Ismail Patel: Extremist
This is a guest post by habibi
Ismail Patel has done well on the British Islamist circuit:
* In 1997 Patel founded the ”Friends of al Aqsa”, which bills itself as a voluntary organisation ”concerned with defending the human rights of Palestinians and protecting the sacred al-Aqsa Sanctuary in Jerusalem”. It publishes reams of anti-Israel leaflets, papers and journals, which are distributed at Islamist events as well as electronically.
* He is a spokesman for the British Muslim Initiative (BMI), a hard-core group that includes fugitive Hamas commander Mohammed Sawalha; Anas al Tikriti, who thinks Holocaust Memorial Day is an Israeli plot; and Azzam “Kaboom” Tamimi. The BMI played an important role in organising and leading the recent anti-Israel demonstrations in the UK. Many of the placards it distributed bore this repugnant Israelis-are-Nazis slur: “Stop the Holocaust in Gaza”.
* Patel has also served as a director of IslamExpo, an annual gathering in London that is organised by the BMI. It offers a mix of mainstream and extremist speakers, helping the political legitimation of the radicals. Hazel Blears clocked this last year and publicly snubbed the organisers. However, since ministers and senior opposition politicians failed to make the same decision in the similar case of the “Global Peace and Unity” event, this legitimation game is still on.
* Scotland too is in the legitimation frame: al Tikriti, Patel, Sawalha and founders of the Scottish Islamic Foundation met with the country’s Europe minister in January 2008 to discuss an “IslamFest” event in Scotland. Former London mayor Ken Livingstone opened this door, and the SNP gave the Islamists a warm welcome.
* The lobby group Conflicts Forum is entirely dedicated to the legitimation of extreme Islamists. For the retired spooky types who run it, presenting rogues in clubland and beyond as “the men we need to do business with” must be an entertaining past time. Ismail Patel is game and credibly extreme too, so he has been welcomed to the group as an advisor.
* Patel is a national member of the “Stop the War Coalition” (StWC) steering committee. He has represented the “antiwar” StWC at a Hezbollah jamboree in Beirut.
* The Guardian and the Independent have published several of Patel’s opinion pieces.
* He speaks frequently at the events of university Islamic societies. In recent years his appearances have included Birkbeck, Birmingham, Cambridge, De Montfort, Kingston, Leicester, Nottingham, SOAS, and Warwick.
Not bad, eh? Well, no wonder he’s a star in his circles. Look at him in delirium for Hamas in this video from the Gaza demonstration on 24 January 2009. He says to a cheering crowd:
“To the Palestinian resistance, we say we will support you until you gain your freedom!”
And here he is at the 10 January 2009 Gaza demonstration, saluting Hamas. He knows what’s best for Jews and who is a good Jew too:
“Hamas is no terrorist organisation. The reason they hate Hamas is because they refuse to be subjugated, occupied by the Israeli state, and we salute Hamas for standing up to Israel.” … “…to the state of Israel: you no longer represent the Jewish people. You have no moral authority to speak for the Jewish people when thousands of Jews are against what you are doing. And finally, to the British Jewish Board of Deputies, shame on you, to work, to promote the genocide of the Palestinian people and the war crimes of the Israeli government. You do not speak for the British Jewry who today have signed in the Guardian against the Jewish government, what it is doing to the Palestinian people. Shame on the British Jewish Board of Deputies.”
Ismail Patel is deliberately stirring up hatred in the UK on top of openly supporting a foreign terrorist group whose very essence is violent racism. He is an extremist. He should be excluded from mainstream politics and challenged wherever he shows up on the fringes.
There’s more. Look at him here in January 2009, cheering the repressive regimes of Iran and Syria, to the delight of IRNA, Iran’s official news agency.
Or here in the same month on Hitler lover Yusuf al Qaradawi’s IslamOnline: “…the present population of Israel is made of immigrants that have been brought from Russia, Europe and America.” Hmm, no one came from Muslim lands, just Europeans and Americans? Ahem.
