Programming note: Join me tonight for the conclusion of our current Tale for Our Time - Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World, a piece of speculative fiction from 1907 on the world of the twenty-first century. Tomorrow, Saturday, I'll be back for the latest episode of our Serenade Radio weekend music show, On the Town. It starts at 5pm Greenwich Mean Time - which is 6pm in Western Europe and 12 midday North American Eastern. You can listen from almost anywhere on the planet by clicking the button at top right here.

~I haven't really had anything new to say about the "Palestinians" in a quarter-century, but I have to admit that, even by their own impressive standards, yesterday's Dead-Babypalooza took Pallie depravity to the next level. My friend (and a favourite Steyn Show guest) Yasmine Mohammed:

The post-9/11 joke was that the "radical" Muslim wants to saw your head off; the "moderate" Muslim wants to watch him do it. Yesterday Macy's (Gaza Branch) Parade was a grimly literal illustration of the gag. As I wrote two decades ago on page 85 of my boffo bestseller America Alone:

One is tempted to update the old joke: A ten-dollar bill is in the center of the crossroads. To the north, there's Santa Claus. To the west, the Tooth Fairy. To the east, a radical Muslim. To the south, a moderate Muslim. Who reaches the ten-dollar bill first?

Answer: The radical Muslim. All the others are mythical creatures.

And so it goes. The baby-killing observances came with the connivance of the Red Cross, whose Palestinian office had never visited these hostages until they came to collect the coffins, and of the world's media, strangely reluctant to devote one-thousandth of the time to analysing these scenes as they did to Elon Musk's two-second twitch of his right arm. The difference in Islam isn't between "radicals" and "moderates", but between the bloadsoaked hardcore types in Gaza, Southport and Villach and those who think everything's going their way right now and glorying in kiddie-killing is an unnecessary complication. Hence the Amalgamated Union of Grand Muftis recognising there are times you don't (as we now put it) say the quiet part out loud:

And another:

There is no "two-state solution": at least the Hamassholes of western universities understand that. I had been opposed to a Palestinian state because the world doesn't need another cookie-cutter Krappistan to add to the fifty-seven existing members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. When it comes to, say, demographically overwhelming Western Europe, they're cooperating enough already. But, after yesterday, it's clear that Gaza can't even muster the minimal entry qualification to be a run-of-the-mill common-or-garden Krappistan.

So one side has to win and one side has to lose.

Hamas, meanwhile, is having difficulty keeping track of all its dead bodies. Sometimes it's easier just to ship back an entirely random corpse:

It's an obvious point and (like all the others) one I've made before, but it bears repeating: The gang-rapes in Rotherham and the gang-rapes of the Israeli women seized on October 7th; the child-stabbings in Annecy and the baby slaughter by Hamas: are they part of the same story - the same psychosis - or are they something different?

I don't find that question difficult to answer. To go back to Yasmine Mohammed and the "irrelevance" of peaceful Muslims, what matters in any society is who makes the running. In the "Palestinian Authority", it's the most blood-drenched. In Europe, it's the wanker class. Hence the insistence that every town from Marseille to Malmö has to import a mini-Gaza of its own. The rationale, such as it is, is that it won't be as bad as all that; more like the West Bank. Yeah, well, forty years ago even Gaza wasn't as bad as Gaza. In case you haven't noticed, it's gotten worse. Funny how that happens.

Has the BBC reported on yesterday's jubilations yet? Okay, it's a shame about those Jew kids, but have you noticed how awful cute all those Pallie moppets are? Beeb execs have as sure an eye for a fetching young laddie as their senior anchor Huw Edwards does:

The BBC produced and aired a documentary purporting to feature a young child struggling to survive in the Gaza war zone.

Aw, he's a darling: Abdullah by name. Very telegenic. Real star quality. Held the whole show together.

It took a bunch of Brit media grandees, some of whom go back so far I even know them, to point out the obvious - that Abdullah is not some random urchin plucked off the streets but the son of Ayman al-Yazouri, a Hamas cabinet minister.

Which, unaccountably, the Beeb neglected to mention. The senior executives say it wasn't their fault; the documentary was an independent production, and the producer failed to disclose it.

When I did independent productions at the Beeb, a third-of-a-century back, that's not how it worked. Just as all the execs knew about Jimmy Savile, I would wager that somewhere up the chain they knew about Mr al-Yazouri, too.

If it's all come down to Jew kids vs BBC kids, then, as we used to be able to say even in the west's media, Islam does not play well with others. A prudent person would seek to quarantine himself and keep those pathologies at a distance. Trump has proposed that the Pallies be moved to neighbouring Arab states, but, if the muftis are anything to go by, that's gonna be a tough sell. Given Anglo-American differences over Sir Keir Starmer's determination to hand over the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius, maybe one of the unoccupied Chagos Islands could be repurposed as Gaza South.

And a BBC crew could be permanently stationed there to make soft-focus documentaries to its heart's content. Granted, the plan would work better if you had Austin Powers sharks with lasers patrolling the shores. Not just to prevent the Palestinians leaving, but the western media too.

If you thought yesterday's ceremonies might cause even the "international community" to wonder whether they'd picked the right house pets, well, there's literally nothing the Palestinians can do to get a bad press. So go with the Shinners and move 'em to Erin:

~In this eighth year of The Mark Steyn Club, we're very appreciative of all those who signed up in our first flush and are still eager to be here as we cruise on towards our first decade. We thank you all. For more information on the Club, see here.