The whole of history turns on this battle

 

Since the death of the Prophet Muhammad much of history can be divided into a struggle between Islam and Christendom. The two great world religions have hugely influenced those countries where they are dominant, and both have at times sought to dominate the other and spread as far as possible.

European civilization is primarily due to Christianity. We would not have democracy, nor free markets, nor human rights nor any of the things that distinguish the West from almost everywhere else if it had not been for certain historical events that kept us Christian.

Islam spread first throughout the Arabian Peninsula then north towards the Levant and westward along north Africa. It captured Spain and pushed on into France where it was stopped at the Battle of Tours in 732.

If Islam had not been defeated by Charles Mantel, there is every chance it would have pushed on and conquered all of Europe including Britain. Sometimes the whole of history turns on one battle.

Islam pushed into Sicily in 827 and pushed further into Italy but was pushed out by 902. It took Spain until 1492 to expel the Moors.

Islam was initially checked by the Byzantine Empire but finally captured Constantinople in 1453 and then pushed on into the Balkans, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria reaching Vienna in 1683. The Ottoman Empire besieged Vienna but was defeated by the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Again, the whole of history turned on a battle. If Vienna had fallen, the Ottomans may have pushed on further into central and western Europe, instead the Ottoman Empire was gradually pushed back particularly in the 19th century and by the start of the First World War was left with only Eastern Thrace.

But while Islam was stopped in 732 and 1683 in Europe it was able to spread into much of Asia reaching as far as Indonesia.

There is no particular reason to be critical of the spread of Islam. Europeans also spread our religion and frequently did so by means of conquest and aggressive missionary work.

At various times Islamic society was markedly superior to that on offer in Europe. Christians and Jews in Islamic countries were treated better than Muslims and Jews in most of Europe. At their best Islamic societies were cleaner than European ones had better scholarship and were often more pleasant places to live. Given the choice between living in London in 1300 or Bagdad I would choose Bagdad in a second.

Islamic societies produced formidable armies. They were able to defeat the best that Europe had to offer in the Crusades and the Holy Land remained under Islamic control until 1948. In the Middle Ages Christianity and Islam were approximately equal in power.

But the Renaissance and the Scientific revolution changed everything. While Islamic states stagnated by the 18th and 19th centuries the West was far superior in terms of technology and knowledge.

It was this that enabled the West to conquer first North and South America then Australasia, then much of Asia and finally much of the Islamic world.

The Ottoman Empire was carved up by France and Britain after the First World War and much of the world’s Muslim population found itself under European rule.

If you looked at the world in 1920 you might have concluded that Islam had been decisively defeated by the West. One hundred years later it feels quite different.

The West reached peak power in 1945 but has steadily lost confidence in itself in the years since. Despite there being many instances in history of empires, colonisation, and slavery only Europeans are supposed to feel guilty about them. No one in the Islamic world feels guilty because of the spread of Islam from Spain to Indonesia. No one feels guilty about slavery in the Islamic world nor about the Ottoman Empire, the Timurid Empire under Tamerlane [Timur] or about any other instance of colonisation. Why should they?

While Muslims across the world have on the whole retained their faith, Christians have largely lost theirs. Most Muslims are confident in the truth of the Quran and feel a sense of purpose and unity with their fellow Muslims. Christians have been left with a vacuum and into this vacuum has flowed any sort of weird and wonderful theory about race, transgender and sexuality. The result has been self-hatred and the destruction of the confidence that Europeans had about themselves and their values.

We have only relativism, you can be a woman if you feel like a woman, while Muslims have God given objective truth.

If we had not been Christians, our history would have been quite different. Even if you don’t believe the miraculous aspects of the Christian story, you ought to at least respect what the New Testament gave us culturally.

But Christianity only gave us everything that makes us European because Europeans thought Christianity was true. Without truth there is no foundation for our values.

There is now a lack of confidence in the essential virtue of the West, which is what allowed the Founding Fathers to dare to create something better and which also enabled us to defeat tyranny three times in the 20th century. All that is left is relativism in relation to other countries and cultures. We dare not even say that science is superior to witch doctors, mumbo jumbo and the superstition of primitive man. It means that we have lost all sense of being able to say clearly and distinctly this is right and that is wrong.

The biggest catastrophe that has struck Europe and the West was our failure to produce enough babies. For the first time in history contraception made it possible to unlink sex from procreation and our lack of religion turned sex into recreation and marriage into a broken promise.

It is for this reason that successive governments have turned to those parts of the world with high birthrates and an excess population that would be happy to live here. We needed them to do the work we didn’t want to do and to pay the taxes that enabled some of us to live idle lives cared for from the cradle to grave.

The clash of civilizations that has been going on for nearly 1500 years has reached its latest battle in Gaza. Jews for centuries were persecuted by Christians, but the horrors of the Holocaust destroyed the old-fashioned antisemitism that existed in much of Europe before the Second World War. But it was soon replaced by a new antisemitism that grew out of hatred of Israel and the fact that it dared to occupy land that once had been part of the Dar al-Islam.

Europeans and Israelis viewed themselves as allies from 1948 until at least 1973. In 1960 the film Exodus was released starring Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint. It tells the story of the foundation of Israel in a positive way and was popular and well received at the time. It is unimaginable that such a film could be made today. It would be picketed. It would be called racist.

Israel somehow lost the narrative. In 1967 there were no mass demonstrations complaining about the Six Day War. The demonstrators had yet to arrive in sufficient numbers. With their arrival we have felt unable to stick up for people like ourselves living in a free Jerusalem. Instead, many in the West feel impelled to sympathise with people who largely don’t share our values and who don’t want to live in a free society because they correctly interpret that their religion is a theocracy. What is a mere majority of votes compared to the word of God?

I admire Islam, but I admire European civilization more. Islam has been a worthy opponent for the past 1500 years, but let’s be absolutely clear. It has always been an opponent. We were able to develop democracy, science, exploration and progress only because we were able to stop the spread of Islam. Now the challenge is different.

When we fought at Tours in 732 and Vienna in 1683 there were almost no Muslims living in Europe, now there are forty million. When Britain allied with Israel at Suez in 1956 there were almost no Muslims in Britain to oppose it and still small numbers in 1967 and 1973.