Then there is this ode to Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas in a Conflicts Forum newsletter.
Or try Patel’s “Friends of al Aqsa” web site, where one finds that he publishes the work of some of the fanatical Israel haters well-known to readers of this blog, including Gilad Atzmon, Israel Shamir, Stephen Sizer, and Ben White.
He has also published this fine specimen of raw Jew hatred by Palestinian journalist Khalid Amayreh, who claims that Israel controls America and is destroying it from within:
Some of the most strident and audacious acts Israel and her agents in America have taken to destroy America from within has been the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. That unnecessary and manifestly disastrous war was conceived in and planned by Israel through the mostly Jewish neocons in Washington, D.C. … Again, if you are in doubt, ask those who dare to speak in Washington and they will tell you what you can’t count on the Zionist-controlled media to tell you. After all, Fox News, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Time and Newsweek, to mention a few of the so-called “agenda setters,” are not really answerable to the American people. They are answerable to the lobby, because if and when officials at these outlets don’t go with the flow, they get fired immediately.
Or consider Patel’s evident fondness for Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, as documented by Engage and shown by citations of Garaudy in a Friends of al Aqsa report on the Nakba.
To conclude, this text comes from one of Al Aqsa’s boycott pamphlets. It is minor in the scheme of things Ismail Patel, but I think it does neatly capture just how low he has fallen in the pit of racist paranoia. Disney, you see, is part of the Jewish plot:
Walt Disney’s Millennium exhibition in Florida depicts Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The annexation of Jerusalem by Israel is illegal under international law. It cost $8 million to set up the exhibition, of which Israel contributed $1.8 million, as part of its campaign to mentally condition the world into accepting its claims over Jerusalem.
Only idiots and fellow racists would promote Ismail Patel and campaign alongside him. Britain seems to have quite a few of both these days.
One of those people (pick your category) is Martin Linton, Labour MP for Battersea, Balham and Wandsworth. According to a notice on the web site of the Hamas-linked charity Interpal, this Saturday Linton will appear at a Gaza conference at the Tooting Islamic Centre alongside Patel, Mohamed Ali Harrath, the Jew hating CEO of Islam Channel, and Stephen Sizer.
Linton also spoke at the 10 January Gaza demonstration, like Patel. Linton concluded his speech with this line: “Keep up the fight! We shall prevail!”.
Great work, boys, congratulations.
Comments
| 24 February 2009, 9:50 am |
Nice to see Roger Garaudy mentioned. Often wonder why not more is made of Tariq Ramadan’s acknowledgement (albeit buried in obscure footnotes in books by Ramadan that no-one reads) and bigging-up of this evil person, found guilty in a French court of Holocaust denial.
Scratch an Islamist or Muslim Brother, find a thick vein of Joo-Hatred.
| 24 February 2009, 9:59 am |
Great article. On a different thread the British government’s commitment to fighting anti-Semitism is being discussed and yet some MPs are tirelessly striving for the exact opposite.
| 24 February 2009, 10:01 am |
*The lobby group Conflicts Forum*
Here is David Aaronovitch on Alastair Crooke:
“The former MI6 agent Alastair Crooke, who has become a kind of Dr Dolittle of Islamist movements”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article5792419.ece
It is probably the case that these appeasers and apologists for Islamist intolerance and bigotry are more Dr Dotoomuches, and all in the best possible taste.
| 24 February 2009, 10:11 am |
I hate to be held hostage to my own prejudices, so I’ve decided to read Crooke’s book to see if it confirms my opinion of him, formed yesterday after hearing in on the radio, that he is , in fact, a complete loon.
| 24 February 2009, 10:14 am |
Azzam Tamimi was billed on the BBC World Service yesterday as “an Hamas Spokesman”
Is he suing I wonder?
| 24 February 2009, 10:15 am |
Crooke is Miss Jean Brodie
| 24 February 2009, 10:27 am |
“bearing the repugnant Israelis-are-Nazis slur: “Stop the Holocaust in Gaza”.”
