Editorial: Hamas terror attacks flag up deep divisions in whole UK, not just in Northern Ireland

The Hamas terror assault on Israel, and Israel's response, has exposed longstanding divisions in Northern Ireland but has highlighted fissures in the whole UK too.

This editorial page yesterday looked at the duplicitous Sinn Fein response to Hamas, in which politicians declined to embrace the barbarous murder of Israelis, while highlighting the Palestinian flag. They knew that was a statement against Israel on the day it suffered grievously.

Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf on the morning of the obscene Hamas massacres told about his concern for his wife’s family in Gaza but disgracefully failed to condemn Hamas or even refer to its slaughter.

Now Hamas has threatened to murder the 100+ hostages it has, on video, in retaliation for Israeli attacks on Gaza. Some of the kidnapped are young folk who were seized at the Nova music festival where dancers were killed. Yet in London, pro-Palestinian protestors let off flares outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington and chanted 'Israel is a terrorist state'. Pro-Israel groups were unable to get to their country's embassy to show their respects. Contrast that with the outpourings of support for Ukraine and America after the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the 2001 Islamist attacks in the US.

There is a madness in western hatred of Israel, the only middle east country with western values. There is a madness in western hatred of westerners who worry about multi-culturalism. Japan or Saudi Arabia have low immigration and do not want multi-culturalism, yet no-one disputes their right to take such national decisions.

If any country can say multi-culturalism is a success, the UK can, as the prime minister Rishi Sunak said in his Tory conference speech, citing his own meritocratic rise. But multi-culturalism only works with some basic level of integration and that is worryingly absent in some UK communities.