Israel is fighting an existential battle. If Palestinian terrorists can massacre 1,400 people in southern Israel on October 7th how can Israelis live normal lives free from fear like we do in Scotland? But while Israel still has the resolve to defend itself and fight back, the biggest danger is that we do not.

While Israel knows that it is threatened by the Muslim world and must be careful in every step it makes towards peace, in Britain we have allowed mass migration of people who hold exactly the same views that Israel is so wary of, and we are not careful at all.

Europe has been in a battle with Islam for 1500 years. I don’t blame either side. Each has merit, each has good qualities. There is no easy way to reconcile us because our values are incompatible. Europe believes in freedom of conscience, democracy and the right to reject religion, Islam largely does not.

But this means that Israel’s battle is our battle. If Israel were to be defeated, we would be weakened and perhaps in time we would be defeated also.

It is for this reason that it is so dangerous to have quite so many opposing Israel in London and calling for its destruction. They oppose us also. They call for our destruction. If we are not very careful, they will win.

The whole of history turns on this battle.

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Humza the hypocrite

 

I grew up in a Scotland that was completely white. In rural Aberdeenshire there were no ethnic minorities. There were no religious minorities either. I didn’t know any Catholics let alone Muslims or Hindus. The only kids we knew who were even slightly different were from England. Some of them were mocked and bullied. I can’t imagine the treatment that a little Humza Yousaf would have been given if he’d grown up where I grew up. The racism and religious prejudice he would have received would have been extreme.

I think it must have been quite tough for Humza Yousaf growing up in Glasgow. Casual racism was much commoner in Scotland then than now. Racist insults and attitudes were expressed without thought. It would make most people on the receiving end rather bitter.

The same can be said about hostility to people of Irish descent. There is no question that when their ancestors arrived in Scotland many experienced prejudice. Some were able to move on and integrate so that the only thing that distinguished them was a surname and a church, but others formed a sort of mental ghetto if not a literal one. They stuck with others who were also part of the Irish diaspora. They hated Britain while not wishing to return to Ireland. They felt themselves oppressed victims of colonialism and sided with what they thought were other oppressed victims of colonialism.

The experience of Humza Yousaf and some Celtic fans is that of people who see themselves as outsiders. They both hate British people and long to be free of the British state. It is as if Irish people were the lost tribe of Ishmael with its relations in Gaza and the West Bank.

As I grew older racism moved from being casual and universal to forbidden to such an extent that Scots with any sense learned to erase it or suppress it. But at the same time the people who had been up until then the main victims of racism learned that they could say what they liked about their former oppressors.

This is ably illustrated by the story of the black South African Rugby player allegedly calling his English opponent a “white c*nt”. There have been all sorts of excuses such as he was speaking Afrikaans or was misheard or whatever, but if a white player had said something remotely similar to “black c*nt” he would not have got away with the excuse that he was speaking Polish. He would have been banned forever. But nothing happened to the black player. There wasn’t enough evidence.

Black people can’t be racist. They are oppressed and according to the latest theories on race this means that they can’t be racist.

It is for this reason that Humza Youzaf was allowed to express his bitterness about Scotland in the video shared by Elon Musk where he complained about people in Scotland in senior positions who were “White, White, White”.

Imagine if Humza Yousaf’s family had instead chosen to move to Kenya and he had grown up there only to complain that “The president is black, the MPs are black, the TV presenters are black”. How would the Kenyans have responded? They would have called it racism. What did he expect in a country where most people were black?

But in Scotland there was minimal condemnation at the time. Now Elon Musk has described the “White, White, White” speech as racism. How does Yousaf respond. He says all the racists are frothing at the mouth, but he is indifferent. Everyone is a racist except me.

This is someone who is so sure of his victim status that he feels able to respond to an accusation of racism by declaring that everyone else is a racist. He feels untouchable.

Contrast this with the experience of ordinary British people who are accused by black people of being racist. If a black colleague reported you, would you say he was a frothing at the mouth racist? No, you would get down on your knees and beg for forgiveness.

What would you say if someone with 161,000,000 followers on Twitter called you a racist? If the whole world had seen, you speaking about black people with sneering disdain would you really have described them as frothing at the mouth racists?

This is now the most famous speech ever from the Scottish Parliament. It is the only speech most people will ever see, but Humza Yousaf is not able to find the beam in his own eye, he can only see the froth in someone else’s mouth.

There is no question that British Muslims experience prejudice both because of their race and religion. The same though to a lesser extent has historically been the case with Irish Catholics. But we are all human beings, and we are all equally capable of being prejudiced.

Many British Muslims choose to live in separate areas of cities like Bradford, many go on demonstrations calling for the destruction of Israel and express joy at the rape, murder and mutilation of Jewish people.

On each occasion since he became a politician that Israel has had a conflict with Palestinians Humza Yousaf always and immediately calls for a cease fire. It is always clear that he is on the side of the Palestinians. The same goes for large numbers of Celtic fans.

There is nothing wrong with expressing solidarity with Palestinians. But I would ask those on the demonstrations and the Celtic fans and Humza Yousaf. Did you once think of Israelis with prejudice in your heart?

This is the problem those who have been victims of racial and religious prejudice don’t think that they too can express racial or religious prejudice. This is why mobs feel free to be antisemitic on London’s streets and why Celtic fans feel free to display the flags of terrorists.

If my family had been trapped in Germany in 1939, I would have said some awful things in private about Germans and would have called them every name and swear word I could think of. Are we really to suppose that Humza Yousaf and family have no prejudice at all against Israelis? Perhaps he is a saint rather than a First Minister.

No Yousaf is a human being with the merits and also the flaw of all other human beings.

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

If someone has exposed your prejudice don’t accuse the whole world of being prejudiced except you. Instead do your best not to feel prejudice and not to express it, then you will be able to see more clearly not only what needs to be done in Scotland but elsewhere too.

 

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Keir Starmer is too weak to defend Israel

 

I was horrified by Jeremy Corbyn in a way that I wasn’t horrified by any previous Labour leader. I might have disagreed with previous leaders, but they were within the mainstream of British politics. Corbyn was not. He was an extremist who supported terrorists and quite frankly hated Britain.

