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Let me tell you how we roll in Europe.

Let us begin with Sheik Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel. He has a crazy article up on the website of the London-based, anti-Abbas, pro-Hamas Middle East Monitor (MEMO) alleging that “Israel has never negotiated with the Palestinians” and is engaged today in their “ethnic cleansing.” It gets worse. The good Sheikh likes to talk of what Jews do with the blood of little Gentile children. Haaretz reported in January 2008:

The head of the Islamic Movement in Israel’s Northern Branch, Ra'ad Salah, was charged Tuesday in Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court with incitement to violence and racism, over a fiery speech he gave a year ago in which he invoked the blood libel. During the speech at the February 16, 2007 protest in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi Joz, Salah accused Jews of using children's blood to bake bread.

“We have never allowed ourselves to knead [the dough for] the bread that breaks the fast in the holy month of Ramadan with children’s blood,” he said. “Whoever wants a more thorough explanation, let him ask what used to happen to some children in Europe, whose blood was mixed in with the dough of the [Jewish] holy bread.”

Crazy stuff. So, presumably if MEMO is happy to publish Ra'ad Salah it must be shunned by all serious people as a pariah cast out to the far fringe of British political and intellectual life?

Er, no.

The director of MEMO is Dr. Daud Abdullah, the deputy secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain. In March 2009, the good Doctor signed the Istanbul Declaration, which hailed the Hamas “victory” against “this malicious Jewish Zionist war over Gaza.”

According to the website Harry’s Place, Abdullah’s deputy at MEMO is Ibrahim Hewitt, the head of Interpal, the British charity that serves Hamas.

The MEMO adviser is the Lord Nazir Ahmed. The good Lord hosted a book launch in the House of Lords for Israel Shamir (a.k.a. Jöran Jermas) in 2005. Shamir’s speech, reported the Times journalist Stephen Pollard, included these opinions: “All the [political] parties are Zionist-infiltrated.” “Your newspapers belong to Zionists . . . Jews indeed own, control and edit a big share of mass media, this mainstay of Imperial thinking.” “In the Middle East we have just one reason for wars, terror and trouble—and that is Jewish supremacy drive.”

It was pointed out to Lord Ahmed that Shamir Israel had worked for Russia’s most anti-Semitic publication, Zavtra, and that his website contained these gems:

Jews asked God to kill, destroy, humiliate, exterminate, defame, starve, impale Christians, to usher in Divine Vengeance and to cover God’s mantle with blood of goyim . . . The Ashkenazi Jews believed that spilled Jewish blood has a magic effect of calling down Divine Vengeance on the heads of the Gentiles . . . The picture of Jews slaughtering children for cultic reasons exerted huge impact on the Christian peoples of Europe.

Lord Ahmed refused to withdraw his invitation. He issued no apology. He was not ostracized. The Labour Party did not withdraw the whip. He has paid no price.

A MEMO trustee is Baroness Jenny Tonge, a Liberal Democrat who has said, “The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the Western world, its financial grips. I think they have probably got a certain grip on our party.” In 2010, she called for an investigation into whether the IDF relief teams were harvesting organs in Haiti. The Liberal Democrats did not withdraw the whip from the good Baroness (though at least party leader Nick Clegg did sack her from the Front Bench).

What do we learn if we read the MEMO website?

That Jews are the new Nazis. Dr. Henan Chehata tells us that “the primarily Jewish victims of the Holocaust, find themselves currently represented by a state, Israel, that claims to speak on their behalf and which is now the perpetrator of similar crimes.”

That “90% of Palestinian children detained by Israel have been subjected to torture.”

That Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is behind calls to build a third temple on the ruins of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. (“Successive Israeli governments have played down claims that Jews are planning to demolish Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock and replace the historic Islamic sites with a Jewish temple, despite the overwhelming evidence that many organisations within Israel and in the Jewish diaspora have that as their prime aim.”)

OK, there is an effort to mainstream anti-Jewish hatred and the Islamist narrative. But every liberal and leftist is opposing this tooth and nail, right?

Er, no.

MEMO is organizing a conference on Israel in May. The keynote speakers are the BBC’s former Middle East correspondent, Tim Llewellyn, and Greg Philo, research director of the Glasgow Media Group and coauthor of Bad News from Israel (2004) and More Bad News from Israel (May 2011). The conference is being hosted by Amnesty International.

And that, my friends, is how we roll in Europe, all rubbing along together—the good Sheik, the good Doctor, the good Lord, the good Baroness, the good Professor, the good BBC man, and the good NGOer.