Rappers Aren't Killing Jews
But I'll Tell You Who Are...
Kanye West might be surprised to learn that Keir Starmer insists “free speech is one of the founding values of the United Kingdom.” That’s what the British Prime Minister told President Trump last year, anyway. “And we protect it jealously and fiercely and always will.”
Kanye, the 24-Grammy-winning self-styled Hip-Hop Picasso, will no longer be performing at London’s Wireless festival. He has been banned from entering the UK by Downing Street in the name of a “fight to confront and defeat the poison of antisemitism.” Whilst Kanye now has quite a long history of toying with Nazism, last time I checked, the recent surge in violent antisemitism in the UK is not coming from the American-rapper community.
If antisemitism was the issue, it is curious then that Starmer was “delighted” to welcome Egyptian-British political activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah to the UK on Boxing Day, despite him calling the killing of Zionists “heroic” and suggesting “we need to kill more of them.”
And of course, if Starmer actually wanted to deal with antisemitism in Britain, he might start by naming its source. Provocative as the American-rapper community might be, there is another community in Britain more likely to hold a positive view of Hamas than a negative one, one of which half believe Jews control the government — a community of whom one in a hundred are jew-hating Jihadis known to MI5.
If it wasn’t already clear, I might remind you that the murders at the synagogue in Manchester last October were committed by Jihad al-Shamie, a Syrian-Brit. Last month, four Hatzola ambulances were set on fire outside a synagogue in North London. The suspects: Hamza Iqbal, Rehan Khan, and a 17-year-old dual British-Pakistani national. “It is a must that we grab a Jewish person and slaughter him and remove his head,” wrote Walid Saadaoui, one of the two behind another foiled Manchester terrorist plot “to attack a ‘mass gathering of Jews.’”
But our Prime Minister daren’t call out this problem in the Muslim community because it is a vital voter bloc Labour is desperately losing. Worse still, of the 70,000 illegal migrants who’ve entered the country by small boats since the start of his premiership, at least 70% have come from Muslim-majority countries. How many of them are jihadis? If only 1% are jihadis, that makes 490.
Keir Starmer’s decision to ban Kanye is low-hanging political fruit. West no question has quite a history of outbursts against Jews, as well as of long apologies and retractions and mental illness. But the decision to cancel his travel authorisation will do little to improve the life of Jews in Britain. On the contrary, some are already using it as evidence that Jews control the British government.
But the affair doesn’t just expose the inconsistencies of our feckless Premier. Only last year Paul Weller, Massive Attack, Primal Scream and a school of other artists published an open letter in defence of Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap’s right to support Hezbollah and Hamas — two organisations embodying the spirit of Hitler in the present day (as Hezbollah militants in Lebanon told me themselves). “The question of agreeing with Kneecap’s political views is irrelevant,” the pop stars implored, “it is in the key interests of every artist that all creative expression be protected.” Surely these principled musicians are similarly outraged by the treatment of Kanye even if they disagree with the things he’s said? I eagerly anticipate their updated open letter.
In the meantime, you’ll forgive my impression that neither the Prime Minister nor these right-on musicians care about free speech or antisemitism. Whether it is in government or in the arts, double standards seem to be the only consistency. No wonder then that the world is increasingly of the impression that Britain has become a totalitarian Woke-Caliphate.
Short and sweet. Concise calling out of the hypocrisy.
Well said. Thank you.