Whipping up Islamophobia amongst people who are already clearly racists, directing that anger towards Palestinians, is clearly part of an agenda.
The United Kingdom’s recent social unrest has grabbed international headlines, as horrifying videos went viral of White British mobs rioting, committing arson, attacking police officers, burning down businesses, breaking into homes suspected to belong to Muslims and assaulting random people.
However, an aspect that almost no one has focused on is how the far-right influencers who motivated these race riots are trying to link the anti-immigrant cause to Israel and how most of them are paid advocates for the Israeli war on Gaza.
Although anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments have been high since the West’s “war on terror” began in the early 2000s, especially in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, over the past few years this rhetoric seemed to have been toned down a notch. However, following the Hamas-led October 7 offensive against Israel, the uptick in anti-Islamic rhetoric went off the charts.
According to the Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR), the number of complaints received over Islamaphobic incidents in 2023 – most of which came after October 7 – was the largest ever in the civil rights group’s 30-year history.
According to the statistics provided for this year, Islamophobic incidents are up by a whopping 70% in the first half of 2024. In the United Kingdom, the rise in Islamophobia is much worse as Islamophobia Response Unit (IRU) data indicates a 365% rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes following October 7.
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What this data tells us is that there is a significant increase in anti-Muslim sentiment that is directly tied to coverage related to the war between Gaza and Israel, whether that be on social media or in the corporate press. While there have been various studies demonstrating the biases of the corporate media, the majority of hardline opinions today appear to be shaped online.
At the center of the ongoing racist riots that are taking place in the United Kingdom is the anti-Muslim campaigner Tommy Robinson. He contributed to sharing a made-up Muslim name for a 17-year-old British-born Christian who stabbed 3 children to death in an area called Southport, claiming that he was an asylum seeker.
It wasn’t long before the fake name released and promoted as if it was evidence of a problem with violent Muslim Asylum seekers in the UK, was proven false, yet this key piece of disinformation was the catalyst for the riots that were to come.
After stirring up tensions, attaching a horrible mass stabbing event to “illegal immigration” and urging something to be done about it, the likes of Tommy Robinson quickly jumped online to distance themselves from violence, but justified the riots. Interestingly, the first point that Robinson made in his video addressing the riots was not about illegal immigration, but about Hamas.
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Tommy Robinson offers the following opening explanation for the racist anti-immigrant riots:
‘Why are people angry? I’ll tell you why they’re angry – Cos’ Hamas were allowed to overtake London. Over take our capital city. Every week flying ISIS flags, Hamas flags. Calling for Jihad. The police did nothing. Nothing. Instead they arrested me.”
He then went on to say that “your actions in the last three weeks or since October 7th, you’ve created thousands of Tommy Robinsons”.
This comes from a man who was taken on an Israeli military tour, posed for photos in Israeli army t-shirts and on top of tanks operating on occupied territory, he even once remarked that he would fight in a war for Israel. But why is the self-described “English patriot” so obsessed with making every issue about Israel and October 7?
Tommy Robinson rose to infamy when he co-founded the explicitly anti-Islam ‘English Defence League’ (EDL), known for racist riots and marches. However, it is little mentioned that the co-founder of the EDL was a man named Paul Ray, who had worked for Israeli intelligence to infiltrate and spy on the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).
In a thread posted to X (formerly Twitter), well-known rapper Lowkey details the EDL’s connections to the Zionist movement, noting that “the EDL English Defence League LTD was registered on the companies house (UK government website) by former Israeli soldier Roberta Moore. She was head of the EDL’s Jewish Unit, which had around 100 members. When asked whether the EDL was exploiting the Zionist Movement, she retorted, “If anything, we are exploiting them”.”
The other time the English Defence League was registered on companies house was by Tommy Robinson's assistant Helen Gower.
Until 13th of June 2014, it seems to have been registered as the THE ENGLISH & JEWISH DEFENCE LEAGUE (EDL) LIMITED.
A reminder that the Jewish Defence… pic.twitter.com/zGhUVGzzQH
— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) August 4, 2024
In February 2013, Roberta Moore changed the name of the EDL on companies house to the Jewish Defence League UK. Moore has been pictured with the leader of the Jewish Defence League (JDL) in Canada, Meir Weinstein.
