Ed West today

 

'Palestine could just as easily be a Right-wing cause, a cautionary tale about the perils of mass [immigration]. The root of the Palestinian tragedy was, after all, the influx of Jewish migrants, many of them desperate refugees, which altered the country’s demographic balance irrevocably, and of which the establishment of the Jewish state was the natural historical result. Such a reading would easily lend itself to conservative fears over unchecked immigration, and as demographic anxieties become the central driver of European political discontent, younger Rightists could well, like the Nouvelle Droite of the Seventies, find themselves making sympathetic analogies with the Palestinian predicament.

'Instead, British migration anxieties seem to have transferred themselves, in centrist discourse, to socially acceptable discomfort at pro-Palestine demonstrations in London and other British cities. Perhaps, along with Europe’s bloody decade of Islamist terrorism, this is the cause of eroding sympathy for Palestinians and growing self-identification with Israel among the commentary class. Centre-right commentators who a few weeks ago howled at the Home Secretary’s remarks on the failures of multiculturalism, expressing their satisfaction at Britain’s successful experiment with demographic change, now express horror at the results.'