“The existence of a Zionist State will bring into relief the separate character of the Jew.” Hilaire Belloc, The Jews, 1922.

In the course of several articles for TOO (e.g. here and here) I have attempted to explain a slow and gradual tightening of the noose on our freedoms, and to make predictions based on current trends. Despite my close attention to these details and developments, I have to confess that organized Jewry has impressed me with the unparalleled impudence of its latest success story — the effective criminalization in Britain of non-violent protest against Israeli human rights abuses. A report in The Independent states that:

Local councils, public bodies and even some university student unions are to be banned by law from boycotting “unethical” companies, as part of a controversial crackdown being announced by the Government. Under the plan all publicly funded institutions will lose the freedom to refuse to buy goods and services from companies involved in the arms trade, fossil fuels, tobacco products or Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Any public bodies that continue to pursue boycotts will face “severe penalties”, ministers said. Senior government sources said they were cracking down on town-hall boycotts because they “undermined good community relations, poisoned and polarized debate and fuelled anti-Semitism”.

Thus, in one stunning move, a key aspect of the autonomous decision-making processes of British local government has been abolished. The central government has arbitrarily vetoed the power of local governments and groups of private citizens to divest from trade or investments they regard as unethical. It goes without saying that the move has been introduced without any public referendum, or any public consultation. This is a diktat passed down on the people by an elite so distant from its people as to represent nothing less than the officialdom of an alien colonial power.

It should also be clear to any intelligent observer that the measure wasn’t remotely designed to protect cigarette and oil companies. These types of businesses are only mentioned as a means of offering (poor) camouflage for the real protected special interest group — a special interest group that has sought privileged, protected status from elites for centuries. A reporter for the International Business Times has remarked: “You don’t need to be Ban Ki-moon to see this wide net has been cast to protect just one state — Israel.” The British government has even brazenly boasted of its latest victory on behalf of explicitly Jewish interests. The Independent adds:

Significantly, and underlining the main target of the ban, the formal announcement will be made by the Cabinet Office minister Matt Hancock when he visits Israel this week. … Mr Hancock said the current position where local authorities had autonomy to make ethical purchasing decisions was “undermining” Britain’s national security. “We need to challenge and prevent these divisive town-hall boycotts,” he said. “The new guidance on procurement combined with changes we are making to how pension pots can be invested will help prevent damaging and counter-productive local foreign policies undermining our national security.”

Our national security, Mr Hancock? What disdain this man must have for the citizens of his country, to feed them such a diet of empty lies. And what a sad and broken nation to accept them!

Robert Singer, World Jewish Congress CEO, has welcomed the move to restrict the freedoms of British citizens, stating:

Over the course of the last years, the UK has been a hotbed for BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) activity. We saw a number of universities and local councils adopting boycott resolutions against the Jewish state, severe actions in supermarkets, and attempts to hamper trade relations between Britain and Israel. It’s therefore important and welcome that the British government has now decided to take action.

I cannot stress enough that this move can’t be seen in isolation. The mind-set that has insidiously worked for the introduction of this measure is the same mentality that agitates unceasingly for gun control and restrictions on freedom of speech. It is the same mind-set and set of interests that both provoked Ted Nugent’s indignation, and then exacted a weak and grovelling apology from him. It is the same supremacist mentality that provoked the loathsome Jackie Mason to demand that a blacklist be made of actors who support the boycott against Israel, uttering: “If not for the Jews who created the industry in Hollywood, all these people would never have a job and would never be working.” These measures are part of an overwhelming trend throughout Jewish history: that Jews have very often been agents and partners of the ruling elite and have often sought and acquired special protections from Big Government in the form of monarchs, politburos, and ‘democratic’ elites.