You’re right, I think “genocide” is much more appropriate and culturally sensitive. Also I prefer to compare the Israeli state to apartheid South Africa, for similar reasons.
Although I don’t think FW De Clerk ever said he’d kill 100 blacks for every dead white person.
| 24 February 2009, 10:48 am |
Gridlock, do you ever stop spouting antisemitic nonsense?
| 24 February 2009, 11:04 am |
“genocide” is much more appropriate
The population of the West Bank and Gaza has risen four-fold since 1967. That doesn’t sound much like genocide to me. So your use of the term, given that it is wrong, can only be put down to your ignorance or bigotry. So what are you, an idiot or a bigot?
| 24 February 2009, 11:09 am |
“Crooke is Miss Jean Brodie”
He thinks he is the creme de la creme?
| 24 February 2009, 11:16 am |
Geert Wilders is a bad, mad racist for pointing out that sympathy for Islamist terrorism is widespread and mainstream because it is Qu’ranicly justifable and no one dares to say so.
‘Army of 10,000′ to oppose the above with ‘protests’ if he went to the HoLords.
Muslim Brotherhood poor misunderstood libertarians who only want to free the world of juice. Hizb ut Tahrir invited into parliament by Claire Short.
I hope that Panarama guy is right and govUK have a get-tough policy on the way. I get more Amis by the day.
| 24 February 2009, 11:19 am |
Martin Linton should hang his head in shame
That implies he recognises what he did was wrong – which of course he’ll never do. To him, and countless others, the Palestinians can do no wrong, whether it’s launching rockets into civilian areas or chucking opponents off the roofs of buildings. Everything they do is always, and has always been, the fault of the Israelis (or their sponsors, the Americans or world-wide Jewry).
| 24 February 2009, 11:21 am |
Gridlock, to be fair, the Israeli state never said it was going to kill 100 Palestinians for every one Israeli.
They just went ahead and did it without asking (including more than 400 children).
But of course, anyone who mentions this is automatically an antisemite to the likes of Nearly Oxfordian, just as anyone who criticized aparheid South Africa was a tirrist.
| 24 February 2009, 11:26 am |
Well Linton does have “form”, he is Chair of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East. Interesting that he supports Hamas while at the same time claiming on his website that he supports a two state solution to the problem of Israel and Palestine
“Martin supports a peaceful two state solution (but) believes that only negotiated departures from existing borders will create a secure Israel and a viable Palestinian state. ”
He had a majority of 163 in 2005. Anyone know if there is a significant Moslem vote in his constitueny these days?
| 24 February 2009, 11:34 am |
Is it a treasonable offence to make threats against one of Britain’s allies? If it’s not, let’s make it an offence, sign an alliance with Israel, and lock these c**** up. Then we scrap all the 28-day crap and all the other anti-terrorist laws.
| 24 February 2009, 11:36 am |
The death of 400 children is appalling.
I seem to recall that during WW II the RAF mounted a bombing raid in Copenhagen to release resistance prisoners from a Nazi jail. They had some success blowing a hole in the walls and some prisoners managing to escape, but unfortunately, they also bombed the nearby school, killing many children. By your argument, the RAF were also murderous child killers.
| 24 February 2009, 11:50 am |
Rintintin,
the modus operandi of “Internationalist” and his ilk (of which TheIrie is a prime example) is to delegitimize any attempt by the West to defend itself. In the past this has even included attempting to delegitimize the actions of the Allies in WW2.
| 24 February 2009, 11:52 am |
Great post
The Reverend Dr Stephen Sizer, PhD (Oakhill Theological College) sure has some lovely friends ………..
| 24 February 2009, 12:32 pm |
“By your argument, the RAF were also murderous child killers.”
