At the back of a tour bus outside Jerusalem where eight seats face each other, a raspy Lutonian can be heard dissecting the nuances of Islamo-Judaic relations in Israel. I’ve spent the past week visiting the Nova Festival memorial and kibbutzes, speaking to survivors about their lost friends and family and engaging in meetings with people at the top of Israeli politics and journalism to understand the conflict better.
And yet, amid the hum of the road and the staccato of political argument, something unexpected is happening: Tommy Robinson is being listened to.
And he’s listening, too. At every meeting, Tommy listens, transfixed - occasionally interrupting with difficult questions, often wandering off to film interviews with Muslim Israelis.
Included among these is an intellectual debate with a British Imam in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem. The imam is very familiar with Tommy and clearly admires him, even as Tommy gets the upper hand in the debate.
A Difficult Truth
This is a difficult truth for a lot of people on the extremes of the political spectrum: the speaker previously known as “racist thug” - and now simply called “thug” as even his detractors admit he’s not racist - is passionate and knowledgeable.
There are many people - particularly in the media - who I would advise to read this. But I particularly want to speak to well-meaning Jewish British journalists and the likes of the Board of Deputies. A couple of weeks ago, Israeli Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli invited Tommy Robinson to Israel to thank him for the work he has done in spreading a positive (and accurate) message about the world’s most-maligned country.
I don’t find it necessary to draw attention to particular posts, so you’ll have to believe me when I write that Jewish social media went into meltdown. The message was clear: “Tommy Robinson is a thug. Don’t link us to him.”
Even as videos on social media showed rapturous Israelis cheering Tommy as though he were the second coming, one journalist - a brilliant one with whom I agree on almost everything else - posted to suggest Tommy’s Israel tour wasn’t going so well because one (literally, one) protester got up and shouted at him at the enormous rally. This is where TDS is more applicable to Tommy than to Trump.
The first thing I say to these journalists is that I get it. I’ve reached out to some of them to say as much. With his checkered past, Tommy is not an easy person to pin your hopes on.
A Troubled History
He has historic affiliations with the EDL and the BNP. He has been in prison several times. Even now, he uploads erratic comments online, such as a video in which he makes wrong presumptions about black parents in a park. I believe he deleted it when he realised.
In a furious response to those labelling him a thug, he put up wild posts about “elite Jews in the media”. His phrasing was wrong - dangerously so - but his frustration with an unrepresentative media class is one many quietly share. He agrees he needs to word his intentions more carefully.
But imagine how you’d feel if hundreds of journalists simultaneously posted to large audiences messages that not only criticise you, but anyone who dares associate with you.
What he meant in his posts is that, just like in the non-Jewish world, there is an elite group that claims to represent the beliefs of others. This is undoubtedly true - everywhere I’ve been with Tommy in Israel, people have clasped his hand and hugged him. Many of my Jewish friends in the UK feel the same, though they could never say as much (one even had me bring a beautifully-written card).
Yet, when I explained something similar to journalist David Aaronovitch, he accused me of lying. That exemplifies the distance that has grown between the media and real people. They simply have no idea about the real world.
Grooming Gangs
The fact is that the elite (politicians and media) - Jewish or otherwise - were asleep at the wheel while unprecedented levels of immigration, specifically from countries that hate Jews (e.g. 99% unfavourable views of Jews in Pakistan according to PEW), turned our liberal society into an intolerant band of Jew haters. They then equivocated, while police failed to stop British Pakistani grooming gangs for fear of being called racist.
Such was the ideological fervour for the cult of multiculturalism (a well-meaning but flawed concept little different to Bolshevism or Maoism in its castigation of non-believers) that the person exposing it was never going to be a measured, prim and proper mainstream liberal luvvy.
Why would, say, Stephen Fry or Jonathan Ross - whatever their personal convictions - risk their comfortable role as tzars of “the current thing”?
So we’re left with Tommy.
And what I want Jewish journalists to understand is that there’s no other choice. We’re out of options. David Baddiel’s Jews Don’t Count is brilliant. But the only possible sequel would be Jews Still Don’t Count. The Left won’t accept us. The Far Right won’t either. The Centre-Right - loud, imperfect and patriotic - is all that’s left.
Our only option is the loud centre, which is precisely where Tommy stands. I realise that many will scoff as they read the previous sentence. They’re used to seeing the words “Far-Right” before his name.
You may believe he is Far-Right. But have you thought about why you feel that?
When he came on Heretics, he explained that he believes anyone who loves the country and is proud to be here is English. That’s his position.
It places him far to the Left of my friends Konstantin Kisin and Suella Braverman (we debate this on an upcoming show) and many respected journalists and politicians. And that’s before we even think about the actual Far-Right - people who hate Tommy with significantly more vigour than the mainstream Left.
To them, he is a traitor; a man who was arrested for fighting a Nazi; and an untrustworthy friend to the Jews, Sikhs, Hindus and black people among other minorities.
You Don’t Have to Like Him
You don’t have to like him. But I would advise Jews - including myself - to side with British patriots. Most Jews pride ourselves on fitting in and assimilating to the UK. As they vote in their millions to stop their native land turning into an airport, let us stand with them.
A person of great import - who I’m obliged to anonymise - recently told Tommy and me in a room full of “alternative” journalists that we need British nationalism to focus on whom we include…and not - as has happened in the States with Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens - on whom we exclude. This provoked passionate applause. It is about creating a national identity around which British people of all backgrounds can come together.
Tommy would be advised to take more care in his social media posts. But he wants this unified UK desperately. British Jews must align ourselves with a growing patriotic movement in the UK that includes rather than excludes.
As Tommy has seen, Muslims live happily, and integrate much better in Israel (where they have more rights than in any other part of the Middle East) than they do in the UK, a country that has forgotten what it is and now denigrates its own history and culture.
This week, I told him that he might overestimate his ability to make a real impact from the ground up. That’s because - despite the Les Misérables myth - the reality is that real change often comes from the top. He needs help. Even on this trip, I’ve seen journalists approach Tommy to thank him - only to dive out the way of photos, lest anyone associate them with him. I can’t imagine what that must feel like.
That’s why I direct this at journalists - particularly the Jewish ones with no other choice: it’s time to stop trying to be accepted by people who will never have space for us, and start standing with those who still love Britain as much as we do.
I felt like I was nearly alone for years vocally speaking up for him. Feeling vindicated because Tommy hadn't really changed much since the EDL days, a little calmer and grown up.
And the EDL: they never were far right or racist whenever Tommy was in charge.
I just watched his debate with this Imam and it was brilliant.