Melanie Phillips wrote about the quintuple murder of the Fogel family, and in the course of her observations wrote:
To the New York Times, it’s not the Arab massacre of a Jewish family which has jeopardised ‘peace prospects’ — because the Israelis will quite rightly never trust any agreement with such savages — but instead Israeli policy on building more homes, on land to which it is legally and morally entitled, which is responsible instead for making peace elusive.
I don’t see why you can’t describe men who decapitate a baby as “savages,” and I don’t see why you can’t also describe as “savages” the vastly larger number of Gazans who celebrate the decapitation of a baby by passing around candy. Conversely, if this characterization of the massacre offends you, I would be interested to read your argument as to why it’s wrong.
Instead, Inayat Bunglawala, chairman of Muslims4UK (and a man who called the blind sheikh behind the first World Trade Center bombing “courageous” and Osama bin Laden a “freedom fighter”) complained about the use of the word “savages” to the police and then to the Press Complaints Commission, which is now investigating.
Melanie will resist this attempt to shrink further the already shriveled bounds of public discourse in the United Kingdom. Whether her various editors and publishers will stand with her remains to be seen. And many other writers will simply conclude that this is one area to steer well clear of. “The lofty idea of ‘the war on racism’ is gradually turning into a hideously false ideology,” the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut said in 2005. “And this anti-racism will be for the 21st century what Communism was for the 20th century: a source of violence.”
That seems the way to bet. I would rather have a society where people are free to call others “savages” than empower the state to police them into not doing so. In Britain as elsewhere, in the name of “tolerance” and “diversity” formerly free peoples are being herded into an ever more intolerant and homogeneous conformity.
Thank you Mark for this post. Sorry to hear about Melanie Phillps, who, if anything, has been a prophetic voice in the past ten years.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"one of them from Engage, a group promoting Muslim engagement in British society."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt seems that rather than promoting engagement in British society, they are trying to bend British society to their will. This "religion of peace" certainly gets offended easily. But you know what? I get offended when some barbarian murders a three-month old baby.
Britons who love freedom and liberty, come here to America where we at least have a slim chance of preserving the West. Abandon your Island, it is lost. Follow your forefathers!
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseto give them the label of savages implies some level of humanity ... I don't consider these things to be human ... find them all kill them and bury them in a trash dump with the rest of the garbage ...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseShe should retract "savages" and replace it with the factually indisputable "savage baby-murderers," and when they object to that, replace it with "Palestinians egged on to the savage murder of babies of religious hatred," and when they object to that...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSavage? Not good enough.
Prisoner 3792771? Not good enough.
The proper appellation is "dead body", and the sooner we dispense with the intermediary steps the better.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseArab massacre? When did the Israeli authorites say it was Arabs who did it? It was an ASIAN who is suspected by the Israeli authorities not an Arab.
SUSPECT IN SETTLEMENT MURDERS NOT A PALESTINIAN
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Mark & Melanie and sadly, too few others, see the direction of liberalism gone haywire as evidenced (again) by the NYTs indictment of building instead of butchering. The Jews build and the savages bomb and butcher with their comrades celebrating.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWherever you see restrictions on free speech look to the oppressors and know they are ultimately motivated by the fear that their own philosophies would not survive scrutiny and cannot compete in the free market of ideas.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI was offended when the Gazans danced in the streets in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. This, a celebration over a murdered baby, takes it to a whole 'nother level.
How can peace be negotiated with these people?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIsraels use of heavy artillery and other unguided bombs has killed many innocent children
How do we resolve that?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNot with a bang, but a whimper comes to mind.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn theory, the investigation by the Press Complaints Commission could be a very good thing, in the same way that being sued by a miscreant opens that miscreant to legal discovery. Melanie Phillips would present the details of the deaths of the Fogel family and the Palestinian celebrations that followed, and Bunglawala would have to explain how that behavior doesn't fit the textbook definition of "savage."
I suspect, however, that the PCC won't allow Ms. Phillips anything like a proper defense.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Israels use of heavy artillery and other unguided bombs has killed many innocent children
"How do we resolve that?"
It would help if the Palestinian terrorists stopped firing rockets and mortars at Israeli civilians, especially from firing positions in civilian areas.
It would help even more if Hamas were annihilated, torn out of Gaza and the West Bank root and branch; and if Fatah's "military branch," the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, were held accountable for its atrocities and its members hunted down.
But it's just as Golda Meir said: there will only be peace when the Arabs want their children to live more than they want Israeli children to die.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI said the other day, I'm all for turning the "Gaza Strip" into the "Gaza Strip Mall." Level it pave it over.
bmp,
If the terrorists weren't striking from civilian installations, using ambulances to transport suicide bombers and violating other 'niceties of war' then their civilians wouldn't be human shields being caught when the IDF has to engage in pest control.
P.S. I still hate the colour blind unfriendly spamware.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy does no one who values free speech, when attacked by the likes of Bunglawala, file a counter-complaint, suggesting that the use of the words "courageous" and "freedom fighter" to describe Christian-hating mass murderers are equally offensive if not more so? Seems to me, you could walk into any mosque in Birmingham and come away with a passel of charges, assuming the law is applied equally to all. (Yes, I know . . . )
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI also find the use of the word 'savage' offensive. A savage is an uncivilized person.
This was an act of monsters.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMark, the state of things in the UK regarding freedom, is just sickening. May God help us all if this continues.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere's certainly something much worse than "savage" that you could call them.
Savage describes the behavior, but it does let them off the hook a bit, akin to something like the insanity defense. If you really wanted to cause a stir you wouldn't just describe their behavior, you would take a stab at the "why?" behind their behavior. In that context, "savage" is almost politically correct. The really controversial, hair-raising thing to call them? How about "Arab Muslims"?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@bmp: "Israels use of heavy artillery and other unguided bombs has killed many innocent children. How do we resolve that?"
From a purely utilitarian point of view, we don't; Israel has killed many more civilians than the PLO and Hamas combined. However, I think that intentions do matter, and unlike the Palestinians, the IDF does not typically target civilians.
@Melanie Phillips: "To the New York Times, it’s not the Arab massacre of a Jewish family which has jeopardised ‘peace prospects’....but instead Israeli policy on building more homes, on land to which it is legally and morally entitled"
I'm always dumbfounded when conservatives -- who supposedly esteem property rights and decry the confiscatory power of the state -- argue that Israel is entitled to the land it seized in 1967. No international legal authority on earth has recognized Israel's right to the West Bank. And morally? Since when does might make right? Am I entitled to anything I'm capable of taking from you by force?
Moreover, any peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians will necessarily involve Israeli settlers losing their homes -- a difficult prospect for any democratic state to impose. Additional settlement construction simply exacerbates the problem and moves the Israelis inexorable closer to making a decision between apartheid and an end to the Jewish identity of their country.
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