Dear Ms Merron

I hope that you will give some consideration to what I have to say about the statement made on the re-election of Viktor Orban as Prime Minister of Hungary, because the BOD’s Facebook statement on this issue troubles me greatly. I think that in this case the BOD is engaging in knee-jerk condemnation and are also failing to see why Mr Orban has become so popular in Hungary and increasingly so, as I observe from social media etc, in the rest of Europe.

For the sake of clarity and brevity I shall reproduce your statement as published on your Facebook page on the subject of the election of Mr Orban and comment on it below.

I understand your concern and the concern of others about the use of particular language and it is language that could be seen as intemperate. However has not the experience of the citizens of many European countries, who have been forced by the European Union to take vast numbers of too often dangerous migrants, not shown Mr Orban to be speaking more than a little truth on this issue? From the perspective of a growing number of European citizens, including Jewish citizens such as myself, the way that many of our towns and cities, or parts of them, have been turned into hostile Islamic ghettos does indeed look like some form of Islamic invasion. This problem of hostile ghettos occupied by followers of a very hostile ideology, at first affects Jews, but soon afflicts followers of other peaceful faiths as well.

I have heard and helped to document appalling tales of Islamic anti-Semitism and violence in places such as the London Borough of Newham. I myself find it would now be impossible or at least suicidal to wear a Kippah on my head walking down the London street on which I was born, after Friday Muslim prayers, because to do so would invite violence from Muslims. You no doubt know of the string of anti-Semitic murders that have occurred in mainland Europe which have been linked to Islamic Jew-hatred and the possibility that there could be many more such killings. I also would guess that you are very much aware of the worsening security situation for Jews in Malmo, Sweden and tragically also in Germany, where there have been reports of some Jewish communal leaders advising Jews to hide their identity, not from natural born Germans, as was the case decades ago, but from the Muslim ‘refugees’ that Germany’s government foolishly imported.

I’m afraid that although certainly not all of the mostly Muslim migrants that have come into Europe over the last decade are ‘poison’, a significant number have indeed been so. This matters and needs to be addressed properly and not just to have this word condemned and this description of the current migrants rejected out of hand. I grew up in London, in a multiracial port area where I saw the world go by the window of my grandmother’s business. I saw wave after wave of people either stay for a while or decide to become British and take on all that entails.

I saw Black and White, Jew and Gentile, Sikh or Hindu grab hold of Britishness with both hands and, nine times out of ten, succeed in a mutually beneficial arrangement at integration and, even though there were sometimes difficulties, they lived in peace with their majority White British Christian neighbours, even if their belief systems may have differed. I grew up in a world of Sikh pedlars, Jewish shopkeepers and taxi drivers, West Indian nurses and Anglo-Indian teachers. Sadly, I do not see this laudable and familiar pattern of migration, settlement and assimilation when it comes to Europe’s Islamic migrants.

What I see when I look at Islam, and many of its followers, is a group of people who follow, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes because they’ve been coerced to do so, an ideology that many people perceive as poisonous. The reason that people perceive Islam in this way is that both by an examination of Islamic scripture and by looking at the sort of societies that are created by both Islamic scripture and culture, confirm that societies that have a lot of Islam in them are also societies that are violent, unfree, bigoted and filled with hate and injustice. It is morally right that thinking people turn away from the Yetzer Hara that these things represent and which are characteristics of Islamic societies. Therefore I have to say to you that your criticism of Mr Orban for calling these mostly Muslim migrants ‘poison’ has been completely unjustified. Too many of these migrants have indeed been poison and the description of them as such is sadly accurate, according to many of those who have been personally afflicted by these migrants or have seen their areas damaged by them. I don’t blame Mr Orban for not wanting that sort of result for his own country. I’m British and I truly did not want what has happened to our country. I wish we had someone like Mr Orban to vote for at our own election time, a person who cares for his nation.

