Britain Embraces Islam – Bans Pro-Israel Supporters

Posted By Pamela Geller on Dec 9, 2013 in Articles, World News | 7 Comments



At last, the whole truth has come to light. In our court battle to overturn Britain’s ban on our entering the country, Robert Spencer and I have received a new cache of documents that reveal a principal reason why we were banned from the country was because we are pro-Israel.

An official (name redacted) in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office wrote in a May 7 letter: “We do have concerns with some of the reasoning in the sub,” that is, the “subject profiles” that had been prepared on Spencer and me, “particularly citing pro-Israeli views.” The official explained that “pro-Israeli views (and also support for waterboarding) apply to a large number of Americans, including former presidents. If, for instance, Geller and Spencer were to request details of their exclusion under FOI/DPA or other mechanism, that being pro-Israeli is cited as a reason may be problematic and they could argue publically that their exclusion is on the basis of their support for Israel.”
To avoid this, the writer advised “removing references to being pro-Israel from the main body of the sub, as this is not grounds for exclusion.” Presumably this advice was followed, as there is little in our pro-Israeli views in all this material, but my “subject profile” still says, “She strongly supports Israel and is an ardent Zionist.” And also: “Pamela Geller’s outspoken support for Israel may also attract pro-Palestinian groups to attend, further complicating the policing operation on the ground and making it harder to keep opposing groups apart.”
So now we know the real reason why we were banned. The letter writer noted that being pro-Israel was not grounds for exclusion, but clearly it was part of the Home Office’s reasoning, or this letter would not have had to have been written.
The move to ban us, meanwhile, was a massive operation. At the first hint that Spencer and I might be speaking at a freedom protest in the U.K., numerous British government and law enforcement agencies sprang into action. Although we had not decided to go and speak in the U.K. until June, various government agencies began working to ban us as early as February.
There are numerous documents from the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism, or OSCT: That’s right, we were banned with the collusion of the office of counterterrorism. These are supposed to be legitimate government organizations, and they are just tools of nefarious forces. How is the U.K. government preventing a terror attack on the U.K., which is the objective of the OSCT? By banning counter-terror activists. Why is the OSCT spending enormous sums of a bankrupt nation investigating “characters” who oppose terror, as they supposedly do?
Another, among a multitude of agencies investigating our case, was a Casework and Operations Red Team for Special Cases. That’s right: The Home Secretary employed a Red Team on our case. Red Teams are designed to devise new strategies and approaches to deal with a threat. Now I ask you: Is spending their time and money on human-rights activists like Robert Spencer and me in any way going to constitute a new strategy for effectively fighting the jihad terror threat against Britain?
It is breathtaking – the amount of time, money and human resources that were devoted to this Kafkaesque exercise. These venerable agencies begin their in-depth and comprehensive research at – wait for this – Wikipedia. From there, they cite to each other such notorious and reputable smear machines as Loonwatch and Islamophobia Today. Senior analysts from Asia, the Middle East and Europe were part of the research and information team. Our case had “very senior scrutiny,” as there was a “need to push” on this research. Mind you, much of the material in these documents was redacted. Wouldn’t the unredacted documents have made interesting reading?
All references to the identities of those who asked that we be banned have been blacked out. Henry Ripley, writing “for the Treasury Solicitor,” explained to our lawyers that “the documents provided have been redacted to remove references to information which is not relevant to the claims.” No, clearly the documents were redacted to conceal who was behind the ban and what their motives were, and to conceal the conspiratorial nature of the exclusion.
But their black marker missed one reference, revealing that one of the groups complaining about us was Faith Matters. Faith Matters was founded by a Muslim named Fiyaz Mughal, who also heads up Tell Mama, a group dedicated to tracking “Islamophobia.” Tell Mama lost government funding in June after making false claims of waves of attacks “Islamophobic incidents.”
The Home Secretary assured Fiyaz Mughal, the discredited liar, that all decisions to exclude were based on sound evidence. How are the wild defamations of Loonwatch and Islamophobia Today sound evidence? In many of the documents, they didn’t even spell our names correctly, or get our birthdates right. Is that sound evidence?
My “subject profile” says that I displayed “a picture of the Prophet Muhammad with a pig’s face superimposed on it on her blog.” The Muhammad pig cartoon they are referring to is one that a Danish imam added to the infamous Muhammad cartoons printed by the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, in an attempt to gin up anger among Muslims against the Danes. The imam presented the Muhammad-as-pig cartoon as if it were one of the original Danish cartoons, which it wasn’t, and now the British government is presenting it as something I created, which isn’t true, either. The original Atlas post is here. The caption on the Muhammad-as-pig photo is: “Supposed to be Muhammad as half pig, but actually an altered photograph of a guy at a French pig-squealing contest.” So they take a photo that she showed was clearly marked as not Muhammad at all, and present it as if I were depicting Muhammad as a pig.
They had teams of people working, spending untold amounts of money researching us, and they couldn’t even get these basic facts right? This crack research team has one eureka moment when one of the redacted names “has discovered circa 120 articles written by Geller on one website alone[!] In order to go through this properly, we need another week to conduct our research.” More time. More money. More people.
“The government,” one document says, “is clear that it opposes extremism in all forms.” Does it oppose extremism in pursuit of truth? Does it oppose extremism in pursuit of justice? Of liberty? How ridiculous they are, tying themselves in knots at the behest of their would-be executioners. There is no doubt that they will eventually regret taking the course they’ve taken – but by then it will probably be too late.

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