Pro-Hamas and pro-Western forces clash in central London on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Jewish people. The police have closed off the streets of central London to vehicle traffic, and the media are being told to leave the area. Tommy Robinson, a journalist for the Daily Mail, is in the middle of covering the protest.
00:18:39.400He's got his own website and he has done journalism and documentaries for years.
00:18:43.400As you may remember, years ago he used to work for Rebel News.
00:18:47.400When he stepped outside the coffee shop, a team of police who had been waiting for him for an hour went up to him and tried to issue him some sort of notice for causing a disturbance.
00:18:58.400He asked what disturbance he had caused.
00:19:15.400They took him, arrested him, and bundled them away.
00:19:18.400I just spoke to a number of people here who pointed out the two-tiered policing.
00:19:24.400Tommy Robinson, who's a friend of Israel and a friend of the Jews, bundled off because the police say so, whereas hordes of jihadists chanting death to the Jews in Arabic, chanting from the river to the sea, which is a call for genocide.
00:19:39.400They're allowed the key to the city by Mayor Sadiq Khan and his political police force.
00:19:48.400I've been thinking about who was at those pro-Hamas marches.
00:19:53.400About 75% people who are Muslim, either British-born Muslims or foreign Muslims who are not yet citizens.
00:20:03.400And about 20% woke, progressive, left-wing, old-stock Brits, white folks, who are just radical.
00:20:11.400And I have to think that both of those components, the open borders, immigration, unvetted immigration, and the woke progressives, the Jewish community has historically been for those things.
00:20:23.400For open borders, immigration, and for progressive, left-wing politics.
00:20:28.400Do you think the Jewish community understands that they created those problems for themselves?
00:20:36.400By supporting open borders, immigration?
00:20:38.400Not at all. We're not creating problems for ourselves. We're not creating problems in the country.
00:20:42.400My family came here in the 1800s because of the Russian pogroms.
00:20:46.400I'm not saying you did it or I did it, but I'm thinking of... Let me give you an example. Adam Wagner, who's a Jewish civil rights lawyer in the city.
00:20:55.400Very pro-Israel, by the way. But he's absolutely for open borders, immigration, and he's absolutely a woke, progressive leftist.
00:21:02.400I'm not blaming him personally, but the ideas of open borders, immigration, and the ideas of woke politics, that's what led to this problem, don't you think?
00:21:14.400I think you're confusing many different things. I think there's nothing wrong with understanding the importance of immigration, of understanding the importance of bringing people and helping people who want to come from other countries to be part of this wonderful country.
00:21:30.400Do you think we should put the brakes on Muslim immigration?
00:21:33.400No, absolutely not. No, absolutely not. The problem is not Muslims. The problem is right-wing, nasty, fascist, Muslim fundamentalists.
00:21:45.400The real problem is anti-Semitism in the Muslim community. Anti-Semitism is not compatible with Western values.
00:21:52.400And that's the problem. Not the fact that people are coming here, because there are wonderful people who come here as well.
00:21:57.400So you don't want to slow down on immigration from countries?
00:22:03.400That is an oversimplification of the problem.
00:22:07.400I can't give you a better solution, but that's not a solution. A better solution is not stopping people coming into a country and becoming more right-wing than this country had ever been before.
00:22:17.400Of course they are. Jihadists are right-wing. They're fascists. They're fascists because they don't want any other voices or views to be aired. They're the right way. They're the only way.
00:22:27.400So what percentage of British Muslims do you think share those views?
00:22:40.400I think it is. I mean, record immigration from countries that have an endemic anti-Semitism problem.
00:22:46.400Again, I tell you, this is an oversimplification of the problem.
00:22:51.400You keep saying that, but you haven't proposed a single thing other than restating your own liberal values to people who are about to devour you.
00:22:59.400They're not going to devour me. Not in this country.
00:23:12.400That's the same with any march. That's what we're doing here.
00:23:15.400We're working together to recognize the fact that we are a free people being able to express our views in a free country and a free democracy.
00:23:21.400And we have to send that message loud and clear that that is what this country is about.
00:23:25.400I think you're afraid of being called racist.
00:23:27.400I'm not afraid of being called racist. I'm certainly not going to be called racist for saying that there are significant problems in the Muslim community with anti-Semitism.
00:23:37.400Open borders are causing problems right throughout Europe.
