A lot of Britons were shocked by the unprovoked attack that was carried out last week by a man identifiable as a Muslim on an elderly man identifiable as an Orthodox Jew in London’s Stamford Hill. As time has gone on more has been revealed about this incident and it turns out that the Muslim man has been involved in not one but three incidents in the area where Jewish people were targeted. One of the incidents involved a child being punched by the Muslim man.

This case has been featured in the mainstream media as well as heavily discussed online. To her credit even the local Labour MP Diane Abbott, who is not exactly everyone’s most favoured Labour MP, has spoken about it and condemned it.

But as Brendan O’Neill writing in Spiked magazine has pointed out, despite there being condemnation from the local MP and press coverage of these attacks, the ire of the political establishment and the anti-racist Left, has been notably muted. Mr O’Neill asked the question whether there would be much more of a furore about this attack had the victims been Muslim and the assailant a White Christian?

Mr O’Neill has come to the conclusion that if this had been an attack on Muslims by a non-Muslim White person then the whole political establishment and the Left would be up in arms about it. There would be politicians queuing up to denounce ‘Islamophobia’ and the liberal press and other media would be full of condemnations of the attacks along with lots of hand-wringing about how Britain is an appallingly racist country.

But on this occasion, when Jews have been attacked by a Muslim there has not been the massive outpouring of comment and the question is why?

Mr O’Neil believes that he has the answer. In his Spiked piece he said:

And the explanation for why, this time, these things haven’t happened is as clear as it is disturbing. It’s because the victims were Jewish and the suspect seems to be a man of Muslim appearance. And this just doesn’t compute in the minds of the identitarian elites who neatly organise people according to whether they are oppressed or privileged, and for whom Muslims are most definitely oppressed and Jews are most definitely privileged. Someone of Muslim appearance seemingly assaulting Jews? This is awkward racism for the woke. It messes with their narrative. And so, shamefully, they largely ignore it. Suddenly hate crime ain’t that important.

It’s difficult to disagree with that comment from Mr O’Neill. It is very noticeable that all those on the Left and in the political and media establishment who would have whined with all the intensity of a World War II air raid siren, had it been a Muslim that had been victimised, are as silent as the grave when it comes to Jews being attacked by a Muslim. This case has indeed shown up the massive double standard practised by those who believe in the concept of ‘hate crimes’.

Nobody should be attacked in the street for no reason or because of who they are, not anybody, whether they are White, Black, Jewish, Christian, Muslim or anybody else and the law and the political culture should accept that. We all should be protected by the law and our rights respected. But, as I’ve warned on a number of occasions before, the whole concept of ‘hate crimes’ is a dangerous thing to introduce, especially into a legal system. By its very nature the concept of ‘hate crime’ creates different classes of people who are often able to access justice more speedily or get better quality justice than everyone else.

The Justice System should be based on the Biblical concept of ‘honest scales’ and the political system should be based on treating everyone as of equal value. But as we can see from the Stamford Hill incidents, corrupting the justice system with the concept of ‘hate crime’ and politics being dominated by identitarianism, has caused both justice and politics to depart from the path of equality. We now have a situation where some people are more equal than others and some victims are more victims than others and the reaction by the political, policing and media establishments following the Stamford Hill incidents clearly show that.