A British court has affirmed a governmental decision to ban American conservative and pro-Israel activists Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller from visiting the United Kingdom.
The two wrote that the decision reflects the nation’s “descent into authoritarianism” and a “suicidal path of appeasement of Islamic jihadists and supremacists.”
Spencer, who directs Jihad Watch, and Geller, who blogs at Atlas Shrugs, both advocate for Israel and American support for Israel. They write regularly on Islamic terrorism and had been invited to speak at a freedom protest in the U.K.
However, the British government, utilizing a letter from an unidentified official in its Foreign and Commonwealth Office that cited the pair’s “pro-Israeli views,” banned them even before they had decided whether to attend the event.
The British government had been advised by an investigator assigned to the case that, among other things, “Pamela Geller’s outspoken support for Israel may also attract pro-Palestinian groups to attend, further complicating the policing operation on the ground and making it harder to keep opposing groups apart.”
In an article Thursday co-authored by Geller and Spencer, they said the British Court of Appeal has affirmed their ban.
“The key element of its decision is its emphasis on the fact that ‘this was a public order case where the police had advised that significant public disorder and serious violence might ensue from the proposed visit,'” they explained.
“In writing that judgment, Lord Justice Tomlinson (with whom Lord Justice Patten and Lord Justice Floyd agree) has only made it clear that the British government has decided to set aside established law and the freedom of speech in order to appease violent Muslims,” they wrote.
Authorities infringing on speech rights in fear of a negative reaction has been called a “heckler’s veto” in the U.S.
A case is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding students at a California high school who were ordered to remove images of the American flag on a Mexican holiday. In another case that more directly relates to the U.K. ban, Christian activists at an Arab festival near Detroit were told to leave public areas because Muslims at the festival might react to them with violence.
Regarding the ban, Spencer and Geller wrote: “Will the British government now ban Jews from the country so as to ‘prevent public disorder,’ since the presence of Jews has been shown all too often to upset some Muslims and cause them to riot? The judgment permits such a Nazi approach.”
They continued: “This dismissal of our appeal sets the precedent that those whose speech is unpopular with the British government can be banned from the country. It strikes what could be a fatal blow to the very heart of the doctrine of the freedom of speech: that speech that is unpopular, and may even be offensive to some must be protected, as a safeguard against tyranny. Offensive speech is permissible even in British law, which the British Court of Appeal ignored in order to appease the government.
“Our appeal never had a chance of being considered fairly on its merits. Rather than rule on our case on the basis of established British laws in a fair manner, Judges Tomlinson, Patten and Floyd moved the goalposts and disregarded core British principles in order to uphold our exclusion,” the two wrote.
“It marks the British government’s confirmation of its descent into authoritarianism and its suicidal path of appeasement of Islamic jihadists and supremacists. If there [are] future historians in Britain with a free mind and access to the records of our foolishly prodigal age, they will note our case as a significant point at which Britain rejected freedom, and instead chose submission to the mob that would, ultimately, make the very idea of a free Britain a dim memory.”
Spencer and Geller affirmed their determination to fight on.
The case is on top of a ban by the U.K. government of one of America’s top radio hosts, Michael Savage.
The government explained it was because of Savage’s views, even though it never specified which statements it didn’t like.
At the time, Savage asked, “Why does the … government protect Muslim terrorists and Muslim hate-preachers who espouse the overthrow of the British government, democracy itself, while banning Michael Savage from entering the land of their better forefathers?”
In 2013, as Geller’s and Spencer’s case was developing, Geller wrote it was the nation’s Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism that opposed their still-unconfirmed visit.
“Among a multitude of agencies investigating our case, was a Casework and Operations Red Team for Special Cases. That’s right: The Home Secretary employed a Red Team on our case,” she wrote. “Red Teams are designed to devise new strategies and approaches to deal with a threat. Now I ask you: Is spending their time and money on human-rights activists like Robert Spencer and me in any way going to constitute a new strategy for effectively fighting the jihad terror threat against Britain?”
On learning of the ban in 2013, Geller said even while she and Spencer were being targeted, U.K. officials had “given rise and sanction to poison from Islamic jihad advocate Anjem Choudary, and his new Islamic Emergency Defense mob (IED – the initials are no accident).”
She continued: “Choudary is free to preach hatred of British soldiers and jihad in Britain. Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll of the English Defense League, on the other hand, stopped on their charity walk for a desperately ill girl on Saturday (after which Spencer and I had planned to meet them to lay a wreath at a memorial for Lee Rigby, the British soldier whom a jihadist beheaded on a Woolwich street). Robinson and Carroll were arrested for attempting to walk through a ‘Muslim area.’
“Now just walking down the street gets you arrested in the U.K. if it might upset Muslims,” Geller wrote.