00:23:41.400The kind of people that are coming into Europe who are culturally distanced.
00:23:44.400They have values that are incompatible with those of Western civilization.
00:23:48.400And when people like the chap that you were just talking to promotes open borders or supports open borders, these really are self-inflicted wounds that we're imposing upon ourselves.
00:23:58.400Western Europe and European peoples have to maintain their values and their identity and their way of life.
00:24:07.400And we are bringing in too many people into Europe whose views are totally incompatible with our own.
00:26:32.400But they can certainly quote lots of statistics to you.
00:26:36.400Yes, but I mean, if they were gay, trans, or a woman and went to those countries, let them see all their liberties taken away and see what they think about it.
00:26:45.400So you're worried about anti-Semitism.
00:39:45.400And the concept of zero tolerance for anti-Semitism, it sounds good, but that's certainly not the way it is in London.
00:39:51.400There's enormous tolerance for anti-Semitism, including shocking genocidal comments like from the river to the sea,
00:39:59.400which is a call to exterminate all the Jews from Israel proper.
00:40:04.400So, I mean, obviously I'm sympathetic to the Jews of the United Kingdom for a number of reasons,
00:40:10.400but I think that they don't know what to do.
00:40:14.400And you can't really blame them because the political class doesn't know what to do either.
00:40:19.400Unlimited immigration from countries that have endemic anti-Semitism, do you think that's feeding the problem?
00:40:28.400Well, that's for the politicians to decide. It's not necessarily for individuals to decide.
00:40:33.400Well, you can have an opinion on the matter.
00:40:35.400I do have an opinion. I think everybody should try and understand where blame lies, the difference between good and evil.
00:40:44.400And I believe, I have to believe, that we're on the side of good.
00:40:49.400And I also believe that eventually there could be a takeover of evil. And that's very worrying.
00:40:58.400When it might happen is something that we're sleepwalking into. And it's very worrying.
00:41:04.400I just was at one of these marches a few weeks ago. Most of the people there are either new immigrants or they're not citizens yet or they're first generation.
00:41:16.400And I just think it's so palpably not a British way of thinking, but a Islamic, jihadist way of thinking.
00:41:26.400Like, I think there are very few anti-Semites in the United Kingdom who are ethnically British.
00:41:31.400I agree with that entirely. I think that's absolutely true. And I think it's the same in most European countries and most countries outside of the Middle East.
00:41:43.400Well, then let's bring it to the logical next step, which should we turn off the taps of mass immigration from those countries where anti-Semitism is rampant?
00:41:52.400I mean, isn't the first rule of holes, stop digging?
00:41:56.400Well, maybe. But I don't think it's necessarily the right thing to do. But you're right.
00:42:03.400Trying to turn around a tanker is extremely difficult.
00:42:06.400But you have to try and show the difference between good and evil and hope that most people, most people will understand that difference.
00:42:16.400I accept at the moment that's very, very difficult, whether that's social media, whether it's the propaganda war that Israel, unfortunately, has never been very good at.
00:42:25.400Whether it's something deeper than that, I don't know. But it's fundamental.
00:42:31.400And unless the world stands up and realizes that things are changing, then it's possible that hate will overcome good.
00:42:41.400And that will be the worst possible outcome for humanity.
00:42:45.400The marchers for about an hour and a half, Trafalgar Square, the Canadian High Commission, and behind me, what they call Whitehall.
00:42:53.400Down that way is the Prime Minister's residence, and you can see the Tower of the Parliament building, the Palace of Westminster.
00:43:01.400So it's really the heart of central London, the same or similar path that the pro-Hamas hate marches have been taking week after week.
00:43:09.400Like I say, because I'm in the middle of it, I don't yet have the ability to estimate the size of the crowd, but it's surely tens of thousands.
00:43:17.400A fairly subdued crowd, both Israeli flags and British flags, as well as some other countries.
00:43:25.400I saw the flag of the Shah of Iran, a counter stance to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
00:43:34.400Lots of signs, many of them were prefabricated, handed out by organizers, but some touching homemade signs as well.
00:43:41.400As I walked and talked, I found that people want that feeling of solidarity and unity, because surely they felt alienated and marginalized and threatened over the last six or seven weeks.
