Who controls the streets?
by Paul Goodman, Conservative Home:
In our democracy, power is dispersed. Ministers don’t ban marches, launch prosecutions, run football or fully control the civil service. With the possible exception of the last, this dissemination of power is a good thing, at least when the country is at peace – protecting citizens and institutions from Ministerial overreach and tyrannical government.
However, it is less of a good thing when the country faces war abroad or insurrection here. The last is threatened if a terrorist organisation, banned by law, has tens of thousands of supporters (at least), and takes to the streets. This has never happened in Britain – until now.
Hamas could have opted for a hudna – a truce that, while not recognising Israel, at least allowed for moves towards normalisation: the granting of work permits in Israel, trade, a crackdown on Islamic Jihad, the relaxation of border controls, the realisation of Daniel Hannan’s dream of a prosperous, bourgeois Gaza. This is the path that western intelligence seems to have expected Hamas to take.
The horrors of its pogrom in Israel – complete with slaughter, atrocity and kidnappings – is a bloody reminder of a perennial truth: ideology matters. Hamas means the Islamic Resistance Movement. It has no interest in co-existence. It refuses to accept Israel’s legitimacy. And it maintains its goal of “liberating all Palestine” – “from the river to the sea”.
So when a crowd chants that slogan on Britain’s streets, it’s saying that Israel should be extinguished. When civilians slaughtered in Israel last week are described, in the word of a Yale professor, as “settlers”, the Islamist claim to the country is being legitimised – as are torture, rape and murder. “Free Palestine”, another catchphrase, means, to many, a Palestine free of Jews.
The police, who can ban marches; the CPS, which launches prosecutions; the Football Association, the game’s central authority in Britain; the civil service, government, local authorities, civil society – none of these are well placed to understand the nature of the threat that Hamas’ supporters in Britain pose to public order, the civil peace we take for granted, and the state’s authority.
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