The one thing that has worried me since 2019 is that every single important figure in the Labour Party campaigned for Corbyn to become Prime Minister. Keir Starmer may have suspended Jeremy Corbyn and prevented him from standing at the next election, but he knew all there was to know about Corbyn in 2019. A man who is now unfit to be a Labour MP was fit then to be Prime Minister.

I was impressed by Keir Starmer’s initial response to the terrorist attacks on Israel. He was clear in his condemnation and clear that Israel had the right to defend itself and prevent Hamas committing such atrocities again. I think Starmer genuinely believes this. But he’s got a problem. The Labour Party clearly does not.

The fuss from some Labour MPs and the resignation of some councillors is absurd. Israel is primarily concerned about support from the United States. It would be annoyed if the British Government or another ally did not support it, but it wouldn’t much matter. The idea that Israel would even notice what a councillor for Leicester, the Irish Government, Humza Yousaf or various Labour MPs say is preposterous.

It matters very little indeed what Keir Starmer and the Labour Party say now, they are in opposition. But it would begin to matter if Labour formed the next Government, not so much for Israel, as for us. I don’t want to live in a country where the Government supports antisemitism and has sympathy for terrorists. That sort of attitude is liable to become a problem not just in Israel, but here too.

There has in the past weeks been huge amounts of condemnation of Israel from Scottish nationalists and from many in the Labour Party. There have been mass demonstrations in support of the Palestinians that only took place because of the 7th of October terror attack. There have been celebrations of this attack too. But it’s not enough to condemn, it’s not enough to demonstrate and celebrate. What we need is practical solutions. What do you propose Israel does?

I have come across lots of people who believe that the Palestinians are the victims of a historical wrong. They have ended up trapped in the West Bank and Gaza. They live in poor conditions and have little hope of a better life. Let’s assume that this is true. Why are you so interested?

Millions of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were displaced from their homes in 1947 when India was partitioned. Millions of Germans were displaced from their homes in in what is now Poland and Russia. Millions of Native Americans, Aztecs, Incas, Aborigines, Maoris and others were killed or lost their homes due to colonisation. It does not give the descendants of these people the right to commit acts of terrorism. It does not give India the right to attack Pakistan. It does not give Germany the right to attack Poland.

So even if you think there was historical injustice in the formation of Israel, the displacement of the Palestinian people and their present situation, it still would not give them the right to attack Israel. What’s more if Labour MPs are uninterested in the rights of displaced Germans and Hindus in the 1940s why are they so concerned with Palestinians? Do they only care about conflicts involving Jews? There is a word for this.

Israel exists. What do you propose to do about it? There are I suspect some privately in both the SNP and Labour Party who think that Israel should be wiped out from the river to the sea. But how are you practically going to do that? There are about 7 million Jewish people in Israel. It’s likely to be necessary to have some sort of method of mass extermination to get rid of all of them. So, what does that make people who shout, “from the river to the sea”? The only fascists in Britain today are those that want to repeat the Holocaust. Unfortunately antifascists agree with them.

An alternative solution to the conflict would be a two-state solution. A Jewish state and a Muslim state. But this has been our problem from the start. The Palestinians lost the chance to have a Palestinian state because in conjunction with the whole Arab world they tried to wipe out the Jewish state in 1948. They lost.

Just like any other country that is attacked Israel was able to gain territory. But this is no different from Poland gaining German territory after it was attacked in 1939. Why are you not demonstrating about that?

So too in 1967 the whole Arab world prepared to attack again, but this time Israel was ready and conquered the West Bank and Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. On each occasion the Palestinians lost out because they tried to destroy Israel. They came closest in 1973 but lost again so turned to terrorism.

But this is our problem with the two-state solution. The Palestinians don’t want it. They rejected it because they demand the right to return of all descendants of people who were displaced in 1948-1949.

No doubt lots of Labour MPs think that all Palestinians should have the right to return. But no one thinks that Germans have the right to return to their homes in Poland. No one thinks that Hindus and Sikhs have the right to return to their homes in Pakistan. There were millions of displaced people after the Second World War, but there are only demonstrations about the descendants of Palestinians. What do you call people who are only concerned about people displaced by Jews?

There are 14.3 million Palestinians worldwide. If they all returned, there would not be a two-state solution, there would be a one state solution with a massive Palestinian majority. What would happen if there were elections in this state? Well, if the Jews were lucky Fatah might form the Government, if they were unlucky Hamas would be their rulers. It is unlikely that democracy would last long. If you were an Israeli, would you choose to live in a state ruled by Hamas or the successor to the PLO?

Is there a possibility of a two-state solution without the right to return? Perhaps but such a solution depends on the Palestinians accepting that Israel has the right to exist and giving up the armed struggle. Gaza in particular is not viable economically without help from the international community, but aid is just recycled as rockets.

Many Labour MPs are calling for a ceasefire, but if a country is attacked it has the right to do whatever is necessary to defeat its enemy. It’s not up to Humza Yousaf, or Labour MPs to determine when there might be a ceasefire, it’s up to the IDF.

We absolutely should be concerned about Palestinians dying and being wounded in the present conflict. Egypt in particular should open the southern border of Gaza to let people out. But it’s not enough to demonstrate in support of Palestinians. It’s not enough to demonise Israel.

Keir Starmer needs to ask his MPs why are you so interested in Israel versus Palestine, but you don’t care about any other conflict in the world? This is the same problem as the Labour Party had under Jeremy Corbyn. There are just as many antisemites as there were only these can’t be criticised for their antisemitism.

Starmer then has to ask what practically can be done to bring permanent peace to the region? Calling for the destruction of Israel isn’t going to help. They will fight you and they will win.

The only thing that can bring peace to the region is if the Palestinians give up terrorism and accept the existence of Israel. The people demonstrating in Britain, and I strongly suspect the majority of rebellious Labour MPs neither accept the existence of Israel nor think the Palestinians ought to give up the armed struggle. This view is now commonplace in the UK. In certain places it is universal and believed without question.

It frightens me that such people might soon form our Government. It frightens me that so many are on our streets. Keir Starmer was too weak to oppose Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister and will be too weak to oppose those MPs who are hostile to Israel. Like Macron he will be too weak to say anything other than we must learn to live with terrorism.

 

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Is Humza worse than useless?

