Quotations

“Hamas leaders know they cannot defeat the IDF militarily. Their only hope is to provoke Israel into killing enough civilians to defeat Israel politically. This is a classic terrorist strategy of provocation. Israel has fallen for it, hard.” Professor Virginia Page Fortna of Columbia University, writing today in Ha'aretz. She is an American political scientist and a specialist in the study of peace negotiations.

"I remember when British people used to say things like “They can’t run me in; I haven’t done anything wrong,” or “They can’t do that; it’s against the law.” George Orwell noted in 1941 that a vague belief in law being above power, expressed in such sentiments, was part of the English character. We also used to say that an Englishman’s home was his castle.

"But night after night, local TV news bulletins show police in body armor with special battering rams, smashing down the door of some alleged drug dealer’s home. And we are expected and intended to approve, even though these events, plainly done for show, have less than no effect on the vast levels of drug abuse in our society. In fact, although we have had a Bill of Rights in England since 1689, on which much of the American Bill of Rights is based (including, amazingly, the right to bear arms), we are very poorly protected from the state if it wishes to start pushing us around."

Peter Hitchens in the American Conservative yesterday. The article is worth reading. The UK no longer has free speech.