jewish and the Christian revelations, so that the fantasy of Andalusia can be recreated in our world.

The problem is that the Jews stand in the way – 5778 being the current year on the Jewish calendar. We’ve been around a long time and showing signs of not going anywhere.

In the Middle East, Israel is in incarnation of the Jews.

So, here’s the connection:

Israel is a western democracy situated in a region of ideological turmoil and chaos. As such, Israel is the buffer in this ideological campaign and hence at the epicentre of the survival of western Judeo-Christian democracy. Intrinsic to this ideological battle is the divide and rule tactic employed against the Jews that goes like this:

If world leaders, and hence the people, can be persuaded that Israel is the pariah state, so that the Jews become the enemy and jihadi ideology a perversion, with our silence the tool, then Andalusia is within reach.

Game set and match – organisations are set up to establish these criteria so that we are increasingly silenced for fear of speaking out. We are accused of hate crimes if we identify the culprits and thought crimes lest we discuss their theology. Then we are silenced into submission.

 Hate crime is the new buzz word, a next step progression toward a totalitarian state, in which talking about terrorists is more punishable than the terror itself, so that some lives matter more than others and hate crime matters above all else, with some beliefs sanctioned whilst others are vilified, building a society of polarisation, in which compassion and human rights are hijacked as the domain of the left holding hands with the replacement ideology of the right that negates our freedom and our democracy.

We are beset by fear, not the fear of another terrorist attack, for that is a happening in a single point of time. We are afraid of being termed racist if we ask questions or name that elephant in the room that engulfs us in a conspiracy of silence.

Orwellian organisations, fancy themselves as prefects, monitors of morality who categorise us, projecting the terrorist extremism back on us so we are called alt-right, a phrase that really has no meaning, corporate speak, used to pigeon-hole us into lists, endless lists that give them power to discriminate, so I am transformed from that white, Jewish woman of Apartheid, into an alt-right, white, Jewish woman of the new fascist anti-fascist list keepers. In this process, there is no place for dissention, for disagreement and debate or negotiation. There is right and there is wrong and those on lists are wrong whilst the list makers are correct.

In the meantime, we continue to be terrorised, awaiting the next plane/shoe/nail/bucket bomb, hoping it won’t be nearby, then we’ll bring candles and flowers with tissues to wipe our tears as we retreat again into submission.

Well today marks the day when we say we will be silenced no longer.

We have had enough,
enough of the terror,
enough of the lies,
enough of the hatred
enough of the stealth takeover of our democracy and of our freedom.

Those of us here today represent a true cross section of society. We are not all from the same background and we are not all of the same belief, but we all have the same message:

All lives matter
All rights matter
Above all freedom matters
And democracy matters

It is not a coincidence that we assembled beside the statue of the great Winston Churchill before arriving here with the women’s memorial to remind that but these courageous people,  we would not be here today.

To borrow from Churchill his phrase:

We cannot allow an iron curtain to settle across our country.

So, let’s stand here together in unity to say:

We will be silenced no more.