 

It’s always been a mystery to me why Humza Yousaf is leader of the SNP and First Minister. I remember during the leadership contest reacting with glee when it was announced that he had won. Could the SNP membership really have been as stupid as to pick Useless? Yes indeed. They were that stupid.

It is now clear that the British electorate has decided to dump the Conservative Party. Labour may turn out to be worse. But voters have decided to give the other party a go. Nothing will change this.

But the swing to Labour is not only going to wipe out much of Tory England it is also going to wipe out much of SNP Scotland. It’s possible that Alex Salmond at his peak could have stopped this. Nicola Sturgeon when she was able to pack them into the Glasgow Hydro could have stopped it too. But Yousaf can’t. Nor can anyone else.

Kate Forbes on the surface would be a better leader, but she would need a whole new SNP to lead. The SNP might be willing to accept a practicing Muslim leader, but it would never accept a practicing wee free. She would split the party and do even more damage than Yousaf.

Yousaf is generally seen as useless. He has achieved nothing of consequence since entering politics. We don’t know why he became the favoured successor to Sturgeon. It may have been to keep a lid on things. This is all part of the mystery.

But if Yousaf was picked for damage limitation reasons there is a danger that the damage will exceed all expectations.

As a member of the Scottish Parliament Yousaf attracted minimal attention. No one outside Scotland was very interested in what he did, what he thought or who he met. But Yousaf is now attracting a lot of attention.

It was unfortunate that Yousaf’s in laws were visiting Gaza when Hamas attacked Israel on 7th October. But it wasn’t just bad luck. They should not have been there. Yousaf was in a privileged position with access to civil servants and contacts who could have told him that the Foreign Office advised against all travel to Gaza. Why didn’t’ he tell his in laws not to go?

Every reasonable person hopes that Yousaf’s relations get out safely and indeed that there are as few casualties in Gaza as possible. But Yousaf appears desperate to make political capital out of the plight of his relations and I think this has been noticed.

Suddenly there are regular stories about Yousaf’s connections with Islamist organisations. In the past two days I have read more about Yousaf meeting with people connected with Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood or a dubious Islamist charity than I have in the past few years. There were always a few such stories if you chose to dig for them, but Yousaf could just about get away with it. That’s becoming harder.

Part of the problem is that it is difficult to find a motivation for Yousaf to join the SNP. His parents would have had zero interest in Scottish independence when they arrived in Scotland. Yousaf suffered from islamophobia and racism as a child and would have been told by numerous people that he was not Scottish. It’s odd that he should have become the ne plus ultra of Scottishness after that.

Wha saw the Humza Yousafs,
Wha saw them gang awa?

For this reason, I always thought he desired Scottish independence for another reason. Just as some people of Irish descent gravitate towards the SNP as a means of achieving the goal of Irish nationalism, so too I think some people gravitate towards the SNP because of their hope that Scottish independence might damage the West generally and punish the UK for its foreign policy choices such as supporting Israel and sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yousaf is a mass of contradictions. On the one hand some Muslims criticise him for his liberalism. He has usually been willing to adopt progressive viewpoints on gay rights and transgender. But privately these sorts of viewpoints must conflict with the Islam that he is taught at the mosque. It must at times be difficult to hold together the two ideas, what he has to tell his SNP colleagues and what he has to believe as a good Muslim.

The contradiction can also be seen in Yousaf divorcing his first wife after he had an affair because she was not a good Muslim and next marrying his second wife Nadia El-Nakla after she had an affair and was divorced by her husband. What is it to be a good Muslim?

I think this is the problem for Muslims living in the UK including Scots like the Yousafs. Their parents liked the wealth of the UK and the opportunities, but rejected everything else about us. But those who grew up in Scotland are more torn. They don’t wholly reject what our country has to offer. Some are not wholly observant Muslims. But on an issue like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Muslims feel the need here at least to assert their Islam even if in nothing else. This explains the excesses at the demonstrations.

I don’t know how much Yousaf has flirted with Islamism. I think most of those who shout “Jihad, Jihad, Jihad” [i.e. inner struggle, inner struggle, inner struggle] are playing a rebellious game and would be horrified if they actually were made to fight a Jihad. At this point they would suddenly find that they were British. Save me save nice British Foreign Office that I’ve always despised up to now.

Yousaf is not a Jihadist agent sent to destroy Scotland with his uselessness. That is a conspiracy theory too far. If Hamas wanted to infiltrate the SNP and eventually the Scottish Government, my guess is that they could have done better. These people may hit their own hospital with rockets, but they are not completely useless.

But Yousaf is not merely useless. He also I strongly suspect holds very dubious views about radical Islam and shares with his wife the desire that Palestine should be free from Israelis. He will be careful not to say this, but if he didn’t think this, he wouldn’t have met the people he most probably did.

Quite a lot of Scots are willing to flirt with support for the IRA and also with Islamic terrorism, but only so long as it doesn’t happen here. It’s a fun game to play from a distance, but that’s all. Far too many in the SNP flirt with very dubious sympathies. You might think it attracts support, but it’s much more likely that ordinary Scots will reject you if you bring such conflicts here. Yousaf has much more damage to do yet. He is worse than useless. 

 

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Britain has changed beyond all recognition

 

What is now the United Kingdom has experienced waves of migration since time began. The Beaker people were replaced by the Celts, who were in turn pushed westwards by the Angles Saxons, Vikings and Normans. We would not be what we are today if it had not been for these peoples, so there is no point regretting it.

But that is not to say that a Celt living in what is now East Anglia did not regret that his home was colonised by Angles and Saxons and that he had to leave it. Likewise, it is not to say that a Pict living in the modern-day Moray did not regret the arrival of the Scoti from Ireland. Within a short time, there were no more Picts.

From the point of view of the original inhabitants the colonisation of North America was a disaster. That is not to say that there was any way to avoid it. Someone at some point was bound to sail across either the Atlantic or the Pacific. People in Europe or Asia would have settled in North and South America eventually even if the ships sailed by Columbus had sunk.

But if we compare the colonisation of North America with the rates of migration taking place today there is something very striking.

The colonisation of what is the USA began incredibly slowly. In 1610 there were only 350 Europeans. We don’t know exactly how many Native Americans there were. Estimate range from 3.8 million to as high as 18 million. By the time of the Salem Witch Trials in the 1690s the total European population was still under 200,000. 