Bomber Harris was a murderous child killer in my opinion. Living in a city that was 90% destroyed by the RAF, it is difficult to think otherwise.
However, the IDF was not attempting to release any resistance fighters from Gaza (quite the contrary) so it is a ludicrous analogy.
| 24 February 2009, 12:38 pm |
Hello?
Have you forgotten me?
| 24 February 2009, 12:47 pm |
Great post!
| 24 February 2009, 1:26 pm |
Bomber Harris was a murderous child killer in my opinion. Living in a city that was 90% destroyed by the RAF, it is difficult to think otherwise.
Rintintin, what did I say? I told you so.
| 24 February 2009, 1:47 pm |
OK Morgoth I get the point. Murder on an industrial scale is fine, just so long as “we” are doing it. 40,000 Germans killed in a two-day firestorm? Yippeee! They are only krauts.
Do you think the Red Army was also right to terrorize the German civil population?
Or is this (yet) another double standard?
| 24 February 2009, 1:56 pm |
Another great post, habibi.
A few years back, over an after work drink, a friend working at the DTI related an anecdote about Ismail Patel that has bothered me ever since. That day he had found Ismail Patel’s business card, with the Friends of Al Aqsa logo, sitting on his desk. He knew who Patel was, and what he was, and the reality behind the Friends of Al Aqsa. He was mystified just how such an odious individual’s business card had ended up on his desk.
He quickly concluded that the only possible way was that it had been included among a stack of papers that had come down from Patricia Hewitt’s office. He was rather perturbed, as was I, that a leading Islamist’s business card should be anywhere near the Trade Secretary’s office, especially as Patel had recently called for a boycott of Sainsburys (Lord Sainsbury was then a trade minister).
My friend rang Patricia Hewitt’s office, explained that the card had come down from there, and asked if they wanted it back. Hewitt’s office, however, denied all knowledge of it. Apparently, they were quite snotty about it. So snotty, in fact, that my friend’s line manager felt compelled to ring back.
She explained how the card had got there, and, for good measure who Patel was, along with his call for boycotting Sainsbury and Tesco. Again, Hewitt’s office denied knowing Patel. Said that they’d never heard of him, that the card couldn’t have come from there, and that it must have belonged to either my friend or one of his team. The denial was absolute, so they both let it go.
The next day, out of curiousity, I did a quick internet search, and found that Friends of Al Aqsa is based in the Leicester South constituency, next door to Patricia Hewitt’s Leicester West seat. Patel has a very high profile in Leicester Muslim circles, and is politically active through the MB front group the British Muslim Initiative.
It’s quite reasonable, of course, for Patel to have contacted Patricia Hewitt on a business-related matter (but then why include a Friends of Al Aqsa business card?) What bothered me, and continues to bother me, is that apprently Hewitt’s team were vociferous in their denial not just of knowing Patel, but of his card ever having been in her office.
I wonder why?
| 24 February 2009, 2:03 pm |
Thread on Ismail Patel.
Another pointless sixth form troll or two enter the thread and we end up talking about Dresden.
Pruning?
Or perhaps DavidT we can just have an ongoing thread for morons who want to talk about ‘genocide’ ‘holocaust’ ’starvation’ in Gaza etc etc.
Occassionally, on a bus, I hear some annoying teenagers talking just like Vicky Pollard. Im reminded of this when you get the likes of ‘Gridlock’ coming into these threads and spouting nonsense.
Back on topic, Ismail Patel is evidently one of many, nasty little Islamists who the ‘left’ embrace.
I hope that they enjoy eachother and have lots of lovely babies.
MattG
| 24 February 2009, 2:06 pm |
Oh
And yes, an excellent post Habibi.
