Opinion: As a survivor of terror, allowing the Al Quds Day March offends me
British-born Kay Wilson reflects on the double standards when it comes to tackling Islamist terrorism in the UK
Six years ago two Islamic terrorists gagged and bound me, forced me to my knees and hacked to death my American friend before my eyes.
Their cleavers chopped away her future generations, ripped apart her family’s heart, tore my own innocence to shreds and decimated the person that I once was.
Bloodied and battered I staggered through the forest, certain of death yet surprisingly finding help.
I recall with gratitude the Israeli Muslim surgeon who stitched up my thirteen machete wounds, tended my thirty broken bones and saved my life.
Through that mile walk back, I was unaware of my future survival and oblivious to the commission that came with it: to speak up against hatred.
It is both hateful and untrue to say that every Muslim is a terrorist.
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It is also untruthful to claim that the terrorism now ravaging Europe is generic and not perpetrated by those belonging to the global Muslim community.
The denial is disingenuous, unhelpful, a patronising absolution of community responsibility and therefore a dangerous form of political correctness gone-mad.
After the attack, my wellbeing only took a turn for the good when I claimed my right to rage at those who murdered my friend.
For the wellbeing of this society, the British people also need to claim their rights to rage at a system that gags them from calling things for what they are, due to fear of being charged with hate speech and being in violation of the Public Order Act Section 5 – an act which increasingly deems values and traditions spawned from Judeo-Christian ethics as offensive.
Personally speaking, I find the blowing up of children at a pop concert and the slitting of young women’s throats on London’s streets far more offensive than a shop owner who hangs a “stop funding terrorism” sign and a Christian who screens Bible verses on a TV in his cafe.
The lawbreakers were told by the British police to take these things down because they were both offensive and an offence under the Public Order Act Section 5.
As a London-born survivor of Islamic terrorism, I too am offended.
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I am offended by the allowing of the Al-Quds March Day (an Iranian-backed propaganda tool) that will take place in London on Sunday despite the Mayor expressing his concerns to the Metropolitan Police and a petition signed by thousands stating their outrage.
In the name of free-speech, people will march in support of organisations that the British government has designated as terror groups. It won’t be the first time that they will be allowed to chant hate, vilify “Zionists” and demonise Israel, the sole refuge for Jewish people in the Middle East, and also the lone democracy.
This appalling abuse of free speech coupled with the authorities selectively appropriating the Public Order Act Section 5, is what ensures that British Jewish schools, British Jewish institutions and British synagogues will continue to need security surveillance night and day.
These double standards and the gagging and harassing of individuals who speak question and challenge the system, is also what will guarantee the increasing familiar sight of police and ambulance crews, scraping parts of men women and children off the walls of a cultural arena and London’s streets.
- Kay Wilson is a British-born Israeli tour guide, a public speaker, a jazz pianist, a cartoonist and a survivor of a Palestinian machete attack. Since the terror attack, Kay has been working as an educator for StandWithUs. She is registered with the Israel Speakers Agency and her award-winning articles have been published in The Tower and The Times of Israel.
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