When the United States declared itself independent it had a total population of 2,148,076. At this point it occupied only 13 colonies along the Atlantic and most Native Americans living in the West would have had only sporadic contact with European traders and trappers.

In 1840 the non-native American population of the USA had reached 17,063,353. It had taken two hundred and thirty years.

Compare this with the UK. In 1939 there were around 7000 people from ethnic minorities living in the UK. There were around 70,000 other foreign-born people. In 1950 the UK population was still 99.9% white British.

But the Census of 2021 for England and Wales (Scotland is not yet fully available) shows that there are 15.3 million people in the UK whose ancestors were not here in 1950. 11 million people living in the UK are from ethnic minorities.

The UK is in the equivalent position of the USA in 1680. It is approximately 70 years since large numbers of people began to arrive here from overseas. But in 1680 the non-native American population of the USA was 151,507 while in the UK it is 15.3 million.

The Native American population of the USA today is around 9 million or 2.9% of the USA population of nearly 332 million. Very few Native Americans live in the places where they first encountered Europeans. They have been pushed westwards many onto reservations or wiped out.

There is no question that what happened when Europeans arrived in North America was colonisation. There is no question also that it was generally bad for Native Americans. The Native Americans caught European diseases, were victims of oppression, racism and wars. But there is also no question that what happened in the USA in terms of change in demographics was incredibly slow compared to what is happening in the UK today.

Whether it is possible to call what has happened here since 1950 colonisation is debatable. There isn’t any particular country that is colonising the UK or ruling it. We are not part of an empire. But then the migrants who went to the USA prior to independence also came from a number of countries. Not all forms of colonisation involve empires or being ruled. Britain was colonised by Celts. It doesn’t mean that there was a Celtic empire or rule from Gaul.

But whatever you call it the result will the same. If rates of migration continue at their present rate quite soon the original inhabitants of Britain will be outnumbered just as formerly the Native Americans were outnumbered or the Picts and the Celts.

Looked at from a point of view two or three hundred years from now I can easily imagine a British citizen reflecting on the people who lived in Britain until 1950 and saying that it was a good thing how people from all over the world came together to form a new Britain just as it was a good thing that the Romans then the Angles and the Saxons came to supersede the Ancient Britons. If they hadn’t, we’d all still be speaking Welsh, driving around in chariots and ruled by druids.

Perhaps it will be a good thing for us to go the way of the Celts. There is no way of knowing what the future brings and there is probably no way of stopping it anyway.

But let’s be clear what is happening in the UK is the equivalent of the Beaker people being replaced by the Celts and the Celts being replaced by the Angles and the Saxons. It’s great if you are an Angle or a Saxon, just as it is great if you are a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers, but it is not so great if you are descendant of one of the Native Americans who met Europeans at Jamestown for the first time in 1607. It’s not so great because your ancestor probably died of flu or smallpox and if he didn’t, he was pushed onto a reservation.

You don’t need to be an expert in demographic trends to see what is happening. The UK has been importing people at one hundred times the rate of the USA in the past 70 years compared to 1610-1680. What’s more the rate of demographic change in the UK is continually increasing. It has massively increased in the past decade.

To illustrate. There were almost no Muslims in Britain in 1950. By 1961 there 50,000. By 1991 there were 950,000, but by 2011 there were 2,706,000 and 2021 3,868,133. There had been an increase of more than a million in a decade. More Muslims live in the UK than Lebanon and almost as many as live in Palestine.

It isn’t necessary to be unpleasant about any British citizen to be concerned about the changes that are taking place to the demographics of the United Kingdom. I am willing to believe that limited migration is beneficial. But what we have is unlimited migration and it is going to change everything.

At what point were the Native Americans outnumbered? When did they lose control over most of the land they had inhabited? Not until the 1890s or a little later. It took the USA nearly 300 years. Here rather less.

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Is the blue tick worth it?

 

Twitter has changed. I still think the rebranding as X is silly. This is not least because it makes it very difficult to search on Google for information about Twitter. The words Tweet and Retweet have entered the language. It is perverse to rename them Post and Repost.

But for someone like me who writes regularly and hopes to get readers, Twitter/X is still all there is. I share my articles regularly on Facebook. They get listed on Google, but Twitter provides me with much of my traffic.

It was therefore with some dismay that I began to find the number of my readers in decline. These things tend to go up and down a bit depending on events. During the initial stages of the Sturgeon scandal lots of people wanted to read about it. Then it all went quiet. But this was different.

I reached out to people explaining the situation. I added a donate button. I am so grateful to everyone who has contributed. I was struggling a bit in August with motivation. Why get up early to write another article if it didn’t get the readers I was used to? I began to think that I was doing something wrong. But I got a huge response from readers, and this continues. Thank you so much. It gave me a boost when I needed it.

But still something felt wrong on Twitter. People told me they no longer saw my articles or didn’t even saw me at all. I asked for people’s experience, and many agreed the problem was my lack of a blue tick.

I was initially reluctant to get a blue tick. It felt like a con. For years I had used Twitter without one. Why suddenly did I need one?

Unfortunately, I am forced to conclude that a blue tick is indeed necessary. If you don’t have one you are forced to fight Twitter to get any attention. The algorithm clearly disadvantages those without blue ticks. It doesn’t make Twitter impossible, but it makes it much harder to gain followers and views.

My experience is this. I subscribed to Twitter and a few days later I was given my blue tick. Immediately I gained lots of followers and my tweets gained much more attention. The page views for my site increased also.

There are a few added extras when you get your blue tick. The first thing noticeable is that there is a timer each time you tweet. It gives you the chance to review what you have written. To be honest I find this an annoyance. Next there is the chance to edit a tweet after it has been sent. I find this very useful. I make lots of typos and here is a chance to fix them. I can see how people might abuse the edit feature. You could get people to retweet one thing only to turn it into something else. But I think anyone who did this would lose followers fast.

It is also possible to write much longer tweets. If you approach the normal limit, you are given the opportunity of writing anything up to 10,000 characters, which would be about 2000 words. I could in theory put my whole article in a tweet. But I don’t think a tweet is the ideal place to read an article and it would rather defeat the purpose of getting people to my site. In general, I think long tweets counterproductive. So, I never use this feature.

