He was always keen on meeting with his constituents and to hear their concerns whether they agreed with him or not, he was engaged in conversation when a man named Ali Harbi Ali walked up to him and stabbed him repeatedly. Amess died soon after.

At first the accounts in the BBC and American networks reported laconically that the police were holding a “suspect,” but they said nothing further about him. Curiously, both French and Italian television, which I watched, at once identified the killer as a “Somali.” No network, British, American, or Continental, has mentioned the word “Muslim” then, nor have they done so in the several days since the murder. The networks prefer to downplay that aspect of the killer’s mental makeup, even though his being a fanatical Muslim almost certainly explains what propelled him to kill Amess.

Now, a day later, the BBC has finally relented, and toward the end of its television coverage (and at its website) it mentions that the killer is “believed to be a Somali.” The American networks have done so as well. But they insist that the police are still “searching for a motive.” They are beginning — just — to mention “terrorism.” But the fact that Ali Harbi Ali did not scream “Allahu akbar” is supposed to indicate that his attack could not possibly have been motivated by Islam. The same media outlets that routinely claim that the terrorists who yell “Allahu akbar” are not uttering a Muslim war cry when they attack, have now claimed that if “Allahu akbar” has not been yelled during an attack, as it was not by the Somali who murdered David Amess, this meant that the attack was not Islamically motivated because, we are now assured, you always hear “Allahu akbar” when Islam is the motive. In other words, if “Allahu akbar” is yelled during an attack, this does not mean that Islam has anything to do with it, and if “Allahu akbar” is not yelled, this means that Islam had nothing to do with it. Do these media explainers contradict themselves? Of course. But they’re hoping no one will notice.

What might have been Ali’s motive? Let’s see. David Amess had been the longest-serving Member of Parliament, having first been an MP from Basildon, serving from 1983 to 1997, and from 1997 until his death, as the MP from Southend. In his almost 40 years as an MP, Amess had been a leading member of the group Conservative Friends of Israel. He also waged a long campaign to erect a statue in honor of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from deportation to Nazi death camps in World War II. The campaign reached fruition when Queen Elizabeth II unveiled the statue in 1997 outside a synagogue in London. In January this year, Amess called the event “one of the proudest moments of my life,” and urged the government to redouble efforts against antisemitism, during a speech to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“British MP stabbed to death during meeting with constituents at church,” Times of Israel, October 15, 2021:

…Amess was the Honorary Secretary of the Conservative Friends of Israel from 1998, and was regarded as a longtime friend of the UK Jewish community.

“Although I myself am not a Jew but a Catholic, there is Jewish blood in each and every one of us. I would certainly have been proud to have been born a Jew, and I stand shoulder to shoulder with our local Jewish community,” he said in the January speech.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid wrote on Twitter that Amess “always stood with the Jewish community and was a true friend of Israel.”

Aside from his support for Israel, and for Brexit (he was an English patriot, skeptical of supranational organizations), his other main foreign policy interest was Iran. Not surprisingly, he was a foe of the fanatical ayatollahs and mullahs, and he was a leading supporter in Parliament for the exiled opposition to Iran’s Islamic government.

Maryam Rajavi, the Paris-based leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, called him “an honorable friend of the Iranian people… in their quest for freedom and democracy.”

Knighted in 2015, Amess, with that spirit of “fun” he so often displayed, celebrated the occasion by donning full medieval armor, bearing a standard athwart a garlanded horse.

He had five children with his wife Julia, including an actress daughter.

When the police investigation is ended, will we be told that Ali Harbi Ali was “mentally ill,” or will we be told the truth?

As for David Amess, a too-zealous police detail kept a priest from Amess as he lay dying, so that this devout Catholic died without receiving last rites.

He was a very good man.

Requiescat in pace.