FOR the first time in my adult life I am ashamed of my country.

This past weekend I was inundated with messages from friends abroad asking if it was any longer safe to come to London.

In particular, I got a number of messages from Jewish friends saying Britain’s capital no longer looked to be a safe place to be Jewish.

While trying to give reassurances, I understood their worry.

How can anyone look at demonstrations across our cities — especially our capital — and think our country is what it once was?

Such as a safe and secure place for people of any minority who made this country home?

Every weekend since Hamas carried out the biggest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust our streets have been full of protests and demos.

Terrorist sympathisers

Not demos in sympathy with the state of Israel, but demos where people openly sympathise with the terrorists of Hamas and all those who want to destroy the Jewish state.

How can I say that with such certainty?

Well, first there is the little matter that these protests have been full of young Muslims calling for Jihad.

That’s often the sign of a bad bunch, I’d say.

Then there are all the others who have been chanting slogans such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

Many of the non-Muslims chanting this probably don’t know what they are referring to.

But it is the River Jordan.

And that if a place called “Palestine” existed between the river and the (Mediterranean) Sea then it would mean there was no Israel.

Instead of there being one Jewish state there would be no Jewish state.

There would simply be a Muslim country in which Jews would be ethnically cleansed.

Most Muslim marchers will know this.

So when we see crowds of people marching through London chanting slogans like this, we are right to worry.

When we see groups agitating for the genocide of Jews we might well wonder: “What have we become? How did we allow this to happen?”

One answer is that the British political class allowed it to happen.

Decades of uncontrolled migration have meant there is no difference between home and abroad any more.

There is no difference between foreign policy and domestic policy.

Anything that happens anywhere in the rest of the world plays out on our streets.

But it is also the result of allowing terrorists, and terrorist sympathisers in particular, to settle here.

Take the Hamas leader, Muhammad Qassem Sawalha, who lives in London and was given the right to live here by the last Labour government.

Why? Why should our capital have become a safe space not for Jews but for the anti-Semitic Islamists of Hamas?

Why are these people free in our country?

Why can we not get them out?

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This is something the Home Secretary should address — fast.

There should be no supporters of Hamas who are in our country and free.

Any more than we would allow members of IS to be roaming around.

But it is also the consequence of policing decisions.

I am sympathetic with the idea that our police are pulled in too many directions.

For instance, whenever they go in too hard on a protest they get criticised.

And whenever they do not go in hard enough they get criticised.

For some years the Met in particular have had an answer to this.

That is to allow disturbances and apparent crimes like those that went on last weekend to occur openly.

And then occasionally swoop in afterwards and arrest people quietly.

It makes some sense.

This weekend Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley defended this tactic and said there would be arrests to come this week in the wake of Saturday’s protests.

I have seen this before.

It is the same tactic the police used with Islamists in Britain in the post-7/7 era.

But what the police do not seem to realise is that policing is not simply a matter of optics on one side.

Sure, they seem not to be willing to do what the French police, for instance, would do.

They are not willing to go in and truncheon a load of Islamists calling for violence on our streets.

They are happy to hang back, collect footage and make any arrests later.

It is a mistake.

Because the world will not see the arrests and the news of them.

If they happen, they will hardly be noticed.

What the world does see is a capital city which has changed beyond recognition.

Islamist fanatics marching in front of Westminster Abbey shouting their hate.

Young men taunting police officers who cannot act.

A country where people who hate our country and our allies seem to be treated by a better standard than the rest of us.

Well, it is time for that to end.

Britain looks weak on the world stage.

Israel can protect itself from the fanatics.

The question is, can we?