But the thing that makes the blue tick worth while for me is the opportunity to allow people to subscribe and the opportunity to share Twitter revenue. The second of these has already repaid my subscription.

To be eligible for Ads Revenue Sharing, you need to have a blue tick, you need at least 500 followers, and you need to “Have at least 5M impressions on your posts within the last 3 months” The way you can find out if you do is to go to Twitter analytics.

The added features that you get from the blue tick are frankly not worth it. But if you want to build a following on Twitter, I think a blue tick is essential. If you are happy with a few followers and just want to interact with others I wouldn’t bother getting the blue tick. If you have 5 million impressions in three months, then it is probably worth applying for a blue tick as an experiment. See how much you get back. Then make a calculation of whether it is worth it. It is cheaper to subscribe to Twitter for a year, but I would only pay one month’s subscription to begin with as you are not guaranteed to get a blue tick even if you pay.

The number of my readers has increased since I got my blue tick. My number of followers has gone up hugely. It’s the difference between walking through a bog and walking on dry land.

But I still rely on each and everyone of you to retweet, make comments and above all read the articles. There is only me. I continually need your help to get the message across. The blue tick helps, but each of you helps more.

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Is media bias antisemitic?

 

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has now been going on since at least 1948, but while this never-ending war has gotten older our response has become more childish.

There are differing historical views about the founding of the state of Israel and the history is well worth investigating. But it also doesn’t matter. There is a state called Israel. There is a population called Israelis. Whatever you believe about how Israel was founded this is a fact.

My understanding is that the founding of Israel was entirely legitimate. But if you want to believe that Palestine was illegitimately colonised by Jewish people you must apply that logic equally to the USA, Australia, New Zealand and any number of other places.

If someone attacks the USA, it will have the right to fight back and defeat its enemy. This has nothing whatsoever to do with what you think about the legitimacy or otherwise of the Pilgrim Fathers.

Israel was attacked by Hamas. We can sympathise with the conditions in which the Palestinians live in Gaza. But like any other country when attacked Israel has the right to defend itself, fight back and defeat its enemy.

Gaza is a tiny strip of land that is densely populated. There are Hamas fighters. There are large numbers of Hamas supporters. There are innocent civilians who just want to get on with their lives. But there is no easy way to tell the difference. It is inevitable that any war with Hamas will involve civilian casualties not least because Hamas fires its rockets, stores its ammunition and fights from civilian locations.

One of the definitions of antisemitism is

Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

There are any number of conflicts around the world, but mostly we pay little or no attention. The Second Congo War involved 5.4 million excess deaths (1998–2008). I don’t recall any demonstrations about it. I don’t remember Nicola Sturgeon or Humza Yousaf calling for refugees to come to Scotland. The Yemeni Civil War (2014-) has seen 3 million Yemenis displaced and 370,000 deaths, but its rarely or ever on the BBC News and no one chants Free Free Yemen in Glasgow or London.

Other countries can fight their enemies, kill civilians and commit whatever injustice they want and people in Britain will neither know about it nor care about it. But not Israel. Every single action Israel takes in response to the worst day in Jewish history since the Holocaust is scrutinised in minute detail and any mistake is condemned even before we know if it was a mistake.

When news broke that a hospital in Gaza had been destroyed. The BBC and the rest of the media immediately assumed that Israel had done it.

Nicola Sturgeon responded to a Sky News by saying

What Hamas inflicted on the people of Israel was unconscionable. So is this. The collective punishment of the Gazan people must cease.

But this is to compare the deliberate murder, rape and mutilation of Israeli civilians with what at the time was thought to be a mistake. No one seriously thinks the Israeli Air Force deliberately targeted a hospital. Israeli armed forces follow the same rules of war as the USA or UK.

It might have been possible to believe that an Israeli missile malfunctioned and hit a hospital, but this isn’t remotely the same as deliberately massacring civilians.

Humza Yousaf responded to a BBC report

There can be no justification for this. None whatsoever.
If people can not be safe in a hospital, where can they?
This attack must be unequivocally condemned in the strongest possible manner
Ceasefire is needed now. Innocent men, women & children must be allowed to leave Gaza

Yousaf immediately assumes that the story is true even though at the time it was reported as being according to Palestinian Officials. He also assumed that Israel deliberately attacked a hospital.

At no point does Yousaf ever mention that Gaza has a border with Egypt, but that Egypt prevents Gazans from leaving Gaza. It would be easy for the international community to provide refuge in Sinai, much easier than taking Gazans to Scotland, which is what Yousaf wants, but Egypt won’t allow it.

What would be the result of a ceasefire? Hamas would continue in power and be free to commit another massacre whenever it chose. But this is like saying Japan can attack Pearl Harbor and then demand a ceasefire because the Americans bombed Tokyo with the Doolittle Raid in 1942.

Since at least the First Gulf War western armed forces including Israel have been held to a higher standard than anyone else and are tasked with minimising civilian casualties. But you cannot win a war in a densely populated Gaza without some mistakes. Russia by contrast was allowed to carpet bomb cities in Syria without any outrage on social media and without any demonstrations.

It has now become clear that Israel did not bomb the hospital in Gaza. The Israeli armed forces have provided evidence that appears to be conclusive that a rocked fired by Islamic Jihad malfunctioned and crashed into the hospital.

But there have been no apologies from Nicola Sturgeon, Humza Yousaf or any of the media organisations which inflamed an already dangerous situation.

It is perfectly legitimate to criticise Israel. It is also legitimate to have different views about the history of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But too many people in their hatred of Israel approach antisemitism perhaps inadvertently.

It is antisemitic to uniquely criticise the historical circumstances that gave rise to Israel and to call for the destruction of the Jewish state.

It is antisemitic to only be interested in wars involving Israel and not be interested in other wars.

It is antisemitic to automatically believe Palestinians and automatically disbelieve Jews.

It is antisemitic to apply a standard to the Israel that you are not willing to apply to other countries.

