Jersey Friends of Israel's hate preacher

As anyone who follows them on Facebook will know, the Jersey Friends of Israel don't really do nuance. As little more than a propaganda arm of the Israeli embassy and their fundamentalist Christian allies, they spend most of their time regurgitating articles from various pro-Israel sources and articulating such tired old arguments as "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East" and "the IDF are the most moral army in the world".

However, in previous times they've tried to maintain at least an image of respectability - remember, these are a bunch whose launch was attended by the Chief Minister, Ian Gorst. With the endorsement of Stephen Regal, the head of Jersey's Jewish congregation, they've attempted to present themselves as a sort of voice of reason against a (non-existent) "rising tide of anti-semitism".

No longer. JFOI have announced that on the 29th of April, they will be hosting American pro-Israel, anti-Islam activist Avi Lipkin.

Lipkin is what you might call a wee bit divisive. Born in Queens, New York in 1949, he spent 29 years as an officer in the Israeli Defense Forces (responsible for military policing in the occupied Palestinian territories, the IDF have a shocking history of systematic, violent human rights abuses), first in an artillery unit and then in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, the propaganda unit of the Israeli army. In 1988, he worked in the election campaign of the ultra-right-wing Likud party (well-known for their flirting with out-and-out racists and European neo-fascists). So far, so controversial. Don't worry, though - the really nasty stuff is still to come. Lipkin has since the early Nineties been a full-time anti-Islam activist, and it's in this stage of his life that his true madness has really come to the fore. Lipkin has previously called Islam "not a religion, it is a criminal psychosis", and has accused former US President Barack Obama of a plot to import "50-100 million" Muslims with the co-operation of the Muslim Brotherhood (an Egyptian Islamist organisation with links to Islamist political parties across the Islamic world) in order to make America a Muslim-majority nation and institute Shari'ah law - according to Lipkin, all these imported Muslims will be housed in national parks seized by the federal government. Apparently, this is all possible because "you have a lot of useful idiots in the Democratic party, including many Jewish people, not realising the big mistake they're making, thinking that the Muslims are the good guys and the blacks are the good guys", blaming the "black agenda" for being linked with "this fanatical Islam". Lipkin also claims that he and his wife knew about the 9/11 attacks before they occurred and that they were aware of a secret Islamic plot to capture the US government because "my wife listens to them" (Muslims).

Jersey has an Islamic community of approx. 600 people. How do the folks over at JFOI suppose that they feel about a man being invited over, at the request of an organisation endorsed by our Chief Minister, who has not only spent two-and-a-half decades as a professional Islamophobe, but has also been involved with Islamophobic organisations and believes their religion is a "criminal psychosis" - a man who has called for a total ban on Islam?

This issue is about far more than the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that is JFOI's usual focus. By inviting this man over, they have given Islamophobia and Islamophobic conspiracy theories a ringing endorsement.