Mick Hartley

Author: Mick Hartley

  • “Among the most vulnerable patients I have seen”

    sic personal hygiene. They have talked about their poor social circumstances and being unable to afford the normal things most children have. They grew up feeling they were on the outside, ostracised by their parents and their peers.

    They have endured all of this, pouring their energy into surviving at the cost of maturing. And then, with little idea of their own identity, they have found the camaraderie of a trans peer group and embraced the idea that they were born in the wrong body.

    They now believe it is their body that is wrong and needs to change. This view has then been endorsed by the NHS, schools and even politicians. No one has said to them: “You are fine just the way you are. Let’s help you.”…

    Professionals seem too frightened to question whether changing gender is what these patients really need….

    I worry that many will look back at the NHS in a few years and think: “What have you done to me? I have no breasts and I cannot have children. My life is wrecked just like my childhood was wrecked.” I feel I am seeing a medical scandal unfold before my eyes.

  • On the Qur’anic ethics of disobedience in times of structural violence

    rly campaigned on behalf of terrorism suspects, was invited to give a “teach-in” at a camp set up by students at University College London (UCL) on Friday evening.

    He later went on to pray with Muslim protesters occupying the green at the nearby School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas).

    Posting photos of his activities on Twitter/X yesterday, Qureshi wrote: “I was really honoured to provide a teach-in to the brave students from @UCLAFP [Action For Palestine] encamping at UCL.

    “I spoke on the Qur’anic ethics of disobedience in times of structural violence. I was also really glad to bring some food cooked for the camp by my wife.”

    Well he wouldn't have cooked it himself, would he? That's a woman's job. He's too busy studying the Qur’anic ethics of disobedience in times of structural violence. And lauding ISIS executioners.

  • Progressive patriarchy

    e or anybody else to acknowledge the risk, because we all know how babies are made,” WoLF Executive Director Sharon Byrne told 4W.

    “Housing men in women’s prisons is California’s progressive patriarchy. The state has an obligation to keep everybody safe to the best of its ability. It cannot throw incarcerated women under the bus when there are alternative ways to keep men at risk of sexual violence safe in men’s prisons, such as by getting a waiver to provide a third space.”

  • Plus ça change…

    Rowling again:

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  • It’s that simple

    Yep – Chase Strangio finally gets it:

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  • “I’ve been made to feel there isn’t a place for me here”

    My final exams start next week and my commute to the faculty takes me past the protesters. I cross the road before I walk past them, I’ve avoided doing my normal running route. My partner is anxious about me wearing my kippah in public. We’ve been scared. It feels like a hostile environment.

    However, the protesters claim that this “liberated zone” is inclusive for all. So, on Wednesday I and a group of Jewish students attended a “teach-in” at the camp on the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

    I have family in Israel and believe in the right to a Jewish homeland. This makes me a Zionist. But at the talk, a protester told me the camp’s purpose was to “defeat Zionism”. For me this was antisemitic, she was denying Israel’s legitimacy as the only Jewish state, denying the Jews alone a homeland, and calling for its destruction. That isn’t a call for peace.

    Given the microphone, I told the 40-strong crowd my experience of antisemitism. But after I spoke, I was shouted at and the panel said I was mistaken. They said she’d just made a political statement and denied my experience of antisemitism. I was being gaslit.

    Earlier in the talk, a speaker had said that the British Jewish community had been fed a lie by “powerful forces within British Jewry” to convince them that anti-Zionism was antisemitism. It was antisemitic trope on antisemitic trope.

    For these people, their personal experience of victimhood cannot be questioned and is used to show the world what antisemitism means, whereas when I stand up to give my experience, I’m made to feel it doesn’t exist. They could easily define what antisemitism wasn’t but never what it was. It was one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life.

    Oxford University is allowing its space to be used to teach and instruct people on how to be antisemitic through anti-Zionism on campus. Its own academics are signing letters of support — one of them is my own tutor.

    The university’s idea of what the camp is there for and what it is trying to achieve — reminding us of tolerance — is pure fantasy. By allowing the camp on its property, Oxford is implicitly endorsing it.

    I emailed my college on Thursday to tell them the situation is intolerable. I’m a student at this university and I’ve been made to feel there isn’t a place for me here.