If during the Troubles a bomb had gone off in Belfast that destroyed a hospital and the IRA had said it was due to the British Army, the BBC would not have reported this as true before the British Army had verified it. It would have referred to the IRA unequivocally as terrorists and would have replaced the voices of Sinn Fein with those of actors. If the British Army provided evidence that the bomb had been the work of the IRA, the BBC would have immediately believed it. If the BBC had made a mistake in its reporting it would have apologised.

This is the double standard. The 7th of October attack on Israeli civilians was an act of terrorism, yet the word of the terrorists is believed and the word of the victims of the terrorism is disbelieved. It’s as if in the days after 9/11 the BBC, Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf believed Osama bin Laden rather than the American authorities.

The USA is always allowed to fight back when it is attacked. But Israel isn’t. This is why the conflict has continued since 1948. We prefer permanent war to resolving it while pretending to want peace.

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The SNP is a dwindling band of fantasists

 

Like everyone else I have not been paying much attention to the SNP conference which is taking place nearby me in Aberdeen. The turnout has been poor with plenty of empty seats. But this isn’t the SNP’s main problem, nor indeed is Humza Yousaf. The real problem is Scottish nationalism has become a movement of fantasists.

In 1989 two million people in what are now Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia joined hands to mark the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which led to them being annexed by the Soviet Union. The human chain stretched for 430 miles. On Saturday Scottish nationalists tried to reenact this.

There is something deeply offensive about comparing Scotland with the Baltic states. Scotland was never annexed. The Kingdom of Scotland merged with the Kingdom of England primarily because a Scottish King became heir to the English crown and a political merger followed.

Scotland is part of a fully democratic UK rather than a Soviet tyranny. The Red Army did not invade Scotland in 1939 rather huge numbers of Scots volunteered to fight for Britain.

Imagine if in 1980 the Baltic States had been given a referendum on leaving the Soviet Union and had chosen to stay. Such a human chain 9 years later would have been ridiculous.

Comparing Scotland with a Soviet Republic is itself absurd, but what is still more risible is the paltry numbers that the organisers could find to actually make up their chain. They chose the narrowest possible point of Scotland between the Clyde at Bowling and the Forth at Falkirk. The links between the people involved linking flags rather than hands, which added at least an extra person’s width to each link. Even then only in a few stretches was there actually a chain at all.

This ably illustrates the delusion. The organisers of the Baltic Way in 1989 knew that there was popular support for leaving the Soviet Union. They knew that they could get two million people to link hands. The organisers of the Scottish pale imitation don’t seem to realise that there is not popular support for Scotland leaving the UK. There is no mass movement willing to demonstrate.

There are more people willing to demonstrate for Palestinian independence than Scottish independence.

There was a time just after the referendum when Scottish nationalism looked like it might become a mass movement. Twelve thousand people were willing to go to the Glasgow Hydro to hear Nicola Sturgeon. The SNP got very close to 50% of the vote in 2015. Some of the marches attracted quite a lot of support. But to Scottish nationalists it’s as if this year never happened. Nicola Sturgeon hasn’t resigned, and Labour didn’t win Rutherglen and Hamilton by a landslide. They are all stuck in those heady days of ten years ago.

I actually think that Nicola Sturgeon’s de facto referendum scheme if successful would have put the UK Government under enormous pressure. If the SNP had been able to win more than 50% at a General Election, it would have been difficult to refuse a second referendum. Of course, a General Election is not a referendum, of course no party can hijack a General Election. But that is not the point.

David Cameron felt compelled to give Alex Salmond a referendum because the SNP won an overall majority at Holyrood. Cameron could and indeed should have said to Salmond you only won 45% of the vote, but Cameron didn’t think he could say No.

An SNP majority in a Holyrood election need not have triggered a referendum, nor need getting 50% in a General Election, but British Prime Ministers are unwilling to say that the UK is one nation indivisible, and that secession is illegal, so they have to at least pretend that the SNP goal is possible. If getting half the votes doesn’t make it possible what does?

But this is all beside the point now. It was just about possible to believe that the SNP would win 50% of the vote a year ago. I think the de facto referendum plan would have cost SNP votes. Most Scots don’t want independence and certainly don’t want it now. The support for independence in polls is massively inflated. It only shows Scots who want independence theoretically rather than actually.

Under Sturgeon the SNP would have retained most of its seats but with much less than 50% of the vote. At this point the British Prime Minister could have said you’ve had your second referendum and lost twice. Don’t speak of independence again.

But Humza Yousaf’s scheme which no one understands puts the SNP in an even worse position. Yousaf thinks that if the SNP wins a majority of seats (i.e., 29) then he can immediately begin negotiations for independence with the British Government.

But the SNP could easily win 29 seats with around 35% of the vote. Humza Yousaf wouldn’t even be an MP. He would merely be First Minister of a devolved Parliament that has no say over constitutional matters. How does he expect to negotiate anything? It’s like the Orkney Councillor threatening to join Norway unless he gets millions of pounds. It’s amusing, but also ludicrous.

But while there might have been pressure on a British Prime Minister if the SNP won more than 50% of the vote, there would be none whatsoever if it won 35% of the vote.

Worse what if the SNP wins only 28 seats? Once more the British Prime Minister says you’ve lost twice never speak of independence again.

But this is where the fantasists take over. Scottish nationalism doesn’t have the numbers. The last year has seen support for the SNP fall to the extent that it loses a safe seat. A few thousand turn up for a march in the sunshine a few hundred try to join hands across Scotland. Yet Scottish nationalists think that Scotland is ready for rebellion.

Scotland can become independent either with the cooperation of the British Government or without it. The problem with all of the SNP schemes is that it cannot force the British Government to either agree to a referendum or to negotiate independence. So, what do you do if it doesn’t cooperate?

We found out from an SNP delegate

We must become ungovernable, we must make the economic and social cost of keeping Scotland in the union greater than the cost of letting us go. In short, we must be willing to adopt a fully treasonous attitude towards Westminster.

This is a sort of William Wallace fantasy. I will be treasonous, and the wicked English will do to me what they did to Braveheart. I can see how this is a Scottish nationalist wet dream and is quite adorable in its silliness, but unfortunately it accurately sums up the SNP’s options if the British Government refuses to cooperate. What’s left except rebellion?

But I’m sorry if you cannot get more than a few hundred to turn up to the SNP conference, if you cannot link hands across the narrowest part of Scotland, the idea that you can hold a successful rebellion is preposterous.

