TONY BLAIR WON'T LET GO OF HIS ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS

In a speech he delivered this week for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Tony Blair made some surprisingly good points about Islamic extremism:

The former prime minister said that there had been a failure to challenge the ‘narrative’ that Islam was oppressed by the West which was fuelling extremism around the world.

He said too many people accepted the extremists’ analysis that the military actions taken by the West following the 9/11 attacks were directed at countries because they were Muslim and that it supported Israel because Israelis were Jews while Palestinians were Muslims. ‘We should wake up to the absurdity of our surprise at the prevalence of this extremism,’ Mr Blair said.

’Look at the funds it receives. Examine the education systems that succour it. And then measure, over the years, the paucity of our counter-attack in the name of peaceful co-existence. We have been outspent, outmanoeuvred and out-strategised.’

[...] Mr Blair warned that it was impossible to defeat extremism ’without defeating the narrative that nurtures it’. Moderate Muslims who believed in co-existence and tolerance were, he said, being undermined by the unwillingness of the West to take on the extremists’ arguments.

‘We think if we sympathise with the narrative -- that essentially this extremism has arisen as a result, partly, of our actions -- we meet it halfway, we help the modernisers to be more persuasive,’ he said.

’We don't. We indulge it and we weaken them. Worse, a reaction springs up amongst our people that we are pandering to this narrative and they start to resent Muslims as a whole.’

Now granted, there's a good point to be made here about how the west's appeasement has only encouraged Islamofascism's increase. And he also made a worthy note about Iran:

‘Go and read the speech of Iran's president to the United Nations just days ago here in New York, and tell me that is someone you want with a nuclear bomb,’ he said.

No way! Tyrants like Ahmedinejad are not someone anybody with common sense wants possessing a nuclear weapon.

Unfortunately, Blair then proceeded to throw all that away by repeating a canard he coughed out years ago when he was in office:

He emphasised that the achievement of a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians would remove ‘much of the poison which the extremists use’.

All this without even once considering that Fatah and Hamas are themselves Islamofascist extremists in the worst ways possible, who refuse to accept Israel's existence, and who, just like many other Muslims across the world, also condone anti-Americanism and jihad against non-Muslims. As Melanie Phillips notes, Ayman Zawahiri of al Qaeda said in April 2008:

‘We promise our Muslim brothers that we will do the best we can to harm Jews in Israel and the world over, with Allah's help and according to his command,’

And sheik Ahmed abu Halabaya said in 2000, following the lynch-murder of 2 Israeli soldiers:

‘The Jews are the Jews. Whether Labor or Likud the Jews are Jews. They do not have any moderates or any advocates of peace. They are all liars. They all want to distort truth, but we are in possession of the truth...They are the terrorists. They are the ones who must be butchered and killed, as Allah the Almighty said: “Fight them: Allah will torture them at your hands, and will humiliate them and will help you to overcome them, and will relieve the minds of the believers.’

Tony Blair's ignorance of these very horrific items - to say nothing of his fixation upon the utterly stupid notion that a "peace settlement" will solve everything, is exactly why Islamofascism will not be defeated, not in Israel, not in Europe, not even in America. All he's doing is encouraging more anti-Israelism by practically suggesting that Israel's existence is the reason for Islamofascism. No wonder his own country, no matter their opinions on Israel, won't take him seriously.