I will move on now to your comments on the part that criticism of George Soros played in the Hungarian election campaign that returned Mr Orban to power. I concur with you that these words could be seen to have anti-Semitic overtones and do key into anti-Jewish tropes, but Mr Orban’s words could equally be seen to be aimed at the ‘ever closer union’ obsessives in Brussels and Strasbourg which has also allegedly pumped money into anti-Orban campaigning, do not do any real work and are notably trans-national in both their allegiance and outlook. As any seasoned user of social media such as you or me will know, there are indeed a lot of genuinely anti-Semitic portrayals and conspiracy theories about George Soros going around out there and like any reasonable person I condemn them. But, the existence of this tin-foil hat nonsense that surrounds Mr Soros should not preclude criticism of his actions, his character nor the alleged use of his substantial wealth to promote Leftist and open borders policies that are increasingly being rejected by Europe’s citizens in a number of different countries, mostly in the East but now also in the West. Am I made to feel uneasy at Mr Orban’s word to describe his opponents? Well yes, but I also know that they can be understood in other ways, besides being an anti-Jewish trope.

To move on to consider your final paragraph, Mr Orban has indeed won a significant mandate for him and his party and I would like to congratulate Mr Orban on his success. However the ‘divisiveness’ that has been brought to the political table of Europe has not been brought by Mr Orban or other European leaders or politicians who wish to protect their citizens from imported troubles, but by the European political Establishment which has basically said ‘Let’s prop open Europe’s doors and say ‘sod you’ to the consequences’. It is the effects, devastating to some communities and to many individuals in Europe, of dumping hundreds of thousands of people from highly antagonistic cultures and ideologies onto them which has brought about the sort of divisions that we see in Europe today. Mr Orban did not create this sort of divisiveness, his rise to power is a direct result of people’s worries about what foolish politicians have done to a continent, and the cultures within it, that took thousands of years to build but which people fear could be destroyed in a few decades.

Your concluding paragraph calls for unity between all Hungary’s citizens and that is a good thing to wish for, if we are decent people we all want peace between everyone. But, and this is very important, although we are all as individuals created in the image of the Eternal One, not all cultures are equal or can or should be accommodated in all nations. Jews have been progressively emancipated in Hungary since the late 18^th century and lived in relative freedom and they assimilated into Hungarian society up until the return of anti-Semitism in the early 1920’s. This was a problem in part exacerbated by the effects of the Treaty of Trianon of 1920 which, because of border changes, left Jews as the most visible minority in Hungary and therefore much more liable to be scapegoated, which was indeed the case. Like any other reasonably decent person, I want all Hungarian citizens, whatever their faith, to live in peace together, but let’s also be honest about the content and character of all cultures and admit to ourselves that not all cultures or belief systems are either equal or deserving of respect.

I’d like to end this piece by drawing attention to what has been for me the quintessential failure of the Establishment and Left’s ‘refugee project’ and one that we should all be concerned about. That is the fact that the effects of importing so many migrants of such incompatible cultures into Europe have been so negative that it has helped to create politicians like Mr Orban and similar leaders in Poland, the Czech Republic and elsewhere. Those politicians and activists and others who have pushed for open borders, who have often used draconian and sometimes violent and oppressive methods to silence concerns about such a policy, have, like too many leaders, fiddled whilst their countries burned. It is this political Establishment that has created not just Mr Orban’s success, but also the success and growth of other nationalist and populist parties in Europe. Your statement gives the appearance that you and the BOD consider Mr Orban to be some sort of monster. I don’t think he is, but there may well be real monsters coming down the line, if the situation regarding migration and especially the growth of Islamic influence in Northern, Western and Southern Europe continues, as it seems to be doing, or indeed if it gets any worse.

I think that it is no use just wringing one’s hands about politicians like Mr Orban without giving due consideration to why and how they emerge and rise to power. I look forward to hearing or reading your reply to this letter. I can understand why you and the BOD would be concerned at what you see as ‘extremism’ rising throughout Europe, but there is much that some members of the BOD may not understand about why a populist political current is becoming more and more acceptable. The issues of national identity, migration, refugees, assimilation and cultural compatibility may be much more nuanced than merely being black and white.

I don’t think that your statement gives the very best view of the Jewish community in Britain, it does make us look like part of the very Establishment that has brought about so many problem by its migration and multicultural policies. I don’t need to tell you that for Jews to be identified, whether rightly or erroneously, with support for some of the potentially nation-killing challenges, such as migration, that Europe faces, may end up not only with Jews of the Right such as myself getting hassle, but also it does nothing to keep the peace of the cities in which we all live.

If I can be of any assistance to the BOD in explaining as I see it how and why we have the sort of politics that we see in Hungary and increasingly elsewhere, then I would be more than happy to help.

Yours sincerely

Joshua Le Trumpet