For all Gordon Brown’s ‘tough talk’ on terrorism, in reality, the Government is actively permitting Islamist terrorists entering the UK. Only recently, the British Embassy in Beirut, granted a six month visa to Hezbollah Journalist, Ibrahim Mousawi. Mr Mousawi is the editor of Hizbullah’s newspaper al Intiqad and former head of Hizbullah’s TV station Al Manar.
Al Manar TV is a Hezbollah propaganda TV station, whose main output is to stir up hatred of the West and a pernicious form of anti-Semitism. One of the classic outpourings of this station was to broadcast a thirty part series based on the notorious forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claimed that a secret Jewish conspiracy plotted to take over the world. Mousawi was invited to speak at a “Stop the War” conference on 1st December and Jacqui Smith failed to deny him entry to the UK at that time. In marked contrast, he was to speak at a similar one in Ireland in October but was refused entry by the Irish authorities. He has also been banned from France.
What is all the more astonishing is that, not only has Mr Mousawi been given a Visa, but the Government refuse to ban Hezbollah in its entirety – only proscribing its mis-named ‘military wing’. This by itself is a fairly limited action as Hezbollah’s ‘external security’ association, is already banned.
As Baroness Pauline Nevillle Jones
(Shadow Homeland Security Minister), has said:
“Proscribing Hezbollah’s military arm will make at best a marginal difference in maintaining the UK's security… Instead of tinkering at the edges - the Government should answer our calls for a complete ban on Hezbollah in the UK. Only then will we be able to stamp out the actions of this extremist organisation in Britain for good."”.
Let us not forget that Hezbollah has masterminded terrorist atrocities around the world, is a proxy of the Iranian Islamist regime, and acts as a major road block against peace in the Middle East. If Mr Mossawi’s visa to England was just a one off, that would be bad enough. But it falls into a pattern of Government appeasement of extreme Islamist activities. They not only refuse to fully proscribe Hezbollah, they have allowed Hizbut-Tahrir to flourish (despite the hard-line organization being banned in Germany and Denmark), and they permitted ‘hate preacher’ Yusuf al-Qaradawi to meet former Mayor Ken Livingstone. If only the hard rhetoric on 42 days et al , was matched by real action to stop terrorists, or their proxies coming to Britain.