Jewish political influence thrives in tyranny, when the masses are dispossessed of freedoms. Tellingly in this regard, in Orthodox Judaism the prayer Hanotayn Teshu-ah is not said for the nation or the people of the country in which the Jews have settled, but rather for the monarch or government. Gordon Freeman explains that “In fact, a prayer for the government is a feature of every type of prayer book of every land of the Jewish diaspora irrespective of the specific religious movement of the community.”[1] This stance is ancient. The rabbinic commentary, Pirke Avot, tells Jews to “pray for the welfare of the government, because were it not for the fear it inspires, every man would swallow his neighbor alive.” What is really intended and understood by this injunction is that were it not for the fear inspired by the government, the goyim would swallow their Jewish neighbors alive. The favored Jewish position is thus to support a strong, feared, government which is capable of harnessing the resentments, real or imagined, of the gentile masses. This is most commonly achieved by stripping the citizenry of their right to bear arms, and a hard clamp down on their ability to organize through speech or assembly.

History is replete with examples of Jews benefiting from powerful, feared, governments. One of Big Government’s primary methods of instilling this fear into the populace is the slow erosion of its freedoms and the introduction of harsh and restrictive legislation. Such measures, never introduced in a truly democratic manner, are of course nothing but a subtler form of violence. And pressure upon a people’s feelings, mentality, and sense of themselves can be infinitely more effective and damaging than pressure upon their bodies. The steady drip, drip of the bleeding of their freedoms denies them the fight or flight impulse that comes with direct, instantaneous physical assault.

Rest assured that there will be further repressive measures on the horizon. Britain is merely the first nation-state to explicitly introduce such protections for Israel. We have already witnessed the introduction of very similar measures in the U.S. at state-level. In May 2015 Illinois passed anti-BDS legislation, provoking the Washington Post to warn of a “wave of anti-BDS legislation sweeping the U.S.” Recently, California introduced legislation prohibiting state government from ‘contracting with entities that support the practice of boycotts on the basis of national origin.’ The equally corrupt and treasonous Republicans and Democrats have come together in South Carolina to pass similar measures, and Florida unanimously passed ‘anti-discrimination’ legislation in the state senate just under two weeks ago. The New York state legislature has passed “a bill that would suspend funding to educational institutions which fund groups that boycott Israel,” and thirty-five more states are reportedly considering similar legislation.

The anti-BDS campaign has been heating up at the national level as well. An anti-BDS law has been introduced in Congress by four legislators well known to be owned by the Israel Lobby. The proposed law would ensure that state anti-BDS laws would not be pre-empted by federal law and would prevent entities from suing states because they had suffered damages from anti-BDS laws. Most incredibly, it would allow state and local governments to penalize entities that advocated boycott. Since boycott has been ruled as coming under First Amendment protections for free speech, this obviously raises Constitutional issues. The proposed law also fits well with an Israeli campaign to censor social media According to a statement from the Israeli Foreign Ministry, governments should require the adoption of “global terms of service prohibiting the posting of hate speech and anti-Semitic materials.” Given that anti-BDS arguments are often framed in terms of opposition to anti-Semitism, it is easy to see where this is going.

In October 2015, The Intercept reported on the criminal convictions in France of 12 activists for advocating sanctions and a boycott against Israel. The convictions were upheld by France’s highest court. In transpired that the individuals were arrested and prosecuted for “wearing shirts emblazoned with the words ‘Long live Palestine, boycott Israel’” and because “they also handed out fliers that said that ‘buying Israeli products means legitimizing crimes in Gaza.’” Pascal Markowicz, chief lawyer of the CRIF umbrella organization of French Jewish communities, published a celebratory decree: “BDS is ILLEGAL in France.” In Canada, officials have also threatened criminal prosecution against anyone supporting boycotts against Israel.

As I have stated before when addressing this topic, I believe that such repressive tactics offer only short-term solutions for organized Jewry. Hilaire Belloc probably expressed it best when he wrote:

It dams up and enormously increases the latent force of anger against Jewish power both real and imaginary. It is like the piling up of a head of water when a river valley is obstructed, or like the introducing of resistance into an electric current. The suppression of resentment…is a fierce irritant and accounts for the high pressure at which attack escapes when once it is loosened (The Jews, 263).

Neither elites nor their allies fare well when tyranny is eventually met with revolution. The centuries-old obsessive quest for Jewish security has never produced its (unachievable and insatiable) goal, but has instead contributed to centuries of tension punctuated with expulsions and ethnic conflict. For a people obsessed with the refrain “Never Forget,” they would do well to become better students of their own history.