Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for The Times of London, her new book, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West and Why Only They Can Save It, is published by Wicked Son. Access her work at: melaniephillips.substack.com.
(JNS) All week, Iranians have been mounting massive and widespread street protests. Triggered by ruinous increases in the cost of living and acute water shortages, they quickly became an insurrection against the Tehran regime, with protesters chanting for the return of the Shah.
These demonstrations have been far more consequential than previous such revolts. They started among the businessmen of the bazaars-the same kind of people who had helped depose the Shah and brought the Islamic revolutionary regime to power in 1979.
Even more remarkably, a number of bases for the fearsome Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij militia reportedly fell into the hands of protesters, with one Basij operative killed after demonstrators threw stones in Kuhdasht, a city in western Iran.
At time of writing, this insurrection is still escalating. Although at least four protesters have been killed, the feared bloodbath by security forces hasn’t yet materialized. Instead there have been unconfirmed reports that some have refused to fire on protesters, forcing the regime to call in Arab reinforcements; that other security forces have run away; and even that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has fled Tehran.
Maybe this revolt will fizzle out under ferocious reprisals, as all previous ones have done. But maybe, this time it will succeed in toppling the regime; it’s the closest the people have ever come to doing so. If they succeed, this would have a seismic impact far beyond Iran. It would transform and reshape global politics immeasurably for the better by removing a malevolent force devoted to the annihilation of Israel, the destruction of America and the conquest of the West.
The protests are therefore of immense significance. Yet astonishingly, the West has been all but silent. There have been no demonstrations in its streets chanting “Free, free Iran!” or “Death, death to the IRGC!”
For most of the week, the mainstream media simply ignored these tumultuous developments. When some reports were finally cranked out, they were minimal and seriously downplayed what was happening.
The Trump administration and Israeli government have expressed support for the protesters. But from the governments of the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, which have consistently sniped at Israel over its battle to neutralize Iran’s genocidal agenda, there’s been a conspicuous silence.
One might think these governments would be desperate to see the back of the world’s most lethal terrorist regime. Israel has taken another step against it by recognizing the independence of Somaliland. This puts the Jewish state into a far better position to deal with the Houthis in Yemen, through whom Iran launders its war against Israel and the West.
Instead the British government, which rushed to recognize the fantasy state of “Palestine,” has refused to recognize Somaliland and reaffirmed its support for Somalia’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Somaliland was a British Protectorate until June 26, 1960, when it achieved independence and received recognition from 35 countries. Five days later, it merged with Italian Somaliland to form Somalia, which disintegrated into warlordism and chaos. In 1991, Somaliland reclaimed its sovereignty and has governed itself in a peaceful and democratic manner ever since.
So Britain refuses to recognize Somaliland, which meets every criterion set out under the Montevideo Convention for international recognition of a state-a settled population, defined territory, functioning government and capacity to enter foreign relations-but instead recognizes a non-existent Arab state of Palestine that meets none of those criteria and doesn’t exist.
At every juncture, the British government is lining up with the enemies of civilization and the West, centered around its malice towards Israel.
This week, Britain added its voice to a statement on Gaza from the foreign ministers of Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland to express “serious concerns about the renewed deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which remains catastrophic.”
Although it grudgingly acknowledged “some improvement since the dire reports of famine in August,” it failed to note that there never had been any famine and no prospect of one, and that the constant claim by the United Nations and its agencies that it was imminent had been a lie.
Worse, the statement complained that “many established international NGO partners are at risk of being deregistered because of the government of Israel’s restrictive new requirements” which would have “a severe impact on access to essential services, including health care.”
But COGAT, Israel’s agency overseeing aid in Gaza, has said that only 37 NGOs have been suspended. These had provided less than 1% of total aid in the past and have brought in no aid during the current ceasefire. And the reason for their suspension is that they have had 10 months to comply with checks to show they have no links to Hamas or other terrorist activity, but have refused to do so.
Like the governments of Canada and Australia, Britain has been systematically peddling the lies generated by Iran-backed Hamas that defame and delegitimize Israel.
These blood libels have fueled the murderous hysteria about Israel and the Jews among their own populations, with the terrible consequences of two Jews killed in Britain in the Yom Kippur terrorist attack on a Manchester synagogue, and the Hanukkah pogrom on Bondi Beach, Australia, in which 15 Jews were massacred.
The refusal by the British government to acknowledge the threat posed by the Islamic world has created its latest debacle. It said it was “delighted” to welcome to Britain an Egyptian dissident, Alaa Abd el Fattah, who had been repeatedly jailed in Egypt for opposing its regime and whose release had been a “top priority” for the Starmer government.
Within a few hours of Fattah’s arrival, however, he was revealed to have tweeted, between 2010 and 2012, a torrent of horrific statements including calls to kill all Zionists and the “random shooting of white males,” hatred of white people and Europeans, and a videoed call in Arabic for the mass slaughter of Jews with the Islamic battle cry: Kaybar, kaybar, ya yahud!
Astoundingly, he had been granted British citizenship in 2021 by the previous Conservative government, even though this was clearly a ruse by his supporters to enlist the British state in pressing Egypt to release him.
The sheep-like Conservatives had gone along with the huge campaign to get him freed from jail in Egypt, mounted by the same kind of people who have been silent about the unimaginably brave people of Iran.
Why is the West so indifferent to the evil of Iran, vilifying Israel instead for resisting Iranian attempts to exterminate it?
Why can’t the West acknowledge the extent of the Islamist threat to itself?
A key reason is that liberals believe the West can do no right, and the developing world can do no wrong. The West, represented by America and Israel, is deemed oppressive, and so all who resist them are regarded as freedom fighters. Western liberals simply can’t grasp that some who resist the undoubted repression of Egypt or other Muslim countries may nevertheless themselves be violent extremists who pose an acute threat to the free world.
The terrible fact is that, with the entire global humanitarian establishment having turned into a force to demonize and delegitimize Israel, conscience in the West has become harnessed to absolute evil. The label of “human rights” activists is accordingly given only to those who support the West’s enemies.
America once thought this pathology was confined to Britain and Europe. Yet the newly installed mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, is an Islamist and antisemite driven by a desire to see Israel destroyed.
He has now appointed as chief counsel Ramzi Kassem, a radical lawyer with a long history of defending people connected to Islamic extremism, and who has claimed that federal counterterrorism tools are illegitimate. He has spent his career laundering Islamic extremism and support for terrorism as human rights-precisely the agenda of the British and European left.
In the global battle underway between good and evil, freedom and tyranny, truth and lies the West is increasingly facilitating evil, tyranny and lies.
Diaspora Jews aren’t merely facing a tsunami of antisemitism. They’re living in a society that has smashed its own moral compass, and so left itself wide open to the enemies of civilization.