‘This Is Not a Time for Naiveté’

The sacking of the British Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, for defending the Jews, reminds us of the electrifying debut at the United Nations by Ambassador Nikki Haley. “A Star Is Born” was the sentiment, and we’re happy to see that Ms. Haley is now a rising GOP contender for president. So what might be next for the valiant Mrs. Braverman, who has lost her job but appears to have found her voice in standing up for Israel and, by extension, the West?The cause of Mrs. Braverman’s dismissal was a column issued Wednesday where she told it like it is with respect to the marches against the Jews that we have been seeing in Britain. These demonstrations have horrified Europe and America alike. She declared that “from the start, these events have been problematic, not just because of violence around the fringes but because of the highly offensive content of chants, posters and stickers.”“This is not a time for naiveté,” Mrs. Braveman wrote, in opposing an anti-Israel rally that was scheduled for Armistice Day. Mrs. Braverman wrote that “we have seen with our own eyes that terrorists have been valorized,” that “Israel has been demonized as Nazis,” and that “Jews have been threatened with further massacres.” Hateful banners fluttered along London’s thoroughfares, held aloft by those wearing Hamas headbands.It is shocking to see such sentiments emerging in Britain. And to see in the party of Churchill — a self-declared “old Zionist” — such pusillanimity as has been displayed by Mr. Sunak in the face of what Mrs. Braverman calls “hate marches” that have featured attacks on police and have been animated by a spirit alien to that which made Britain a hero of the 20th century, a past recollected on the weekend marred by a march of 300,000 for Hamas.The erstwhile Home Secretary was overruled by Mr. Sunak and the Metropolitan Police, who allowed the “National March for Palestine” to proceed. Some 126 arrests were reported on Saturday, some attributable to a protest of the far-right. There are reports, though, of 150 masked figures from the Hamas crowd detonating firecrackers in the faces of police officers. Mrs. Braverman accuses the police of a double standard in enforcing the law. It could be, as the perspicacious Melanie Phillips puts it, that it was “unnecessary and unwise” for Mrs. Braverman to “drag Northern Ireland into what was otherwise a strong and necessary intervention” by mentioning it in her dispatch opposing the march. A misplaced analogy, though, is small potatoes compared to a heaping dose of plain-spoken prose. Only, it seems, Mrs. Braverman sees the danger. And she was cut loose for sounding the alarm.We have never met Mrs. Braverman, and can only speculate, but we wonder whether her deep understanding stems from her own family tree. We read that her mother was from a Hindu-Tamil family in Mauritius, while her father, Christie Fernandes, is from the Indian state of Goa, once home of a large Jewish population, one that has felt the sting of persecution. In any event, such a family tree could produce the fruit of wisdom.Now, Mrs. Braverman is out, to be replaced by the former foreign secretary, James Cleverly, whose former post is being filled by the onetime prime minister, David Cameron,* a foe of the idea of an independent United Kingdom. It makes one wonder where Mr. Sunak is heading, aside from a stinging loss at the polls. We look forward to the day when Ms. Braverman will throw her capacious hat in the ring for prime minister. ________* The short list of those who acceded to foreign minister after having served as a prime minister includes Lord Balfour of the Balfour Declaration, which endorsed the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

‘This Is Not a Time for Naiveté’

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