  • On the Balfour Declaration

    An idiosyncratic historical take from Lebanese University Professor George Harb:

    "After the so-called annihilation of the Zionist Jews by Hitler – which is in doubt to begin with – they gained the sympathy of all the people in Europe, and fled to France, and when Hitler entered France, most of them went to Britain.

    "The so-called Balfour Declaration, which promised the Jews a state… During World War II, Balfour was Britain's Home Secretary. Balfour oppressed the Jews much more than Hitler and Nazism did. He threw them in prison. Why? Because when the Jews arrived in Britain…

    "What have the Jews been doing throughout history when they arrive somewhere? They join the banking and media sectors, and take control of them, and then they turn against their religious institutions, because historically, the Church fought the Jews. The Jews do not believe in the Church and want to destroy it, and wait for the Messiah. This is a long story and I do not want to get into it.

    "So the Jews turned to destroying the Church in Britain – both the Protestant church and the Catholic church – and they moved to destroy the banking sector and control the media. They urged the British media to start a war against Hitler, in order to get rid of him. The Jews live off the European conflicts.

    "Balfour was smart, so he senses this danger. He said to them: 'The best thing is for us to found a state for you.' This is because he was on his way to annihilate them again. So they promised them a state in South Africa. They took them to South Africa, but at the time, there were savages there, and they said that Israel could not survive there. Nobody mentioned the historic and religious roots of Israel or whatever.

    "Then they checked out Palestine, and found a sect of Jews living in Jerusalem, and thought that since they had holy places there, they could use them as a emotional basis and bring the Jews there. In short, they brought them to the East in order to get rid of them."

  • Islamophobia alert

    Classic.

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  • Hostile glares, eye rolls

    s accepted last year to do a master’s degree at a prestigious university in London I was excited. Being the daughter of a diplomat I had spent my life travelling and had never felt particularly linked to my Jewish identity. There is a thriving Jewish community in London and I was thrilled with the prospect of making some Jewish friends. Along with being ready to connect with my fellow students, I was also enthusiastic about the film course that I had been accepted on to. Then, the week after I started, Hamas perpetrated the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

    While the events of October 7 unfolded, I was glued to the television, tears rolling down my face. As the death toll rose and before Israel even began to think of retaliating, thousands of people spilt on to the streets of London celebrating “the Palestinian resistance”. And so instead of seeing empathy for those who lost their loved ones, I found myself at an epicentre of hate in London.

    When I opened Instagram I saw students I had met the week before on my course posting messages in support of Hamas: “Resistance is justified”, “Free Palestine”, “Freedom fighters”. It was surreal.

    I deleted them all right away because I didn’t want to be connected to the hate they were promoting. In addition, I was terrified that they would learn from my account that I was Jewish or, God forbid, a Zionist. But I was so furious that a few days later I brought a “F*** antisemitism” sticker to class on my laptop. It was then that I saw a shift in their attitude towards me. Our conversations went from amicable to none at all. I noticed the eyerolls every time I spoke in class, and I could hear their voices drop as I passed by….

    One friend was cornered by another student after a seminar and questioned if she claimed Israel as a Jew. This student then went on to call her a baby-killer. The same friend was also spat at on campus while speaking about Israel on the phone.

    A friend from a different university in London told me how she was shunned by her peers and kicked out of the class group chat. She had not shared her views on Israel — she was ostracised for simply being Jewish. She was told later that students she had considered her friends had celebrated her departure from the group chat with images and emojis.

    I wish I could say things quietened down over time, but they didn’t. Students wore keffiyeh scarves and displayed “Free Palestine” phone cases and pins. Many of my classmates, despite having no personal stake in the conflict, adopted this new fashion trend in solidarity.

    A new fashion trend. Yep. The new fashionable antisemitism.

  • The “trans inclusive” school for severely autistic children

    ings very literally and see the world in black and white.

    “If you tell them they can be a member of the opposite sex, then they will really believe that. Showing them nonsense like the gingerbread person, which is highly regressive and misleading, is only going to make them very confused.

    “You would expect schools, especially ones that specialise in autism, to respond very cautiously and with great care in this area. Instead, youngsters are being fed pseudoscience, presented as fact, and so are the staff. It is shocking and breathtaking.”

    LGBT Youth Scotland, as we've heard, are Scotland's answer to Stonewall, infiltrating Scottish primary schools with gender woo. Infiltrating a school for autistic children marks a new low.

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