Jihadists and Lager Louts: Blair’s Tsurris

Jewish Comment .com
Thursday 11th Aug 2005 at 00:20

Contributed by : Carol Gould

[tsurris – Yiddish word for miserable problems]

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It is the day before Thursday yet again, and in London we tend to get
nervy at this point in the week because July 7th and 21st were
Thursdays. It is worrying that tomorrow is 11 August (Madrid happened
on the 11th and of course 9/11 ..) and that eight and eleven add up to
nineteen. In recent years radical groups operating without
interference inside the UK have celebrated September 11th with
veneration of the `Magnificent Nineteen.’

So, here we are being told by the Metropolitan Police that the next
attack is not a matter of if, but when. Intelligence gatherers have
declared that the attack will centre on the City of London, our
financial district. It is vulgar to try to blow one’s own trumpet and
say `I told you so’ at times like these, but for years in these
columns we have been lamenting the rhetoric being used by radical
organisations throughout the British Isles. Tonight on the news Avi
Dichter, the head of the Israeli security services, the Shin Bet, said
it is vital to nip the terror in the bud. He cited the targeted
killings of major militants using military helicopters.

Assassinations from helicopters hovering overhead will never happen in
London. However, reading an interview with Hassan Butt, a Muslim
activist in the UK who cares nothing for Britain and does not have any
feelings about the killing of Londoners, one could imagine an enraged
reader taking in the comments by Butt and wanting to throttle this
young radical. Butt had been vociferous about the grievances of
British Muslims just after September 11th, 2001. Four years later, his
sentiments have not changed.

This provokes a far-fetched but, we think, valid premise: does the
death of six million in the Holocaust give licence to Jews around the
world to blow up Germans? Does the 1915 massacre give Armenians the
right to go out and slaughter Turks? British Muslim leaders have taken
to wheeling out events from the founding of Islam to the present day
as unresolved issues needing a renewed, brave confrontation with the
West. In a disturbing poll conducted by the BBC today, only 29% of
British Muslims questioned said they think they should integrate into
British society. I am moved to look up at the wall of my living room
and gaze at the photograph of my late grandfather, Harry, who is
dressed as a Yankee Doodle Dandy and, with a moustachioed pal, waves a
fistful of American flags. This photograph was likely taken in 1910,
and both young men look ecstatic. They are so thrilled to be in
America, even if they can barely speak the language. As Janet Daley,
the expatriate American columnist observed on BBC `A Question of
Security,’ Britain does not have any structures in place to make
immigrants feel they are being inducted into a special and exciting
national identity, whereas the United States makes citizenship an
experience and celebration.

The only instance in American history in which hatred of the nation
spilled over into civil disobedience was the height of the civil
rights movement, when radical elements influenced public figures and
sportsmen to raise their fists in the Black Power gesture rather than
singing the Star-Spangled Banner. These African Americans did indeed
have a grievance, but what has Britain done to harm the scores of
angry young Muslims spewing fury in the media and on the streets, and
who burned the Union Jack and US flag in Grosvenor Square in May of
this year? I asked Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about this at the
World Affairs Council in Philadelphia that same week and he seemed
lost for words; what, when all is said and done, can the nations’
leaders do to placate these viscerally angry, British-born militants?
They have been given every opportunity in this country and many have
claimed tens of thousands in state benefits including housing, child
support, Incapacity Benefit, mobility cars, free pills plus medical,
optical and dental care and Income Support. The thanks the British
taxpayer gets is pronouncements from these non-workers that Jihad is
now in full swing and that the `covenant of security’ ( the passive
acceptance of radical activity by British authorities over the past
decades) ended with the re-election of Tony Blair.

Last year I had a vision of Britons waking up one morning to be
greeted by streets filled with tens of thousands of young men with
AK-47 machine guns, mowing us down in a giant Jihadist insurgency. The
people to whom I mooted this `remote view’ of things to come must have
thought me close to lunacy. This week, the `Independent’ newspaper
reports that intelligence sources feel there is a trained and ready
insurgency inside the British Isles armed with Kalashnikov and AK47
equipment. Reading Hassan Butt’s comments in today’s London newspapers
that Jihad is coming and that he has utter contempt for British
values, one can only feel that we are in a situation in which we have
`shut the stable door after the horse has bolted.’

Turning to the troubles within white British society, tonight’s main
BBC and ITV news addressed the national crisis of alcoholism. It is a
disease out of control; where Britons go, their reputation for
loutishness and violent, abusive behaviour under the influence of
massive amounts of alcohol follows with dread in Europe. Last year I
was in a fashionable French restaurant with American friends with whom
I had been commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of D Day in
Normandy. There was a loud commotion and soon we could see that a
group of heavily inebriated British tourists had become violent . The
Gendarmes arrived and we watched in disbelief as the Britons reeled
and collapsed onto the floor. They were so drunk they could not
stand. It was impossible for the officers to lead them out because
they were unable to walk. How many times one has seen this over the
years; the tragedy is that this sort of drinking now plagues the
young. On the BBC images were shown of pleasant and decorous behaviour
by pub patrons in the 1960s. Today, describing the state of our
drinking culture, Judge Charles Harris QC said, ‘These people are
simply savages.’

This takes me to the other major story in Britain: the continuing rage
in Manchester over the purchase of its legendary soccer team by
American Malcolm Glazer. Fans staged a protest and the images on
television were enough to convince a viewer that the Glazer sons
should steer clear of Manchester and perhaps the United Kingdom
altogether. The anger of the fans was frightening. At a time when
Britain is threatened with a Lebanon-style internal insurgency from a
legion of Jihadists, Britons continue to get into a fury about an
American running Manchester United. We had letters form furious
readers who said we did not understand British culture and not to
comment on soccer, but can anyone reading this imagine a crowd of
Americans threatening the life of a Briton who had bought, say, the
New York Yankees or Philadelphia Eagles?

What do these issues — loutishness and soccer rage — have to do with
the Jihadists? For those of us who were purveyors of fine culture in
theatre, film and television we have seen this great tradition
vanish. Scouring the pages of `The Evening Standard’ newspaper one can
find no new writing in the West End theatre. Every show is a revival
or a re-hash of an American musical. Thirty years ago London was the
world’s nerve centre for new writing : Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter,
Alan Bennett, Michael Frayn, Peter Nichols and other giants of the
creative world were generating a classic a month. Now, British theatre
and television are mired in a doldrums the likes of which can only be
called a tragedy. Into this maelstrom of a disappearing British
cultural identity come the Jihadists. It would be absurd to say that
impeccable behaviour at soccer games; the presence of Olivier, Gielgud
and Richardson on the West End stage and responsible pub conduct would
make the Jihadists have some respect for the culture they are expected
to absorb. What would make life in Britain more pleasant would be a
return to the days of glamour, elegance and dignity that characterised
daily discourse in this island nation. The idea that Gordon Ramsay and
Anne Robinson (her humiliation of contestants never ceases to horrify
me) are major celebrities is an indicator of the vast earthquake in
British society that has taken place in the past decade.

The Jihadists must be confronted and dealt with, but our own crumbling
society also needs attention. When the terrorists go, we may be left
with our own terror. The bottle must cease dominating our lives. The
solution to this nightmare, which is seeing children as young as
thirteen years of age in hospital with liver failure, will be an
uphill struggle. Perhaps our geneticists should research the reason
why alcohol is so abhorrent to Jewish youth! A world without Jihadists
and lager louts is too much to hope for but a troubled Britain,
preparing for Olympics 2012, will have to start somewhere. The message
to Tony Blair? Get real.