J'accuse!

random thoughts on everything

Who are today’s moral warriors?

Alfred Dreyfus

Who are the people with gravitas, power, and clarity of vision, the great orators, the deep thinkers who carry an entire crowd on words not of division or anger, but true wisdom? With serious international punch we have Douglas Murray, perhaps Erin Molan, and a handful of others. But few can match the bravery of revered writer Emile Zola who stirred the French to public conscience in 1898. Outraged them over the imprisonment of Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus, scapegoated on a false charge of espionage.

At great personal cost, Zola stood alone when he shouted his disgust across the front page of a national newspaper. He pointed at the culprits, named names and told the truth about the evils of antisemitism, the soiled hunt for “dirty Jews.” If he did that in London today, he would certainly find the Met Police crowded on his doorstep, handcuffs primed as they accused him of a hate crime. Admittedly it didn’t go down well in Paris of La Belle Epoque. With the government and army exposed as conspirators and liars, Zola was forced to flee or face prison.

Loving the idea of him making an illegal boat crossing from France to England I nominate our Home Secretary Yvette Cooper for a bit of time travel. I imagine she might have polished up her French, pulled on a wetsuit, grabbed a hip flask of whiskey, memorised a few of Zola’s paragraphs, and got husband Ed to waltz her to Dover in rescue. She would almost certainly have been challenged by Robert Jenrick, racing him neck and neck to the finish.

Here in the UK we are grateful to have a group of excellent Lords who take every opportunity to speak up in Parliament for our Jewish community. They very much deserve our praise and admiration for facing a hostile press who seek popular headlines in preference to truth. Big shout out to them all, but in particular Ian Austen, Howard Leigh and Stuart Polak. They bravely and consistently stand on our behalf trying to mitigate the government’s weak stance on antisemitism, highlighting its ever present threat to our communities, and reminding people that 56 hostages are still held in Gaza.

Inside the Commons it feels as though the freedoms of our entire nation are at risk as Labour prove themselves inept in every department. They bluster, they bully, they display little insight or care for the crumbling of British society. The fault lines between social classes, the disintegration of schools, hospitals, doctors surgeries, law courts, social services, and housing. Two tier policing, rising prices, crime, empty shops, uncollected garbage, the pernicious taxing of motorists, dirty streets, deserted bicycle lanes, cash-cow speed cameras, potholes, overcrowded prisons, NHS waiting lists, our stuttering economy, and additional green taxes plotted for us by a man who betrayed his own brother.

The people are angry, and rightly so. The thought police are in power and we, the Jewish community have reason to be fearful. We’ve seen this before. It began the same way in 1933 when antisemitism rose up in the universities, in the arts, in the press, in false academia, in lies and in propaganda. We now fear less for Israel than we do for the UK and Europe. As countries shift to the political left or right, they yell about genocide and willingly repeat lies told by a terror group, kowtowing to an evil that if allowed to continue must, and will eventually, consume us all. Government rhetoric in the Commons bewilderingly favours terror groups, excusing them for a massacre, for hostage taking and for adhering to no rule of law. Bedazzled by Middle Eastern money, TikTok MPs align with Hamas to encourage votes they will never be given at the ballot box. Labour not only turn away from an ally, they question their legitimate right to fight and survive. Honest, factual debate is forsaken for sectarian politics that have raised questions on Gaza 9,228 times since the Party came into power. This is an unprecedented number. Thousands more than any of our domestic issues and shameful time wasting for a British Parliament with no means to ‘free Palestine.’

In Macron’s riotous Paris, 1,570 antisemitic acts say little has changed in attitude since the Dreyfus affair. This week, in a laughable sop to the Jewish community, the French government gifted a sudden, posthumous upgrade to Alfred Dreyfus. He went from army captain to brigadier general. I expect that after a 130 years, this symbolic gesture now makes everyone feel truly welcome and protected from the mostly young Arab men who rampaged through Paris after a game of football. Thankfully PSG won … the repercussions of a defeat are unimaginable.

What made Emile Zola’s defiant act so spectacularly brave, was not just his clarity, but his conviction to do right by a man he never met, with whom he shared no common trait, no deep understanding, or religious belief. For this he was vilified, ostracised, fined and convicted of libel.

On his behalf I say to the BBC, to the journalists seeking sensation, to the fools repeating propaganda, to the ignorant who tear down hostage photos, to the silent majority who still believe nothing bad will ever happen to them.

J’accuse!