Israel

While preparing to head out to synagogue to join the dancing and celebration for the Simchat Torah festival, the rocket sirens started sounding. As we grabbed the kids and ran to our safe room (all new Israeli houses are built with one), I assumed there must have been some incident overnight, some Israeli escalation to trigger this rare but not unprecedented rocket fire on Jerusalem. I was wrong. In a mass surprise attack, Hamas launched a huge barrage of rockets from Gaza at southern and central Israel. But this bombardment was only cover for the real attack: hundreds of armed Hamas terrorists, organised in military fashion, on technical vehicles, poured

It emerged this week that the head of the Mossad, David Barnea, slipped quietly over to Washington in July to hold secret talks about the prospect of an Israel-Saudi peace deal. This was part of a drip-drip of stories suggesting that an agreement may be back on the cards after an Iran-Saudi deal brokered by China complicated things in March. Israel is far from finished as a beacon of hope in the Middle East In another significant development, the respected Saudi newspaper Arab News published an editorial this week selling a possible deal to its readers. This followed a study finding that Saudi Arabia has scrubbed ‘practically all’ antisemitism and

Watching Israel tear itself apart this week has been like seeing your best friend embarrass himself at a party. The world has looked on while the Netanyahu government, in hock to a small cabal of religious chauvinists, pushed through the first stage of its judicial reform agenda, sparking the biggest street protests the country has ever seen. Whatever happened to the start-up nation? Last night and this morning was the Jewish fast of Tisha B’Av, which commemorates the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD and the subsequent exile from Israel. To mark it, firebrand minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the Western Wall to the sound of messianic songs before provocatively

Car-rammings, shootings, stabbings and bombings targeting innocent men, women and children are a constant fear for Israelis. This morning, seven people were wounded in a ramming attack in Tel Aviv. Only a fortnight ago, four Israelis were gunned down by Hamas murderers. Last year, there were 5,000 such attacks. In 2023, more than 28 Israelis have so far been killed. How would we in Britain react to such events? The IRA years show all too clearly that, in the wake of a terror threat, the security forces fight back. Israel is adopting a similar approach – but is being roundly, and unfairly, condemned for doing so. On Monday night, Israeli

Walk into my grandmother’s living room in north-west London, and you could be forgiven for thinking you had suddenly stepped into the Middle East. The coffee table is laden with treats, from homemade date-filled flatbreads to baklawa and nuts. Al Jazeera plays on the flatscreen, reeling off the latest news about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. In the corner of the room is a darbuka drum and my late grandpa’s backgammon set for anyone who fancies a game. In the kitchen there are two pots brewing: one making slow-steamed tea laced with cardamon, the other Arabic coffee ready to be poured into miniature cups. Unsurprisingly, my family are often here – along with the

In his Spectator review of Avi Shlaim’s memoir Three Worlds, Justin Marozzi refers to the author’s claims about the 1950-51 terrorist bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad: ‘Shlaim’s bombshell is to uncover what he terms “undeniable proof of Zionist involvement in the terrorist attacks”, which helped terminate the millennial presence of Jews in Babylon’. Marozzi calls these claims ‘controversial’ but he doesn’t delve into just how controversial. The charge is that Zionists attacked Iraqi Jews in order to encourage them to flee to Israel.  There are several problems with this theory. As the investigative journalist David Collier has argued, ‘these explosions did not cause the exodus…the Iraqi Jews were persecuted, were offered a window to leave, and despite the fact they had to

Chaos reigns in Israel, a country in the throes of an ad hoc general strike called by trade unions, university students, numerous industries across the country, and many military and civil defence reservists. Demonstrators are storming buildings and fighting the police. Some council leaders say they are beginning a hunger strike. If you wanted to fly into Ben Gurion airport today, as tens of thousands of people usually do of a weekday, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. It’s closed.  Why is all of this happening? In the immediate term, because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sacked his defence minister, Yoav Gallant. Gallant is a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party and is a loyalist. He said that Netanyahu should

Huwara is a Palestinian town in the heart of the Shomron, the mountainous northern portion of the territory Israel refers to as Judea and Samaria and the world knows as the West Bank. Huwara is smouldering today after a night of rioting and fire-setting by Israeli residents. On Sunday, two Israelis, brothers Hallel and Yagel Yaniv, 21 and 19 years old, from the nearby Israeli settlement of Har Bracha, were murdered by a Palestinian gunman. They were travelling through Huwara when they were gunned down at point-blank range while sitting in traffic. Their mother Esti said: ‘We have a huge hole in our hearts. Nothing will close that hole, not

How does Israel contain Palestinian terrorism without provoking the third Intifada? Recent weeks have seen the largest escalation in violence between Israel and the Palestinian since 2021. Israeli forces have killed at least 42 Palestinians so far this year; and eleven Israelis, mostly civilians, have been killed in a series of terror attacks. The violence is in danger of spiralling out of control.  Although Israel has been successful in capturing or killing terrorists (but also several innocents), it has encouraged more unrest in the West Bank. The nationalistic rhetoric of members of the Israeli government, including talks of expanding Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory, is making it worse. Hamas has so far

Jerusalem, 13 May 1998. Khairi Alkam, a 51-year-old Palestinian labourer, left home early in the morning to pray at al-Aqsa mosque before going to work. As he was walking through the Mea She’arim neighbourhood, a suspected Jewish terrorist stabbed him in the back and left him to bleed to death in the street. He left behind a wife and nine children.  The crime horrified Israelis and Palestinians alike. Ezer Weizman, then president of Israel, visited Alkam’s widow Dalal to pay his respects and described the killing of her husband as ‘a murder by cowards’. Dalal was not eligible for compensation under the Victims of Hostile Actions (Pensions) Law – no

Peace has never seemed further away for Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Several dreadful incidents recently have made that point sadly obvious. The most vicious was a terrorist attack: a horrific shooting in which seven people were killed and many injured outside a Jerusalem synagogue on Friday. We don’t know the organisational affiliation of the attacker, Khairi Alqam. He could have been Hamas. He could have been Islamic Jihad. None of those organisations claimed this attack. Some observers – on the basis of speculation, or possibly evidence not in the public domain at the moment – believe that he was a member of the Islamic State. What we know for sure is that this

Is Israel cosying up to Russia? When Eli Cohen, Israel’s foreign minister, spoke to his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov last week, it was the first such call between the countries’ foreign ministers since the start of the war in Ukraine. Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs, Cohen said, was planning to establish a new ‘responsible’ policy with regard to the country and ‘talk less’ about the war in public. The announcement of the call caused a frenzy, with speculation that Israel wants to adopt a pro-Russia policy. It prompted a public admonition from senior Republican senator, and ally of Israel’s newly reinaugurated prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Lindsey Graham. Graham tweeted ‘The idea that Israel should speak less about Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine is a bit unnerving.’ He continued, calling Lavrov ‘a