Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May has bragged in a speech to the Conservative Friends of Israel group about banning a pro-Israel Jewish woman, Pamela Geller, for ‘Islamophobia’.
The faux pas — already noticed by major pro-Israel advocates in Washington, D.C. and Westminster — came on Monday afternoon as Mrs. May announced the government’s endorsement of a definition on anti-Semitism.
But in order to caveat her support for British Jews, Mrs. May reignited a long-standing war of words with U.S. Israel advocate Pamela Geller and her colleague Robert Spencer.
The pair were banned from the United Kingdom when Mrs. May was Home Secretary.
Ostensibly under the guise of “Islamophobia”, Mrs. May excluded the pair who have been both free speech champions and leading advocates against radical Islam.
Writing for Breitbart London today, Ms. Geller struck back, revealing that documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act actually state Ms. Geller may have been excluded due to her pro-Israel and pro-waterboarding views, as much as her activism against radical Islam.
She wrote: “The writer [of an government document about her banning] 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. And now May has the brazen gall to equate Islamophobia with anti-Semitism in justifying why I was banned from the country, despite the fact that anti-Semitic hate crimes are far more common than anti-Muslim ones, and Jews present no terror threat”.
In her speech to the Conservative Friends of Israel group, Mrs. May stated: “Indeed, when I was Home Secretary we took what I believe was an important step in gauging a truer picture of the problem, requiring all police forces to record religious hate crimes separately, by faith.
“And I made sure we kept extremism – including the sort that peddles anti-Semitic vitriol – out of our country.
“That is why I said no to so-called comedians like Dieudonne coming to Britain.
“It’s why I stopped Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Pastor Terry Jones coming too – since Islamophobia comes from the same wellspring of hatred.”
Pastor Jones is perhaps best known for his plan to burn Qurans — something the establishment in both the United Kingdom and the United States have cracked down on while seemingly turning a blind eye to the burning of U.S. and British flags over the years.
Concluding, Ms. Geller writes: “How ridiculous Theresa May has become, tying herself into knots at the behest of their would-be executioners. There is no doubt that she will eventually regret taking the course that she and her colleagues have so recklessly chosen for Britain – but by then it will almost certainly be too late”.
Ms. May has already put herself at loggerheads against the incoming Trump administration in the United States. Attacking Ms. Geller, who is a regular contributor for Breitbart.com, is evidently another effort to distance the United Kingdom from the anti-establishment in the U.S., which could in turn scupper a trade deal between the two nations.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.