The JDL was once proscribed as a terrorist organization in the United States and is widely understood to be the armed wing of the Kach Party of far-right Israeli former Knesset member Meir Kahane. When the EDL was first formed, a featured speaker at their rallies was also a former Israeli military trainer Rabbi Nachum Shifren.
According to a former Tommy Robinson employee, Lucy Brown, the far-right media personality was being paid £10,000 a month by the Zionist Billionaire Robert Shillman.
This, as an investigative piece published by The Guardian found that with funding from Shillman, the Canadian right-wing media outlet called ‘Rebel News’ paid Tommy Robinson a salary of £5,000 per month. In addition to this, it was also revealed that the Philadelphia-based think tank called the Zionist ‘Middle East Forum’ (MEF) acknowledged paying Robinson at least $60,000.
It suffices to say that Tommy Robinson has a long history of receiving funds from Zionists, on top of the fact that extremist Kahanists are directly linked to the racist EDL and he was even invited on a trip to hang out with the Israeli military.
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It therefore comes as no surprise that he is injecting irrelevant anti-Palestinian rhetoric into his commentary on the riots he helped encourage, while continuing to justify, despite being careful not to endorse violence.
If we also look at the range of other far-right figures that have recently popped up in a major way in the wake of October 7, stirring anti-Muslim sentiments, they always manage to link Israel to whatever anti-immigrant points they espouse.
Take the example of Douglas Murray, who was instantly flown out to Tel Aviv and became a prominent apologist for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, while promoting October 7 propaganda hoaxes. Murray popped up out of nowhere, emerging to present neatly packaged propaganda about the Middle East, Muslims, Asylum Seekers and so-called Western values. Despite his lack of relevance, he even stepped in to host Piers Morgan uncensored when the show host took a break.
If we take others, such as Katie Hopkins, who also went on a trip to Israel and posted photos of herself wearing Israeli army t-shirts, they too package their anti-Islam and anti-immigrant messages with pro-Israel talking points.
None of this is by accident and Israel’s role in propping up Islamophobic media figures, or using right-wing influencers to espouse anti-Palestinian talking points is part of a long campaign to whip up hatred for Muslims and Asylum Seekers while attaching this hatred for support of Israel.
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While the racist riots in the UK may not be directly triggered by the Zionist Lobby’s financing of far-right figures, these individuals exist due to the considerable financial backing they receive in the first place. There is also a reason why Tommy Robinson is trying to suggest that the riots are happening because of Hamas taking over London, by which he means peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters, as this actually has little to do with why the racist riots are happening at all.
By adding the disinformation that pro-Palestinian protesters are all Hamas and that they were also holding ISIS flags, this adds fuel to the fire and helps direct hatred toward Palestinians and support for Israel.
Whipping up Islamophobia amongst people who are already clearly racists, directing that anger towards Palestinians, is clearly part of an agenda and despite the obvious ties of the far-right to Israel, there is almost complete silence in the corporate media concerning this issue.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
This should be headline news. Musk wants race riots in the UK because a majority of sane pro-human rights voters defeated the right-wing extremists, and now the global zionist thug league is using him to whip up their hate. Starmer could expose the truth about Robinson/Ray, as this article does, but he is also a tool of the zionist mafia.
Here in the US, we have giant pink billboards telling us Hamas is coming for our children, and everyone knows who is behind it. It has been going on since 9/11, and our corrupt politicians would sell us to WWIII just for zionist money. We are so sick of it – they should be in prison.
The Israeli lobby has always paid morons to stoke the racist card and all the Zionists mentioned are taken in by the sewer of GB as heroes of democracy that also relates to support for the Ukraine Nazis. The bifurcation of the world is now set in concrete, sides have been chosen and global war is taking place.
This is a brilliant piece of journalism. Living in the UK I had no idea of these links but am hardly surprised. Keep up the good work. What has it come to when I have to take my Muslim neighbour and her child to a swimming lesson in my car, as she is afraid to go in public by herself?
Muslims didn’t do 9/11. Israel did. Read “solving 9/11: The Deception That Changed the World” by Christopher Bollyn for a start.
cope
this is absolutely delusional. all you can do is spew bs conspiracy theories because you have nothing real to report on. palestine will be flat.