There is support for independence, but only on condition that we keep our jobs, our standard of living, the pound and the ability to live and work in other parts of the UK. The treasonous attitude would become markedly less treasonous if the UK Government decided to abolish the Barnett Formula. Would we then rebel until it gave it back?

Achieving independence without UK cooperation, or through treasonous rebellion, would mean no international recognition, no EU membership and quite probably no food in the shops and no money in our bank accounts.

There are fewer Scots who want that than are present at the SNP conference.

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Gaza has become Scotland's problem

 

The conflict between Hamas and Israel ought to have nothing whatsoever to do with Scotland, but we are being dragged in because our First Minister is Humza Yousaf and his wife’s parents are trapped in Gaza.

It is necessary for all of us to have compassion for everyone who is trapped in Gaza. This is the case in any war. It was a mistake in my view to bomb cities in the Second World War. I understand why it was felt necessary at the time. In the early years of the war there wasn’t much else Britain could do to fight back. But it achieved little except the loss of civilian life, and I don’t believe it shortened the war even by one day.

For the same reason we must hope that Israel kills or injures as few Palestinians in Gaza as possible. But that does not mean that Israel does not have the right to take all necessary measures to defeat a foreign state that has just attacked it.

While the modern morality of war means that no one thinks that Operation Gomorrah which created the firestorm killing 37,000 in Hamburg in 1943 is acceptable, if an enemy state attacks you there is an absolute moral right not only to defend yourself but also to fight back to the extent that you defeat that enemy and prevent it being able to attack again. You must try to kill or injure as few civilians as possible, but you can still defeat your enemy.

Humza Yousaf is rightly concerned about his family members who are trapped in Gaza, but what he has not told anyone is that they should not have been there in the first place. The Foreign Office provides travel advice to British citizens and there was prior to the Hamas attack on Israeli citizens a travel warning against all travel to Gaza.

I can understand why Humza Yousaf’s in laws chose to ignore this advice. They wanted to visit members of their family. Nevertheless, it was foolish to go somewhere where the Foreign Office could not help and where it would be impossible to obtain travel insurance.

Humza Yousaf wrote to the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister, but he ought not to expect any more help for his in-laws just because he is First Minister than if he were a private citizen. The British Government will no doubt do that it can, but it will have no diplomats in Gaza and it’s not clear what else it can do.

This brings us to something unpleasant. I thought Humza Yousaf behaved rather well when he went to a synagogue to comfort the relatives of a Scottish person who was killed in the Hamas attack. But I begin to question what he really feels. The reason for this is that another SNP politician close to Humza Yousaf appears to have a more radical view.

In a speech from a few years ago we can hear Nadia El-Nakla a Dundee City Councillor and wife of Humza Yousaf make some statements that are dubious and unacceptable.

She begins by referring to Ban Ki-moon calling Syria a terrorist regime and clearly thinks that Israel ought also to be called a terrorist regime. She claims that Israel kills children as if it does so deliberately. She then refers to David Ben Gurion the First Prime Minister of Israel as a terrorist.

El-Nakla quotes Ben Gurion as saying, “The old will die and the young will forget”, but there is no record of him saying any such thing. It’s like quoting from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

El-Nakla uses this spurious quote to justify why she is arguing. She says Palestine will only be free if we remember and we fight.

People on both sides of this argument ought to have as much free speech as possible, but this I think is pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable.

If you think that David Ben Gurion was a terrorist, you are saying the equivalent of George Washington being a terrorist. But a terrorist cannot found a legitimate state. This then is to deny Israel’s right to exist.

But not only does El-Nakla think that Israel was founded by a terrorist, she thinks that it is still ruled by terrorists.

She thinks that we should not forget, and we should fight. But what is she fighting for. It’s not entirely clear. It could be that she is fighting for a two-state solution where the Palestinians rule Gaza and the West Bank. But they do that now. So it appears she must be going beyond that. She thinks Ben Gurion wanted the Palestinians who were displaced from their homes in the war of 1948 to never return. Well, she obviously wants to fight to allow them to return.

She says Palestine will be free, she doesn’t add from the “river to sea” but it is implied by her desire that they will return. That is the point of remembering.

But what then would happen to the state of Israel and the Israelis living there. Well, we discovered that last week.

It’s only because of the Hamas attack that Palestine supporters are speaking at all. If there had been no attack by Hamas they wouldn’t be demonstrating. No one would be demonstrating.

El-Nakla just like Humza Yousaf will deny that they support Hamas and we must take them at their word unless we can show otherwise. They will say that Hamas has nothing to do with their family in Gaza.  But Hamas was elected in 2006 which is why it took over the Gaza Strip in 2007. We can’t tell who in Gaza supports Hamas and who doesn’t. Perhaps El-Nakla’s family voted for someone else entirely. But clearly some people in Gaza support Hamas. We saw them cheering last week.

If I were a descendant of Palestinians, I too would most likely be angry about what happened in 1948. But I might equally be angry if my family were expelled from East Prussia. The twentieth century was full of tragedy. But however, Israel came about and there are arguments on both sides, it exists. It is full of Jewish people and in my view, people talking about freeing Palestine implicitly from the Jewish people living there are coming very close to advocating mass murder. There is no other way to free Palestine except by defeating Israel militarily, which would involve the wholesale replacement of the Israeli population if not its extermination.

Daniel Hannan wrote today

Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees,” says the 1988 Hamas Covenant, “and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’”

But this doesn’t come from Hamas it comes from the Sunnah

The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.

This I think is the essence of the problem. While Germans accepted the loss of their land in 1945 and the displacement of their people, Palestinians didn’t. They continue to refight the war of 1948, which was a war to exterminate the Jews. They don’t want to coexist with Israel, they want to destroy it. They can’t quite bear that Jews live in land that used to be part of the Dar al-Islam and will hunt them as they hunted them last week in the Negev and will expect even the trees and the stones to help them murder the Jews.

None of this of course should have anything to do with Scotland. The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should have no more interest to us than the dispute between China and India over uninhabited valleys in the Himalayas. But somehow Humza Yousaf’s family holiday has become our problem as is his wife’s desire to return to somewhere where she wasn’t born and isn’t a citizen.

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