MattG
| 24 February 2009, 2:30 pm |
Anyone who adresses a baying crowd of moronic loons dressed like Wee Willy Winky and crows ’shame, shame…’ over and over again, has no sense of irony.
| 24 February 2009, 2:42 pm |
any chance of fixing those fonts, in the post, way too large.
| 24 February 2009, 2:45 pm |
Linton will be out of a job next year, thank goodness. Another pseudo-liberal Labour MP to bite the dust. Fortunately Kate Hoey next door should be safe.
| 24 February 2009, 3:14 pm |
OK Morgoth I get the point. Murder on an industrial scale is fine,
Death in war, as long as no war crimes are committed and the rules of war are upheld, is not murder.
just so long as “we” are doing it. 40,000 Germans killed in a two-day firestorm? Yippeee! They are only krauts.
‘We’ did not initiate and carry out the holocaust. ‘We’ did not initiate pogroms, massacres of civilians and the bloodiest conflict in history. ‘We’ did not set out to conquer the planet and institute a 1000 year Reich.
The fact that you immediately try and equate the Allies with the Nazis is sickening.
Do you think the Red Army was also right to terrorize the German civil population?
Strawman alert!
Or is this (yet) another double standard?
The only double standards here come from you.
As I mentioned to Rintinin upthread, you’re yet another example of the TheIdiot tendancy of hypercriticality of liberal democracy and gross apologetica for totalitarianism.
| 24 February 2009, 3:30 pm |
‘We’ did not initiate and carry out the holocaust. ‘We’ did not initiate pogroms, massacres of civilians and the bloodiest conflict in history. ‘We’ did not set out to conquer the planet and institute a 1000 year Reich.
- nor did the overwhelming majority of the victims slaughtered in the carpet bombing of German cities. They were just ordinary folks who were nowhere near the levers of power but got the double whammy of a vile dictatorship AND a terrorist bombing campaign.
Same applies to the people of Vietnam, Laos etc. who were taught the benefits of liberal democracy care of a campaign of terror bombing.
| 24 February 2009, 3:44 pm |
‘We’ did not initiate and carry out the holocaust. ‘We’ did not initiate pogroms, massacres of civilians and the bloodiest conflict in history. ‘We’ did not set out to conquer the planet and institute a 1000 year Reich.
Actually, “we” did all of those things and much, much more. “We” turned crop failures in Ireland and India into famines which killed millions. “We” helped instigate the genocide of Armenians by interfering in the Ottoman Empire. And “we” had already conquered the planet and built an empire on which “the sun never set”, following the motto: fly the flag and flog the wog.
“You” need to pull your head out of your arse, Morgoth.\
| 24 February 2009, 3:44 pm |
Well Pol Pot certainly proved that south east asia can grow their own genocidal dictators without any assistance from the West
| 24 February 2009, 3:48 pm |
You certainly have a lot of angst there Internationalist, is it all your parents fault? You didn’t ask to be born did you? Let it all out.
| 24 February 2009, 4:05 pm |
Actually, Mrs. Ben, Pol Pot spent some time in Paris hanging out with Internationalist and his buddies.
| 24 February 2009, 4:28 pm |
Internationalist, what do you think about Pol Pot a Sorbonne educated Marxist?
| 24 February 2009, 5:26 pm |
David T: Crooke is Miss Jean Brodie.
This raises intriguing possibles – is Crooke engaging in some sort of lesbian-drag type rumpy-pumpy with romantic leads from the East? Is he a triple agent? And who would be the one-armed Scots-bloke?
Does this sort of dessert-porn appeal to a certaintype of public-school educated person?
Is it de rigeur?
| 24 February 2009, 6:21 pm |
Internationalist,you do not get it do you?
As General Sherman stated during the American Civil War,’there is no refinement in war.’
Like it or not,Bomber Harris helped to liberate your country from the Nazis so people like you could quote their misinformed statements.
