This week, the Metropolitan Police in London were videotaped removing posters with pictures of hostages taken by Hamas. The posters were being removed from Cullimore Chemist in Edgware. The chemist's CEO, Hassan Khan, recently retweeted posts branding Israel and the IDF "filthy animals" and encouraging Iran and Hezbollah to attack Israel.
This naturally caused some properly earned angst. After all, the removal of such posters has become the domain of antisemites across the world. What was the police's excuse for removing the posters? They explained, "We do not wish to limit the rights of anyone to protest or to raise awareness of the plight of those kidnapped and the terrible impact on their families. But we do have a responsibility to take reasonable steps to stop issues escalating and to avoid any further increase in community tension."
Stop the escalation.
Prevent the community tension.
That's the important thing.
This week, the Metropolitan Police also reportedly arrested a man for posting a video criticizing people for putting up Palestinian flags around his neighborhood. The British police didn't touch the flags, in the name of relieving community tension. Instead, they arrested the man who wondered why Britain would import the kinds of people who would post Palestinian flags on the street poles while Hamas is holding babies hostage.
Remember, the tensions must be reduced.
There are two ways to reduce tension in a community. The first is to cave to those who are the most dangerous and the most radical -- in this case, the Hamas supporters. Criminalize anyone who would ask just why a community in the West should be expected to contain people who support Hamas. Take them to jail for asking the question on tape.
The second way to lower community tensions is to recognize that those very people who defend Hamas are a danger to your community -- that the problem isn't community quiescence, but the constituency of the community itself.
That there can be no community with people who root for Hamas.
This should be obvious. But it isn't. It isn't because the West simply refuses to look reality in the face. Better to arrest those who speak it than to look reality in the face. Reality is ugly. Reality is unpleasant. And reality might require you to recognize that importation of millions of people who hate the West was an awful idea, and that means should be taken to reverse that process.
And so, instead, a way must be found to pretend away the threat.
Blame it on Israel.
Jabber about the two-state solution.
Talk about Islamophobia.
Whatever you do, don't look the realities of multiculturalism's dramatic failure directly in the face. This, of course, plays directly into the hands of Hamas. They now understand that they can say and do literally anything, and that much of the West will cover for them in order to maintain the fiction that multiculturalism works. They don't even bother to hide the ball. Hamas officials have spent the last weeks explaining that they wish to murder every Jew, and that they wish for their own civilians to die.
They say it all out loud. On camera. Repeatedly. But the West won't look Hamas in the face because then it might have to look Hamas' supporters in the face. And while Hamas is in Gaza, Hamas' supporters are located in our own towns. They work in our stores. They go to our schools. They staff our press and our academic institutions.
That's too ugly and it's too frightening. So, look away. In the name of relieving community tension.
As the community dies.
Ben Shapiro, 39, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show," and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author; his latest book is "The Authoritarian Moment: How The Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent." To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