00:43:56.400I can only imagine what it feels like to be a British Jew or a friend of British Jews and see the raw hatred coursing through the cities over the last month.
00:44:05.400So the feeling of being amongst friends and allies must be relieving.
00:44:11.400But I found very few members of the British Jewish community were able to articulate a way forward.
00:44:19.400And I understand that, because for their entire lives, they've lived under a certain understanding, a certain world view, that they know how the world worked.
00:44:29.400And that anti-Semitism was a thing, but it was not a dominant thing.
00:44:33.400And that Jews were certainly at the heart of British society, as they are in Canada and the United States and Australia as well.
00:44:40.400And the idea that we were in some pogrom era where Jews had to be terrified, that was long in the past.
00:44:49.400I think that's shaken some Jews to the bone.
00:44:52.400And the problem is, along with that world view came certain liberal or progressive ideals, like open immigration is the progressive, kind-hearted thing to do.
00:45:03.400And one gentleman actually said, we have a responsibility because of Britain's colonial past.
00:45:09.400So even though many people in this march confirmed to me their belief that open borders immigration from countries where anti-Semitism is endemic,
00:45:20.400many people here confirm the obvious that that was a major source of anti-Semitism and almost completely the source of the pro-Hamas activity in this country.
00:45:30.400Few British Jews were willing to give up their progressive traditional belief in open borders and multiculturalism.
00:45:40.400And I think that there's an incoherence there.
00:45:44.400Because for British Jews to realize that the policies that they have supported painlessly and perhaps even self-righteously for the last half century are precisely the policies that have unleashed hatred and violence against them today.
00:46:00.400That's why the Tommy Robinson vignette was so telling.
00:46:05.400I've known Tommy, as you know, for the better part of a decade.
00:46:27.400But the fact that the police had this whole operation to extract him and arrest him was stunning, given that not only is he harmless, he is a pro-Israel advocate.
00:46:38.400I know for a fact that he has visited Israel in a very sympathetic and supportive way.
00:46:42.400I know that he has been perhaps the number one challenger of jihadist ideology in the UK.
00:46:48.400And he was there as a journalist, but also as a friend of the Jewish people, for the police to provocatively and preemptively arrest and extract him and frankly cause a scene, shows the problem here.
00:47:02.400Because the establishment, and frankly some Jews, would rather blame the comfortable scapegoat of Tommy Robinson than the far right and the football hooligans.
00:47:17.400Frankly, ethnic British are not anti-Semitic, with a few micro-exceptions on the fringes.
00:47:27.400The British National Party or the National Front or whatever they're called, they never had any prospects of electing a mayor or a prime minister.
00:47:37.400They never had the numbers to muster 100,000 marches chanting for the Jews.
00:47:42.400In fact, the fringe far right anti-Semites in this country were a delightful problem for the establishment to have,
00:47:50.400because there were no real danger, but it kept a frisson of danger in the air so they could pose as problem solvers.
00:47:57.400And the Jewish community could be scared of them, but not really scared.
00:48:01.400And they could frankly talk about them and maybe even fundraise off them.
00:48:05.400It's much different when you have 100,000, 200,000 actual Hamas supporters who actually will use violence against the police.
00:48:14.400That's a lot harder for the Jewish community to process and digest.
00:48:18.400My observation is that there's a lot of British Jews who can't process this contradiction.
00:48:24.400They're seeing that the fruits of their political ideology, open borders, immigration, woke progressive ideology in universities, that these things have come back in the form of anti-Semitism,
00:48:35.400whether it's Black Lives Matter or in Canada, Idle No More or other radical movements, even Greta Thunberg, the global warming child prophet.
00:48:46.400She's in her 20s, but she still looks like a kid.
00:48:48.400The other day she was denouncing the Zionists and said we have to crush the Zionists.
00:48:53.400All these darlings of the left are now devouring the Jews.
00:48:57.400And for many of the people I spoke with here, the idea of realizing that they were wrong about open borders, immigration,
00:49:05.400realizing that they were wrong about critical race theory and cultural Marxism,
00:49:09.400that's going to be too hard for them to come to terms with, to basically repudiate a lifetime mindset.
00:49:18.400If you're a liberal Jew, that has worked out well for you in the United Kingdom for 50 years, but it's not working anymore.
00:49:26.400But it's very hard to admit you're wrong after 50 years of knowing in your bones that you're right.