The Guardian’s long crusade in defense of radical Islamist Raed Salah is dealt a heavy blow.

The Guardian’s coverage of the UK’s detainment of Sheikh Raed Salah (which included twelve separate reports and commentaries), represented the ideologically driven anti-Israel bias of the paper at its worst.

As we’ve pointed out, the Guardian continually airbrushed, or ignored, irrefutable evidence of Salah’s antisemitism, extremism, and record of incitement. Inversely, those who opposed Salah were typically referred to in the pejorative as merely “right-wing” Israelis or those with an anti-Muslim bias.

He has been in Britain since June, despite being banned from entering the country, and spoke at a number of anti-Israel events before being arrested.

Salah appealed the original deportation order issued by Home Secretary Theresa May, who deemed that he was not conducive to the public good, and was granted bail in July while he awaited the deportation hearing.

On Wednesday, Salah lost his appeal against deportation from the United Kingdom.

Indeed, the case that Salah is indeed an extremist, and that the UK made the proper decision in detaining him, simply couldn’t be clearer.

Salah has endorsed classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about 9/11, advanced the Medieval blood libel, spent time in Israeli jails after acknowledging providing funds to Hamas, and has used his authority as leader of the Islamic Movement’s Northern Division to incite thousands of his followers to riot under the pretense that the Al-Aqsa Mosque was in danger of being destroyed by Israeli authorities. 

Regarding the UK Immigration Tribunal’s rejection of Salah’s appeal, per the blog of the CST:

“The tribunal considered five pieces of evidence against Salah: a poem he had authored which we argued could incite hatred of Jews, but which Salah argued was not antisemitic; a speech in which he made a ‘blood libel’ slur against Jews, but which Salah claimed was not about Jews; Salah’s inflammatory claims that Israel intends to destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque; the outstanding charges he currently faces in Israel for incitement to violence and to antisemitism; and Salah’s conviction for funding organisations linked to Hamas.”

The UK ruling stated:

“We are satisfied that the Appellant has engaged in the unacceptable behaviour of fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK. We are satisfied that the Appellant’s words and actions tend to be inflammatory, divisive, insulting, and likely to foment tension and radicalism.”

“[The Appellant] has admitted in criminal proceedings being involved with organisations used to fund Hamas, a group part of which is proscribed as being a terrorist organisation.”

The ruling goes on to point out that for the purposes of “unacceptable behaviour” under the Prevent strategy, the most important criterion is the impact of a person’s words in fostering “hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK”, and it clearly accepted that Salah’s blood libel comments had the potential to incite antisemitism in the UK.

The Guardian, in a June 30 editorial on the detainment of Salah – in a polemic simply dripping with contempt towards Israel – accused the UK of engaging in anti-Muslim “intolerance”.

As the evidence contained in the UK Judiciary’s ruling clearly indicates however, the only thing the UK was being intolerant about was Raed Salah’s undeniable record of religious extremism, incitement to violence, and virulent antisemitic bigotry – decidedly reactionary values which a genuinely liberal newspaper would similarly lack tolerance towards.  

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