As to the Russian mlitery who virtually raped their way thro’ Germany,your comment is not worthy of an answer as it is crass and very silly.
| 24 February 2009, 7:58 pm |
sorry, but why castigate ben white and not seth freedman?
| 24 February 2009, 7:59 pm |
“Bomber Harris helped to liberate your country from the Nazis so people like you could quote their misinformed statements.”
No he didn’t. He just murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people on behalf of the British Empire in the vain hope that Britain could continue to rule half of Africa, the Indian subcontinent and the other pink bits on the map.
My freedom of speech never even figured in his calculations.
And the Russians who raped their way through Germany, took one third of Germany either for itself and its allies, ethnically cleansed millions and denied freedom of speech to half of Europe were his close allies.
| 24 February 2009, 9:03 pm |
“Human Smoke, The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization”
by Nicholson Baker reveals the truth about the motives behind the mass murder of Germans by the RAF and USAF in World War 2. And “freedom of speech” definitely wasn’t one of them.
There were two principal aims to the saturation bombing of civilians by the Royal Air Force: one was to provoke a response to the increasingly devastating carnage, ie, to get Luftwaffe to bomb British working class areas in retaliation thus pulling the population behind the bourgeoisie – a ploy that largely succeeded.
And secondly, the aim was to kill, maim and terrorise as many German civilians as possible – the primary aim wasn’t industry or the war machine. Very early on in the war, the RAF were dropping bombs on working class areas and then coming back to strafe with machine guns the firemen trying to put out the blazes. The British Air Ministry produced a new policy report on bombing, 24.4.41: “It is only possible to obtain satisfactory results by the ‘Blitz’ attack on large working class and industrial areas of the towns”. An appendix concluded, “delayed action bombs should make up 10% of the tonnage dropped”. Previous head of the RAF, Lord ‘Boom’ Trenchard, said the way forward was to drop more tonnage where most people live, so that fewer bombs would be wasted. Charles Portal, Head of the RAF, agreed. Head of Bomber Command, Richard Peirse gave these orders on 5.7.41: “(destroy) the morale of the civilian population as a whole, and of the industrial workers in particular”. Churchill called for the “largest quantity of bombs per night” and the RAF started night bombing.
Britain may have lost its empire and become a third-rate power that has no choice but do what the USA tells it to do, but its ruling class still leads the world in one department: humbug and hypocrisy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/books/review/Toibin-t.html
| 24 February 2009, 10:23 pm |
“He just murdered”
Oh dear. No.
“in the vain hope that Britain could continue to rule half of Africa, the Indian subcontinent and the other pink bits on the map.”
Again, sadly no. If the British were that concerned about their empire, they would have come to an accommodation with the Nazis- they wouldn’t have engaged in an existential struggle with them.
“And the Russians who raped their way through Germany, took one third of Germany either for itself and its allies, ethnically cleansed millions and denied freedom of speech to half of Europe were his close allies.”
No. Sadly for this “theory” the British were rather desperate, by this point, to stop the Russians getting their hands on Germany, because by this stage it was plainly apparent what the Russians’ motives were. “Close allies” my arse.
“to provoke a response to the increasingly devastating carnage, ie, to get Luftwaffe to bomb British working class areas in retaliation thus pulling the population behind the bourgeoisie – a ploy that largely succeeded.”
Oh dear yet again. This is what happens when Marxists try to fit the facts into their theories, isn’t it?
| 24 February 2009, 11:28 pm |
Surely we get Lord Lucan into this narrative too?
| 24 February 2009, 11:33 pm |
“…Nicholson Baker reveals the truth…”
Nut alert.
| 27 February 2009, 8:33 am |
Know your moving on to Ishmial Patel! What a lame blog this is…..we had so much terror exploited on the Palestinian people and you blame this man for speaking out against the terrorist and the people who support the terrorist? Truely you guys live in a bizzare world. Ismial Patel is a great example and leader of the Muslim Community and your witch hunt against reputable Muslims Leaders will not go far.
Great post. Martin Linton should hang his head in shame.